Lords of Honor-The Collection

by Christi Caldwell

  “And the artist should be honored,” he persisted.

  “I’m not signing it, Tristan.” He opened his mouth to continue debating the point, but she glowered him into silence. “Enough about what I should or should not do with my work.” Poppy bent down and rummaged through a basket. For several moments, she fished around and then drew out several of the sketchpads there. She proceeded to flip through book after book, discarding them for the next. “Full,” she murmured, dropping the journal in exchange for another. “Nearly full.”

  He craned his neck. “What are you doing?”

  Ignoring his question, Poppy turned through the pages of another. “Perfect.” Book in hand, she stood. “Here.”

  Tristan grunted as she pressed the heavy volume hard against his chest. A question in his eyes, he glanced between her and the sketchpad. “What is this for?”

  “Go ahead,” she urged him. “Have a look.”

  Tristan hesitated before taking the thick sketchpad. He flipped it open. “My God,” he whispered, to himself. The Kent lake where they’d fished so many times. He turned to the next. A young girl on a riding path in Hyde Park. How expertly, how perfectly she’d captured every detail. Tristan looked up. “You truly are nothing short of remarkable, Poppy Tidemore.” And yet, she couldn’t bring herself to memorialize her name.

  Another one of those pretty pink blushes stained her cheeks. “Uh…yes…well, thank you, but that is not what I’m showing you,” she mumbled, endearingly discomfited by his praise. Ripping her pad from his fingers, she flipped through, and held the sketchpad out so it faced Tristan.

  He stared perplexed. “They’re empty.”

  She nodded.

  “I’m…confused,” he admitted. But then, the minx had always had that effect on him.

  Poppy lowered the book. “You need to find yourself, Tristan.”

  Find himself…

  Two words which suggested he was lost. Which was perhaps the most accurate way with which to describe who and what he’d become. He’d been a rogue. A soldier. A war-hero. None of what he’d been or done helped him from his current circumstances. “I’m no artist,” he said gruffly. With that, he closed the book, and made to hand it over.

  She lifted her palms and refused his rejection. “It is a journal, Tristan. Let the pages guide you.”

  “I can’t take your book, Poppy.”

  “I have plenty more.” Filling her arms with the remainder of her art supplies, Poppy started for the front of the room.

  Tristan sprang into movement. His longer-legged stride surpassed her shorter one, and reaching for the handle, he opened the door. Ducking his head out, he did a sweep of the corridors, and then motioned for her.

  With impressively noiseless footfalls, Poppy slipped from the room. The quiet, however, was broken by the enormous dog trotting at her side.

  Tristan followed her retreating frame several moments.

  “Poppy,” he called after her on a whisper.

  She paused, glancing back.

  “Thank you.”

  With a smile, Poppy bowed her head, and then rushed off.

  He stared after her until she’d gone, and then closed the door. Leaning against the panel, he glanced around the fine hotel rooms. With Poppy and her dog and her teasing gone, the melancholy returned.

  This was…home.

  Chapter 6

  Most people despised rising early.

  Poppy had never been one of those people. In the early morn hours, when most of the world slept on, one was permitted the freedom to do what one wished, without those prying eyes about.

  There was a difference, however, between early…and ungodly.

  Quarter to four in the morning fell firmly into the latter column.

  She raised her arms filled with art supplies, to stifle yet another yawn.

  Tristan.

  He’d always lived life his own way.

  Arriving early and upending her schedule was on point for the earl.

  Nay, he went not by the title Earl of Maxwell now. But, rather, baron.

  It was a foreign concept to try and wrap her mind around, still. What must it be…for Tristan? To have lost everything familiar? And his entire circumstances—the very name he’d gone by these past years—ripped away.

  And yet, he’d not descended into some surly, dark scoundrel. He’d retained that ability to tease and be teased. That had been one of the reasons she had been so enamored of the gentleman. That and, of course, his appreciation for dogs.

  Only, now there were no dogs; the pair of hounds that had followed him for his morning rides in Hyde Park. Or who’d risen with the sun to join him as he’d fished at the estates of his best friend, Poppy’s brother-in-law.

