Page 22 of Mistletoe and Christmas Kisses
And took her blasted plums with her.
* * *
Tristan roused slowly, groggy after what felt like hours of actual sleep. He could only think,I’ve found my duchess. Under his nose all along. This, followed by a private declaration that should have scared the piss from him but didn’t,I’m getting married.
Maybe even before Christmas.
He turned, smoothing his hand over her side of the bed. Sunlight was edging in around the drawn curtains, a pleasing frame of gold. Daylight. A full night’s sleep, the first in years. Stretching, he smiled to himself. Her side of the bed. He liked the sound of that. Camille would always have a side with him from now on. She was the answer to his dreams. His path to the future, to happiness, to peace. To think, he’d considered letting Ridley marry her. Even if she hadn’t cried off, even if they hadn’t sealed their fate during a lush, remarkable night,thatwouldn’t have happened.
A daft idiot, he’d been twitching with jealousy since the night of his return.
He sat up, a slight twinge pinging his back, guessing Camille was rounding up food as they’d eaten nothing last night. They’d swigged wine and whispered and laughed and made love. Again. And again. The last time shoved against the wall, him holding her up, hence the pain in his back. She had this neat trick, sucking on his tongue when she kissed him, which made him lose his mind. Lose. His. Mind. And her eyes, they’d gone this exacting shade of green, like fresh limes, when she slid over the brink. Impossibly beautiful.
And horribly arousing.
He’d never experienced a night like it, a woman like it, not once, not ever. He’d known he would marry her, so he’d remained inside her to completion, the first time he’d ever done that.Bliss.
His cock boosted the sheet as images commandeered his mind. Camille astride him, underneath him, legs locked around his waist, arms looped around his neck. Her mind invading his. She’d asked curious, delightful questions about other positions, other locations.
Was it possible on a chair? Outside? In the bath?
She’d damn-near talked him into a state of frenzy.
With the winter sunlight flowing over him, his body spent, his heart light, he accepted his existence was shifting. He was going to make Camille his duchess, then have a family. Have a life. Build her the finest greenhouse in England. Repair his tenant’s homes and the village’s roads, build a new school, and expand the church. He had ideas, thousands of them. He’d simply needed someone to help bring them into play.
He’d needed a reason to live again.
He’d found one. Found her.
The lengthening silence and extreme chill in the room began to register. The crack of a branch against the windowpane, wind whistling down an empty hearth, but nothing from inside the lodge. Not a breath aside from his. He drew one scented with her tantalizing essence as a flash of unease stirred his senses.
His gaze landed on his desk, papers jumbled, the letters he’d started then balled up in frustration and chucked to the floor tossed about. His effort to find a way out of having Camille marry Ridley without Tristan having to marry her himself. Scrambling from the bed, he approached the mess as if it were a blazing coal someone had asked him to shove down his trousers. Hesitant but certain, his belly clenched, a gut-sure feeling he usually paid attention to.
Oh, no.Not good.
Her handwriting, exhibited in a hastily-sketched note across the top of the letter, was lovely and delicate and strong. As she was.
Fury pulsed from her words like blood from a wound.
You have honor, I have pride. Thank you, but no.
“Bloody hell,” Tristan whispered and crushed the vellum in his fist.
He stalked into the main room of the lodge, searching the corner where she’d dropped them yesterday. No basket, no plums.
Bracing his hand on the wall, he hung his head with a stricken groan.
Averyangry future duchess was on the loose. And averypersistent duke was going to catch her.
* * *
“Where is she?” Tristan snapped as he stalked into Lady Fontaine’s lavender parlor two hours later. Her favorite room, and the one she’d summoned him to for every gentle scolding of his youth, it fairly pulsed with femininity and stylish restraint. And the raw scent of pine. She stood before that silly tree he’d chopped down a mere four days ago, when it seemed like a hundred, her smile coy, sly, curling wickedly at the edges.
Oh, he justbetshe loved this.
“My darling duke. What a surprise.” She turned a sparkly silver ball in her hand and hung it from a branch. Tapped it once to send it swinging. “Or not.”
He took a fast step forward, into the room. “Consider me foolish, but I have a feeling Camille isn’t here. That she’s gone racing off in a fit of ire you made no effort to talk her out of.” He yanked his beaver hat from his head and muscled his fingers through his hair. “Am I correct?”