Page 18 of Mistletoe and Christmas Kisses
Camille stepped close and grasped her aunt’s hand. Tears pricked her lids, and she blinked them back. “I can’t save Longleat. Not by marrying a man I don’t want, who doesn’t, if he considers it carefully, want me. I’m too independent, too stubborn, and I would have made Ridley miserable. I thought I could do it, marry him to save us. But I find, after…well, I find I cannot. Please forgive me.”
Bel drew her into her arms, and love flooded Camille’s heart. “Oh, my lovely girl, you have nothing to apologize for. We’ll find a way to save the estate, never you fear. If you marry Mercer—”
Camille pushed from her hold, the basket banging her hip. “Tristan and I aren’t going to be together. He feels he can’t marry, and I won’t accept anyone else.”
Bel frowned in confusion and nodded to the basket. “But you’re picking fruit for him!”
“He liked the plums. I’m going to give them to him before I seduce him.”
Fanning her cheeks, Bel looked around for a place to sit. “I feel faint. Elated but faint.”
Camille grabbed a wooden bucket and flipped it over, settling her aunt atop it and crouching beside her.
“Dear me,” Bel said and dropped her head to her hands, her body wobbling with the rock of her seat. “Seduce him, you said?”
Sitting back on her heels, Camille searched for a way to explain. She understood her rationale but didn’t expect anyone else to. “If I’m not to marry, what’s the harm in letting myself experience passion? With someone I’m attracted to. Someone kind. Someone Itrust.”
“A gorgeous duke we suspect is excellent in bed,” Bel said from between her fingers. “Don’t leave out the best part.”
“Are you going to try and stop me?”
Bel knocked her bonnet aside and gazed from beneath the twisted brim. “Why would I when I agree?”
Camille blinked. “You do?”
She cupped her niece’s cheek, her eyes full of affection and fond memories. “You could have married Ridley and been content, I suppose. If you didn’t know passion existed. I’m guessing something happened with Mercer at the ball, and now you do. I could have done the same, married for convenience, for money, a business arrangement beneficial to both parties. But there was a man, long ago, a baronet without a penny to his name. Not a farthing. My family wouldn’t allow it, of course, and I was too young to know to fight for him. But he…” She sighed and laughed, her gaze sliding to her slippers. “He ruined me for marriage. After his kiss, his touch, I could accept no other as my husband. Better this”—she indicated her life in one broad gesture—“than that. I’m content. I made the right choice.”
“He’s going to break my heart,” Camille whispered, closing her eyes at the thought of it.
“Oh, darling.” Bel bussed her cheek. “I think it’s more likely you’ll break his.”
* * *
Tristan pictured the gentle curve of Camille’s breast for the fourth time in minutes and smashed his thumb with the hammer. Hissing an oath, he stepped back from the pile of decaying boards he’d stripped from the hunting lodge’s wall and shook his throbbing hand. His childhood hideaway, he’d come here when his parents began hurling insults and dishes, when he was lonely or scared or bored. It had been his castle. Over the years, his father had allowed the dwelling to slide into a deplorable state along with the rest of the estate. Tristan had a team of workers doing repairs at Tierney Hall, but here, in this most personal of places, he wanted the work to be his and his alone.
He wanted to propel himself into a state of exhaustion as he restored his ancestral home, fatigue leaving no room for dreams of war or women.
He wanted to forget about her, the girl who’d tried to pet a swan, the woman who’d waltzed with him beneath the glow of a thousand candles.
The woman he’d taken in his arms and whispered his secrets to.
She made him want to share himself.
His past, his future.
Before, he’d believed he was broken. Now, he suspected he was only wounded. Healing slowly, buthealing. Even the little he’d told her about Waterloo had released the pressure in his chest like he’d jammed a nail in a cask and let the contents trickle out. Miraculous, that reckoning, a furious flood of sunshine after two years of gloom.
Tristan dropped to his haunches to trace his finger along a split in the rotted walnut paneling, his taut exhalation fogging the morning air. Somehow, his childhood nemesis, the girl he’d fondly considered a bothersome nuisance, was helping him find his way.
He hadn’t anticipated falling in love, which he believed might be happening. Uncertainty, confounding joy. Unadulterated distress. The first person he hadn’t been able to shove from his mind no matter how hard he tried to.
Obsession. Fascination. Bewilderment.
Sounded like love to him.
Which left two choices. Either fight for her—or let Ridley win. Tristan brought the hammer down on a rotted board at the thought.
While he kneeled there, his mind in turmoil, the faint scent of orange blossoms whispered through his senses, and he turned to find Camille standing in the doorway, basket in hand, sunlight oozing around her, the certainty of his feelings confirmed by the answering flicker of happiness lighting his soul.