.
Blythe's brain was mired in mud and ice. Everything that people said to her came from some faraway place. She could not bear for Tristan and Thomas to fight, and the only thing she could do to keep it from happening was to walk away with Tristan. Even in her chilled state, she could feel the pain of leaving with Tristan. The whole way out of the room, she knew that Thomas’ eyes were on her, and that somewhere silently inside him, he was begging her to come back.
She also knew that Tristan seeing the two of them practically in each other’s arms was not going to make her cousin more merciful. Leaving with him seemed like the only choice.
He was silent in the coach heading toward their home.
Blythe was the one who broke the silence. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“You cannot be pleased by the current state of things between us. I want to know what kind of storm is brewing over me.”
Tristan's laugh was bitter. “You sound very brave when you speak like that. It's almost as if you are championing some cause you know to be right.”
“Thomas Martin is—”
“Thomas Martin is a Martin, and at the end of the day, that is all you need to know about him!”
Tristan's voice was so loud and hard that Blythe winced. She wanted to tell him about the men who had tried to abduct her and how Thomas had come and rescued her. Then she wondered if her cousin would even care, or if he would see it as one more sign of her degeneracy.
“Tristan—”
“No. Stop. I know what your defenses are going to be and believe me when I say I don't want to hear them. The Martins are rotten to the core, brother and sister both.”
“You are so very cruel when you speak of them. I do not believe that you speak of anyone else that way.”
Instead of dismissing her comment, Tristan was still for a long moment. “I must seem terribly cruel to you.”
“You do, sometimes. I also know that that is not truly you. I have known you for many years, Tristan, and I do not want to think that the boy I knew has become a cruel man.”
“I have, unfortunately. From experience, I will tell you here and now that the Martins are poison. If you will not stay away, or perhaps if you cannot stay away, believe me, I can understand that.”
Blythe eyed him, though, in the darkness, there was precious little to see. Something in his tone tugged at her mind. “What do you mean? How do you understand so well?”
“There are many reasons why Carrows and Martins do not mix, Blythe. Some of those reasons are ancient, and some are much more recent. But that's neither here nor there. There are more important things for us to speak of.”
“More important?”
“Yes. Tonight, we are staying at the Grosvenor Street house. Tomorrow, we are leaving. And before you get any bright ideas about fleeing, I am stationing a maid to watch your door until the moment we are back in the coach.”
“Leaving? But where in the world are we going?”
“Away. Away from the London madness. My duties in Parliament are fulfilled for the time being, and it is time I tended to matters closer to home.”
Blythe swallowed hard. When she spoke, she could hear the hollowness in her own voice.
“What do you mean, matters closer to home? What are you doing?”
“I don't want to talk about this right now. You have had a long and overwrought night.”
“Don't condescend to me as if I were some delicate child! If we are playing the game with you as the family patriarch and me as the erring female supplicant, you must at least tell me what is going on.”
There was a long pause where she thought Tristan was just going to ignore her. When he spoke, there was something dead in his voice, something that made her skin crawl. “Very well. If you must know this minute, I have decided that we are to be married. This solves many problems, not in the least of which is your ruin. We are leaving London while I procure the special license to do that.”
“You can't be serious! We're cousins!”
“Second cousins. It is perfectly legal; I only need the license to do it swiftly.”
“Tristan, do not do this to me, to yourself. We would make each other miserable.”
Tristan looked away, running all ten fingers through his hair. “We're making each other miserable now. You won't stay at home; you won't be married. At the end of the day, Blythe, I am your guardian. I am responsible for you as if you were my daughter.”
“Who you're going to marry?”
“Bad analogy. But the fact remains that I am responsible for you, and this has become the only acceptable way to continue.”
“The only acceptable way for you to take the Gallowglass property, you mean. Is that what this has all been about? Are you so very piqued that your father wanted to see to it that I wasn't a pauper?”
Tristan rocked back as if she had slapped him. For a moment, she felt guilty about saying such a thing, but she steeled herself against it. She refused to feel sorry for Tristan. After all, he was the author of her current misery.
“That's not true.”
“Isn't it? You've been strange with me ever since this all started. You were content to let me be until my damned inheritance came into play, and then you refused to stop.”
“Everything changed when my father died. If you remember, I was looking into settling an amount on you, so you could be decently wed.”
