Page 73 of The Wolf Duke's Wife
“Leaving? For where?”
“That will become clear when we arrive. But leaving will occur now.”
Christine stared at him in disbelief. He looked like he had been working all night and had risen from his desk to come down to the breakfast room. He put a hand through his hair, barely taming it. His eyes were bright. Christine felt his excitement for whatever their errand was.
“Have you found Charles?” she asked, breathlessly.
Is it better that Charles is found, and I no longer need to wonder where he is? Or that he remains free and unharmed? Charles destroyed us. He is my blood, but he did not behave as if he were.
“No, this is something far more pleasant. A wedding present.”
She rose, putting down her linen napkin. Tristan pulled open the door and waved his arm to indicate she should precede him. She left the room ahead of him.
The carriage rocked and sighed like a ship leaving harbor, wheels hissing over the damp road as Greystone fell away behind them and London’s smoke thinned to a blue haze on the horizon.
The morning had opened its palm to a pale, water colored sky. Hedgerows slid past, slick with rain and newly washed cobwebs. Inside, the air was warmer than the world beyond, smelling faintly of leather, lamp oil, and the clean starch of Tristan’s linen.
He sat opposite; one boot braced on the seat opposite. One palm rested loosely upon his thigh, as if motion barely touched him. Despite that, each rock of the carriage seemed to carry his shoulder to press against hers. To shift his thigh slightly enough to make contact.
Christine let her hand slip to the seat between them and touched his leg as the carriage rounded a corner. Neither acknowledged the contact.
The light caught in his hair and made dark waves of it. His face held that calm he wore like armor. It was not indifference. It was discipline. She had let silence run for nearly a mile, measuring it, testing it, and hoping it might yield more than words would. It did not. So she abandoned hope of subtlety.
“Where did you go,” she asked at last, “last night?”
He looked up as if from a long way off. “Pardon?”
She hated the heat that climbed her neck.
“At the final dinner. You vanished. Everyone noticed.”
“Everyone?” A wry crease appeared beside his mouth, “The Dowager Duchess will be gratified.”
“Tristan.”
He studied her for a moment, then turned to the window and watched a line of elms lift their black hands to the sky. “Gillray House.”
“To do what?”
“Tidying.”
He said it in the tone men used for the movement of pawns. A faint pat upon the shoulder of a matter dispatched.
“Tidy what?”
“Loose ends.”
“Could you be any more ambiguous?”
Her voice fluttered and steadied, a bird finding a branch.
His eyes returned to her. “I instructed Lady Gillray to have your belongings prepared. I prefer not to leave pieces of your life in a house that wished you ill.”
A complicated ache went through her. It was relief at being considered and a warmth of pleasure. There was also anger at being managed… and something warmer and more treacherous than either.
Is this the beginning? Am I to be merely a trophy with no more power than the suits of armor he no doubt has decorating his house?
“You might have told me.”