  Sadness filled her.

  Yes, Poppy’s mother might believe there could be no greater tragedy than the loss of Poppy’s reputation at the hands of some cad, but she was so very wrong in that self-centered opinion.

  Poppy reached Tristan’s apartments. Balancing her work supplies in one arm, she inserted the universal key given her by her sister, and let herself in. The well-oiled hinges made not so much as a creak of protest as she entered and closed the door behind her.

  The grey curtains drawn and the fire at the hearth having long since died, but for a lone candle flickering from a sconce near her mural, the room had since been pitched into darkness. Blinking to help adjust to the dim space, Poppy slipped inside, and then carefully pressed the panel closed behind her.

  From behind the thick bed-curtains, a shuddery snore penetrated the quiet.

  He snored.

  It was not a new detail. Poppy had gathered Tristan’s slumbering habits when she’d come upon him hiding in a copse at Christian’s summer house party nearly three years ago. Finding him with his back pressed against a majestic oak, and his hat bent low over his eyes, had been endearing. There was, however, a deeper intimacy to this moment, with Tristan on the other side of a curtain, sleeping in his bed.

  He emitted another snort, and Poppy gave her head a disgusted shake.

  Do not be a silly nitwit. She’d ceased waxing on about Tristan Poplar in her mind some years ago. Well, two years to be precise. Regardless of whether she’d set aside her infatuation with the charmer, was neither here nor there.

  The work she’d been brought in by her sister to do, however, was what mattered.

  Carefully making her way across the room, Poppy took the path over the plush carpeting. As she set down her art supplies, she inspected her work from the previous evening. Setting down her case, she touched the tip of her smallest nail against the paint, and gave a pleased smile.

  Dry—

  Click.

  Poppy went absolutely motionless.

  “Not another movement.”

  And despite knowing Tristan Poplar, she’d never heard this side of him; the steely baritones, that even laced with sleep, contained a sharpness and threat within them.

  Her heart thudded in her chest, and she angled a glance to where Tristan slept—or had slept.

  The head of a pistol glinted in the dark…that weapon pointed directly at her breast.

  “And here I thought you’d been more appreciative of my work,” she said, her voice emerging faintly threadbare.

  The gun disappeared, to be replaced by Tristan ducking his head out between the bed curtains, and she breathed more easily. “Poppy?”

  It was not that she’d thought he’d kill her—not intentionally, anyway. But one never knew what another person might do when startled from slumber. “Who do you think it would be, Tristan?”

  “I don’t know. I’m living in a hotel after my father coordinated the kidnapping of a nobleman and rightful heir…who’s since become a lord of the underworld. I can hardly imagine the reason for my paranoia.”

  “Truly?” She tipped her head. “Because you’ve quite laid out—”

  “Not truly, Poppy.” All vestige of sleep had vanished from his voice. With a long stream of curses, Tr
istan let the bed-curtains flutter shut. “I was being sarcastic,” he snapped.

  “Sarcasm doesn’t suit you,” she took delight in informing him, as she fished her brushes from her apron. In a small jar, Poppy added yellow, orange, blue, and red and then blended the colors together until they’d formed the rich auburn of Tristan’s hunting dogs. Raising her brush, she made to touch it to the mural—

  When she registered the utter still in the rooms.

  Lowering her brush to the jar, she glanced back. “You’re not sleeping.”

  There was a pause.

  And then… “I might have been.”

  Her lips twitched. Alas, he’d never been able to stop himself from rising to her baiting. As he was awake, she pushed the heavy curtains open. The glow from the moon sent light spilling into the room. “No one falls asleep that quickly,” she pointed out as she returned to her task.

  “I do.”

  That was a detail she’d not gleaned about Tristan Poplar; it highlighted, despite the connection she’d imagined between them, how little she truly knew about him. Just like the fact that he slept with a pistol. “Perhaps you do,” she conceded. “But you were not snoring enough to wake the person in the other rooms.”

