He kissed the hollow at the base of her throat. Christine made a sound that went through him like wine. His hands slowed oftheir own accord, unmanning him with their sudden gentleness, thumb grazing the line of her ribs, palm flattening at her back, not to possess but to keep.
“Tristan,” she breathed.
“Say it again,” he said.
“Tristan,” she whispered.
He lifted his head and looked at her.
How can two syllables unman me more than a touch? How can the sound of my name be so utterly erotic?
He wanted very much to close the last inches that separated propriety from ruin. The room had become a small, sunlit ship adrift in uncaring seas. But he was not a boy; he had not forgotten the village under their feet. He saw the wet brightness of her moist lips. The excited gleam in her eyes, the swell of her breath against his chest, made him stop.
“I should put you in that chair and let you scold Reeve’s list,” he said, voice unsteady and almost amused by its own failure.
“You should,” she agreed, not moving away.
He dragged air into his lungs like a swimmer. Slowly, slowly, he eased his hands to a safer country. She watched him, and thetriumph in her face was not cruel. It was pleased. As if the proof of his restraint delighted her as much as the proof of his hunger.
“We will be late for the vicar,” she murmured.
“I am already at confession,” he said drily, and she laughed.
He did set her in the chair then, though he kept his hand at the back of her neck for one indulgent beat longer than necessary. He fetched the bread and tore it, trying not to notice the way her mouth looked when she bit. When he stood, he did it as if he had never been anything but a duke with his boots on and a ledger in his head.
“Eat,” he ordered, “then we will see Reeve’s suggestions for ribbon excess and prevent the green from strangling itself.”
“Bossy,” she said lightly, and obeyed.
He took the list from the table and scanned it, forcing his brain back to practical things. Names, trades, and a neat sketch of the green. He had not been asked for coin, not once. He had been asked for permission and for trust.
“We will send the tent,” he said, and realized he had spoken aloud.
Christine’s smile was small and warm and victorious in a way that felt like being unhelmed by a friend during a game. “Thank you.”
“Do not thank me,” he said, because habit demanded deflection. “Thank the weevils I am determined to thwart.”
A rap sounded at the door, three careful knocks. Tristan looked to Christine, saw that she had set her cup down and smoothed her skirt, saw, too, the ghost of heat still on her face. He went to the door and drew the bolt, schooling his mouth to a line that would not betray them to any eye that thought itself clever.
Reeve stood there, cap in hand. Behind him, Reverend Potter. He was tall, grave, with the watery eyes of a man who thought well of everyone and had therefore suffered for it. They stepped into the room.
“Your Grace,” the vicar said, “my lady. I hear we had some trouble on the lane.”
“We had,” Tristan said, “and we will have answers before dusk.”
“Meanwhile,” he said, brightening at the sight of the paper in Christine’s hand, “we have joy to plan.”
“We have orders to arrange,” Tristan corrected, because the wordjoysat oddly upon his tongue and because he could not entirely bear to let the afternoon’s earlier admission stand unchallenged. But when he looked down at Christine and saw the quick answering spark in her eyes, stubborn, clever, and thoroughly alive, he thought perhaps the two things were not so far apart as he had always insisted.
They sat. Reeve cleared his throat and began with barrels and lanterns and lanes. The vicar spoke of the old and the very young. Christine asked questions. Tristan, against his former nature, listened. Outside, a cart rattled harmlessly past. The chalkboard downstairs gathered more names under its heading. And somewhere beyond the hedges and the easy brightness of noon, a rope lay in a ditch where a pair of men had dropped it in a hurry.
Someone had sent them. That thread persisted. He would find it and pull until the whole ugly garment came apart. But for now, in a room above a village that had surprised him, he sat beside the woman who had insisted upon light, and he admired her for it.
That and many other things. Things I cannot say aloud. Will not say aloud.
Not yet. But that was an improvement on never.
Twenty-Nine
