Page 90 of The Wolf Duke's Wife
“Blanche,” Christine murmured.
“Not safe,” Tristan repeated, “for you, walking into a crowd of people who have decided what they think of your household before you speak. Envy grows teeth. I have scars to prove it.”
She lifted her chin, the stubborn line he knew too well. “I have teeth of my own.”
He swallowed the answer that would wound them both.
“If you insist upon this, you will not go alone. Nor with Miss Waldron alone. You will go with me.”
Christine’s eyes warmed in a way that made the gallery brighter. “You would come?”
“I will not have you conquering my domains without my permission,” he said dryly, “nor inviting the vicar to weep upon my boots. Yes. I will come.”
Blanche clapped her hands and then, to her credit, schooled her delight to the level of mere insolence. “Then we must dress. I have a bonnet that could convert a whole parish.”
Tristan lifted an eyebrow. “To vice?”
“To adoration,” she said sweetly.
“Miss Waldron,” he said, “I will not have you encourage the blacksmith to propose to my housekeeper.”
Mrs. Fogarty snorted. “He already tried. I told him I have charge of three stills and a duke; I don’t want a fourth child.”
Christine’s laughter slipped out before she could stop it. The sound struck him in the center of his chest and made it difficult to play the tyrant convincingly. He looked back at the map to avoid looking at her.
“Rollins will send word to Mr. Reeve that we wish to meet him and Reverend Potter tomorrow morning,” he said, “a notice, not a surprise. If I am to endure their civility, I expect it washed and dressed.”
Christine nodded, solemn as a sworn oath. “Thank you.”
“Do not thank me,” he said, “I am going to prevent calamity, not to encourage your habit of rescuing all England.”
She tilted her head. “And if England wishes to be rescued?”
“Then England should apply to my duchess and not to me.”
That, apparently, was quite the wrong thing to say to a woman intent on not blushing. Color rose like dawn along her throat; her eyes went softer than a man like him deserved. He turned at once and addressed Mrs. Fogarty with unnecessary severity.
“Inform the kitchens we will require stout bread for the morning, and something that convinces a vicar I mean him no harm. Not cake. Cake is a declaration of surrender.”
“Pies,” Mrs. Fogarty said, already making lists in her head. “A good pie says we are God-fearing. Two pies says we are generous. Three pies says we are sorry.”
“One pie,” he said. “We are not sorry yet.”
Blanche, who had drifted to the window to judge the quality of her reflection in the glass, turned back with her grin like a small scandal. “How you terrify me, Your Grace. One pie. The village will faint.”
He might have ended it there, with the plan made and the future duly postponed to the morning. But Christine moved to the window seat, gathered the papers in a neat stack, and rested her palm upon them as if swearing them to silence. When she looked up, he could not pretend not to see.
“I do not mean to shame you by any of this,” she said, “nor to make you into something you are not.”
His throat tightened. “What is it you think I am?”
“A man who knows what is owed,” she said simply. “And who hates that knowledge when it costs him?”
“I do not hate it. I am just tired of being a purse with boots.”
She spared him the answer by turning to Blanche, “We should let His Grace return to his ledgers.”
Blanche made a face. “Ledgers! Very well. Mrs. Fogarty, let us go and terrify the poultry.”
