“Do not spread that rumor,” he said, “I have a reputation to maintain.”
“Why?”
It was an unexpected question for both of them, a thought that appeared in her mind and was spoken aloud without conscious volition. She flushed at its brazen directness.
But then, don't I have the right to ask if he wishes us to pretend to be betrothed? Not even that, but married!
“To keep others away,” Tristan replied, his tone suggesting the snarl of the challenged pack leader.
“That sounds lonely.”
“I have everyone I need.”
“Except me.”
Pause. A blade had slipped through his armor. He looked at her from beneath gathered brows, his hair, a mane, tumbling about his carved features. Christine gasped, thinking of primitive epochs in which men’s language was strength and force, survival of the savage.
“Do I not?”
Christine flushed.
I must learn to think of our marriage of convenience as a transaction only. I cannot go weak at the knees every time I think of being Christine Valentine of Duskwood.
“We were talking of your frightening away people.”
“Are you not frightened?”
“Not for myself, no.”
“You are fond of the girls,” she said.
“I am,” he said without hesitation.
“Their parents have been kind to me. The girls…remind me that not everything in this world must be earned through fear.”
There was a melancholy in his tone she had never heard before. Christine found herself stepping closer. Proximity to him made her heart skip and her breath come quick. Her pulse raced when she realized that he could simply reach out and touch her in the blink of an eye.
“It is commendable that you were so anxious to find them.”
“I have lost much in my life. I do not say that for sympathy. It is a fact,” Tristan said, “it makes me value what I have.”
“What have you lost?” Christine asked.
His storm-dark eyes found hers, held them with the force of a clasped hand. She could not look away and did not want to. She felt stripped by that gaze, exposed to her skin. To her soul. She forgot to breathe, flushed with embarrassment, and took a deep breath. His gaze never wavered to her heaving chest, but she felt the effort of his attention.
He wants to look. He wants me, my body. Oh Lord, that thought is enough to make my knees tremble.
She had unlocked an aspect of his character that had previously been completely hidden. But there was more, and her heart hammered at the prospect of discovering it. Of peeling back another layer, a layer closer to discovering the real Tristan.
“That is too grim a subject for an afternoon walk.”
“A subject that brings understanding cannot be grim. Only good,” Christine countered.
She was determined to hang onto this opportunity. She was glimpsing the man behind the portcullis. Seeing through his defenses. He looked away, and she found herself studying his profile, wanting to run her fingers over the planes and angles of his face. To touch him and feel him react to her touch. It was enough to make her feel drunk, dizzy.
“That depends on the reason behind the question. And the role of the questioner,” he said evenly. “For now, we play our parts. You as my betrothed, I as your devoted protector.” She shouldhave been angry at his shutting his gates in her face. Instead, she found herself laughing again, softly.
“You are insufferable.”
