An Unsuitable Alliance by Beverley Oakley

Author:Beverley Oakley [Oakley, Beverley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beverley Oakley

Seeking the sanctuary of his study half an hour later, Tristan buried himself in his work.

Rubbing his eye sockets, he tried to concentrate on the blurred words before him. How could he concentrate on anything but his fears for Adelaide?

He had no idea how long he sat there but he felt Mrs Henley’s presence before the woman spoke. It was like clammy fog wrapping its ghostly tentacles around him and he shivered as her voice reached him from the shadows.

‘Tristan, a word if I may?’

Always the question was couched as a command. Always it echoed round his head like a clarion call to protect his vulnerable young wife. As if he hadn’t done everything, at every step possible, that he could.

Even as he turned, his mind screamed self-reproach, just as he knew Mrs Henley would charge him with his culpability. Adelaide had taken a turn, and wasn’t that an indication that Tristan had not listened to the mother’s strictures? That he’d been remiss by forging his own path.

He’d lost track of time as he’d attended to Adelaide but now he saw that it was late afternoon, the long shadows casting their gloom over the house like a pall.

‘Certainly, Mrs Henley.’ He indicated a chair with a resigned wave of his hand and she rustled in, giving off a scent that reminded him of mouldering lilies.

Mrs Henley lowered herself onto an uncomfortable, little blue and silver upholstered chair and regarded him balefully.

‘Tristan, you and I may have our differences but we are as one in two important regards.’

She spoke the truth, for this was not the first time she reminded him that Adelaide’s welfare and that of the poor unfortunate souls whom society had relegated to the scrapheap were their primary interests.

She went on, ‘You have, I gather, seen my daughter.’

‘Of course!’

‘No need to sound insulted. Naturally you have seen her but do you recognise in her the emotional, tormented creature who has taken to her bed as the Adelaide you married? Of course you do.’

He hated the way she spoke for him. She’d always done it, but he’d learned that to object merely prolonged the agony of the interview and delivered no real benefits. It was why he let her go on with merely an incline of his head. She knew Adelaide better than anyone. She’d been with her when Adelaide was vibrant and carefree. She had lived through her daughter’s terrible ordeal. Hadn’t he heard it a million times?

Tristan clenched his fists and strove for calm. God, but for those foul renegades who had raped his lovely Adelaide the two of them might be living in the kind of domestic felicity he dreamed about. With an effort he steadied his breathing as he wiped the back of his hand across his forehead.

‘All this ridiculous gaiety and racing round London. Being feted and adored’—her nostrils flared—‘is the worst possible thing that could have happened to her, and I blame you for not tightening the reins when you must surely have seen how it would end.

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