  “I…I most certainly do not snore,” he stammered.

  A snort escaped her. “With all the mistresses you’ve kept these years, not one of them had the forthrightness to share that you snore worse than an overweight pug running too fast in the heart of summer?”

  “I…I…” He strangled on his words.

  Well, if that wasn’t certainly a first in all the years she’d known Tristan Poplar, effortless conversationalist. Her lips twitched up in a smile. “I’m personally of an opinion I would prefer to have a lover who was truthful with me about my habits.”

  “You are not taking a lover,” he barked from the other side of the bed curtains, and Poppy might almost be endeared by the idea that he cared…if he didn’t have the indignant tones to match her overprotective brother.

  “No,” she conceded. She counted several beats of silence. “At least not at this precise moment, anyway, as you are the only gentleman ab—”

  The heavy netting around his bed did little to conceal the animalistic growl emanating from the gentleman tucked away there. “You are most certainly not taking any lover. Ev—ah—”

  A heavy thump followed by a grunt filled the rooms as Tristan hit the floor hard.

  Oh, this was entirely too much fun. Fighting to control the mirth shaking her frame, Poppy devoted all her focus to her mural. “Worry not,” she said with a false somberness to her tones. After Tristan’s reputation and the death of Poppy’s girlish dreams, coupled with Rochford’s treachery, the last thing she desired was a lover. “I’ve no intention of taking a lover. At least, not…” She cast a flippant glance back, “…soon—” Her words withered and died on a high-pitched squeak, as her gaze took in Tristan desperately clinging to a sheet around his waist.

  Good God… It would appear there was one bit of information she’d not been privy to all these years—Tristan slept in the nude. Information, that would have been decidedly more helpful…before she’d gone and enlisted Rochford’s assistance. “You’re…naked,” she whispered. Her heart threatened to pound outside of her chest.

  Clutching the sheet close to his body with his spare hand, Tristan slapped a hand over his eyes. “Why aren’t you closing your eyes?” he croaked.

  He was magnificent. A towering, chiseled wall of muscular perfection. Flat of belly, narrow of hips, a light dusting of dark curls upon a sculpted chest…he epitomized the male form. That figure artists since the beginning of time had sought to forever memorialize.

  Say something. Say anything. Be breezy. He’d of course be accustomed to breezy females.

  “I believe the better question, Tristan, is why are you closing yours?” Except, for all her attempts at control of the situation…and her body’s awareness, her words emerged breathless. Faint and awestruck to her own virginal ears.

  And embarrassment that weakness for him was ultimately what brought her eyes quickly closed. She pressed a palm over them for good measure, and promptly mourned the sight of him before her.

  Tristan groaned. “Close your eyes.”

  “They are. If yours were open, you’d know as much,” she said from around her hand. Even with that assurance, she slid her index finger and middle finger apart the minutest fraction.

  Clutching at the satin sheet wrapped about his waist, Tristan jumped to his feet with an impressive agility. That slight movement sent the muscles of his flat stomach rippling.

  Of their own volition, Poppy’s fingers slid apart a fraction more.

  She needed a canvas. Immediately. And charcoal. As she committed the planes of his physique to memory, she catalogued the paints she’d require.

  “Good God, are you peeking at me?” he choked out, tripping over himself as he rushed to the opposite side of the bed.

  “No,” she lied, sliding her fingers tightly into place. In fairness, she’d been more openly staring.

  There was the whispery rustle of silk indicating he’d let the sheet fall from his fingers.

  And this time she let her arms fall to her sides. She scowled at those grey bed-curtains that obscured Tristan, and hated those dark articles all over again, and for very different reasons than their design.

  “Why aren’t you sleeping, Poppy?” There was the sharp slap of fabric.

  A moment later, Tristan emerged from the other side of the bed—bare-chested. Barefoot.

  Bare for everything, except the tan trousers he’d donned. Her mouth went dry once more. Words. Speak words. Poppy mustered a smile. “I’ve never been one to rise late.”

