Page 117 of The Wolf Duke's Wife
“Then I will marry her somewhere your permission is not required,” Tristan said evenly, “Scotland, perhaps. I am told the journey is most romantic.”
A gasp swept the room.
“You would elope with her?” Lady Gillray spat, “You would destroy what little reputation she has left and your own as well?”
“She is more vital to me than my reputation,” Tristan said, and his voice carried through the hall like the toll of a bell, “if you wish to contest that, madam, I invite you to try.”
He turned to the magistrate, whose pen now quivered in his hand.
“Will you defy me as well, sir? Or have you had your fill of humiliation for one evening?”
The magistrate’s eyes darted between them. “I…will take no action, Your Grace.”
“Wise,” Tristan said.
Then, for all to hear, he added,
“Let it be known that the Duke of Duskwood will defend the woman he loves. With words if I can, with arms if I must. And now, since you have all come for a ball,” his voice softened to something perilously edged, “you shall have one.”
The orchestra, which had frozen in terror, gave a collective start as he turned his head toward them.
“Play,” he said, “now.”
Violins scrambled into life. Guests shifted, half-stunned, half-thrilled, the air quivering between scandal and awe. Christine stood motionless, heart pounding. Only when he turned back to her did the world begin again. He took her hand, his fingers warm, steadying.
“Come,” he said softly, “we’ve given them a spectacle. Now let’s give them something finer.”
He led her from the room, into the smaller drawing chamber beyond, shutting the door against the curious hum of voices. She barely had time to speak before he caught her shoulders, eyes dark with a hundred unsaid things.
“What happened to you?” she whispered, touching the bruise at his temple.
“An ambush,” his mouth curved without humour, “a letter reached me this morning supposedly from my solicitor. Said Charles had been located in Surrey. I thought to end this onceand for all. Instead, I found a deserted barn and two men who took issue with my skull.”
Her breath hitched. “You could have been killed.”
“I might have been, if their intent were murder. But they only wanted to delay me.”
“Why?”
“One of them was the same fellow who tried to abduct you on the lane. I got him this time, and to escape the wolf’s jaws, he told me who paid him.” Tristan’s jaw tightened, “Lord Bingley.”
Christine stared. “Bingley? But why?”
“I mean to find out,” he brushed a thumb along her cheekbone, as if to reassure himself she was real, “but first, you must rest for an hour. You’ve weathered worse than Lady Gillray tonight. The guests will stew in their scandal for a while, and then we will conquer them together.”
“I could not have done it without you,” she said, her voice breaking, “I thought you’d never come.”
He gave a half-smile, weary but sure.
“Then trust me once more, Christine. Whatever this is, whatever they plot. We will end it together.”
She nodded, and though she knew the music beyond the door was only a dance, it felt, for the first time, like the prelude to war. And in that quiet space between candlelight and shadow, between fear and faith, she realized that she had already chosen her side.
Thirty-Five
The candles had turned the ballroom to daylight, but the corridor outside lay in a cooler dusk where the house could breathe. Christine stood in the little anteroom beyond the drawing chamber with her back to the paneled door, palms pressed flat to the wood as if she could keep the world from entering by force of will. Music seeped through, violins steadying themselves into a waltz, along with the collective murmur of a hundred mouths relearning how to speak after spectacle.
Her heart had not relearned anything. It galloped as though it meant to break out and make a run for the hills. Tristan closed the inner door softly and crossed the carpet toward her. He had bathed the worst of the dust from his face and bound the scrape at his temple. Someone had bullied a clean coat onto him, though the bruise beneath his eye showed stubbornly through civility. He looked both more himself and less.
