“I might,” he agreed, “but you would have argued that you should attend, and I wished to avoid a scene.”
“You wished to avoidme,” she said, more sharply than she intended.
That, at least, tugged a thread in him. The calm shifted. “Never.”
He pulled something from the seat beside him. It was a folio of thick paper tied with twine. He set it on his knee.
“Speaking of scenes,” he went on, gentling the moment with a change of subject.
He untied the twine and handed her a slip of paper, written in block capitals, in the neat, cold hand of a clerk. Her name leapt at her from the page.
A marriage is announced between His Grace Tristan, Duke of Duskwood, and Lady Christine Davidson…
The line blurred with the speed at which her lungs forgot their purpose. The neatly inked lines were coolly confident, clinical, and certain. It made what had only been talked of thus far into a reality. It made it real for any reader. She lifted her eyes.
“This is the message that has been copied and carried to every newspaper in London and will be circulated beyond over the coming days and weeks. Announcing our betrothal,” Tristan said, a trace of triumph in his voice, the light of it in his eyes.
“You have sent these already?”
“They will appear tomorrow and then every day for a week. I have purchased the space. London’s appetite for news is insatiable, and I mean to satisfy it with something more palatable than Gillray’s gossip.”
“But you did not ask me.”
His brows lowered a fraction. “Would you have preferred the announcement held back and rumor to fill the gap? I do not care much for leaving the field to rumor. It bites worse than the truth. Besides, why would you object? You agreed to this and to the reason behind it.”
“It is not a rumor I fear,” she said quietly. “It is what truth you intend to catch in your net. Perhaps I am not so complacent about your apparent keenness for the hunt.”
A stillness passed over him, like the wind dropping from a sail. “Explain.”
She looked down.
“You are very pleased with yourself, Tristan. Forgive me, but you are. There is a glint to you, something almost…triumphant,” she forced a small, thin smile, “you look like a hunter who has found his quarry’s trail.”
The corner of his mouth hardened. “I am a hunter. It is what dukes are, whether they shoot birds or chase deer,” his gaze did not leave her, “and there is a deer abroad I would like to stalk.”
“Charles is not a deer,” she said, and heard the tremor she wished to hide, “he is my brother.”
He is my brother. I played with him as a child. He protected me and comforted me when I cried. But he also destroyed our family with his greed, with his reckless lack of regard. I donot know whether I want him to remain free or see him serve justice.
“He is a man who destroyed lives and walked away.” his voice stayed quiet, the calm restored, the discipline resumed, “My notice is a rope thrown into a dark well. It may draw him up. Better he comes to me than I go to him.”
“And then?”
“Then,” he said, and the single syllable held a thousand calculated paths.
He opened his mouth and then simply shrugged, looking away. It was a chilling moment.
He washes his hands of the moment. As though not holding himself responsible for what might happen.
“We talk,” he said, finally, brows drawing down tightly as though the words were dragged from him.
She wanted to say she believed him. She wanted to say she did not. She wanted to ask whether talk in his mouth meant a gallows in someone else’s. Instead, she folded the notice along its crease and set it back upon his knee.
“I want to see him,” she said, “I want to ask him why. But I cannot want that if it means you will harm him.”
He studied her as one might study a map for hidden roads. “You think I brought you into my life to make you watch a punishment?”
“I think you brought me into your life to hunt him. Hunters rarely mean their prey well.”
