The Duke's Hellion Page 7

  She couldn't resist.

  "How would you tame me?"

  The look on Tristan's face was oddly soft. "Well, I sure as hell wouldn't do it with food, though perhaps we could start there."

  "I suppose you would tame me with kindness."

  "Darling, you are forgetting that I know you. At the wrong moment, kindness looks too much like pity or foolishness to you. No. I suppose if I needed you tamed, I would fascinate you. Give you something to prove or something to worry at and draw you."

  He considered it for a moment, and Georgiana felt her cheeks flame red. S was worse than a girl fishing for compliments. With Tristan, she didn't even know what she was fishing for.

  "And after that? I would let you do as you like. I believe I realized I don't really want you tame."

  Georgiana did sink into a silence after that, but it was not because she was preparing a strategy for dealing with her father.

  No, it was because, for the first time in years, Tristan had called her darling.

  * * *

  Chapter 13

  Tristan couldn't help feeling a stab of nostalgia as the carriage took them onto the vast and verdant grounds of Fox Hall. The Carrows kept a small residence in Devon, where he had been intending to stay, but overall, his family had never had much business in the region. Fox Hall, sprawling out in elegant splendor and with the family crest of three gold arrows, reminded him of why.

  Still, I didn't have such a bad time here once.

  Tristan had to shake his head to clear that strangely wistful thought out of it. He was beginning to believe that in some ways, the past could be every bit as dangerous as the future, and now it was reaching out for him and for Georgiana as well.

  The grounds were gorgeous. As cold and rainy as it was, the Devonshire countryside had burst into life, and the gardens were well-tended, already offering up their bounty of color. Georgiana, far from looking thrilled to see the ancestral seat of her family, looked only pensive, and strange for her, oddly nervous.

  Tristan knew that whatever was happening between them, he should put a stop to that. Despite that very reasonable thought, however, he reached across the carriage to give her hand a gentle squeeze.

  “It's going to be all right, you know.”

  She shot him a faintly scornful look that heartened him to no end. If Georgiana could be scornful, then surely all was not lost. “Well, we'll see, won't we?”

  They had arrived unannounced, so there was no one waiting to greet them. Instead, together, they made their way up the grand stairs of the estate, all the way to the pristine white double doors. Georgiana looked as if she would very much like to turn around and run back to London but, taking a deep breath, she raised her hand to knock briskly on the door. Tristan hung back a little, still not quite sure of his welcome even with the heiress of the house in front of him.

  The door was opened by a cavernous old man with two identical gray tufts of hair on an otherwise bald head. His face was as stern as marble, but then he blinked at Georgiana in surprise.

  “Why, Lady Georgiana! We were not told to expect you.”

  “I'm afraid you would not be able to expect me at all, Toomes, as I didn't expect myself to be in Devon. Plans change, however, and since it is the end of the season, I thought that Devon would be a fine destination for me. So long as I am welcome, of course?”

  Toomes hastily concealed his surprise, and Tristan cocked his head to one side in curiosity. The elderly butler rather looked as if he had seen a ghost, but surely Georgiana was not such a stranger to her family estate.

  “Of course, you are welcome, Lady Georgiana. Forgive an old foolish man for his surprise. And... your companion?”

  Apparently, the feuds of the masters were passed along to their servants. By the lancing eye that Toomes shot at him, Tristan could tell that the butler had a very good idea of who he was, and that impression was not in the least favorable.

  “Oh, Toomes, this is Tristan Carrow, the Duke of Parrington, of course. We met on the road, and I thought it might be a lark to offer him our hospitality.”

  “As you say, Lady Georgiana. Please, come this way. I will escort you to your rooms, and I will alert your father to your visit and your... visitor.”

  An upper-class servant could swear without saying a word. Tristan hid a smile at the old man's disdain, even if by all rights he should be insulted. However, there was nothing to do but to follow the butler into the depths of Fox Hall while the footmen took care of his and Georgiana's small amount of luggage.

  Fox Hall was lovely, Thomas had to admit. It was a modern building altogether, unlike Haverfield Hall, which was the ancestral Carrow estate. The ceiling rose high above while tall French windows let in every bit of available weak spring light. Tristan realized that his thoughts were straying when he imagined Georgiana and her brother Thomas dashing through the halls when they were children.

  Georgiana was deposited in her own bedroom, and Tristan was led some distance away to the guest wing, where he was advised to take his leisure. The room was beautiful, but not, Tristan suspected, the best the house had to offer. It would have been his right as a duke to demand it, but after all, he wasn't in Devon to play the local lord.

  For a moment, he wished that Georgiana had been all right with him staying in the Carrow residence nearby, but there was something in him that resisted the idea of leaving her alone, even if it was in the bosom of her family.

  As she so often reminds me, she is far from helpless. I shouldn't treat her like blown glass. She wouldn't even want me to.

  Even as he thought it, however, he remembered the flash of fear in Georgiana's eyes when they had talked in the carriage. There had been fear there, and despite everything he knew of her, he couldn't leave her behind.

