Valentine stood on the front steps of Lady Hermione’s townhouse and watched, mouth agape, as Tristan tossed Phillip Edgecombe into the street. Phil staggered wildly, his arms circling like a windmill, but he didn’t fall. She felt a surge of relief. As odious as he’d been to her, she didn’t wish to see him seriously injured.
She caught Tristan’s arm. “Pray don’t hurt him.”
Tristan turned on her. A lock of raven black hair had fallen across his brow. It did nothing to soften the ferocity of his expression. “If you care for him, tell me now, madam. You needn’t mince words.”
“Don’t be stupid.” She tugged his arm. “Come inside. Lady Hermione will never forgive me if we make a spectacle of ourselves in the street.”
He allowed her to pull him back into the house. Ledsen shut the door behind them. Valentine couldn’t bring herself to meet the old butler’s eyes. In situations such as these, men almost always blamed the woman. And, in this instance, she supposed that it was her fault to some degree.
“I shouldn’t have said anything to either of you in the hall,” she said as she led Tristan into the morning room.
“Why the devil not?”
“Because Phil—I mean, Mr. Edgecombe—was being impossible. And I should have known that you would—”
“Behave true to character?”
“What?”
“A bully and a brute. You said that in Yorkshire once. Or something to that effect.”
She stopped in the center of the morning room and stared up at him. A glowing warmth suffused her chest. It had only been a few weeks, yet he was even more handsome than she remembered. And infinitely more dear. “Yes, I suppose I did.”
“Well, there you are.”
Her gaze drifted over his face. Smitten, that’s what she was. It was embarrassing really. Especially as the feeling was so obviously not mutual. Tristan returned her gaze with aristocratic indifference, or so it seemed to her. He appeared to be wholly unaffected by their reunion. While she was, by his very presence, transformed into a mass of melting treacle. “No one has ever stood up for me before,” she blurted out. “Not in my entire life.”
He gave her an arrested look. “Haven’t they?”
“Never. And what you did just now… It was simply magnificent.”
“It was brute strength. There’s nothing particularly—”
“You were magnificent.”
Tristan’s lips tilted in a fleeting smile. He appeared faintly amused. Mildly diverted. He also appeared to be turning a dull red about the collar.
Valentine’s eyes fell to his cravat. Good lord above! Had she just made the most notorious libertine in England blush like a schoolboy?
“You’re very easy to impress, Miss March,” he said.
She smiled up at him. “Why are you here? What are you doing in London? I didn’t think I would see you again until the New Year.”
“I came to meet with some gentlemen at my club. I had a rather pressing business proposition to discuss with them.”
Her smile dimmed a little. What had she expected? A passionate declaration of love? Of course he hadn’t come back for her. It was remarkably foolish of her to even entertain such thoughts.
She gestured to the silk damask settee. “Won’t you sit down?”
“I’m too restless. But you sit, please.”
She did, spending some little time arranging her skirts. She wished she’d worn a prettier dress. Something with a flounce or a few ribbons. Not that he seemed to notice what she was wearing. “What sort of business proposition? Is it something to do with Blackburn Priory?”
“In a manner of speaking.” He rubbed a hand along the side of his jaw. “These last weeks I’ve been making an inventory of the Priory, as well as beginning some of the less costly repairs. Replacing rotted roof tiles and digging drainage trenches and so forth.” He paused, frowning. “Are you at all familiar with the market town of Harbury Morton?”
She shook her head.
Tristan began to pace the room. “It has no industry. No direct rail access. But the farmers and landowners thereabouts produce an annual yield that far exceeds…”
Valentine listened in silence as Tristan went on to talk of crops, steam mills, and transport. She didn’t fully understand it but was mesmerized by the intensity with which he tackled the subject.
When they had first met in Yorkshire, she had been drawn to him because he was kind and handsome, and because he had seemed lost and a little sad. He had needed her, even if only in some small way. But now, he was fairly brimming with confidence. He was happy. She’d known he would be. He was too inherently good to have kept on down the wrong path. Instead, he’d summoned the strength to make a change. It was one of the reasons she loved him so.
