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.

Chapter 5

Lucie woke with a cat on her face and her toes cold as lumps of ice.

“Blast it, Boudicca.”

Boudicca jumped and landed on the floorboards with a thud.

“Your place is on my feet, as you well know.”

Boudicca turned and was on her way down to the kitchen, because frankly, she was a cat, not a foot warmer. A lady might keep a pug for such services.

With a sigh, Lucie threw back the blanket and padded to the corner with the ceramic bowl and pitcher, trying to blink the remnants of sleep away. Her lids scraped like metal sponges against her eyeballs. She had finished working at the darkest hour.

A glance at the small mirror confirmed it: she looked haggard. A little ashen around the gills, too. Not unlike the women depicted on the cards tucked left and right into the mirror’s frame. Valentine Vinegar cards, carefully curated from the avalanche of anonymous ill-wishes that poured through her letter box every February. Their little rhymes and verses all concluded the same: she was a blight on womanhood, would suffer a tragic life and then die alone. She caught a poor cat and a bird, but she can’t snare a man, so we’ve heard . . . to see you muzzled, fast and tight, would be for all a joyful sight . . . Her favorite card showed a shrill-looking suffragist skewered on a pitchfork. The spinster’s wiry hair was flying in every direction; her nose was red and crooked like a beak. She had a touch of witch to her. And everyone was secretly afraid of witches, were they not?

Her reflection gave a sardonic little smile. She felt not at all powerful this morning. She wished to creep back under the covers, clammy as they were.

Downstairs, Boudicca was yowling and causing a racket with her empty food bowl.

Resigned, Lucie slipped into her morning wrapper.

The white light of an early morning gleamed off the white kitchen wall tiles and polished wooden cabinets. It smelled of tea, and Mrs. Heath, marvel of a housekeeper, had already kindled the fire, toasted bread, and chiseled open a tin can of Alaskan salmon.

“You can thank Aunt Honoria for the money she left me, or else you would feed on whatever the cat meat man has on offer,” she said to Boudicca while alternately spooning salmon chunks onto her own plate and into the cat bowl under the cat’s watchful eye. “Or worse, you would be out hunting mice every day, like a regular cat. What have you to say to that, hm?”