  The maid brought a basin of water to the door, steaming hot, and though it was not a bath as Tristan might have preferred, it was far, far better than nothing. It was wonderful to be able to strip out of his clothes and towel himself down, washing off the grime of the road. He was clean and dressed only in breeches when there was a scrabble from behind an elderly tapestry on the wall.

  A rat?

  Tristan approached the wall warily, ready to snatch aside the hanging, but then to his surprise, it pushed itself aside, or rather Georgiana did, stepping out of a doorway that had been quite hidden by the hanging.

  “They do not keep that door well-oiled. I'd mention it to Toomes if Toomes wouldn't immediately tell my father.”

  “Are you seriously telling me that Fox Hall has secret tunnels? Please don't tell me that all of the stories Ned and I made up about your house being haunted are true as well.”

  “Nothing so dramatic, I am afraid. You are in a suite that is meant to hold couples, and the door between connects the lord to his lady. I decided I didn't want to be seen knocking on your door, so I slipped into the lady's room instead.”

  “And here you are.”

  “Hm.”

  “What?”

  “Tristan, you're practically naked.”

  Tristan looked down, distracted to see that yes, he was still only in his breeches. He scowled.

  “I'm going to say that that's just what you get when you interrupt someone without knocking. Keep your eyes in your head, I'm not some show pony for you to gawp at.”

  Georgiana giggled at that, and even if it was at his own expense, Tristan felt something in him lighten when he heard the sound. It didn't stop him from turning around and pulling on fresh clothes, dressing quickly as she paced the room. There was a restless quality to her, as if she was a wild animal that had returned to a cage. Every now and then, he would swear that she turned her head just enough to watch him as he dressed, but he decided that this was far from the time to say anything about it.

  “So, are you going to tell me what you're thinking?”

  “My father sent word that he would appreciate us dining with him tonight. He is not well, but he will come and greet us in the family dining room.�
��

  “That's good, isn't it?”

  “It might be. Tristan, I've not seen my father for almost a year.”

  Tristan blinked. “Really? How in the hell have you avoided it?”

  “Well, I saw him at Thomas and Blythe's wedding, of course, and at the time, he made some noises about me returning home to Devon for a while.”

  “But... I take it you didn't care to do it.”

  Georgiana thrust her chin up at him, daring him to question her. “No. I didn't. Whatever in the world would I do here in Devon? I stayed in Town under the chaperonage of one lady or another.”

  “Which means that you hopped from friend to friend, relying on the fact that their mothers liked your reputation well enough that they didn't necessarily mind covering for you. And then you did as you pleased.”

  “You're allowed to do as you please.”

  “No, I'm really not. But continue. You were talking about running amok in London.”

  “I've been behaving myself. I just... never thought about coming back here if I could help it. And now... I don't know what to do.”

  Tristan sighed. He felt as if it was his responsibility to say something about family duty or piety or something proper like that. However, whenever he was with Georgiana, what was proper so often went out of the window.

  “Well, I believe what we're going to do is we're going to go have dinner with your father. Is there anything I can do to make it easier?”

  Georgiana's laugh was a surprisingly dark thing.

  “Be a different person who does different things?”

  “Ah. I see.

  * * *

  Dinner turned out to be a strange affair overall. He and Georgiana proceeded to the dining room, which turned out to be a cozy room where dinner was laid informally. As they were entering the room, they were joined by a dignified older man with a hawk-like countenance and a fall of unfashionably long fair hair. He walked with the aid of a silent nurse, and when she had settled him into the chair at the head of the table, she disappeared into the corridor.

  The Duke of Southerly, Peter Martin, was an imposing old man, and Tristan realized that he must have had his children quite late. He stared around with a gimlet eye, and he hardly seemed to hear Georgiana's explanation for running into Tristan on the road and deciding to offer him lodging at all. He ignored his daughter in a way that set Tristan's teeth on edge, and eventually, all three of them ate in stolid silence, Georgiana oddly quelled, and the elder Martin seeming to grow only more discontent as the meal went on. Tristan, however, had endured far worse in his life and maintained the silence in his turn. It did not worry him to be silent, but it simply seemed like a strange environment to have created people like Thomas and Georgiana.

  It wasn't until dinner was over that the old duke spoke his mind.

  “I do not know why you are here. Doubtless, it is some harebrained scheme of my daughter's, and as such, I do not have a choice but to tolerate it.”

  Tristan scowled, but Georgiana jumped as if she had been struck with a pin.

  “Father!”

  “Don't twit me, girl. You've always been a foolhardy thing, and well, that was my doing, given how early your mother died. You and your brother have always been apt to leap before you look, and the finest scholars in all the land could not explain how neither of you have come to misfortune.”

  As best he could on legs that seemed loath to support him, Peter Martin spun toward Tristan.

  “This, however, is beyond any disaster that you have ever created before. The Dukes of Parrington have the morals of your average paving stone and just as much life. And you bring him under my roof.”

  “I may be under your roof, but I do not have to suffer your abuse. And Georgiana doesn't either.”