  “No, you haven’t,” he muttered, scouring the room. “Don’t you have an early morning ride to see to? A suitor to prepare to greet?”

  Poppy retrieved the white lawn shirt near her feet, and held it up. “There’s hardly a rush of suitors now.”

  Tristan sprinted over and tugged the garment from her fingers. “Not now, per se. But soon.” He drew the article overhead, and stuffed his arms into the sleeves.

  She scowled. “Oh, come, you know there’s no suitors waiting.” And she’d never known Tristan to be deliberately mocking.

  Teasing? Yes. Hurtful, no.

  He dropped his hands on hips. “And whyever not?”

  Such a rich indignation pulled that response from him and sent warmth filling her chest.

  And then it occurred to her.

  “You…don’t know.” It was a statement that left her on a slow exhalation.

  Tristan shook his head. “Don’t know what?”

  When everyone in London knew of and whispered about her scandal with Rochford, there remained one who hadn’t—Tristan. And there was something so very…refreshing in his not bothering with that gossip.

  He closed the handful of steps between them, so just a handsbreadth separated them. She tilted her head back to meet his dark gaze.

  “Know what, Poppy?” he clipped out slowly.

  She smiled. “Why, I was ruined.”

  Chapter 7

  Mayhap he’d misheard her.

  After all, she’d delivered those words conversationally with her usual smile in place. The one that dimpled both her cheeks, and lit her gaze.

  Only, searching his tangled mind, he couldn’t bring together a single word that rhymed with those to explain any misunderstanding on his part.

  Nonetheless, it bore confirming. “You were ruined?”

  Poppy nodded once.

  He shook his head.

  She nodded a second time. “Ruined…as in one with a shattered reputation. A scandalous lady. A—”

  “I know what ruined means,” he said tightly. “What I intended to ask was…” He slashed a hand at the air, and the lady ducked out of the way to avoid his gesticulations. “Was…was…?”

  “What happened?” she hazarded.

  Who. Tristan�
��s fingers curled into reflexive fists, as a blinding haze of red-hot rage dulled his vision. It was a name he sought. The blackguard who’d succeeded in destroying Poppy Tidemore’s name and reputation. The “what happened”, however, would do…for now. “We’ll begin there,” he said, in the calmest tones he could manage.

  Poppy wandered over to her box of art supplies, and proceeded to unpack the remainder of its contents. “I went off with someone I had no business going off with, and we were discovered.”

  An image flickered forward…of Poppy, with her gown shoved up around her hips, while some rogue guided her down the path of ruin. Rage sizzled in his veins. Biting. Sharp. Red-hot. “You. Went. Off…” A primal growl climbed his throat. Dead. Once he had a name, Tristan would kill the bastard with his bare hands in a death that would be as slow as it was brutal.

  Setting down the brush she’d been holding, Poppy faced him. Her eyes formed perfect circles. “Are you thinking…never tell me you believe I…” A laugh burst from her lips.

  And just like that, the tension went out of him. In her usual Poppy fashion, she’d been teasing him. And he didn’t know if he wanted to shake her or breathe a sigh of relief. Either way, her amusement, combined with his own, proved contagious. “You didn’t—?”

  “Good God, no!”

  His shoulders trembled, and he dusted his hands briefly over his face. “I thought—”

  Laughing, Poppy slashed her palms at the air. “Absolutely not. I’ve no interest in a liaison with some faithless bounder.”

  Oh, thank God. Because the idea of her, Poppy, wrapped in the arms of any man sent something dark and insidious rolling through him. Some emotion he didn’t care to examine or name. It was enough that Tristan needn’t worry about that image as a reality. Only…

  His amusement ebbed. “If you weren’t…” I cannot even say it.

  “Having sexual congress?” she supplied, the innocence of her tone belied by the sparkle in her mischievous eyes.

  The minx. Only Poppy Tidemore would have devilish fun while discussing how her ruin came to be. Nonetheless, he was determined to have the whole story in the lady’s own words. Except… His brows came together. “Were you ruined because you accompanied a gentleman…somewhere?”