Courting Poppy Tidemore (Lords of Honor Book 5)

by Christi Caldwell

  He settled himself between her thighs and she felt the weight of him there, pressed against her.

  Poppy panted. Uncaring that the doors hung open. That anyone might wander past. Wanting only this moment. “Now,” she ordered.

  He sheathed himself slowly inside her. The slow drag of him was an exquisite torture that bordered between pleasure and pain.

  She bit her lip hard enough that the metallic hint of blood tinged her mouth.

  But Tristan was there; kissing the wounded flesh, lightly sucking the injury. “Please,” she begged, but he tortured her still; drawing out and then in on one smooth glide, he sank deep inside her. Poppy cried to the heavens as he stroked her. Poppy sobbed his name.

  She shook and shivered as he plunged deeper and deeper still. Over and over. Filling that place she’d ached every night since he’d left. That hungering having only grown in his absence, a yearning that could only be sated and stoked by this man.

  Moaning into his shoulder, Poppy nipped him.

  He grunted, thrusting hard, so hard that her back knocked against the Doric column, but only pleasure mobbed her senses.

  “Poppy…” he gasped against her neck.

  Through the cloud of his desire, she clung to her name, and the words to follow…wanting more.

  Their bodies strained against one another; as they moved, their rhythm taking on a franticness that pulled Poppy higher and higher, to that glorious precipice she wanted to fall from.

  And then as he thrust deep once more, she shattered, screaming and crying out from the force of her release. Blood rushed to her ears, muting his hoarse shout as he reached his own climax; pulsing inside her, and then they collapsed into one another. Gasping, and struggling to find a proper breath.

  Her eyes still closed; Poppy lay her head against his chest.

  She didn’t want to climb down from this moment. She wanted to remain here, wrapped in his arms, where there wasn’t just three days for them and a host of regrets and dreams for more.

  Sir Faithful whined, and as one, Tristan and Poppy looked to the three dogs sitting in a perfect row, staring at them.

  Poppy’s shoulders shook with laughter as she buried her head against her husband. “I cannot face them.”

  “Naughty creatures, you are. Go,” he scolded, and Poppy peeked to find them unbudging.

  “Though, in fairness, I cannot blame them for wanting to w—”

  Another laugh burst from her lips, and she swatted him. “Stop it.”

  They shared another smile and Tristan pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead that brought her eyes closed.

  Invariably reality would always rear itself. This moment was no different.

  Tristan straightened, and using his kerchief to gently clean Poppy, and then himself, he tucked himself back inside the front fall of his trousers, and stepped away.

  Her legs still weak, Poppy rested a shoulder against the column, borrowing support from it. She made a show of righting her garments, and tucking her shirt back in the waistband.

  This was one thing that had always made sense between them. It was everything else that hadn’t ever been able to sort itself out.

  “You’re returning, then,” she murmured.

  “I…”

  “Have to?” she supplied. “I understand.” Unlike when he’d last departed, this time she did. He needed to do this for him. She wasn’t enough.

  “I’d have you know, your letters have been the only joy I’ve known in your absence.”

  How was it possible for words to prove both buoyant and heartbreaking all at the same time?

  “I’m happy they’ve brought you comfort.” She was unable to keep the rasp of bitterness from creeping in.

  Brushing his knuckles along her jaw, Tristan guided her chin up. “Is he the reason your letters stopped coming?”

  Once, she had craved a hint of Tristan’s jealousy. Some visceral evidence that she mattered to him. She’d been searching for any crumb of indication that he cared. Now, she saw the truth: that sentiment had never been any mark of a healthy love relationship—like what her sisters had with their spouses. “My letters didn’t stop, Tristan,” she finally said. “They just came less frequently.”

  Tristan’s nostrils flared. “Because of him.”

  “Because of me,” she cried out. “Because of you.” How could he still not see? How could he be so dense? “You left, Tristan,” she enunciated each of those words, and gave herself back over to all the hurt and all the resentment that had tormented her at his leaving. “And when you left, I cried for days.”

