“Good,” he said, although it seemed as if he hadn’t really heard me. I gripped his arm above the elbow as we walked down the slippery steps, uncertain of the state of his wrists and knowing better than to ask.

“I meant what I said,” he added. “You look beautiful tonight. That dress…” he trailed off.

“I’m supposed to be trying to seduce you into giving me all your money.”

“Trying?” He laughed. “You have succeeded, and in doing so, quite driven thoughts of anything else from my mind.”

“Your focus on our task is admirable,” I said, but secretly I was pleased.

“If I am distracted, it is your fault. You have been my undoing since the day we met.”

The coachman opened the door to the carriage, and Tristan helped me inside.

“Good evening, Cécile,” Monsieur Bouchard said, his loud voice filling the small space. I’d met him several times previously, as he was a subscriber, and the nephews sitting next to him as well. “Good evening,” I replied. “I understand I have you to thank for giving Monsieur de Montigny an excuse to see me tonight.”

“Glad to oblige.” The older man winked at Tristan as the carriage started forward. “I wanted proof that he wasn’t all bluster and that you two truly were acquainted.”

“Oh, yes,” I said, smiling up at Tristan. “We met in Courville this summer. I was ever so pleased when he decided to join society in Trianon.”

“And from now on, I shall go to Cécile with all my questions,” Bouchard said. “She is far less taciturn than you, Montigny.”

I laughed. “He hoards his secrets like a miser does his coin, I’m afraid. I spent all summer trying to pry them out, and I’m quite certain I barely scratched the surface.”

“For good reason,” Tristan replied. “It gives me an air of mystery. If I told you everything, I’d risk you realizing that I’m really quite dull.”

“I doubt that,” I said, then the carriage hit a dip in the road, bouncing me sideways against Tristan.

“Steady!” Bouchard shouted, banging on the wall. “Curse these roads. Something needs to be done about them.”

Except I didn’t curse them at all. Even through the layers of my skirts, I could feel the press of Tristan’s hip against mine, the brush of his coat against my neck as he rested his arm along the back of the seat, the way his breath tickled my hair. I wanted to lean against him, but the gleam of amusement on the other men’s faces told me I was already skirting the line of what was proper. I wanted them gone so it wouldn’t matter, and from the burn of the heat in the back of my head, I knew the same thought had crossed Tristan’s mind.

There isn’t anything stopping you. The thought that I’d been thinking more and more over the past few days, crept across my mind even as I laughed along at a joke I hadn’t even heard. He is your husband.

I considered the reasons why our intimacy had been limited before. Certainly a child was a complication we could not afford. Our lives were too much in jeopardy, and I couldn’t even bear to think about what would happen to our baby if we were both killed. Half-blood as it would be, if the King got his hands on our child, would he not sell it off as a slave as he had done with Lessa? And that would be if he didn’t kill it out of hand. And wasn’t there a certain inevitability that the child would have to go to Trollus as long as the curse remained? Would it happen the moment it was born? Before? I shivered at the idea.

The carriage pulled to a stop beneath the domed side entrance reserved for subscribers and other important guests. Tristan stepped out first, then helped me down. “What are you thinking?” he asked quietly, leading me toward the doors the liveried men held open for us.

“The compulsion is getting bad again,” I said, because it was true and he needed to know, and I didn’t want to admit that the only thing that chased it off was my lusty thoughts.

“Keep in your mind that you are doing what you promised you would,” he said softly. “She knows my intent, and she’ll come after me sooner rather than later. She has to.”

I knew he was trying to make me feel better, but the reminder that Anushka would try to hurt him or kill him did anything but. He was not afraid of her, but I was. There was no one alive who knew more about trolls, and she’d killed one as powerful as him before.

Sensing his words had the opposite effect than he’d intended, he reached up with his free hand and squeezed mine where it rested on his arm. Then he lowered his head, his breath warm against my ear. “I know that wasn’t what you were thinking about.”

My cheeks flushed, but a smile crept onto my face. “Perhaps not.”

My mother had taken me on a tour of the opera house soon after I’d arrived in Trianon, but sometime since, I’d lost an appreciation for how extraordinary it really was. Marble colonnades banded with gilt twisted up to ceilings painted with soft golds and blues, with massive crystal chandeliers hanging one after another to light the long stretch of the grand foyer.

We were somewhat late, and went straight to Bouchard’s box on the second level of the horseshoe-shaped theatre and took our seats, the lights already dimmed and the curtain up. Willowy girls in white tulle flitted across the stage, and even though I’d seen them perform countless times before, I could not help but marvel at their grace, lifting up onto their tiptoes in shiny satin shoes, limbs impossibly flexible. Tristan leaned forward against the railing as he watched, his expression captivated. This, like so much else, was not something he’d ever seen before.