Either way, I intend to find out.
The door swung back, bouncing against the wall. Madeline found herself looking into a square, spartan room. A sparring room.
In the middle of the room, inside a marked-out ring, two men were sparring. One gentleman was unfamiliar to her, tall and strong-looking with a loose white shirt, but she barely gave him a second glance.
Tristan had stripped off his shirt, fighting bare-chested. Sweat rolled down the swell of his torso, and she could see the muscles in his shoulders shift as he moved. Curls of hair stood out across his chest, dampened by perspiration.
Heat coiled in her breast, plunging downwards, heavy as a stone, and seemed to rush through her whole body, right to her extremities. The pulse of arousal started up inside her, andMadeline swallowed thickly. Tristan’s arm flew back, fingers curled in a punch, about to hit his sparring companion.
“Stop!” Madeline cried.
At once, the two men stepped apart. The taller of the two, the one she did not recognize, put his back to her immediately and strode off to a low counter along an opposite wall. There was a bowl and a jug there for washing, and a crumpled towel. He did not even greet her, which she thought was rather rude.
This man did not attract much of her attention, however. Her gaze was dragged back to Tristan as though by a magnet.
Tristan was breathing heavily, sweat glistening on his chest as his shoulders heaved. He eyed her with a strange look, cool and intent. It made Madeline swallow hard again.
“Madeline, what are you doing here?” Tristan asked, voice rasping. “I was in the middle of a sparring session. I gave orders not to be interrupted. That footman…”
“Oh, don’t blame the poor footman,” Madeline muttered. “I bullied my way in, I can assure you.”
He grunted. “Be that as it may, I should have been left alone.”
Silence fell, and Madeline found that her gaze was tugged, quite shockingly, down to his naked chest. When she forced her eyes upwards again, Tristan was grinning knowingly at her.
“You are staring very hard, my lady,” he mused. “Whatever could have attracted your attention?”
She flushed and folded her arms. “Nothing much, as it turns out.”
He gave a bark of laughter. “Oh, very witty, my dear, very witty!”
“Put some clothes on, for heaven’s sake,” Madeline snapped, reddening further. She felt like somebody’s prudish spinster aunt.
Still chuckling, Tristan swaggered over to a low table by the window, where a second bowl, jug, and towel were set out. He splashed water on his face, droplets rolling down his chest. Clearing her throat, Madeline concentrated on keeping her face averted. She glanced over at the man again, the strange one. He still had his back turned, and had not removed his shirt to wash his face, even though she could see that sweat plastered it to his skin.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me to your companion?” Madeline asked.
Tristan wandered back over to her, dabbing his face with the towel. He hadstillnot put on a shirt, the wretch.
“You may call him Orion,” Tristan answered thoughtfully.
She frowned. “Orion?He’s a member of the rival gang, then?”
“One might say that.”
“Orion cannot possibly be his name.”
Tristan looked at her oddly. “Well, of course it is not.”
The man—Orion—moved over to a narrow side door, which she had not noticed before, still keeping his back to her.
“It is good to have met you, Your Grace,” he said in a deep, low voice that she did not recognize. Then, without so much as agoodbyeor aby your leave, he slipped out through the doorway, closing it softly behind him.
Madeline sniffed. “What a strange man.”
“Enough about him,” Tristan said shortly. “You won’t see him again, I imagine. The man likes his privacy.”
There was an edge in his voice that made Madeline think that she’d pushed the subject to its limit. Oh, well, never mind. She didn’t particularly care too much about the stranger in any case.
