Blanche’s eyes brightened as if someone had lit another lantern. “Then you shall be pleased with us. We’ve made six.”
Christine said nothing. She only watched him, and he had the unnerving sense that she could see which sentence had scraped his temper. He laid a hand upon the back of a chair and looked down at their map with the practiced indifference of a general surveying an enthusiastic child’s plan for Trafalgar.
“You will not go to Duxworth,” he said, more evenly, “not this afternoon, not at all.”
“May we ask why?” Christine asked quietly.
“Because there is nothing there you require,” he said, “Duskwood’s kitchen supplies are more than sufficient. If we want more bread, we bake it. If we want ale, we ask Mrs. Fogarty to terrify a brewer until he weeps barley. There are plenty in London.”
“And the village?” Christine asked, very softly.
“Will interpret your courtesy as obligation,” Tristan said, “they will think a courtesy one week is tribute the next. The last time I entertained generosity there, I found myself named miser for not providing a new nave, a schoolhouse roof, and a road that led only to an alehouse.”
Blanche made a low, delighted sound. “What a road.”
“There is such a road,” Mrs. Fogarty confided to her, “it slopes like a drunkard. You roll down it whether you will or no.”
“Then all the more reason to lay it properly,” Christine said, and the way she said it, without reproach but with a clear, practical mercy, made Tristan want to laugh and swear in the same breath. She faced him, arms folded tightly, lips pressed together.
“Tristan, they are not beggars gathered for your purse. They areyourpeople, whether you like it or not. The estate is their bread. Will you truly throw a celebration inside your walls and treat those who keep the walls standing as if they did not exist?”
“And you think walking into the inn with your sweet smile will redeem a decade of silence?” he asked, too sharp. “Besides, they are not my people. They are free people. I am not their feudal lord. If Duskwood ceased to be tomorrow, they would go on as before.”
Christine laughed, and Tristan came forward, lips curling into a snarl at the mockery. He stopped to stand in front of her, hands clasped behind his back. Blanche and Mrs. Fogarty both took a step back. Christine did not. She watched him, tapping her foot.
“Did I say something amusing?” Tristan growled.
“Yes. I cannot believe an educated and intelligent man can be so naive. Do you think that Duxworth is an independent entity? It is the moss that has grown on the stones of Duskwood. Take away the stones, and the moss shrivels and dies. How many tradespeople in the village rely on your custom as the core oftheir business? How many crafters would starve without the coin you spend on their work? How much produce from local farms ends up on your table?”
“They are free to sell their wares to anyone,” Tristan snapped, “they are not beholden to…”
“Yes, they are! It costs twice as much to cart goods or produce to the next town, or even to London, where they would be competing with a thousand others. You are their livelihood.”
Tristan scowled, feeling as though the village and their need were an anchor and chain wrapped around him. He had never considered it in those terms before.
I always thought that free Englishmen had the choice to do as they will. I didn’t think that they might be constrained because of my wealth.
The portraits along the gallery seemed to lean closer to hear. He saw his uncle’s mouth in three different frames, set in an identical line of disappointment, or perhaps that was memory shifting its weight beneath his ribs.
“You support my very reason for not going to the village,” he said, the effort of keeping his voice level costing him dearly. “When I walk into that village, they do not see a man; they see a purse. They were content to see my father, God rest him, as a saint while he poured out coin, and a sinner the moment he paused to plan. I have no wish to wear either mask.”
“Then do not,” Christine said, “walk in as Tristan. Not the Wolf, not the purse, not the Duke. Just the man who intends to do better than silence and better than bribes. Just a man who wishes to make his betrothal a celebration. A cause for happiness.”
Blanche stared at her with the theatrical bliss of a woman watching a play turn out exactly as she hoped.
“Do let me come,” she whispered to no one in particular.
Tristan looked at Christine. There was something plaintive in her words. It was as though she cried out for those words to be real. That the engagement should be a cause for joy. An occasion to be remembered. They both knew that the engagement was not a celebration. It was a trap. He saw the papers spread out behind her, the practical scheme of lists and lanterns. In that, he glimpsed the thing that truly pulled at her.
It was not a ball but a bridge, thrown from this cold house to every hearth that warmed it. He wanted to tell her it could not be done. That men were not so easily mended as roofs. That road, if laid, would only deliver criticism faster. He found instead that he remembered the margin notes in his uncle’s hand.
Widow Pelham’s rent was deferred again.
It had enraged him as a boy. It had smacked of people taking advantage of his father, of his uncle, of him. It moved him now in a way he did not care to name. He set both hands upon the chair and said, because he had no better weapon than bluntness.
“It is not safe.”
Blanche blinked. “The village, Your Grace, is unsafe?”
