Free Cavendish Brothers 02 - To Enchant an Icy Earl by Catherine Gayle

didn’t step in to rescue him
from answering. She waited.
    At long last, he started again. “My
father beat me if I ever answered to it. ‘You are Wentworth,’ he
would say as he took a switch to me, ‘and someday you will be the
Earl of Fordingham. You are not Tristan Cavendish. You do not
answer to anyone but the king. You do now bow down before anyone in
your life. Never forget it.’ He beat me so often that the messages
he delivered with the blows seemed to imprint themselves upon my
person.”
    She sniffled, and only then did she
realize that she’d been crying. “Tristan. May I call you that, my
lord?”
    He reached over and brushed the pad of
his thumb over her cheek, drying away the tears before they could
fall to her gown. “I like the sound of it on your
tongue.”
    His words were hardly more than a
whispered confession, but they warmed Calista through to her very
soul.
    She lifted herself up upon her toes to
place a kiss upon his cheek, but he turned his head slightly before
she made contact, kissing her in return. This was unlike their
previous kisses. It was not heated, but tender and inviting.
Soothing, almost.
    When he pulled away, Calista gave him
a watery smile.
    “ I suppose there is only
one more thing we must do, then,” she said.
    Tristan furrowed his brow in thought,
and then a moment later shook his head.
    “ You’re supposed to ask her to marry you
now,” Miranda shouted from the doorway. “Good lord, you must be the
most obstinate—”
    “ That’s enough, Miranda,”
Calista said through a chuckle.
    “ Of course,” Tristan said
sheepishly. He bent to his knee, took her hand in his, and looked
up at her adoringly. “Miss Bartlett—I mean, Calista—would you do me
the great honor of becoming my countess?”
    Now that she was getting to know him
as she was, she knew that this was a man greatly in need of some
teasing in his life. With all of her siblings, Calista had become
quite practiced in the art of teasing over the years. Fighting back
her smile, she pursed her lips together and said, “On one
condition.”
    His eyes widened, and a bit of the
indignation she’d expected forced its way into his gaze. “But you
said you wouldn’t leave me.”
    Calista raised a single brow. “I will
only agree to be your countess if I might also be your
wife.”
    The fight left him and he visibly
relaxed, his shoulders lowering to a more natural, comfortable
position. “Calista Bartlett, will you be my wife?”
    “ Forever,” she
promised.
    “ Excellent,” Miranda put
in. “Now that that’s settled, can we do something about the Duke of
Danby? He’s insisting he must see you both in the drawing room
again.”

Calista could absolutely kiss the Duke
of Danby. She wouldn’t even care if anyone saw her do it. Well, not
overmuch at least. Indeed, as her husband’s carriage rolled along
the drive of Danby Castle with a blanket of snow beneath the
carriage wheels, she thought she very well might do just that once
she saw him again.
    Over the last several months since
that day in Devlin’s drawing room, the duke had been forcing
Tristan and his brother, Wesley Cavendish, to come to terms with
one another—to sort out their vast array of differences.
    “ You are married to my
granddaughter, Cavendish, and you to a woman who is as good as my
granddaughter, Fordingham. I will not have you sulking about and
not speaking, and I certainly will not stand for either of you
throwing blows at the other.”
    Never mind the fact that they were
brothers. Danby didn’t seem overly fussed about that aspect of
their relationship.
    Throughout the remainder of the Little
Season, Danby had invited (if his summonses could be termed as
such) both couples to take supper at his townhouse at least once a
week. During those visits, he’d insisted the two men air their
grievances, and he’d browbeaten them both into actually listening
to what the other had to say. It had been a long process—and