Rosamund’s mouth betrayed her. The smile arrived before her defences could intercept it—small, involuntary. Then she caught it, smothered it, pursed her lips together until the muscles ached.
But Tristan had seen it. She watched him see it—the way his gaze sharpened, the way his breath seemed to hesitate, as though her smile were something fragile that had landed unexpectedly in his vicinity and he was afraid of startling it away.
He said nothing. He did not smile in return, because he was not a man who took what was not freely given, and a smile wrestled away from its owner against her will did not count.
But the string stayed draped over his shoulder, and he did not remove it, and when Clara demanded that he begin rebuilding the castle immediately with improved dragon-proofing, he complied without protest.
Rosamund retreated to the corridor. From inside the study, Clara’s voice rose, imperious and delighted.
“Underthe chair, Your Grace. I said under!”
“My apologies. The regulations, as you say, are quite specific.”
“They are. Try again.”
Rosamund closed her eyes. The dandelion Clara had given her that morning was still tucked in her sleeve, crushed now, its brightness fading.
He was not what she had expected. Not what she had needed him to be. The villain she had carried in her chest for four years was dissolving, and the man left behind was someone she could not afford to see clearly, because seeing him clearly meant acknowledging that the world was more complicated than grief had permitted her to believe.
She opened her eyes. Straightened. Smoothed her skirt with hands that trembled only slightly.
From the study, laughter—Clara’s, bright as struck crystal. And beneath it, too quiet for anyone but Rosamund to catch, a sound she had never heard before and could not have prepared for: Tristan Rathbourne, laughing.
CHAPTER 11
“Your Grace, a letter. From Mr Hargrove’s office. The courier was instructed to wait for a reply.”
Tristan took the sealed envelope from Harding’s tray without looking up from the fire he had been staring into for the better part of an hour. The study was dark—he had not called for lamps, had not moved to light them himself. The fire provided what it could, and he had discovered, sometime after the rest of the household retired, that he preferred the room this way. Dimmer. Less precise. A space where the edges of things blurred, and a man who spent his waking hours maintaining edges could afford to let them soften.
“That will be all.”
Harding withdrew. The door closed with the particular discretion that Rath House servants had perfected—audible enough to confirm departure, quiet enough to leave no impression.
Tristan broke the seal with his thumb. The handwriting was Hargrove’s clerk, but the content bore the solicitor’s voice—measured, methodical, carrying the gravity that legal language acquired when it was trying very hard not to alarm the reader.
Your Grace,
I write to inform you that enquiries have been made by a Mr Edwin Vale regarding the circumstances of your recent marriage. Specifically, Mr Vale has been in communication with a magistrate in Cheapside—a Mr Aldcroft, whose reputation I shall characterise as flexible—concerning the validity of a marriage conducted by special licence when the nearest male relation of the bride was not consulted prior to the ceremony.
The legal foundation for such a challenge is negligible. A special licence issued by the Archbishop requires no such consultation, and the absence of familial consent has no bearing on the legitimacy of the union. I state this plainly so that the matter itself may be dismissed.
However, the intent behind the enquiry warrants your attention. Mr Vale is not pursuing a viable legal remedy. He is testing the walls, if Your Grace will permit the metaphor, seeking any point of vulnerability in the structure you have built around the Duchess. That he has engaged a magistrate of questionable standing suggests he is willing to operate outside conventional channels, and I would counsel vigilance accordingly.
I await your instruction.
Yours faithfully, R. Hargrove
He read it twice. The first time quickly—absorbing structure, identifying threat, filing detail. The second time slowly, letting each sentence land with its full weight.
Edwin Vale. He held back a sigh. He had expected this. Edwin was a man who did not accept defeat. He absorbed it, studied it, and then began dismantling it from the inside, the way water found cracks in stone and froze.
Tristan reached for a fresh sheet of paper. Dipped the pen. Wrote a single line:
Ensure every document surrounding the marriage is unassailable. Leave nothing to interpretation.
He signed it. Folded it. Sealed it with the Rathbourne crest and set it aside for Harding.
Then he held Hargrove’s letter over the grate.
