Courting Poppy Tidemore (Lords of Honor Book 5)

by Christi Caldwell

  But certainly not this woman.

  He cut through his fury to find a proper response. “I’m sorry, Poppy,” he said quietly.

  Her head came flying up, and gone was the wounded expression she’d briefly worn, replaced by a palpable fire that set her hazel eyes aglow.

  The air flow in his lungs froze, leaving him breathless.

  “Don’t you do that, Tristan,” she demanded, magnificent in her fury. “I’m not injured and I’m certainly not dead.” She jabbed her brush against his chest, splattering paint upon his linen shirt. He grunted, as she advanced toward him, backing him up until his legs knocked against the mattress. “I’m very much alive, and I won’t be pitied because of what happened.” She stuck him with her brush-turned-makeshift-weapon once more. Then the fight seemed to go out of her. Poppy sank onto the edge of his bed. “And certainly not by you…” Her voice faded to a whisper. “I expected more from you than to care about my scandal.”

  And the disappointment there—for him—not because of his scandal but because of how he’d failed her in this instance, left him gutted. When he’d come upon her in his hotel rooms yesterday evening, he’d welcomed the freedom with which she’d spoken to him. For in their exchange, she hadn’t seen the man whose scandal filled the gossip columns and drawing rooms. Rather, she’d spoken to him as she always had—and he’d failed her.

  Tristan shoved open the bed-curtains.

  Poppy stiffened as he claimed the spot alongside her. But still said nothing, that silence so un-Poppy-like, so all that he wanted was to restore her to the previously fiery warrioress about ready to take his head off for his affront.

  He weighed his words a long while, measuring each one before speaking. “Of course I care about your scandal, Poppy.”

  Her back went up.

  “But only because I care about you,” he said softly. He always had. From the moment she’d chased her troublesome dog into his riding path and he’d nearly trampled her, he’d come to care about the spirited girl. “And so, what you did or did not do, matters not one whit to me…except in how you’re hurt because of it.” Tristan shoved a hand through his badly mussed hair. God, mayhap it was the early morn hour that was causing him to make an absolute blunder of this. “What I’m attempting to say and doing a splendid poor job of is that—”

  Poppy rested her spare hand on his knee.

  He glanced from that delicate touch, to her face. “Thank you,” she said softly. Then with a sigh, Poppy stuffed her brush into her apron pocket and flung herself backwards on his bed. “It was a foolish decision, though. I’ll concede that to you and not anyone else. And if you tell anyone I said as much, I’ll meet you with pistols at dawn.”

  Tristan joined her, lying down so they lay shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  She angled her face toward his. “Telling anyone? Or meeting me with pistols at dawn?”

  “Either,” he said, with a wink.

  They shared a smile before simultaneously glancing overhead at the curtains. There’d always been an ease around Poppy. With her, he could always be assured that she’d never fawn or simper. Rather, she was always her teasing, blunt-speaking self. This time, however, tension thrummed within his frame.

  “Who was the bounder?” he forced in casual tones, determined to have the name of the bastard who’d sullied her reputation.

  “Lord Rochford.”

  Lord…? He rolled onto his side. “The Marquess of Rochford?” he asked incredulously. “Staid. Proper. Unnaturally tall.”

  “The very same.” Her face scrunched up. “Except, given that he ruined my reputation on a wager, he’s a good deal less staid or proper than credited. Though, in fairness”—she rolled over so she could face him—“he’s not unnaturally tall.”

  Tristan narrowed his eyes. “Oh?”

  “He’s quite pleasing.”

  Quite pleasing.

  Tristan stiffened. “You’d defend the bastard who ruined you?” That went against everything he knew of the fiercely proud, indomitable young woman.

  She lifted her shoulders in an awkward shrug. “I can separate what he did from what he looks like. And”—she touched a fingertip to the corner of her eye—“he is appealing to the eye.” With that far too casual utterance, she sprang from her reclining position, and found her way over to her mural.

  And then removing her brush from her apron, she dipped it into a small glass jar…and proceeded to paint.

