Page 121 of The Wolf Duke's Wife
“There is a stable-boy who thinks the moon speaks to him. He will not ask questions as long as I ask nicely. Two saddle horses, quiet mouths, good legs, and cloaks. We take the bridle pathalong the river until the road turns north. If anyone stops us, we are going to comfort a sick aunt.”
“You have grown clever,” he said, half-mocking, half-awed.
“I have grown tired of being stupid,” she said.
He looked at her as if seeing, at last, that she was not the sister he had left behind to carry his debts like shopping.
“Very well,” he said softly, “let’s fly.”
She nodded, and then, because she could not leave the place that had been the first home she remembered without touching it, she reached for the rough bark of the yew and let her fingers rest there a second, like a benediction no priest would recognize. In that brief contact, she smuggled a prayer into the night, that the man she loved would forgive her, or at least would not bleed from this in a way he could never mend.
They moved, quick and quiet, along the hedge and down to the service path. She did not look back at the house, though the windows called like a constellation. In the scullery yard, the stable-boy was indeed conferring with the heavens while a cat derided him. Christine said his name, and he came to earth at once.
“Two horses,” she said, “now please. Not the greys, the chestnuts with more sense than vanity. Bridles and plain saddles. No ribbons.” She met his widened eyes, “You did not see me.”
He did not blink. “No, my lady.”
Charles watched her with a kind of reverence that made her almost laugh; it was so late and so poor. He took the first bridle the boy handed him and fell into the old, easy motion of buckles, straps, the practical grace of a man who had always been more comfortable with a horse than a ledger. She swung into the other saddle without waiting to be helped and discovered that her body remembered as if it had been practicing without her.
The boy opened the small gate by the east wall. Beyond it, the path narrowed to darkness. The wind had found its way across the fields and brought the smell of water and the faintest rumor of rain.
Christine gathered the reins. For an instant, one open, mortal instant, she allowed herself to picture Tristan in the ballroom. She pictured his face when he realized she had chosen this. The thought was a blade she drew across her own heart to keep herself honest.
“Go,” she said, and put her heels to the horse.
They slipped into the dark like two lines of ink vanishing into a page already overcrowded with other people’s stories.
Thirty-Six
The moon had hauled itself free of the horizon and hung low over the fields, a coin struck from ice. Its light turned the meadows silver and the trees to ink, the kind of half-darkness that made the world feel made of secrets. Tristan’s horse was blowing hard beneath him, flanks damp, but he pressed on. Every shadow might have been her. Every turn of the path seemed to whisper that it was just too late.
He had scoured the house first, the terrace, the walled garden, even the folly by the lake where she liked to walk when she thought herself unobserved. Her name had gone unanswered in every room. It was in the stables that truth had found him. Two horses missing, both chestnuts with the same smooth mouths she preferred. The stable hand, pale as tallow, had stammered,
“Her ladyship ordered them saddled, Your Grace. Said she was riding with her brother, Mr. Charles.”
Tristan had needed the full measure of a breath to keep from shouting. Instead, he’d mounted the nearest hunter and ridden out with fury tight behind his ribs.
I have been a fool, and fools lose what they love most by thinking vengeance could be caged.
The night smelled of grass and river. He took the lower trail where the bridle path ran along the slope toward the woods. The fresh prints of two horses shone dark in the dew, leading north. A grim smile touched his mouth. He followed.
Wind whipped the hair at his brow and dried the sweat on his temples. Somewhere far ahead, hooves struck stone, echoing faintly. He urged his horse on. When the path narrowed through a copse of hazel, he saw them. Two riders in the moonlight, moving hard and fast. He spurred forward, and the hunter surged, closing the distance like a hound sighting quarry.
“Christine!” His voice carried, raw and furious.
Both riders turned. Christine’s face, pale in the glow, flashed toward him, and he saw her expression twist between shock and relief. Charles pulled up beside her, his horse dancing sideways. Tristan reined in just short of them, the horse shying and stamping. The silence that followed was terrible. The three of them, the night, and the thin sound of the river.
“You shouldn’t have come,” Christine said at last. Her voice trembled only slightly.
“You shouldn’t have left,” he returned.
Charles shifted uneasily in the saddle. “You can have your lecture later, Duskwood. I’ve no wish to stay for it.”
“Then go,” Tristan said. “But not before we settle what’s mine.”
Christine flinched. “Tristan…”
He dismounted, boots striking the ground hard, “You took my horses, Christine. And something else, if I’m not mistaken.”