  He reached for her. “Poppy,” he said, his voice hoarse.

  She shrugged away from him; his touch would only weaken her now. She’d have him hear and own all the truth. “For weeks I cried, Tristan.” Her lower lip trembled and she bit it hard. “I would r-rewrite my letters to you because I’d stained them so very badly with my tears and I’d not have you see them.”

  He groaned. “I didn’t know.”

  “Of course you didn’t know.” It was too much. She spun away from him, and hugged herself in a protective embrace. “You never knew. You never saw me.”

  He was immediately there; at her side, turning her to face him. “I always saw you.”

  A tear streaked down her cheek. “Not in the way I wanted you to.”

  “No,” he said, so easily that he chipped off apparently the last piece of her heart that hadn’t already been hopelessly shattered. “I saw the young girl racing in Hyde Park who just made me smile. And who teased me like no other.” Another tear slipped down her cheek. Tristan caught it with his thumb, dusting it back. “I saw the young woman who didn’t give a damn what anyone said, and could not fathom there was someone of such convictions.” He gripped her shoulders. “I always saw you, Poppy. Never doubt that. I love you, Poppy.”

  Her breath caught. Four words twined together into a beautiful poem she’d lain awake dreaming to hear from him.

  Only…she was not that girl. Not any longer.

  “Why?” she asked curiously. “Is it because you think you’re losing me?”

  Is it because you think you’re losing me…

  Not: because you’ve lost me. And even as Poppy didn’t reciprocate his words of love, he took hope.

  “Or are you worried over Caleb or—”

  He pressed a fingertip to her lips. “There is no reason other than one: because I love you.” His gaze roved each cherished plane of her face.

  “I’ve an opportunity to receive instruction…in France.”

  His arm fell to his side. Of anything he thought she might say to his declaration, that had not been it. “Instruction.”

  “Art instruction,” she said needlessly, but still necessary for his slow-to-process mind. “Women are forbidden from attending classes here, as you know. The Académie des Beaux Arts admits four women each year. Caleb believes I have talent.” Tristan believed in her talent and long before that interloper in their marriage. “And he invited Jean-Antoine Houdon to view my works.” She stared at him as if that name should mean something. As if any of this should make sense.

  Tristan was only capable of shaking his head.

  “Mr. Houdon, he is a renowned sculptor and he’s helped secure one of those placements for me.”

  Tristan noted that mound of rock she’d been sitting with upon his arrival and found his way over to her abandoned work station. The tools. The stone. All new to her. Moments he’d missed while in Ireland. And how many more would he lose when he returned. He picked up one of the metal instruments, the foreign item cool in his hand.

  “You’ll be gone, Tristan,” she reminded him, unnecessarily. From the moment St. Cyr had thrown the commission across his desk and hit him square in the chest, Tristan had thought only of being apart from Poppy. “As you said, in several years you’ll sell your commission and we can have a marriage. But Tristan,” she whispered, joining him. “I cannot sit here waiting for life to start. I don’t want to. You wer
e right. I want to stretch myself. I want to grow and share my work not as if it is some dirty secret that I should be shamed for.” As she’d been with Rochford.

  Everything was careening and out of sorts, and he couldn’t slog his way through to the other side of reason. When he came out on the other side, there was just one thought. Tristan set the metal instrument down. “Are you going with him?” He himself heard the sharpness of that question.

  “You aren’t hearing me. This isn’t about Caleb,” she said gently. “This is about me.”

  And when she departed, taking all three dogs with her, Tristan was left uncertain which he loathed more: the absolute absence of “us” as a word to join Tristan and Poppy together. Or the sound of the other man’s name that had tripped so easily from her lips.

  The soft echo of returning footfalls brought him spinning around. “Oh.”

  “Goodness,” Claire drawled. “For that reaction, one would think Mother had walked into the room.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said tiredly; his rigorous travel, and the weight of all he’d discovered since his return, drained the energy from him. He sank onto the edge of Poppy’s abandoned stool.

