Tristan’s hand dropped to his coat pocket. He pulled out the amethyst pendant, let it lie in his palm. “I kept this,” he said, as if to himself. “I told myself it was only a curiosity. Now I think I kept it because I knew I would never see her again.”
“Rubbish,” said Henry, standing. “You kept it because you are a sentimental idiot.”
Tristan barked a laugh, the first real one in days. “I suppose I am.”
Henry clapped him on the shoulder. “So, what will you do?”
Tristan stood. The room spun, but he steadied himself. “I have already begun.”
Henry’s eyes narrowed. “What does that mean?”
“You will see,” Tristan said, and for the first time he could recall, a real smile broke across his face.
He moved toward the door, then paused as Henry called after him.
“Whatever you’re planning, don’t wait too long. Dawnford’s wedding plans are like a military campaign.”
Tristan did not look back, but the line of his body was pure willpower. “I won’t,” he said. “Not this time.”
CHAPTER 34
“This is not what I wanted!”
It was the day before Lavinia’s wedding, and in the drawing room, Frances stalked in a path so erratic it threatened to wear a trench in the threadbare rug. Her hands were clenched at her sides, while her cheeks grew redder with every lap.
Lavinia, for her part, sat poised on a chaise with her lips pressed so tight they might never smile again. She trimmed an invitation with a pair of scissors. The letters were perfectly aligned, the ribbon she’d selected was a blue so cold it might freeze the heart of any recipient.
“Are you listening to me?” Frances halted mid-tread and planted herself before the escritoire.
Lavinia did not look up. “I have been listening for the last half hour, darling. Your projection is admirable. Have you considered a career upon the stage?”
Frances’s mouth fell open, then snapped shut with a force that would have done a trap proud. “This is not a jest! This is not—” She scrabbled for a word, found none, and made a strangled sound. “You are marrying Lord Dawnford. You are sacrificing yourself, and you won’t listen to any alternative. You have gone entirely mad.”
Lavinia placed the trimmed invitation onto the growing stack and reached for another. “Sacrifice implies martyrdom. I am neither a martyr nor particularly fond of melodrama. I am a spinster, and this is the natural course for my type.”
Frances’s voice broke. “But you are not a spinster! You are only seven-and-twenty.” It sounded, in the moment, like a diagnosis. “And you could be happy, if only—if only—” Her hands, finding no suitable object to throttle, caught up a muslin swatch from the arm of the chaise and wrung it as if it might yield an answer.
“If only what, Frances?”
Lavinia did not know where her sister’s outburst was coming from, but she had to appreciate the girl’s spirit. “If only you would let yourself be loved! If only you could see what everyone else sees.” She whirled away and paced once more across the rug. “You think no one notices, but I saw you at Lady Montfort’s ball. I saw the way you and the Duke looked at each other.”
Lavinia’s hands stilled for the first time all morning.
She let the silence draw out, then smoothed her features into a neutral mask. “You are mistaken,” she said.
Frances spun. “I am not mistaken. I have eyes. And I know what it means when two people look at each other and the whole room goes silent. You are in love with him. With the Duke. And now you have ruined everything.”
Lavinia, who had been so careful, so perfectly and suffocatingly careful, felt something in her ribcage contract. She looked up then, meeting her sister’s gaze full-on. “I am not in love with anyone, Frances. And even if I were, it would not matter. The Duke of Evermere is precisely what his title suggests. He is distant, unchangeable, and entirely unattainable. He does not, and he could never, love me.”
“That is a lie,” Frances shot back, face contorting. “I saw how he looked at you at the garden party. I saw?—”
“What you saw,” Lavinia interrupted, “was the brief, accidental attention of a man who had run out of things to say and found himself at a loss.” She could not keep the edge out of her words. “He is a Duke. I am this. If I am to rescue what remains of our family and protect you from…from the sort of men who circle when they smell blood, then this is the only option left to me.”
Frances’s composure crumbled. “But you do not have to! I told you I could sell my pearls and even train to become a governess or a companion to one of Aunt Petunia’s friends.”
“Aunt Petunia would rather eat a mouse than allow you to be a companion to her friends,” Lavinia allowed a bitter chuckle. “She has hopes for you.”
“Yet she never offered to help us repay our debts.”
