“What is it?” he asked.
“You know something is troubling me.” She met his gaze, a soft smile tugging at her lips. “Twin sense.” She tapped her temple. “Youdohave it.”
He made a rolling motion with this hand.
Allie didn’t make him wait. “I’ve been thinking lately . . . you have a choice before you right now, Brother.”
“A choice?”
“Yes. You are grieving the loss of the world you knew. Mourning the future you thought to have.”
“Your point . . . aside from rubbing salt into my wounds?”
“I hate seeing you in such pain. It hurts.” Allie rubbed the heel of her hand against her breast bone. “But I know from my own past that pain can be a catalyst for change . . . a good sort of change.”
“Good? How is painevera good thing?”
“Obviously, the pain itself is not”—she rolled her eyes—“but the fruits of the pain do not have to be negative. ’Tis part of the reason I permitted Sir Rafe to speak with you. Our father was a terrible man, but Sir Rafe let hatred and pain change him for the better.”
“So you claim.”
“No, I think that anyone looking in on Sir Rafe’s life would see a man who is loved and loves in return. A man happy and content with his lot.”
“But he is nothing and no one. The bastard son of a duke. A man who has all but retired from Polite Society. How is that success?”
“To echo Sir Rafe’s own words, power is only one measure of success. There are other criterion.”
Kendall knew this. He wasn’t an imbecile.
“But I don’twantother criterion. I want power. I want revenge. I want Iso—” Damn his ungovernable heart for battling to insert Isolde here. He inhaled. “But my dreams are now turned to ash.”
“Then be a phoenix, Tristan. Rise from the ashes.”
Rise from the ashes? He would prefer to return to the heights he had already summited.
“And remember, no matter what our father may have taught you—no matter your prior experiences—youareworthy of love. You arecapableof love.” She paused. “In short, you are all sorts of lovable.”
Kendall snorted. “Being capable of love will in no way ensure I can build a real marriage with Lady Isolde.”
“Nonsense! Let the pain you are feeling now work on you. Let it push you to become a better man.”
“A better man?” He fixed her with a baleful glare. “Am I not sufficient as I am?”
Allie sighed. “A softer man. One of more heart. Gentler. Kinder. The sort of man that the boy Tristan admired. The man he might have become without our father’s monstrous interference.”
Kendall lolled his head against the back of his chair. “As I have said too many times to count, Allie, that tender-hearted boy is long dead. Quashed under the heel of our father’s brutality. He lives only in your fanciful memories.”
“I disagree. You reverted fromKendalltoTristanfor me. I think it is time you rediscovered that boy for yourself. The Tristan I know would be a caring husband to a wife.”
Wife.
As in, husband and wife.
Himself and Lady Isolde.
It still felt surreal.
That Kendall would marry her. That he would take her to his bed. That she would be the mother of his future heir.
