“Rachel deserves to know that I’m not just sorry for doubting her—I’m going to prove she was right to believe in me,” he said firmly. “She deserves to see me fight for our future instead of surrendering to our past. She deserves to know that loving her hasn’t cursed me—it’s saved me.”
He moved toward the door with the first purposeful stride Hugo had seen from him in days. “She deserves both my honor restored and my love freely given. And by all the saints, she’s going to have both.”
“Where are you going?” Hugo called after him.
“To begin making amends,” Tristan replied, his voice carrying the kind of determination that had once made him one of the king’s most trusted knights. “To show the woman I love that some things are worth fighting for, even when the odds seem impossible.”
“And if she’s already given up? If the magic worked and she’s gone back to her own time?”
Tristan paused at the door, considering the possibility that had been haunting him since Hugo’s revelation about finding Rachel in the garden. Then he straightened his shoulders with the resolve of someone who’d finally found his purpose again.
“Then I’ll find a way to follow her,” he said simply. “Even if it takes me to the ends of the earth or the far reaches of time itself. I’ve been a fool and a coward, but I’ll not be either any longer.”
With that, he strode from the solar, leaving Hugo to stare after him with a grin that threatened to split his weathered face in half.
“About bloody time,” the big man muttered, then settled back in his chair to begin planning whatever chaos would be necessary to restore his friends’ happiness.
CHAPTER 21
Rachel was still shivering when she reached her chambers, skirts sodden, hair plastered to her neck, the storm’s failure clinging to her like mud. She stripped off her cloak with shaking hands and dropped into the chair by the hearth, staring at the useless cookbook on the table as the fire crackled.
A knock came, firm but hesitant.
“Come in,” she called, her voice flat.
The door creaked open, and there he was—Tristan, broad shoulders soaked from the storm, eyes shadowed with something more dangerous than the storm. He stepped inside, closed the door, and for once didn’t stand at knightly attention. He simply looked at her, as if seeing her properly for the first time in days.
Then he went to his knees.
Rachel blinked. “Uh—are you … what is this? A proposal? " Fair warning, I’m a terrible cook when I’m crying, and my mascara game is nonexistent in the fifteenth century.”
He didn’t smile. Not yet. “Rachel,” he said, voice raw, “I’ve been a coward. I told you I was wrong to trust you, when the truth is that I have never trusted anyone more. And still I doubted. I pushed you away because I thought loving you would bring ruin—as though ruin hadn’t already claimed me long before you fell into my garden.”
Her throat tightened. The storm outside had left her hollow, but his words cracked something inside her chest she hadn’t realized was still frozen.
“I meant to protect you,” he went on, gaze desperate. “But in trying, I’ve done nothing but wound you. If I must prove my devotion by deed as well as word, then so be it. I will host a tourney in your honor. I will fight every knight who enters until I stand bloodied but victorious, and lay my triumph at your feet. I will shout your name until even the king cannot deny your worth.”
Rachel stared at him, thunderstruck—not by the promise of knights bleeding in her name, but by the fact that this brooding man had actually gone full romance-ballad on her, in a drafty stone chamber, with mud still streaked halfway up her kirtle.
Then she laughed. The sound startled her, bubbling up sharp and warm until she pressed a hand to her mouth.
“Oh, Tristan,” she managed between gasps, “don’t you get it? I don’t want a tourney.” She leaned forward, cupping his jaw with damp fingers. “I don’t want blood and banners and epic poems.”
His brow furrowed, confusion flickering like a boy caught without his sword.
She smiled through the wetness in her eyes at the blurred image of him.
“What I want is spices. New cookware. And…” she let the pause linger, teasing him just enough to see his breath catch, “…you, Mr. Broodypants.”
At that, his mouth finally curved—slow, hesitant, then blossoming into a smile so devastating it nearly undid her.
“Spices, cookware, me,” he repeated, as if testing the shape of the words. “That is all?”
She paused. “And Greystone. I know you have another estate, but I love it here. Though maybe fix the hole in the roof.”
He leaned forward, resting his forehead against hers. For the first time since Westminster, the silence between them wasn’t heavy with doubt. It was full of possibility.
When Hugo burst in a few minutes later—soaked, muttering about saints and fools and who had left mud all over the stairwell—he found them still kneeling together by the fire. And though he grumbled loudly about the state of the rushes and water all over the rugs, he left with a grin that split his scarred face from ear to ear.
