Page 87 of The Wolf Duke's Wife
“You will write often,” she said, “and come again soon.”
“I promise,” Christine said.
Selina looked at Tristan. “Take care of her, my lord of Duskwood. She has always carried too much of other people’s burdens.”
He bowed slightly. “It seems I am learning to share the weight.”
The words warmed Christine in a way she could not name. As the carriage turned back toward Duskwood, the first stars pricking the twilight, Christine leaned her head against the window. The countryside blurred into shadow and silver.
“You were right,” she said softly.
“About what?”
“Surprises,” she said, “this one was… perfect.”
He regarded her in the half-light, his expression unreadable. “I am pleased.”
“And thank you,” she added, “for the kindness you’ve shown, for arranging this, and for not telling Selina more than she needs to know.”
His gaze lingered. “I would not have you look at me with gratitude,” he said, “it is a poor currency between husband and wife.”
“Then take it as affection.”
He smiled faintly. “That I’ll accept.”
She turned back to the window. The darkness thickened as they rode, the rhythmic creak of the wheels and the muted thunder of hooves beneath them. Somewhere far ahead, Duskwood waited with its woods and its mysteries.
But for this one evening, she let herself rest in the illusion of peace, in the warmth of his presence, in the fleeting dream that she belonged entirely to him and he to her.
Twenty-Five
The house worked. That was the best way to think of it, not as a pile of stone glowering on its hill, but as a living engine with a hundred small cogs that wanted turning at the proper hour.
When Tristan returned his attention to it with his customary ruthless efficiency, he felt the old relief of slipping into a well-made glove. Numbers did not flinch. Roof slats did not weep. A broken gate spoke plainly of neglect and could be silenced with oak and iron. Even the accounts, once ordered, yielded to his will and sat up like good dogs.
The study smelled of wax and old paper. Ledgers lay open in obedient rows, quills stood like soldiers in their stand. He had the south-tenant arrears at last in hand, the Duxworth dairy lease renegotiated, and a memorandum to Rollins regarding the scandalously lax polishing of the second-floor sconces.
He signed his name and pressed his seal into cooling wax, one decision after another in a rhythm as steady as a metronome. Order and duty, both ingrained deeply in his bones.
The problem is the drift of my attention. It was never a problem before.
The thought occurred to him as he was forced to re-read the same page of a statement of account for the third time. The eye of his mind had been on Christine’s face upon seeing her sister. Upon the memory of her soft, pale skin in the water of the bathhouse.
Those memories slunk into his mind whenever his attention drifted, even if it was for no more than the length of a breath. Christine on the terrace at Birchfield, her hand covering Selina’s, sunlight climbing the curve of her cheek.
She laughed at something her sister said, and it did a quite absurd thing to my chest. It was not even funny, so why did I react with such…such…weakness?
He had carried the sound home with him, and it had been interfering with duty ever since. He shut the ledger with more force than necessary.
Softness is the rot that begins at the root. I owe it to my uncle to be tougher than that.
He rose, crossed to the window, and looked out upon the lawn that sloped to the darker line of the woods. Duskwood’s stones were cool at his back, and the glass on his knuckles was cold. Below, a pair of gardeners bent to their work in a border newly laid with rosemary.
Somewhere to the right, he saw the statuary, mossy and worn, where Louisa and Flora had played. He found himself smiling at the recollection of their joy.
It made the house brighter. And warmer.
When he realized the direction his thoughts were moving in, he turned away from the window with a face that would match thunder. Children would come. One day. For now, he had his quest, his duty. And marriage, true marriage, was not part of his agenda.
