Page 68 of A Dance with the Wayward Duke
He mounted the last steps and entered the palace. High ceilings glittered with candlelight. Mirrors multiplied the crowd until courtiers appeared in regiments. Uniforms flashed with braid and orders, silk gowns moved like bright water, jewels winked at throats, ears, wrists. The heat of bodies mingledwith orange blossom, wax, perfume, and the faint iron smell of soldiers dressed for court instead of battle.
At the far end, beneath a canopy that managed to look both royal and theatrical, stood the throne.
The usher announced him: “The Duke of Stormhaven, newly appointed ambassador of His Britannic Majesty to the Court of Naples.”
Silence fell.
Tristan braced himself. After the greeting from the Neapolitan envoy, who had not even known his name, he knew the shape of his welcome. Turned heads. Polite blindness. The courtly art of making a man enter a room and vanish in it. London had done the same often enough. Admiralty dinners where men with cleaner reputations received applause while he stood with salt still in his bones and victories treated like inconveniences.
Every face turned toward him. A whisper passed through the room. Then another. His name moved low at first, then gathered speed.
Stormhaven. The Sea Wolf. The Adriatic run. The burning battery off Ragusa. That night action near Corfu. Didn’t he take the French sloop with half his guns run out? Didn’t he bring the convoy through under fog?
The whispers rose into an excited tide.
People moved toward him, not as one approached a useful barbarian, but with eagerness. Men in uniform stepped forward first, then diplomats, then courtiers with bright eyes. Questions came at him in French, English, and Italian.
Tristan stood very still. He could not make sense of the room. What had happened? How did they know all of his victories?
Lorenzo leaned close. “It seems our passenger accomplished everything she set out to do. She is certainly good at diplomacy.”
Marguerite.
Tristan turned his head slightly, but there were too many faces, too much silk, too much light.
She was nowhere and everywhere at once, in every warm look, every name repeated with admiration, every path opened before him where he had expected a wall.
She had done this for him. His throat tightened until speech became impossible.
What did a captain who had learned to cut to survive do with a woman who gave too much?
“Sir—”
A man stepped forward, then stopped himself mid-stride, color rising in his face. “Captain—Your Grace. I served aboard the Aquila during the Ligurian patrols. We studied your Adriatic run. The turn into the shoals—how you used the soundings to force their line to break—An honor,” the young man said more quietly. “Truly.”
Before Tristan could answer, a larger presence folded around them. A man with a mane of black curls and a uniform that seemed assembled for the express purpose of being seen clamped one hand on the young officer’s shoulder, fingers heavy with rings.
“Enough, Villeneuve,” the man said, booming and amused. “Let our new ambassador breathe.”
Tristan recognized the man and bowed. “Your Majesty.”
King Joachim Murat laughed and hooked an arm through his with easy familiarity, steering him forward as if they had been allies for years and the map of Europe had merely forgotten to note it.
“I expected another stiff-lipped automaton from London,” Murat said, loud enough to be heard by half the room. “Instead, they send me a man who has seen powder smoke up close. A warrior.” His grin widened. “If the Emperor had secured a manlike you for his admirals, perhaps history would read differently, eh?”
Tristan inclined his head. “I served where I was sent.”
“Spoken like an Englishman,” Murat said. “But with better shoulders.”
Lorenzo made a sound behind him that might have been strangled laughter. Tristan ignored him because one did not elbow one’s brother before a king, however strong the temptation.
Murat led him a few steps apart. People shifted, made room, leaned in. Tristan answered questions. Yes, the Adriatic had taught certain lessons. Yes, the weather off that coast could be treacherous. No, a faster ship did not always command the engagement. Yes, soundings mattered when pride made captains foolish.
All the while, his body remained tuned to one absence.
Marguerite.
A flash of pale gold near the far mirrors made his breath catch, but it was not her. A laugh from behind a pillar tightened his hand around his glove, but it did not belong to her. He heard her everywhere in the room’s sudden kindness. She had given him this, then vanished before he could ask why kindness from her felt more intimate than any night in his bed.
