She finally looked up at that. As if the response to his question should have been obvious. “My family’s.”
He let his eyes drop to the columns of neat, precise figures she had been filling in. There were pages of them. He pulled the ledger toward him before she could protest, turning it to face him. The numbers told a story he had not been prepared for. Debts, creditors, outstanding accounts. All of it recorded in her careful hand. “How long have you been doing this?”
“Since I was old enough to understand what the numbers meant,” she said, pulling it back. “Someone had to.”
He did not know why that particular detail needled him as much as it did. She had been gone from dawn until late every day, and she had not been resting or socializing or doing anything a new duchess might reasonably be expected to do. She had been working without asking him for anything.
He set the thought aside.
Tristan strode toward his wife, his movement making the candles on Cathy’s table flicker.
“I make the rules of Baxter Hall, Cathy. And one of my rules is that we dine together. We show unity. After everything that hashappened, are you truly suggesting we live as strangers under the same roof?”
Cathy stood up, her height imposing, and she was using it tonight. No more hunched backs. No more hiding. He still towered over her, looking down at her flashing eyes.
“Why?” she asked simply.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Why does it matter to you whether we dine together, Your Grace?” Her voice was quiet, but there was nothing uncertain about it. “You made yourself quite clear to Lord Farstone on our wedding day. I was not meant to hear it, but I did. So let us dispense with the pretense, shall we? This is a marriage of convenience. I know how devastated you were to be married to Miss Priggish, and how you suspect I may be behind a terrible scheme.” She paused, her jaw setting. “You did not want this. I did not want this. So why should we perform over dinner when there is nobody in the room to perform for?”
“What Brandon said—”
“Was the truth,” she said quietly. “Or at least your truth at the time. I am not angry about it, Your Grace. I am simply practical. You wanted a quiet, biddable duchess who would not embarrass you. You were given me instead. I think we can both agree that the ledgers are a more productive use of my evening than sitting across a dining table pretending we are something we are not.”
“And what are we?” he asked, before he could stop himself.
She blinked. The question had caught her off guard; he could see it.
“Strangers,” she said. “Strangers who share a surname and a scandal. Nothing more.”
She stepped away from the table, but she was not done. “You should have married Miss Longrove if you wanted a wife who would obey and behave as you wish her to. That was what you needed. A delicate flower, and not a thistle. There is no world in which I would allow myself to be plucked only to satisfy your ego. Therefore, we can be nothing but strangers in this marriage.”
“You did not kiss me like a stranger,” he said. “You kissed me back, and—”
“It was a moment of weakness,” she said. “I am not made of stone, Your Grace. I am, however, made of better sense than to mistake a moment of weakness for something it was not. Now let me finish my work.”
Tristan should be furious. He shouldnotwant to see this defiant woman anymore. Yet, at that moment, he felt a pull from her that he could not ignore. He closed her ledger firmly.
“The ledgers can wait,” he said firmly, his gaze dropping to her full lips. “Your husband can no longer. It has been five days of you avoiding me, Cathy. I never said anything about being spared from your presence.”
“Oh?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. He saw her breath hitch, even though she tried to hide it. “Your silence in that regard when conversing with your friend was enough. Please, spare me your pity.”
Tristan moved closer, his hands finding the surface of her table on either side of her hips. He had caged her. Even the heavy ledger felt helpless under the palm of his hand.
“Do you really believe all that?” he asked, leaning in closer. Their foreheads were so close. It was so much easier to do with her height. “Do you think I ran from that altar and stood in front of your entire family and half thetonout of pity? You think I kissed you in the library out of pity? You think I have spent five days in my own home acutely aware of every hour you are not in it, out of pity?”
Cathy trembled. Tristan was close enough to feel that. He could feel the heat radiating from her body and saw how hard she gripped the edge of the table behind her. Her knuckles had turned white.
“Your reputation precedes you, Your Grace. So do forgive me if I find all that hard to believe.”
“I do not say things I do not mean, Cathy. It is perhaps the one virtue Brandon would concede me without argument. I am many things. A liar is not among them.” He held her gaze. “I did not want to marry. That much is true. I will not pretend otherwise. But I did not leave that altar because I pitied you. I left because I could not say those words to another woman when I had spent the previous night thinking about you.”
“Your Grace, stop,” she said. Her voice was not as steady as she would have liked. “I... I do not want to be married to you,” she reminded him. “I know you do not want to be tied down to someone like me either. There is no reason for these big words. However, I am truly grateful for what this marriage means to my family. Your protection saved my sisters’ reputations after our father abandoned us. We can make a perfect arrangement of separate lives in the same house. I trust your servants are discreet.”
Tristan felt that twinge of annoyance once more, and he did not attempt to hide it.
“Discreet? Is that the only thing that is important to you? Charity and propriety and the careful management of appearances?” He let out a short, humorless laugh. “You are lying to me, Cathy. Worse than that, you are lying to yourself.”