“Tristan.” Flynn set down his toast and dropped his voice to a pitch suited for confessionals. “You once told Lord Harrowgate—at his daughter’s wedding, I might add, while people were literally exchanging vows—that love matches were the primary mechanism by which otherwise competent men ruined perfectly sound family estates.”
“I believe the word I used wasreliable.”
“You believe—” Flynn pinched the bridge of his nose. “Theword.”
“I stand by the sentiment,” Tristan said mildly. “I have simply found that I am not immune to the occasional exception.”
Another silence. Flynn turned his head and looked down the table to where Imogen sat, deep in conversation with his great-aunt Cordelia—rather successfully, by the look of it, given that Cordelia was showing no signs of her usual tendency toward tearful monologue. As Tristan watched, Imogen said something that made the old woman laugh, and the sound of it carried the length of the table.
He found his own gaze traveling, as it had been doing all morning with the same involuntary, unhelpful persistence, to the soft rise of her bosom above the ivory silk. The dress still strained, slightly, at its altered seams, a detail he could not seemto stop noticing. She was, in that gown and in that light, an extraordinary amount of woman.
He looked away. He returned to his tea.
Flynn, he realized, was watching him watch her.
“I will say this,” Flynn began.
“I would very much prefer you did not.”
“She’s stunning,” Flynn said, with the settled appreciation of a man delivering an objective verdict. “You had no idea what you were passing over, all that time. Half those girls the matchmaking mamas parade around are so malnourished a good November wind would carry them off. Your—” he paused, with a faint, admiring gesture that somehow managed to encompass all of Imogen without actually pointing “—your wife looks as a woman should. Withcurves. Real ones. The kind a man could actually?—”
“Cavendish.” Tristan’s voice came out several degrees cooler than he intended.
Flynn stopped.
There was a short pause during which Tristan set his tea cup down with extreme precision.
“Noted,” said Flynn, in a tone of considerable satisfaction. He reached for his cup. “Well, well.”
“Do not.”
“I have said nothing.”
“You are thinking several things.”
“I am always thinking several things. It is my condition.” Flynn leaned back in his chair and regarded him with an expression that Tristan recognized, and disliked, as genuine warmth. “I have known you a long time. I have seen you at negotiations and funerals and the occasional catastrophe, and I have never—not once—seen that look on your face when you looked at Eliza Reeding. Or any other woman for that matter.”
Tristan said nothing.
“Whatever the particulars of this morning,” Flynn went on, more quietly now, all theatre set aside, “I think it may have worked out rather in your favor.”
“The jury,” Tristan said, “remains convened.”
Flynn laughed, soft enough for the table, and turned his attention back to his breakfast.
Tristan did not turn his attention back to anything in particular. He was, with considerable effort, not looking at his wife. He was also, with marginally less success, not thinking about the particular problem that would present itself this evening—that she was in fact exactly as untouched as she had declared herself, sitting opposite him in the carriage with that steady, furious dignity, and that the same ivory silk that strained now at its seams would require, at some point, to be removed.
He’d never before bedded a virgin.
He picked up his fork.
“You appear to be enjoying yourself.”
He looked up.
Imogen had apparently concluded her conversation with his great-aunt, who had been claimed by a nephew at the far end of the table and was now subjecting him to the reminiscences Tristan had narrowly avoided. Imogen’s eyes were on her plate, her expression entirely composed, her voice pitched only for the foot of space between them.
“I am not known for enjoyment,” he said.