  “Here.” Claire held a flask out, and he wordlessly took the offering, removed the top, and drank deep.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Why hadn’t anyone? Not St. Cyr or his sister-in-law.

  “I mentioned her art instructor. Odd. Boorish.”

  Caleb Gray wasn’t an art instructor. Art instructor implied little French fellows who spoke in nasal tones and oiled their hair.

  “In fact, I wrote about him quite often,” his sister said, tossing her curls.

  “But you didn’t mention…” The way he’d looked at Poppy; it was a look Tristan knew because it was the way he’d looked at Poppy long before it had ever been appropriate, so much so that he’d denied it from himself.

  His sister knitted her brows together. “That he was an American?”

  “That he is… who he is.”

  Understanding dawned. “Ahh. Yes, well, I would have expected Mother would have mentioned him to you.”

  “She did,” he muttered. Tristan loosened his badly wrinkled cravat and tossed it aside.

  “You just assumed it was Mother being disapproving.”

  He had. Now, he forced himself to remember all the notes she’d penned about Poppy and her “obscene work”, as she’d referred to it. Poppy in breeches. Poppy who could not be bothered to work with a conventional instructor.

  All the while, what she hadn’t said was the truth: Poppy was spending her days with a tall, strapping American with unkempt hair and a beard, as all good artists should have.

  Yes, Gray fit with all the images Poppy had of an artist.

  Tendrils of jealousy unfurled, and he clenched and unclenched his fists.

  “You needn’t worry,” his sister said softly.

  “Who said I was worried?” He wasn’t. He was terrified out of his goddamn mind.

  “The vein is about to bulge from your temple.” Claire rested a hand on his arm. “Poppy loves you.”

  His heart thumped hard. “How do you know?” he asked hoarsely. In his yearning, needing his sister to be correct.

  “Because I see her smile when she reads your letters. And she smells them. Her eyes close and then when they open, they are only sadness.”

  Oh, God. His chest buckled.

  “And with the cruelty she faces daily from Mother, she’d have to love you to stay here.”

  That snapped Tristan to. Poppy had married him, a worthless bounder, when she could have had any, and he’d saddled her with a heartless mother-in-law, and only after he’d hightailed it to Ireland. Restless, Tristan jumped up and began to pace. He’d assumed the only way to restore his honor was by the same acts of valor that he’d been recognized for after battling Boney. Only, Poppy had been right. Honor was not about how the world judged a person…it was about how a man lived his life. And he wanted to spend his life with Poppy.

  He cursed. “God, I’ve been a fool.”

  “Yes, but in your defense, you had good intentions.” Her eyes twinkled. “Alas, Hell is full of good meanings, but heaven is full of good works.”

  Tristan stared at the mural he and Poppy had painted together; her voice echoed in his ears.

  You equate your honor with how the world views you and not with how you live your own life…

  All this time, he’d connected his honor with the Maxwell title. He’d been so driven to restore his name. Failing to see until now, that it wasn’t about the title he’d lost. He could be honorable on his own terms—honorable as Lord Bolingbroke rather than Lord Maxwell. He could care for his wife and his sisters and his properties—however unimpressive they may be. He could live a life he was proud of.

  And he could do all that…be all that, with Poppy at his side.

  “I know what I need to do,” he whispered.

  Claire wrinkled her nose. “Let us hope one of those things is a bath.”

  “I’ll require your help with something.”

  “Anything.”

  But first…he was already striding across the floor. “Where is Mother?”

  “The breakfast room. She was awakened the moment you returned.” Claire cupped her hands around her mouth. “I have a feeling I’m about to enjoy this.”

  Ten minutes later, waiting in the breakfast room as his mother entered, it was clear who was not enjoying this.

  His mother blanched. “Goodness, Tristan, you smell and look positively atrocious.” He balled his hands, silent as she eyed the sideboard. “Where are the servants? It is those odd characters your wife insists on hiring—”

  The servants Poppy paid for. “I want you gone,” he said quietly.