And one of the reasons, she feared she would lose him.
After all, what need did he have of her now? None at all. They were bound together by nothing more than his promise to marry her.
“It was the water mill that gave me the idea,” he said. “In centuries past, it made Harbury Morton a thriving concern. But now, every farmer and landowner in the district is obliged to transport their crops to towns with working mills. If there were a way for Harbury Morton to have a steam mill of its own. And direct rail access to transport its crops, coal, and lime…”
“Is there such a way?” she asked.
“I believe there is,” he said. “I’ve spoken to an industrialist in Newcastle who’s been keen to build a steam mill in Harbury Morton these many years. The gentlemen at the Blyth and Tyne Railway are equally keen. In both cases, all it wants is investment. I already own the land.”
“Perhaps your father—”
“No,” Tristan said. “My father has nothing to do with this. If anything, I expect that my ventures in Northumberland might eventually set me free of him.”
Valentine folded her hands in her lap. She wasn’t sure what to say, so she remained quiet as Tristan’s pacing took him to the small walnut writing desk on which her book of verses sat open. He stopped there, casting an idle glance down at her work.
“It’s all rather ironic,” he said.
“How do you mean?”
“I’ve come to believe that that’s the very reason my father gave me Blackburn Priory. So that I might gain independence from him. He must have known the place was rich with possibility. Had I gone there years ago—had I taken the time—I might have seen it for myself.”
“Everything happens in its season,” she said. “That’s what my father used to say.”
“Very wise of him.” He set his hand on the edge of the desk. “If only that season would have come sooner. Then I would have known…”
“Known what?”
“That my father never wished to see me fail. Quite the opposite. He hoped to see me succeed.”
“Of course he did. Your father loves you very much.”
He gave a short laugh. “Let’s not get carried away.”
“But he does,” she insisted.
“I can’t imagine why,” he said. “I’ve been the greatest trial of his life. Had there not been intervening circumstances, I have no doubt he would have cut off my funds and cast me off into the proverbial wilderness.”
The words she’d overheard outside the billiards room at Fairford House echoed in Valentine’s mind. “By intervening circumstances, you mean your engagement to me.”
Tristan didn’t deny it. “My father wouldn’t allow my future wife and children to live in penury. No matter how much I had disappointed him. A hard fact, but—” He broke off. “What is this?”
“I beg your pardon?”
His attention was fixed on the opening page of her book of verses. “This drawing.”
She flushed. “It’s meant to be a lion.” She rose from her seat and went to his side. Her skirts brushed up against his leg. “I know it looks like a pug dog, but once I have applied the watercolors it should look a bit closer to my mother’s illustration.”
“What illustration?”
“From the front of the original book of verses. It was one of the pages that Felicity Brightwell destroyed. I can’t recreate all of them, but I’m trying to draw some from memory.”
“A stag facing a lion, each on their hind legs,” he said thoughtfully. “And this I suppose is an eagle.”
“With a crown of roses in his beak.” She gave him a rueful smile. “My mother painted many variations of the design, but this was the most common. I always thought it a rather odd configuration.”
Tristan looked up from the book. His eyes found hers. “Was your mother very religious?” he asked abruptly.
“No more than reason.”
“Yet she named you after a saint.”
She shrugged a shoulder. “Papa said she was trying to atone. To make things right with God before I was born. She can’t have felt easy about having a child out of wedlock. And certainly not so far from home.”
“Why did she choose Surrey, I wonder. What brought her there?”
“To our village?” Valentine frowned. She’d often wondered the same thing herself. “I suppose she must have simply run out of money. Before Papa found her weeping in the church at Hartford Green, she’d been staying for several days at an inn outside the village. She could no longer afford it.”
Tristan looked down again at the book of verses. “The famous Caddington pride,” he muttered.
“You think it was pride that brought her to Hartwood Green?”
“No,” he said. “But I think—indeed, I would wager my last groat—that it was pride that kept her from returning home to Caddington Park.”
Her brow furrowed in confusion. “I don’t understand—”
“St. Ashton.” Lady Hermione’s voice rang out from the doorway. “How good of you to call on us.”
