“She says she has an inquisition prepared for you.”
“I see.”
“She wants to know that you'll adore me sufficiently.”
Tristan slid a hand around her nape and pulled her closer, then bent to take her lips. He kissed her softly, but Hyacinth clutched at his waistcoat and traced her tongue against his lips, and he was lost. He kissed her deeply, tasting, savoring. Deep, dizzying kisses that left them both breathless, until they edged apart and pressed their foreheads together.
“I have every intention of adoring you. Today. Tomorrow. All the days to come.” He lifted his head and looked into her eyes. Her pupils were as large as he suspected his were. “I’ll see if I can find him now and come back later.”
Hyacinth nodded, kissed him again when he made to pull away, then released him.
Tristan smiled at the threshold, then stepped into the hallway.
After closing Hyacinth’s door, he heard the familiar tap of his father’s cane before he turned to face him.
“What in God’s name is the meaning of this?” His father kept his voice low, his tone grave. He jerked his hand toward Hyacinth’s guest chamber door and shook his head as if Tristan had utterly disgraced him. “My chamber. Now.”
Tristan followed his father into his room. His father pointed at a chair and Tristan sat in it, much like he’d done as a child, though more often in his study, when he had broken some rule or angered his father in some way.
“Whose chamber were you coming out of?”
Tristan swallowed. He could prevaricate. To protect Hyacinth. To protect himself. But he’d never been a liar and he knew, now more than ever, exactly what he wanted.
“Miss Hyacinth Bridewell’s, and I plan to offer for her father. I was on my way to speak to Edgerton when you encountered me in the hall.”
“What about the earl’s daughter? Lady Felicia.”
Tristan ran a hand across his forehead. “Father, I have just told you that I plan to propose marriage to Miss Bridewell. Lady Felicia is no longer my concern.”
“How long have you known Miss Bridewell?”
“I met her at the end of the Season.”
His father arched a graying brow. “An infatuation then?”
“No.” Tristan would not allow him to belittle what he felt, but he found himself hesitating to say the rest. To confess what was truly in his heart.
“We have no title.” His father’s voice had grown quieter. “Will Edgerton even give his blessing?”
“That is what I intend to find out.”
“Why the haste?”
“Because I do not wish to wait.”
His father narrowed his eyes. “Look at me, boy.”
Tristan worked his jaw, irritated by the tone he knew all too well. His father believed he knew best. And whatever Tristan’s age, whatever he’d achieved, his father would always insist on his way.
But Tristan looked into his father’s eyes, willing him to see his resolve. Willing him to understand that nothing he could say would sway him from the decision he’d made. From the…love he felt for Hyacinth Bridewell.
“You are besotted.” His father slumped down into a chair as if all the air had seeped out of him. “Good God, you really haven inherited the weakness I prayed you would not.”
“Love is not weakness.”
He father scoffed. “Oh, but it is.” Planting his cane firmly on the carpet between them, his father leaned forward. “You have seen what it did to me.”
Tristan had seen. He had watched his father all but lose his mind in the year after their mother’s death. And thenhe’d watched his father keep himself ensconced in that sorrow, refusing company, sometimes even refusing food.