  As though she’d not just lauded Lord Rochford’s form. Or spoken about her admiration for the bounder. The same bounder whom she’d been discovered with.

  A muscle leapt in his jaw. Did she care about the blackguard? And why did that idea rankle as much as it did?

  It is only because she is St. Cyr’s sister-in-law. As such, through that relationship, Poppy by default was more of a de facto sister to Tristan. Why, he’d fished and raced with the lady. By God, he’d chatted about the breeding times of his dogs with the girl. Of course he’d worry about her as he would…any of his sisters. Tristan stood. “And that mattered to you?” he forced casualness, even as a dangerous energy hummed in his veins. “That Rochford was, how did you phrase it?” He knew precisely how she’d phrased it. “Hmm? Pleasing to the eye?”

  Poppy added another stroke to her painting. “For the purpose it served.”

  Despite her earlier assurances, all manner of unwanted images flitted past: of Poppy alone with the too tall Rochford—the too tall, partially naked Rochford. Rage clouded his vision, and he registered her words coming through the blood pounding at his temples.

  “His physique is quite proportional,” she said, so conversational as she alternated her brush for a medium sized one, and added to the faux finish. Popping out light areas, as she captured his former Kent estate.

  “Proportional?”

  Her fingers flew quickly, as she dabbed at several errant spaces upon the mural that came together as the summer sky through those trees. “Proportional. That is a term used in art. It generally refers to the relative size of parts of a whole.”

  “The whole in this case being Rochford?”

  She angled a winning smile back like he’d solved the question of man’s existence. “Precisely,” she lauded, and went back to her work. “Did you know?” she asked, this time without so much a glance for him. “The proportions within the body are based on an ancient Greek mathematical system which is meant to define perfection in the human body.”

  “I…I…” That penetrated his jealousy, and he found himself not for the first time completely befuddled by Poppy Tidemore. “That is a rather clinical description of the gentleman.” And that managed to ease some of the tautness in Tristan’s frame.

  With the back of her spare hand, Poppy brushed a curl behind the perfect shell of her ear. “That is all one requires when painting a subject.”

  Painting. Understanding dawned, as at last it made sense. Why…why… “You met him alone so that you might paint him.” Tristan was unable to keep the relief from his voice. That was all it had been. Not some girlish infatuation with…with… His mind balked at even completing the earlier thoughts that had haunted him.

  “Sketch,” she corrected. “I was going to paint him later.” Poppy let her brush fall to her side, as she looked at him once more. Through the blanket of her thick black lashes, wariness spilled from her gaze. “I’m sure you have something to say on it.”

  Because no doubt her family, along with every member of Polite Society and then some, as the lady succinctly put it, had something to say.

  “Do you truly expect me to pass judgment on you?” They’d known one another for more than six years now.

  “Everyone else has.”

  “I’m not everyone else,” he said instantly.

  Poppy’s eyes went soft, and lips parted—ever so slightly with such adoration that should have terrified the hell out of him. Only, his gaze slid of its own volition, to that mouth he’d not allowed himself
to think about…that he’d forced himself to not think about. Lush crimson flesh, Poppy’s, that begged to be kissed…and more.

  Choking, he wrenched his gaze over her head to the mural taking shape.

  Hell. I am going to hell.

  Chapter 8

  For the flicker of a moment, Poppy had believed Tristan was going to kiss her.

  Which was as ludicrous as it was preposterous. As a girl of fifteen, she’d yearned for that moment. Why, she’d even practiced it. That was, within the confines of her rooms upon a pillow.

  But practice her first kiss, she had.

  Only to find herself twenty-one, and in possession of still wholly virginal lips—and wholly unfair given her now scandalous reputation.

  Poppy stole another sideways peek at the man standing beside her.

  No, his gaze was firmly fixed on her mural; if there had been any doubt that his attention had been on her, then it had only been a trick of that girlish part of her deeply buried that had always hoped for his attentions.