  Tristan was becoming rapidly very certain that if he had to spend much time in the presence of the older Martin that he would be more than inclined to strike the man down, old and infirm or not. To his surprise, however, the duke laughed, a bitter and creaky thing.

  “Of course, you won't. And you won't see me, as worn out as I am. At some point in a man's life, all he can do is look upon his folly and understand it was the work of another man, the younger man he was. Daughter, I wish you joy of whatever plot you are considering, and I hope that by the end, the family name has a hope of standing.”

  The duke rang a bell, and the silent nurse returned to help him out.

  Tristan waited until the door was closed, and he turned to Georgiana.

  “Are you all right? He had no right to speak to you like that.”

  Georgiana uttered a laugh that sounded shaky even to Tristan.

  “I want to offer up excuses for him, but there really aren't any, are there? At the end of the day, all I can say is that he was once different.”

  “I can believe it. I mean, he sounded like a Carrow, with all his talk of reputation and misfortune, didn't he?”

  He had hoped to make Georgiana laugh at that, but all she could summon up was a wan smile. “It's not such a bad thing to be compared to the Carrows.”

  “Now I know that you must be exhausted from the road if you are agreeing with me.”

  It was good to see her smile even a little, and Tristan tamped down the urge to murder her father firmly.

  * * *

  Chapter 14

  Georgiana brushed out her hair mechanically until she was well past a hundred strokes. She realized that she was staring at nothing and that the clock had long-ago struck midnight. She knew that realistically, she had only ridden in a carriage for the last few days, and then she had returned to her childhood home to have dinner with her father. That was all she had done, and she certainly did not have the right to be exhausted.

  Still, she was. It was a bone-deep weariness that went all the way through her, and she felt as if her limbs were far too heavy for her to move. Despite that, she had an urge to seek her bed, and instead, she sat at her vanity, inspecting her appearance with an almost morbid fascination.

  They say that I am so beautiful and clever. Father's never seen it though. I wonder what he's seeing instead.

  The memory of dinner lashed at her like the tail of some vicious whip, and she physically winced from it. Unbidden, tears came to her eyes, and she wondered all over again why it was so difficult to deal with her father when she had so much experience dealing with the men of the ton.

  She knew that if she started crying, it would take a long time to stop, and that was something she could hardly afford right now. She was just composing herself and ready to force herself to lie down, if not sleep, when there was a soft knock on her door. It was something so light that she barely realized that she had heard it at all, and without thinking, she went to answer it.

  “Tristan?”

  “Can I come in, or shall we wait for your father to fetch his saber?”

  Hastily, she let Tristan into her room, pausing only to look down the long dark corridor to reassure herself that no one had seen.

  Once she locked the door, she turned to Tristan in shock.

  “What in the world are you doing here? Were you that perturbed by me using the door in your bedroom?”

  Tristan considered for a moment. “What would you say if I said yes?”

  “I'd say that that surprises me, given how you cultivate an air of being completely stoic in the face of all comers. Tristan, answer my question.”

  Tristan had always had an air of being unassailable to her. Even when he was a young man, long before his father had died, he had walked about as if he was utterly certain of his place in the world and his relations with all in it. Some might say that it came of being born to wealth and power, but Georgiana had always thought that it had more to do with Tristan simply being himself. He was far too stubborn to be anything less than confident in himself.

  Now, however, he looked almost nervous, as if he was not sure what was going on. She supposed that that was fair, given what she had forced him into and where he had come, but
something about the way he paced back and forth in her bedroom made her doubt that as well.

  “I came to see how you are.”

  Georgiana had to stifle a startled laugh. It seemed ludicrous to her. “Why?”

  He glared at her, crossing his arms over his chest. He had removed his jacket, but otherwise, he was still dressed. It occurred to her that he was probably as restless as she was.

  “Dammit, Georgiana, do you really think it is so impossible for someone to care for you?”

  “Well, no, not really. I know my brother loves me. I believe Honey is quite fond of me, and my father cares in his own very strange and occasionally hurtful way. But you, yes.”

  Tristan actually flinched at that, and then he shook his head as if shaking away an unwanted thought.

  “Well, it's not true. I was concerned after you looked so bleak at dinner. Your father had no right to speak to you like that.”

  Something about the outrage in his tone warmed her, but Georgiana shoved it aside. The last thing she could afford right now was to be soft with anyone, let alone the one person in this entire mess who was inclined to help her.

  “He was different once, and I have not been here to see a gradual change. It makes me a little worried for my cousin Tabi, who is usually here. I'm not sure if you've ever met her; she seems like she'd get along well with you. Not much of the Martin blood in her, for all she is a dear...”

  Tristan crossed the floor toward Georgiana in two steps, and for a moment, she thought he was going to shake her. Instead, his strong hands fell on her shoulders, and he looked straight into her eyes. Even in the dim light of her bedroom, she could see the leashed fury in his eyes, and she was almost afraid until she saw that all that righteous wrath was for her.

  "He should not treat you like that. In the end, you are his daughter, and you deserve more care, at the very least."