“O’ course, lass!”
Tristan watched as Isolde cradled the brooch in her hands, Hadley leaning in for a closer inspection.
She did not lift her head to look at Tristan, to ask if he would like to see the brooch, too.
As on the street that morning, she did not look his way at all.
Again, it was Hadley who raised his head and shot Tristan a look. This time he had no trouble interpreting the earl’s smugly triumphant expression.
Tristan turned to study the art over the fireplace—a Highland scene painted in an indifferent hand—unable to recall the last time he had felt so miserable.
Would this interminable evening never end?
After tucking the brooch safely away, Sir John offered Isolde his arm to lead her into dinner. “We are so few this evening, we needn’t fuss over ceremony and bother with precedence.”
Though the man hadn’t looked at Tristan as he spoke, it was a deliberate snub. As a duke, Kendall should have been first through the door, his wife on his arm.
Instead, Isolde smiled radiantly and crooked her hand into Sir John’s elbow.
Hadley offered his own arm to Lady MacDougall, leaving Tristan and Mr. Alexander MacDougall to follow them into the dining room.
Tristan stared at Isolde’s lovely auburn head, wishing with everything in his soul that they were still tucked safely away in that cottage on the island.
Any doubts he had about his orders to Ledger had fled.
Watching Hadley so knowingly commandeer Isolde’s attention andaffection underscored the futility of Tristan’s hope. With Hadley standing between them, Tristan would never develop a truly loving relationship with his wife.
After all, why would she choose him?
Isolde stared intothe drawing-room fire, listening to the laughter rumbling from the dining room.
She and Lady MacDougall had left the men to their port.
“Och, they appear tae be having a right lovely go of it,” Lady MacDougall said, eyes drifting fondly to the door before focusing again on her embroidery.
Isolde supposed that was one way of putting it.
Another burst of merriment erupted, Tristan’s bass chuckle notably absent.
A block of ice was warmer than her husband’s behavior this evening.
Isolde wanted to howl in frustration.
She had seen shades of Kendall yesterday, but today Tristan had entirely withdrawn into his ducal self. With her father and the MacDougalls this evening, he had reverted every whit to the haughty Duke of Kendall.
Not a trace of Tristan in sight.
The change in his behavior was precisely what Isolde had feared. That the second they found themselves in Society, he would become Kendall once more.
Ye possibly haven’t been as attentive tae your husband as ye should,a wee voice whispered through her mind.
It was just . . .
Her father’s arrival had caught her so off guard. And the intensity of his distress had overwhelmed her. Hadley thought she had died. Isoldecould summon tears just remembering how he described the agony and grief of his journey north.
Isolde had admittedly forgotten about her husband for an hour or two. The entire town of Oban, as well as her father, had wanted to hear the story of her miraculous escape from the sea.
But when she managed to slip out of the inn’s taproom to search for Tristan, it was to find he was aboard theSS Statesmanagain, closeted with his secretary, Ledger.
