Chapter 4

The next day, Ashdown Castle

Dark, cool, void of sound—his father’s office was a crypt. This impression was caused in part by heavy ebony furniture and finger-thick curtains, but mostly by the crypt keeper himself: surroundings dimmed and silence fell where the Earl of Rochester trod.

He was ensconced behind his desk when Tristan entered, against the backdrop of his most prized possessions: a vast tapestry displaying the Ballentine family tree since 1066, personally gifted to the House of Rochester by Henry VIII. Tradition. The family name. Royal favors. Everything Rochester valued most highly was embodied in this moldy piece of embroidered silk. If given the choice between saving a helpless babe or the tapestry from a fire, he wouldn’t hesitate to let the infant burn. And whenever Rochester took a seat at his desk, the family tree’s branches were sprawling out just so from behind his head, giving an impression of him growing leafy antlers. The first time Tristan had noticed this from his side of the desk, he had been eight years old, so naturally, he had burst out laughing. The next moment, he had been bleeding from a split lip, while Rochester had already been seated in his chair again. The back of his hand struck quick and sudden like a snake.

“Your mother is unwell,” Rochester said. It was a complaint, not a concern.

“I’m sorry to hear it,” Tristan said evenly.

“If you were, you would have called on her. You have not set foot in this house since your return.”

He nodded. It had, of course, been Rochester’s idea to enlist Tristan in Her Majesty’s army and to send him to such far-flung places as the Hindu Kush. And he would have gladly left him there, had it not been for Marcus, infallible Marcus, breaking his neck.

“I shall go and see Mother after this.” Whatever this was. His father hadn’t yet disclosed the purpose of their meeting.

Rochester steepled his long, pale fingers, as he did when he came to the crux of a matter, and fixed him with a cold stare.

“You must get married.”

Married.

The word turned over and over in his mind, as if it were a complex phrase in Pashtun or Dari and he was scrambling to gather its full meaning.

“Married,” he repeated, his own voice sounding oddly distant.

“Yes, Tristan. You are to take a wife.”

“Right now?”

“Don’t be precious. You have three months. Three months to announce your engagement to an eligible female.”

The first tendrils of cold outrage unfurled. A wife. He was in no position to commit himself to such a thing. Of course, since he had become the heir, matrimony had loomed on the future’s horizon, but it kept melting into the distance as he drew closer. Much as he liked women, their softness, their scent, their wit, a woman in the position of wife was a different animal. There’d be demands and obligations. There’d be . . . little spawns in his own image. There’d be . . . expectations. A shudder raced up his spine.

“Why now?” His tone would have alarmed another man.

Rochester’s gaze narrowed. “I see the military failed to cure your dire lack of attention. I shall lay it out for you: you are seven-and-twenty. You are the heir to the title, and since Marcus left his widow childless, you are the last direct heir in the Ballentine line. Your main duty now is to produce another heir. If you don’t, four hundred years of Ballentine rule over the Rochester title come to an end and the Winterbournes move into our house. And you have been shirking your responsibilities for nearly a year.”

“Then again, I was held up in India, trying to convalesce from potentially fatal bullet wounds.”

Rochester shook his head. “You returned six months ago. And have you diligently courted potential brides? No, you have caused headlines implying the cuckolding of fellow peers and rumors alluding to . . . punishable offenses.”

“I did?” He was genuinely intrigued.

Rochester’s lips thinned. For a blink, he looked like the younger version of himself who used to take his time when selecting an instrument to mete out yet another punishment. For Tristan’s fidgeting. Or for his fondness of poetry and pretty objects, or his “girlish” attachment to his pets. It had to grate on Rochester that his only instrument of control nowadays was the tight financial leash on which he kept his son. It had to lack the element of immediate gratification. And if all went according to plan, Rochester would soon lose his grip on the leash, too. Things had to go to plan because hell, he was not taking a wife now.

“I’m not in the habit of reading the gossip sheets,” he said. “Consider me blissfully ignorant of any rumors pertaining to my person.”

The earl slowly leaned forward in his chair. “You have been seen in an establishment.”

“Entirely possible.”

“With the Marquess of Doncaster’s youngest son.”

That surprised a chuckle from him. “The rumors are about Lord Arthur?”

The casual way he said it made Rochester go pale. Interesting.

Do not worry about Lord Arthur Seymour, Father—I let him watch while I shagged someone, but he hasn’t been on the receiving end of it. The words were on the tip of his tongue.

“Trust society to manufacture something out of nothing,” he said instead. “I doubt they dared to be explicit about it.”

A muscle twitched under his father’s left eye. “Enough for Doncaster to briefly contemplate a libel suit.”

“Against whom? Either way, a patently silly idea. Every person in the British Isles would learn about sweet Arthur’s inclinations.”

“And possibly yours,” Rochester snarled. “Mere whispers about such a thing are an impediment to your standing. An alliance with a lady of impeccable repute can redeem your reputation, but naturally, the fathers of such women are presently disinclined to hand them to someone like you—unless I laid out a fortune.”

Tristan’s jaw set in a hard line. “Keep your money. I’m in no need of a wife.”

There was exactly one woman with whom he’d ever contemplated something beyond a fleeting association, and she was not on the marriage mart.

Rochester was not interested in any of those facts. “Under the circumstances, we need to move fast,” he said.