  “Street waifs, many of them,” she continued, as though he’d not spoken. She reached for a plate.

  “Did you hear me? I want your things packed, and I want you to return to Dartmoor.”

  The porcelain dish slipped from her fingers, and clattered upon the sideboard, but remained miraculously intact, much like the woman herself. “You aren’t making sense.”

  “I’m not? Let me make it more clear for you then? I have spent these past months owning the guilt that belonged solely with you and father—”

  “Hush,” she whispered. Her terrified gaze flew to the door, and then back to Tristan.

  “I have sought to restore honor to our name, and I’ve nearly cost myself the only happiness I’ve ever truly known.” His wife. He’d almost lost his wife. Or mayhap he already had.

  “Bah, what is happiness without one’s standing in Polite Society?”

  She’d never understand. And he’d have her nowhere near Poppy and neither would he force his sisters to suffer her company. “You’re leaving,” he repeated for a third time. “Claire and Faye will remain, but your days of ordering my wife around and speaking ill of Poppy and her talents are at an end.”

  His mother’s brow shot up. “Th-this is because of your w-wife, isn’t it?”

  “This has nothing to do with anything Poppy has said about you and everything to do with what she should have said about you.” Tristan walked off.

  “Tristan?” his mother cried. “You cannot do this. Do you hear me? What are you doing?”

  Hopefully winning his wife back.

  Chapter 24

  Once more, Poppy was partner-less on the sides of a dance floor.

  The great irony, however, was not lost on her, that she should find herself in the exact state she had for the better part of three years, while also having a husband.

  Of course, one’s husband would have to be present in order to have him as a potential partner.

  His three days had really only been two and a half, and he’d since been gone a week.

  It was not getting easier.

  She’d believed she’d accepted her and Tristan’s future for what it was: a man and woman who lived separate lives—for now—who would reunite in a few years
and attempt to begin a life together as husband and wife.

  “Mother will be horrified,” her sister Prudence said. On the sidelines of Lord and Lady Smith’s ball, Poppy found herself agreeing. “At your leaving to attend art school, but I am so very proud of you.”

  “Undoubtedly,” she said, staring wistfully out at the dancers. “At least she’ll pretend to be.” The dowager countess, however, had beamed with pride during Poppy’s art exhibit.

  “Everything is in place,” Pru murmured.

  “Yes.” She was set to leave in a fortnight. She’d promised Tristan his sisters would have a Season, and she’d honor that. Before she left, she’d see plans were in place for next year.

  “I still find it atrocious that Tristan left his sisters’ care to you,” Prudence muttered.

  Poppy frowned. “Claire and Faye are not a burden.” And what was more… “He sent his mother away because she was unkind to me.” He’d always been her champion: against Rochford. His mother. The unknown man he’d believed she’d been meeting at the last event they’d attended here together.

  A wave of crippling pain swept her.

  “I can forgive him somewhat, then” she said reluctantly. “But I still am not happy with him, Poppy, and nothing you say will make me forgive him.” Prudence took a sip of her lemonade and her lips puckered. “Egads, this is awful stuff.”

  Lemonade.

  Emotion stuck in her throat. Oh, God. This was too much. Lemonade, here at another of Lord and Lady Smith’s tedious affairs. It was all an echo of another time.

  “I cannot, however, forgive Tristan leaving you, still.”

  “He had to, Pru,” she said tiredly; this same debate she’d had with her and Penelope at various points since Tristan’s latest departure. “He is a captain in the King’s Army.”

  “Fine. I’ll even allow that. However, he cannot simply disappear and reappear, Poppy,” her sister gesticulated wildly as she spoke, drops of pink lemonade splashing over the rim. “He is wreaking havoc on your heart,” Prudence exclaimed, and slashed her hand at the air. Horror wreathed Prudence’s face as she splashed Poppy. “Oh, hell,” Prudence whispered, and Poppy’s gaze slipped down to the wide stain drenching the front of her gown.