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.
Pale blue and not white, and yet, how very much this moment was like another.
It was too much…
She needed to leave. The walls were closing in and crushing her heart in the process.
“Oh, please don’t look at that,” Prudence begged. “I’m so sorry.”
“It is fine,” Poppy assured. “I’ll see to it.
“I’ll help you.”
“No. No. I’m fine. If you’ll watch after Claire and Faye?” Her two sisters-in-law, social outcasts, pariahs amongst the other wallflowers, who looked as miserable as Poppy had been, and still was. Only now, for altogether different reasons.
“You’re certain?” Prudence called after her.
“Fine.” She wasn’t. Poppy weaved between guests, lords and ladies whose attention had at some point ceased to be fixated upon her, and had moved on to other subjects. In this case, her sisters-in-law. That was the way of the ton, though. One scandal to replace the next and there was a good deal less exciting about married Tidemores than the young girls she and her sisters had once been.
Poppy found herself walking these old familiar halls, wandering the same path she had as a young woman who’d dreamed of a future with Tristan. But this hadn’t been it. The future had been the two of them together.
Out of sight of the ballroom, Poppy took off running, until her chest burned and her toes ached from the constraints of her heeled slippers.
She didn’t stop until she reached the conservatory where it had all begun. Shoving the door open, she stumbled inside, the room a perfect replica of that night.
Poppy sucked in a shuddery breath and loosening the laces of her slippers, she slid them off. Freeing her feet from their miserable constraints, she flexed her toes. Her laces dangling in her hand, she wandered to the watering fount.
Sinking onto the ledge she stared down at her reflection in the lightly rippling water. Her lips quivered in a sad smile as she touched the front of her stained dress.
“I’m not adorable. Kittens and pups are adorable. And even if I was red in the face, which I am not, it would be with entirely good reason…
A sob ripped from her throat, and she bit her fist. But it was futile. Her body shook from the force of her tears, and she let them fall and accepted all she’d lost and all she wept for.
The happiness she’d wanted with him…
“Poppy, since when did you begin drinking lemonade?”
She didn’t move. Those words, an echo of long ago, spoken so clear, in the now, by that same voice, and yet, it could not be…because he’d gone.
She’d waved him off once more a week ago.
“I don’t drink lemonade,” Poppy said softly. “Someone tossed it at me.”
“Is your gown righted?” he asked, that deep baritone cascading over her like so much wonderful heat cast by the summer’s sun.
“It is.”
“Ah, that is unfortunate.”
And for the first time since he’d gone again, Poppy smiled. “That wasn’t what you said,” she reminded, still unable to face him. Afraid this moment was a dream of pretend she’d crafted from her desire to see him.
“No. But that is what I wanted to say.”
“And my stained dress?”
“I may have enlisted your sister’s support,” he called over from the doorway.
Prudence had known he was here.
“I may have sworn her to secrecy,” he murmured, follo
wing her thoughts. Their thoughts had always moved in harmony. It was them, however, as people, who’d struggled to find a proper synchronization. Until now. “That is also how I would have rewrote that night for us, Poppy. Not a glass tossed at you by Lady Kathryn Delaney but an accident from a beloved sister calling me out for the fool I’ve been.”
Another tear fell.
All these years, she’d believed the moment in Lord Smith’s conservatory an afterthought Tristan had barely remembered, and yet, verbatim words that had fallen from each of their lips, were words he uttered now.
He was close. She felt him at her shoulder.
Then he was there. She caught his reflection in Lord Smith’s pool.
He sank onto the stone ledge beside her, and waited, giving her time, and not again speaking until she at last looked at him. Tristan brushed the tears from her cheeks. “There remains so much about that night I wanted to do over, Poppy.”
Her breath stuck funny in her lungs. “Our Marriage Pact.”
“Our Marriage Pact.”
She slid her gaze away, but he cradled her cheek, gently guiding her eyes back to his. “You misunderstand me. I wanted a do-over. I wanted to return in time to the damned fool I was and give you an entirely different list.” He reached inside his jacket and withdrew a note.
She followed his movements. “What are you doing?” she whispered.
“A proper marriage pact needs to be written. May I?”
“Please.” Through the watering of the fountain and her own beating heart she barely heard her own reply.
“I want to spend every damned moment of every damned day bringing your lips up in that saucy grin.” With his spare hand, he touched a finger to the corner of her mouth. “This one. This one right here.” Setting aside the list, Tristan held her eyes and recounted all those wishes. “I want to be with you, always. I want to share your bed and your dreams and your hopes. And a daughter, Poppy,” he whispered. “I want a daughter just like you. One who has your spirit and smile and courage. Ten of them if you’d have it.” She struggled to see him through the tears in her eyes. “I want a life with you in every sense of the word. And I want it now. Not three years from now.”
Her lips quivered. “Your commission—”
Tristan ran the pad of his thumb over that trembling flesh. “I’ve called in a favor. My commanding officer at Waterloo has allowed me to trade my post for one with the Home Office in London…when I’m ready to accept it.”
When he was ready to accept it? What was he saying? “I don’t…I…but…”
“You helped me see that I was blinded by my own quest to restore my image in society. I’d lost sight of what mattered. I’ll not have my pride be my ruin. Losing you would ruin me.”
Poppy gasped.
“Because you, Poppy,” he said gently. “You are what matters. Being with you. Having a family with you. And I want you to have your dreams and attend Académie des Beaux Arts because that is what you deserve. I’d just ask that wherever you go, you let me go, too.”
A sob tore from her throat, and she fell into his embrace. Tristan’s arms came up around her, and he touched his lips to her temple, her brow, kissing away the damp stains left by her tears. Then, he kissed her, claiming her mouth, and Poppy kissed him, willing him to feel everything she’d ever carried in her heart for him. “I love you, Tristan.”
“And I love you, Poppy. I’d ask you for but one more thing?”
“Anything.” She’d been his, as he’d been hers; their lives together ordained at that meeting.
“Forever.”
And leaning up, she kissed him; offering him just that.
The End
Coming Soon by Christi Caldwell
The Spitfire
Her dream is to open a music hall. Only one thing stands in her way—the man she loves. The final Wicked Wallflowers novel from USA Today bestselling author Christi Caldwell.
Leaving behind her life as a courtesan and madam, Clara Winters is moving far from the sinful life to which she was accustomed in the gaming hell the Devil’s Den. Her more reputable and fulfilling endeavor is a music hall for the masses. One night, when she sees a man injured on the streets of East London, she rushes to his aid and brings him home. It’s then that she discovers he’s Henry March, Earl of Waterson, and a member of Parliament. No good can come from playing nursemaid to a nobleman.
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Out September 17th! Order Today
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Lords of Honor-The Collection Page 125
