Page 15 of Mistletoe and Christmas Kisses

While he pondered this dilemma, managing his enchanting botanist through another elegant rotation, somewhere behind him, a glass hit the floor and exploded with a bang. To Tristan’s unmitigated mortification, the sound plunged him into the anarchy of a rain-soaked field in Belgium, the chalky scent of death crushing, the bitter taste of fear choking.

All at once, he was at war, and the memories were swallowing him whole.

“Tristan.” Camille yanked his sleeve—and this was when he apprehended he’d brought them to a standstill in the middle of the ballroom, puzzled couples darting around them.

She repeated his name, more urgently this time.

He gazed at her and blinked slowly. “I’m fine,” he whispered when he was reasonably sure he wasn’t. And as he’d been trying to tell her, might never be again.

Camille grasped his forearm and smiled, fanning her face like she’d gotten warm and needed a reprieve. Nodding at anyone who looked their way, she gestured to the refreshment table as if they’d discussed food and drink as a remedy. She was quick, this woman, razor-sharp. She would have made a fine soldier. Tristan wanted to tell her this, she’d have liked it, he imagined, but he had to focus or anxiety would triumph and completely ruin the evening.

As it was, he wasn’t going to sleep for days.

Camille grabbed a glass from a passing footman and shoved it in his hand. “Drink, Tris. Your skin has gone the color of daisy petals.”

He drained the glass, the wine stinging the back of his throat but doing little to mist his mind. “Is that good?”

She shook her head, her gaze probing as she searched his face. “I don’t think so.”

“I may need a moment,” he admitted when he recognized how badly his hands were shaking. “Can you make excuses for me? A loose button, a sudden headache?”

“The countess has a wide variety of sitting rooms with doors that lock. Find one.”

Tristan laughed, although blackness was edging his vision, and panic was beginning to swell. “Yes, she mentioned those. In excellent working order should I have the urge to ravish anyone this evening.”

Camille flushed, her gaze dropping to her slippers.

Damned if they weren’t in trouble, both of them, he thought desperately.

After an awkward silence, she took his glass and gestured with it to a hallway leading off the ballroom. “I’ll render apologies should the countess want to know where you’ve run off to. Should I keep a list of the eligible ladies who stop by hoping to be ravished?”

“Naturally.” He turned, heading toward a discreet salon of his choice. “That reminds me,” he said and glanced over his shoulder, “apparently a handsome marquess is trying to run you to ground now that Ridley’s gone off to be with his mommy. I think I was summoned to intervene. Hold my place, should this occur. I’ll regain my ducal fighting stance swiftly, I promise.”

Then he stumbled from the ballroom before he let society see what war did to a man.

* * *

Throughout a cotillion and a Scotch reel, Camille worried about the way color had bled from Tristan’s cheeks. As she tried to imagine what dread like that mustfeellike, she stepped on Lord Heming’s toes and got lost during her conversation with Baron Birmingham. When Viscount Arnold approached for his selection, she claimed to have a torn hem and took herself off to find Tristan.

This worrying without action would not do.

She located him in the fourth room she tried.

He didn’t turn from his study of the woodlands surrounding the countess’s estate, simply stood quietly before the window sipping from a glass. He looked lonely. On an island he didn’t want anyone else to reach, the glow from a candelabra turning the tips of his hair gold and gilding his skin. Camille turned the key in the lock, and the dull clink echoed through the room.

“They’re like nightmares while I’m awake. I don’t know why, but startling sounds bring them to the forefront of my mind. Like they’re close, shallowly buried and easy to retrieve.” He braced his hand on the window ledge and gazed into the snowy night. “Only needing a jolt to reveal them. Then I’m tossed into the pit.”

Skirting the desk he stood behind, she settled in beside him, shoulders touching, and took his glass. Gin. It burned as it went down, and she coughed.

“Easy,” Tristan said without looking at her, a hint of a smile in his voice.

She pushed the glass back in his hand, a hand that no longer shook, she noted. “I walked in on Lady Pierce-Nesmith two doors down on her knees before a man, a man most definitelynotLord Pierce-Nesmith. It was, if nothing else, enlightening.”

Tristan turned to her with a sputtered laugh. “You’re kidding.”

Camille grimaced, recalling what she’d seen in the two-second flash. “I wish I were.”

“Don’t they know about the famous Milburn locks?” He tipped his glass her way. “Which I noticed you wisely employed.”