Valentine turned from the desk with a start to see her distant cousin entering the drawing room. A rush of heat crept into her face at being caught alone with Tristan, and in such close proximity, too. She immediately moved away from him. “You’re back early, ma’am.”
“As you see.”
“Were Lady Penelope and Lady Euphemia not at home?”
“They were, but there was no need to dally.” Lady Hermione looked at Tristan. “To what do we owe the honor of this visit, my lord?”
Tristan greeted Lady Hermione with cool civility. “I’m in London on business. As I’ve been explaining to Miss March.”
“Lord St. Ashton is seeking investors for a business venture,” Valentine said. “A steam mill and a railway station in Northumberland.”
“How enterprising of him.”
“It’s bound to be a great success.”
“Indeed.”
“And it will make him quite independent of Lord Lynden.”
Lady Hermione’s gray gaze slid to Tristan’s face. “If that’s so, then there will be no more need to marry in order to secure your income.”
Tristan acknowledged this fact with a subtle inclination of his head. “No need at all, ma’am.”
“And this is what you have come to tell my young cousin, I presume.”
Valentine heartbeat quickened. She looked at Tristan, her eyes questioning. He wasn’t calling off their engagement, was he? He couldn’t be. Only a short time ago, he’d told Phil that the two of them were betrothed. If he didn’t wish to marry her, then why…?
“I’m afraid that’s a conversation for another day,” Tristan said. His expression was unreadable, his voice reverting to the same tones of aristocratic indifference she’d heard him use in North Yorkshire. “I’ve already stayed too long. I’ve other appointments this afternoon.”
“As do we,” Lady Hermione said. “Tomorrow we’ll be travelling to Caddington Park and we must make our arrangements.”
Tristan’s face betrayed the faintest flicker of surprise. “You’re going to see Stokedale?”
“We are.”
Valentine’s stomach was trembling. She clasped her hands at her waist. When Tristan threw her a glance, she looked away. She couldn’t bear it.
“You have no cause to do anything I ask, my lady,” he said, “but I would beg you to notify my father. Allow him to accompany you.”
“To lend us countenance?” Lady Hermione scoffed.
“To lend support to Miss March. I would go myself, but—”
“You most certainly won’t!” Lady Hermione’s bosom swelled with righteous indignation. “When I think of what I’ve had to endure. The lengths to which I must go to shield my cousin from gossip. That orgy in Yorkshire. Those odious Brightwell creatures. And now, Ledsen tells me, you’ve pitched a country gentleman into the street outside my own home! A country gentleman who’s threatening lawsuits and scandal and having respectable people brought up on charges!”
“Oh no,” Valentine said in horror. “He didn’t, did he?”
Lady Hermione didn’t answer. She was in too much of a passion. “No, St. Ashton. You shall not accompany us to Caddington Park. You’ve done quite enough for my cousin, thank you.”
Tristan’s face had gone hard as stone. “You need say no more, madam. You’ve made yourself abundantly clear.”
“I trust I have.” Lady Hermione strode to the door of the morning room and pulled it open. “Miss March? See our guest out, if you please.”
Valentine did as she was bid, walking out the door and down the stairs, her hands clasped tightly in front of her. She was aware of Tristan behind her. She could feel the warmth of his body, could hear the sound of his boots on the steps. But she didn’t address him. Not until they reached the front door.
She turned to face him then but couldn’t bring herself to lift her gaze any higher than the top button of his waistcoat. “I bid you good day, my lord. And I wish you good fortune in all of your business endeavors.”
“Miss March…”
“Please don’t. Lady Hermione is right. There’s no need for us to remain betrothed. And if you’d only…”
Her words disappeared in a tremulous breath at the feel of his fingers touching her beneath her chin. He gently raised her face until she was forced to look him in the eye. “Have you lost faith in me?”
She swallowed hard. “No, my lord.” It was the truth. He would marry her. He would keep his word if she let him. “I believe you will do the honorable thing. And so must I.”
Dawning realization registered on Tristan’s face. “Valentine—”
“Goodbye, Lord St. Ashton,” she said. “I release you from our engagement.”