Where I can continue to woo you, he did not add.Where I will have the space to learn how to be both Tristan and Kendall.
“Och, my father will want reassurances beyond a few lines in a telegraph, Tristan,” she clapped back. “Or even a letter, for that matter.”
“Doyouwish to return to London?” he asked, disliking the curt sharpness in his tone. “To forgo this space of time you and I have together?”
Tristan could feel the harmony they had established on the island slipping through his fingers, like the tide washing out to sea.
“I don’t know.” Isolde threw her hands up. “My family will be beside themselves with grief, particularly my father.” She ticked off her fingers. “Over the past two weeks, Papa has endured watching me marry a man he considered an enemy, suffered impeachment by Parliament, and then was told I had drowned! I would be shocked if the whole hasn’t sent him to an early grave. I cannot continue on this journey without assuring myself that he is well. That he knows—that my whole family understands—Iam well. Do ye not worry about your sister?”
“Allie is a practical sort. A message will serve as well as my own presence and will reach her more quickly. More to the point, as I said, she is in Aberdeen with Ethan, not London. Why is a message insufficient for your father?”
He did not say the words that burned his tongue:Why are you prioritizing your family over me?
“How can yenotsee it as insufficient?! I don’t . . .” Isolde pinched the bridge of her nose and took in a long breath. “I don’t wish to argue with ye. It sounds as if we have a day or two yet before we must make a final decision. And we are both tired andcrabbit. Today’s events have been momentous. Come. Let us summon my maid and your valet and prepare for bed.”
Tristan permitted her to ring the bell and then listened from the adjoining room as Isolde chatted with her maid.
But when he finally slid into bed beside her and gathered her against him, his wife held herself stiffly before eventually rolling out of his embrace.
His arms had never felt so empty.
Time.
He had needed more time before being cast into the world like this. Time to adjust to this change within himself. Time to woo his wife properly.
He should have insisted they stay an entire month on that damn island. Maybe he would buy the thing and keep Isolde there until he found a way to earn her love.
26
News of the shocking deaths of the Duke and Duchess of Kendall has rocked London. The terse telegraphic dispatch describing their untimely demise would touch even the hardest heart. Black crepe drapes the windows of Gilbert House and the Earl of Hadley’s townhouse in Mayfair. We all join in mourning the lives of a young couple taken too soon.
—article inThe London Tattler
The next morning, Tristan escorted Isolde downstairs to their private dining room, his wife quiet and agonizingly polite. Conversation between them was strained at best, their disagreement unresolved.
Tristan hated it.
Isolde was mute and withdrawn, and he hadn’t a clue how to mend things.
As usual, hisKendallself had blundered and set everything to wrack and ruin.
Butwhat was he to do?
He had apologized for neglecting her the evening before.
Though he supposed that wasn’t the true problem.
He and Isolde disagreed about when to return to London, and he didn’t know how to resolve it, other than to simply accept her plans and try not to be too surly.
But returning to London so quickly . . .
It almost guaranteed they would never form a true marriage. She would retreat within the bosom of her family, happy to be surrounded by those she loved once more.
And he would—
Well, he would likely return to his Library of Shame and develop a dependence on brandy or some such.
Huzzah.
