The Honorable Heir by Laurie Alice Eakes Read Free Book Online

glanced over his shoulder. Seeing she had seated herself on a sofa facing the windows, he settled on a chair across from her. “They? You weren’t here?”
    “I only arrived in Tuxedo Park three days ago.”
    “Yes, from Dieppe. Wouldn’t Le Havre have been more convenient?”
    Her hands flattened on the brown velvet cushion, and a stillness settled over her. “How do you know where I was in France?” Her voice was as cold and brittle as the ice rimming the edge of the lake.
    “I thought I would—”
    The arrival of coffee, hot and fragrant, along with cream, sugar and sweet biscuits, interrupted him. Her question and his partial response hovered in the air while she thanked the footman, then poured Tristram coffee, adding a dollop of cream and pinch of sugar he preferred. Not until she settled back on the sofa, a fragile china cup cradled in her hands, did he continue.
    “I thought I could catch up with you in Paris, and then Le Havre, but I miscalculated your direction there, and arrived in New York a week ahead of you.”
    Her eyes widened, a little too far for genuine surprise, as far as Tristram was concerned. “Why, may I ask, were you following me?”
    “To recover the jewels, of course.” He smiled.
    She gave him a blank stare, sipped her coffee, then set the cup on the low table between them. Light from the wall sconces flashed off the diamond-studded wedding band and matching engagement ring on her left hand, rings that should grace the far less attractive fingers of the current Countess of Bisterne, Florian’s sister-in-law.
    Tristram leaned forward and slipped his hand beneath Lady Catherine Bisterne’s, tilting it so a cold flame burned at the heart of the engagement diamond, and asked, “Shall we start with these rings?”

Chapter 4
    A handshake often creates a feeling of liking or of irritation between two strangers. Who does not dislike a “boneless” hand extended as though it were a spray of seaweed, or a miniature boiled pudding? It is equally annoying to have one’s hand clutched aloft in grotesque affectation and shaken violently sideways, as though it were being used to clean a spot out of the atmosphere. What woman does not wince at the viselike grasp that cuts her rings into her flesh and temporarily paralyzes every finger?
    Emily Price Post
    B lood drained from Catherine’s face. Beneath Tristram’s grip, the rings warmed. Her eyes squeezed shut, and her lips, no longer dusky rose, compressed.
    “Please.” Her voice rasped barely above a whisper, and she tugged her hand free.
    Tristram considered rising and crossing the room so he could bang his head against one of the myriad glass panes in the windows to knock some sense into himself. She hadn’t just been reacting in guilt; he had been holding her hand too tightly.
    “I am sorry, my lady.” An urge to raise her hand to his lips washed over him. If blood had drained from her face, then it surely flooded into his, for his ears and cheeks burned. His necktie grew too tight. “I forgot myself.”
    “I’d ask you to leave but I believe we have unfinished business.” Her hands steady, her expression now the smooth mask adopted by a lady used to court circles, she refilled both their cups. Instead of picking up hers, she twisted off the rings and laid them on the table, where the diamonds winked and shimmered like lighthouse beacons warning of danger ahead. “As you can see, I have never taken them off.” Her ring finger bore the marks of rings long worn. “I was afraid to remove them lest people think I was hunting for another husband.” Two rapid blinks betrayed emotion trying to break through her facade. “I’d recommend you tell old Mrs. Selkirk that, but then you would have to admit you were here.”
    “I expect she already knows.” He seized on the diversion like a man stuck in quicksand grasping a rope to haul himself out. “I had to ask the Selkirks’ butler for directions.”
    “They wouldn’t lend you