I jerked my chin free. This conversation had gotten away from me.
“Well, that explains a great deal.”
I got to my feet, retrieving my box of candies and Tristan’s note. “This is my life, Mama, not yours. Sometimes I think you forget that. Now I’m going to get ready for rehearsals. It would not do to keep everyone waiting.”
The clock bonged six times, and I fought the urge to go to the window to check for any sign of the carriage.
“He’s with Bouchard, who is chronically late,” my mother said, from where she sat reading a book. She’d switched strategies from this morning, now employing passive-aggressive indifference in her attempt to dissuade me from this path. “Don’t fret.”
“I’m not fretting,” I said, smoothing my lace gloves over the rich blue velvet of my dress. The bodice was both tight and low, revealing the slight curves of my breasts, which were amplified by the added padding. It was one of my new gowns, and I could not help but admire the sleeves, snug to my elbow and loose in a spray of lace that hung to my wrists. The crinoline puffed the skirts out from my hips, the velvet slashed to reveal the lace petticoat beneath.
My shoes were matching brocade with ribbons that wrapped around my ankles, and I wore sapphire and diamond earrings that Sabine had deemed a perfect match to the dress. She’d fixed my hair so it was up, a few curls left loose to frame my face, and rimmed my eyes with kohl and tinted my lips.
A knock sounded at the door, and I leapt up. “I’ll answer it,” my mother said, rising far too slowly for my tastes and then ambling toward the door. “Good evening, Monsieur de Montigny,” she said. “Please do come inside. Winter is truly upon us.”
“How is your hand?” Tristan asked, but whatever she answered went unheard in my ears as I adjusted my dress for the umpteenth time. When I glanced up, he had rounded the corner with her, and our eyes met.
His disguise was in place, eyes grey instead of silver and skin altered to a duskier, more human hue. But all else was the same, and even if he had made himself unrecognizable I still would have known it was him. I loved him; so much so that my chest felt tight and my breath short, and everything else in the room seemed wan as a faded painting.
“Mademoiselle de Troyes.” He smiled, glanced at the floor and then back up to my face. “Memory, it would seem, is a pale comparison to reality.”
“How charming he is!” My mother clapped her hands together and we both twitched. “Best be off. You don’t want to be late.”
Once we were outside, I said, “Marie’s ladies were talking about you at rehearsals today. Of a certainty, she knows you are in Trianon. And if she knows, so does Anushka.”
“Good,” he said, although it seemed as if he hadn’t really heard me. I gripped his arm above the elbow as we walked down the slippery steps, uncertain of the state of his wrists and knowing better than to ask.
“I meant what I said,” he added. “You look beautiful tonight. That dress…” he trailed off.
“I’m supposed to be trying to seduce you into giving me all your money.”
“Trying?” He laughed. “You have succeeded, and in doing so, quite driven thoughts of anything else from my mind.”
“Your focus on our task is admirable,” I said, but secretly I was pleased.
“If I am distracted, it is your fault. You have been my undoing since the day we met.”
The coachman opened the door to the carriage, and Tristan helped me inside.
“Good evening, Cécile,” Monsieur Bouchard said, his loud voice filling the small space. I’d met him several times previously, as he was a subscriber, and the nephews sitting next to him as well. “Good evening,” I replied. “I understand I have you to thank for giving Monsieur de Montigny an excuse to see me tonight.”
“Glad to oblige.” The older man winked at Tristan as the carriage started forward. “I wanted proof that he wasn’t all bluster and that you two truly were acquainted.”
“Oh, yes,” I said, smiling up at Tristan. “We met in Courville this summer. I was ever so pleased when he decided to join society in Trianon.”
“And from now on, I shall go to Cécile with all my questions,” Bouchard said. “She is far less taciturn than you, Montigny.”
I laughed. “He hoards his secrets like a miser does his coin, I’m afraid. I spent all summer trying to pry them out, and I’m quite certain I barely scratched the surface.”
“For good reason,” Tristan replied. “It gives me an air of mystery. If I told you everything, I’d risk you realizing that I’m really quite dull.”
“I doubt that,” I said, then the carriage hit a dip in the road, bouncing me sideways against Tristan.
“Steady!” Bouchard shouted, banging on the wall. “Curse these roads. Something needs to be done about them.”
Except I didn’t curse them at all. Even through the layers of my skirts, I could feel the press of Tristan’s hip against mine, the brush of his coat against my neck as he rested his arm along the back of the seat, the way his breath tickled my hair. I wanted to lean against him, but the gleam of amusement on the other men’s faces told me I was already skirting the line of what was proper. I wanted them gone so it wouldn’t matter, and from the burn of the heat in the back of my head, I knew the same thought had crossed Tristan’s mind.
There isn’t anything stopping you. The thought that I’d been thinking more and more over the past few days, crept across my mind even as I laughed along at a joke I hadn’t even heard. He is your husband.
I considered the reasons why our intimacy had been limited before. Certainly a child was a complication we could not afford. Our lives were too much in jeopardy, and I couldn’t even bear to think about what would happen to our baby if we were both killed. Half-blood as it would be, if the King got his hands on our child, would he not sell it off as a slave as he had done with Lessa? And that would be if he didn’t kill it out of hand. And wasn’t there a certain inevitability that the child would have to go to Trollus as long as the curse remained? Would it happen the moment it was born? Before? I shivered at the idea.
The carriage pulled to a stop beneath the domed side entrance reserved for subscribers and other important guests. Tristan stepped out first, then helped me down. “What are you thinking?” he asked quietly, leading me toward the doors the liveried men held open for us.
“The compulsion is getting bad again,” I said, because it was true and he needed to know, and I didn’t want to admit that the only thing that chased it off was my lusty thoughts.
“Keep in your mind that you are doing what you promised you would,” he said softly. “She knows my intent, and she’ll come after me sooner rather than later. She has to.”
I knew he was trying to make me feel better, but the reminder that Anushka would try to hurt him or kill him did anything but. He was not afraid of her, but I was. There was no one alive who knew more about trolls, and she’d killed one as powerful as him before.
Sensing his words had the opposite effect than he’d intended, he reached up with his free hand and squeezed mine where it rested on his arm. Then he lowered his head, his breath warm against my ear. “I know that wasn’t what you were thinking about.”