  Tristan leaned in; his nose nearly brushed the painted brush the pheasant took flight from. “It is as though if I look close, I can almost see the River Grom,” he murmured, as one lost in thought.

  Since Juliet had opened Poppy’s eyes to the wonderment of art in all its forms, Poppy had found herself in a like state. Never had Tristan, nay anyone she’d known, fallen into that deep, reverent introspection. And certainly not as a result of anything Poppy had created.

  It was as heady as the thought of the kiss she’d once imagined from this man.

  “It is,” she said softly, moving to stand beside him. With the tip of her brush, she gestured to the hint of blue-grey water taking shape, of that river she’d once swum in, attired in nothing more than her undergarments. “I wanted to capture the memory of it.” Of those beautiful lands he’d since lost. “To memorialize the river here.” Forever. For selfish reasons, as much as for Tristan.

  And as the silence stretched on, she curled her toes into her boots. This sharing of her work was foreign, and she’d been so excited by Penelope’s offer to transform the walls of the Paradise Hotel, that Poppy had not properly thought about how…exposed she would be. Her work would be on display, as it now was before not just any patron, but Tristan. Poppy forced herself to look over.

  Tristan’s eyes were riveted upon that painted river, and in his gaze, there was a sadness, so haunting, his pain so palpable that her heart spasmed. Teasing one another as they’d been, it had been all too easy to forget that they’d been brought together in her sister’s hotel because of their own scandals. His, however, was the far more devastating.

  “But do you know the thing about the mural, Tristan?” she asked quietly. Not waiting for a reply, she shifted closer so that their arms brushed. “The River Grom is an afterthought to the focus of the image. Going on the hunt with Valor and Honor? Be it in the country or here in London, they’re with you still.” An awkward pall fell over the room.

  For his dogs weren’t with him. “Well, they are not with you here, per se.” Dogs were not permitted in the hotel and the only exception made had been for Poppy. “I’m sorry, Tristan.”

  “Poppy, it is fine,” he said softly.

  Only, it wasn’t. “I didn’t mean to add further upset.”

  “You didn’t.”

  Another horrifying prospect slid in. She pressed a palm to her chest. “You’ve not had to give away your dogs?” she whispered.

  “God, no,” he exclaimed. “That I would have actually fought Northrop on.” Tristan paused. “Maxwell,” he quietly corrected.

  Maxwell. How both singularly odd and wrong it was to hear Tristan speak of another in a title that he’d worn so well.

  “They’re with my sisters in the country.” No doubt, the only happy pair of that group in Devon.

  “I can paint over it,” she was already stepping back to reanalyze her mural. Chewing at the wood tip of her brush, she contemplated the wall. “It will be nothing to—”

  “No.”

  “Do away with the river. I can add brush—”

  “Poppy,” he said with a greater insistence. Resting a hand on her arm, he silenced her. His gaze worked over her face; filling her with a warmth as real as a physical touch. “I wouldn’t have you change a single aspect of it,” he murmured. “It is…perfect.”

  Perfect. Her heart fluttered, and blast and damn if she didn’t fall in love with Tristan Poplar once more in her life. Only for reasons that had nothing to do with a girlish infatuation or his love of dogs and his scandalous reputation. He appreciated her work. Even if he appreciated it, however, she’d not have the subject of his room focus on a painful memory in his life. She wetted her lips. “You’re certain? Because I—”

  “I’m certain, Poppy,” he said, giving a light squeeze; his grip, contradictorily gentle, and yet, firm, sent heat tingling from the place he touched.

  Her mouth went dry.

  Stop. You’ve made peace long ago with your purely platonic relationship with Tristan Poplar.

  Telling herself as much did little to stifle the butterflies dancing in her belly.

  He released her and Poppy remembered how to breathe once more. Clasping his hands behind him, he resumed his study. “When did you discover a love for art then?” he murmured in reverent tones.