“A small amount. Not an heiress’ portion. And then everything changed.”
“Yes! Of course, everything changes! Everything always changes. That's the way of the world, and all we can do is to stay with it, to make sure that we do not get ground up when it goes by.”
Blythe stared at Tristan. There was something almost mad in the way he spoke, and a certain desperation in his eyes that made her shut her mouth. She had no idea what drove him like this, what devil sat on his shoulder.
Could my cousin be the one who is behind all of this? The man who entered my room, the two who tried to kidnap me?
A shiver ran along her spine. Tristan seemed to take her silence for obedience, because he lapsed into silence, leaning back against the velvet seats. He looked like a man torn by demons, and despite what she was beginning to suspect, Blythe could not resist a distant pang of sympathy for him.
I can't believe he ordered those things. But he is desperate now, and he seems on the brink of madness. I cannot take anything for granted.
At that moment, she missed Thomas more than she'd ever thought possible. It was tinged with the great love she felt for him, but more than that, there was simply the fact that she and Thomas were better when they were together. Together, they could solve this. They had emerged triumphant from enough scrapes that she barely knew how she had gotten by without him before, and now that she had to, she didn't like it.
I should think that being with him made me weaker, but I'm not sure I would have gotten this far without him. I miss him. God, I miss him so.
As promised, Tristan stationed a young girl at Blythe's door, one of the maids who had helped her dress. When Blythe looked at her dubiously, the girl curtsied.
“Miss Dennings, his grace, the duke, told me to tell you that if I allowed you to leave before he came to fetch you in the morning, I and my sister in the kitchens would be dismissed without a reference.”
Blythe stared at the girl, her blood boiling. “Surely, he wouldn't do that! That's monstrous!”
The girl shrugged, a miserable look on her face. “All I know is that he looked well and serious enough, Miss Dennings.”
“I'm sure he did. Thank you for telling me that. Do not worry. I will not do anything that gets you and your sister dismissed, I swear.”
The girl looked comforted, but Blythe retired to her room in a simmering rage.
How dare he. How dare Tristan use other people against me, people who cannot stand against him, the very people who depend on him for their livelihood!
Of course, in many ways, what Tristan had done was ingenious. He had found the one barrier she wouldn't cross. The idea of the maid and her sister being cast out without references was horrifying. Without a reference, they might never find positions in a proper household again. She had helped far too many girls who had been cast out in similar situations to hope the world would be at all kind to them.
God, doesn't Tristan know what he's threatening?
She had to admit that perhaps he didn't. Tristan was of the aristocracy, and his life was as different from those of the two maids he had so callously threatened as night was from day. Of course, somehow, Thomas had learned that the people who cooked his food and swept his streets were people, and she warmed at the thought of him. She remembered his rescuing her at the tailor's, and how he had been so kind to Honey.
Blythe looked up at the ceiling, taking several deep breaths until she was sure she wouldn't cry. She couldn't afford to think of Thomas like this. After all, when she finally managed to get some sleep, she would probably dream about him, as she had so often over the past month.
She paced for hours, trying to find a way out of her situation, to escape, to flee London or at the very least to get some kind of word to Thomas, but in the end, she knew Tristan had finally found the best way to snare her. She refused to put the jobs of the women Tristan employed at risk, and so she was stuck.
In defeat, Blythe undressed and slept restlessly in her bed, and as she had guessed, she dreamed of Thomas. Somewhere in a thick mist, he was calling her name, and she knew she had to get to him, but she was mired to her knees in cold mud. With every shout, Thomas’ voice grew fainter, and no matter how she shouted, he never seemed to hear her.
A brisk knock at the door woke Blythe, and she realized she had kicked the blankets down to her legs, where they tangled her terribly. By the time she had untangled herself, the knocking had grown more insistent, and she nearly stumbled as she made her way to the door.
On the other side were two maids, one of them the girl who had stood guard all night. Her relief when Blythe appeared was palpable, and Blythe felt another hopeless stab of rage at Thomas.
“Well, here I am. What is to be done with me?”
“His grace has asked us to prepare you for a long journey. We'll get you packed and dressed in no time, Miss Dennings.”
Blythe was sure they would. As the two maids set about laying out her clothes and packing her bag, her belly dropped to somewhere in the vicinity of her shoes and stayed there.
Thomas. Oh, Thomas, I wish you were here...