Tristan was fairly certain he had crawled from the ocean into his own personal version of Hell—adoring his wife and yet helpless to know how to inspire a reciprocal affection in her.
No wonder poets bemoaned the misery of unrequited love.
The ache of it tortured him. It wound through his limbs and squeezed his heart—a tentacled Kraken ofyearninghungerlongingthat gave no quarter.
And yet, he welcomed it.
The longing sizzled in his veins, sparking and hot. He lived! She lived! And some forgiving god had gifted him a second chance at her love.
Tristan passed a long night curled into one of the narrow box beds in the second bedchamber, his brain endlessly looping through the events of the day.
One moment, he bobbed in the ocean, screaming into the wind, desperate to find Isolde.
The next, he was once more unlacing her corset, exposing inch-by-inch the delicate ridge of her spine and freckled expanse of skin.
This, inevitably, led to the memory of kissing her palm.
Over and over, his senses revisited the feel of her hand under his lips—the give of her skin, the faint tremor in her palm . . . as if his touch had not been entirely unwelcome.
He had nearly come undone.
Despite his exhaustion, sleep was long in coming.
Tristan woke to wind rattling the gables and dreary daylight seeping through a crack in the bed drapes. A glance out the window confirmed the storm still raged—frothing the sea and pushing mounds of sea foam up the beach.
He dressed in the same shirt and pair of trousers, adding a worn wool coat overtop. His own clothing was still too sodden to wear.
His wife’s bed was tousled and empty.
He found her dressed in the cold larder, bent over a cupboard, appearing to inventory its contents.
A blue homespun wool gown hugged her waist and ended mid-calf, displaying a rather erotic length of ankle and leg. Light from a window to her right rimmed her hair—plaited into a simple crown atop her head—turning it to liquid amber.
Her unaffected beauty stole his breath.
Want. Want. Want.
Helplessly entranced, he had to lean a shoulder against the door jamb to ensure he remained standing.
How could you not have known?a part of him wondered.How could you not have realized before now how thoroughly you love her?
Well, hehadknown, he supposed.
He had simply assumed it to be a flaw in his personality.
To love the daughter of his enemy—to marry a scandalous woman—would be the height of folly. And the Duke of Kendall did his utmost to avoid folly. Which was ludicrous, given the missteps that had landed them here.
Hewasoften afflicted with a sort of mania, an obsessive need to obtain or achieve something.
Isolde had been a compulsion in his blood for nearly a decade.
As with so much else, Allie had seen the truth of that, too.
Isoldeplaced a bag of what appeared to be flour onto the worktable, brushing a tendril of copper hair off her cheek.
Ti bramo.
The Italian words drifted through his brain—I yearn for you.