  “My sister-in-law, Juliet, came to serve as our governess.” The scandal of Jonathan marrying the family governess had shocked society, and earned them countless whispers and stares. This man, however, gave no outward reaction. She may as well have stated the color of the sky overhead. “Until her, I’d only seen…art in one way. But then, she encouraged me to look and see the world around me and sketch that which is in here,” She pressed her brush to her chest. Tristan’s gaze followed her gesture, and then he slowly lifted his eyes back to her own. Her fingers trembled under the intensity of his stare. For in this moment, he didn’t stare back at her as though she were troublesome Poppy Tidemore, but rather with the wicked glimmer reserved for those scandalous ladies his name had been linked to through the years.

  “You enjoy it.”

  She shook her head. “I love it,” she corrected. There was a distinct difference. Letting her arm fall, Poppy cleared her throat. “When I create something, nothing matters: not my mother’s hopes for me, not my reputation, or name. Nothing. All that matters is that I’m leaving a mark that hadn’t been there before.”

  As the strident emotion in her voice pitched around the room, heat went rushing up her neck.

  A sad smile transformed Tristan’s mouth from its usual carefree grin. “One’s mark.”

  And there it was—that indirect reminder and…mention of his lost title.

  A somber quiet descended upon the room, an altogether unfamiliar state for her and Tristan. Whenever they’d been together, there’d always been teasing, and never a shortage of words.

  Tristan continued that contemplative stroll down the length of her mural.

  She mourned the loss of the affable gentleman who’d entranced her once impressionable self.

  Poppy joined him at the mural; forcing him to stop his pacing. “A title does not a legacy make, Tristan,” she said gently.

  He whipped around to face her. “In our society, it does, though, Poppy.” There was a faint pleading there.

  “No.” She shook her head. “That is what our society thinks a legacy is. They’re wrong.”

  A pained chuckle rumbled from his chest and spilled from his lips. “God love you, Poppy, you’re the only one who could so convincingly call out the way our world, in fact, is.”

  Her heart did a somersault. His was the singular greatest compliment anyone had ever paid her. Even as she’d wager the fingers she used for sketching, he didn’t intend it that way. She smiled. Poppy slipped a hand into his and squeezed. “Finding our own way and our own happiness and leaving our own marks? Those are the only legacies that matter, Tristan.”

  They looked as one to their inte
rlocked fingers, and something shifted in his gaze. He made no immediate move to disentangle his hand from hers. The air crackled around them like the still before a lightning storm. His hand still in hers, Tristan slowly, inch by slow inch, lifted his gaze to her mouth…and the heat within his eyes stroked her like a physical caress.

  Since she’d been a girl she’d despised her mouth. Her full lips were at best too big for her face. And yet, Tristan’s eyes darkened, filling with an intensity that robbed her of breath. For in this moment, she felt nothing at all wrong with her mouth.

  Nothing wrong, at all.

  Tristan could not look away from her. Nor did he want to.

  Time had lost all meaning.

  Logic meant nothing.

  He saw only Poppy Tidemore. Which was faulty and preposterous because of who he was. Because of who she was.

  A battle raged within him: to claim her lush lips, slightly parted. Or to leave.

  “You are looking at me oddly,” she whispered, her voice a husky enticement that beckoned. Hers were the sultry bedroom tones that didn’t fit with the young girl he’d only allowed himself to see.

  Or tried to. At various times—fleeting ones—over the years, he’d taken note of her in ways he shouldn’t: the deep, enthralling shade of her eyes; a honeyed hazel, that was flecked with gold. The curve of her hips and legs when she donned breeches.

  Along the way, he’d done a convincing job of forgetting those details or excusing away his notice—until now. Now there could be no escaping this enigmatic pull she held over him in this moment. What was the last thing she’d said? His mind moved like mud.

  Words, Tristan. Form words. Flippant ones. “Am I, Poppy?” Except, that question came out graveled and tortured. “Looking at you oddly?”

  Poppy nodded slowly, sending a lone curl bouncing at her shoulder, drawing his gaze lower. “Differently.” Her chest rose and fell with quicker intakes, in an age-old hint of desire he was all too familiar with.

  Only not from this woman.