Tristan shrugged. “Quite frankly, Cousin Winterbourne is welcome to all this.” He gave a careless wave, vague enough to include the entire house of Rochester: a sort of careless vagueness bound to annoy his father.

Rochester’s eyes were dark. “This is not a game, Tristan.”

“Sir, have you considered I might not find a willing, eligible woman in three months’ time, given my devilish reputation? Then again”—and this occurred to him now—“I suspect you have long selected an appropriate bride.”

“Of course, I have. But the potential scandal induced her warden to hold off on signing the contract. You cannot humiliate the lady in question and her family by proposing to her as you are.”

“Right—who is the lucky thing?”

Rochester shook his head. “And tempt you into committing some tomfoolery before matters are settled? No. For now, your task is simply to establish a rapport with relevant society matrons, and to dress and act like a man of your station. Start with taking out this . . . thing.”

He flicked his fingers toward Tristan’s right ear. Tristan had it pierced with a diamond stud. He liked the stud. He gave his father a cold stare and rose.

“I have survived the Siege of Sherpur and I walked to Kandahar while carrying a half-dead man on my back,” he said. “My days have been steeped in more death, blood, and filth than I care to remember, so forgive me if the matter of lily-white wives and gossip rags strikes me as trivial.”

He had nearly reached the door when the earl said: “If you wish for your mother to stay at Ashdown, I suggest you begin to see the gravity of these matters.”

He froze. Several things were happening at once: heat and cold, the spike of his pulse, the roar of blood in his ears. Part of his mind was racing; another had gone deadly still.

He turned back with deliberate slowness. His body was still all too ready for combat: useful on enemy territory, but not when the territory came in the shape of a nobleman’s study. Kill or be killed was but a figure of speech on British country estates, wasn’t it?

“What does it have to do with Mother?” His soft voice was softer still.

Rochester’s face was all shadows and hard angles. “As I said: she is unwell. She might be better cared for elsewhere.”

Tristan’s fist was white around the cane. “Be plain.”

“There are places more suited for people with her moods—”

“Are we speaking of Bedlam?”

The earl tilted his head, his smile thin as if slashed with a knife. “Bedlam? No. There are private asylums that are quainter, more suited for her care.”

Private asylums. The places where perfectly sane but inconvenient wives and daughters were still sometimes sent to die.

As he walked back to the desk, wariness flickered in Rochester’s eyes—the bastard knew he had gone too far. He had done it anyway, so he must be feeling bloody emboldened.

“She’s grieving,” Tristan said, his gaze boring into his father’s. “Her son is dead.”

Another flicker of emotion. “So is mine,” the earl then said, roughly.

On another day, in another life, he might have commiserated. “She does not belong in a mental institution. It would kill her, and you know it.”

“Tristan, I can only accommodate so much irregularity in my household. You may decide whose it is going to be: yours, or hers.”

It was an act of extortion, one to which he would have to bend, and every fiber of his body strained to eliminate the threat to his freedom there and then. He drew a breath deep into his body, and another, until the wrathful heat in his veins abated.

Rochester gave a nod and said, almost amicably: “I appeal to you to do your duty. Marry, make an heir and a few spares. You have three months to reestablish a tolerable reputation. Prove you are not altogether useless.”

Useless. Another deep breath. Useless—Rochester’s favorite insult. Everyone who was not serving the earl’s plans in some capacity fell into this category, and yet, growing up, useless had always cut the deepest.

Well then. Visiting Mother in Ashdown’s west wing had to wait.

By the time he was back in the carriage and speeding down the driveway, he had formed a conclusion why Rochester was using the countess to force him rather than, as usual, his bank account: first, he must have become aware that he, Tristan, was close to achieving a modicum of monetary independence. And second: the marriage business was serious, and Rochester rightly suspected that another cut to his allowance would not yield results. Marry a woman of Rochester’s choosing, and have their children remind him of the earl for the rest of his days? Hardly. Hence, his father’s blackmail, a life for a life, his or his mother’s.

If he gave in, Rochester would turn his mother into the noose around his neck when it suited him for as long as she lived. It meant he needed a plan, too. He would send word to Delhi, to General Foster’s residence—perhaps he would be inclined to house two English guests for a while and not ask questions. This would take time, damnation; letters took weeks to travel back and forth such distances. He could use the submarine cable to telegraph a message to Bombay, but the cables from there to New Delhi were often cut. Briefly, he toyed with the idea of setting off with an invalid into the unknown; to hell with Foster, to hell with plans. But this kind of impulsiveness had rarely served him well.

What was clear was that he needed to increase and secure his money supply a lot faster than expected. Lucie’s face flashed before his eyes, and a fresh wave of resentment hit his gut. She was, unwittingly, on the cusp of crossing the plans he had made for his new, settled life in Britain. And as of fifteen minutes ago, her interference had become a threat.

He was looking out the carriage window, not seeing a thing, as Lucie kept barging into his thoughts. By the time he had reached the train station, he wondered whether a part of him, the one that had sometimes filled his long nights in the East with memories of her and unencumbered English summers, had been keen on being in the same country as her again.

His coach was empty, and the silence was blaring. He fished for the whiskey flask in his chest pocket. For a while, he would have to play along in Rochester’s game to buy time. But first, he would get drunk.