He put his hand on her shoulder and looked at her with an intense expression. ‘Remember that. If I say I will return, I will return. I will protect you.’
‘Do you mean that?’ Lottie asked in shaking voice.
‘As best as I am able.’
‘That is good to know.’
‘And now if you remain willing, the blacksmith awaits.’
‘The blacksmith?’ Lottie tilted her head and tried to quell the sudden butterflies in her stomach. ‘We have no horses that need shoeing.’
‘We have a marriage that needs forging. It is where all the best marriages take place in Gretna Green, or so I am reliably informed.’
‘We are not marrying in a church?’ Lottie regarded her hands. ‘I had always imagined that I would be married in church.’
He shook his head. ‘We are marrying in Gretna Green, under Scottish law. Two witnesses are all the law requires. The blacksmith is waiting for us. All you have to say is that you don’t want to, Lottie, and I will personally put you on a coach back to your mother and Newcastle.’
‘No, I will marry you…even if it is a blacksmith’s shop.’ She drew a deep breath. Her wedding would bear no resemblance to the wedding of her dreams. A blacksmith’s anvil and a torn dress. But it was a better prospect than the future those men had planned for her. ‘Like you, Tristan Dyvelston, I keep my promises.’
He curled his fingers around her gloved hand, raised it to his lips. ‘Thank you for that.’
Lottie allowed her footsteps to match his. She was getting married. It might not be the wedding she dreamt of, but she was determined to be the right sort of wife. She would make him see that she could be helpful. It was the details that counted. She gave one last backward glance to the alleyway and turned her face to the sun. Her footsteps faltered. ‘Tristan, what sort of ring?’
‘The blacksmith will take care of it. He is used to weddings. He informs me that he has already performed two this morning.’
‘You mean it isn’t going to be a gold ring?’
‘Is a gold ring a requirement for a marriage in Scotland?’ His gaze narrowed. ‘Is it ever a requirement?’
Lottie wet her lips and said goodbye to the last of her dreams. ‘I had only wanted to know.’
Lottie twisted the iron band about her left ring finger, rather than look at her new husband where he stood speaking to the blacksmith. The ceremony had gone quickly, squeezed in between a horseshoeing and mending a plough. Nothing fancy. Simple and ordinary.
Her face burnt from the heat of the fire and her ears rang from the clanging of the hammer against the anvil. A quick brush of his lips against hers. Very correct. Very polite, but nothing more. But she wanted more. She wanted him to kiss her like he meant it, like he wasn’t marrying her simply because he had to, because society forced them. Lottie concentrated on the iron band. Slowly she drew on her glove, hiding the ring, but her hand remained heavy with the unaccustomed weight.
‘Shall we depart, Lottie?’ Tristan said, coming over to her; the blacksmith started striking the anvil with his hammer again. ‘Unless you want to stay and see the horses being shod, there is nothing here for us.’
Lottie shook her head and allowed Tristan to lead her from the shop.
‘So we are married. Forged as it were.’ She gave a small laugh once they had returned to the street. It looked as it had when they had entered the shop—people were still hurrying by, intent on their shopping, the mud still lay in pools. Nothing had changed. No one noticed what had happened to her. ‘I had never thought about it. My friends will be all agog when I write. One only ever hears about going to Gretna Green to get married, and the precise details are never spelt out.’
‘Yes, we are married. The ceremony was perfectly legal.’
‘I never questioned it.’ Lottie glanced quickly up at her new husband. His face was remote and held little of the warmth she had glimpsed last evening. She wondered how she could get it back. If he had looked like that, then she would not have been tempted to make this marriage. She wanted him to smile down at her, to do something to show that this marriage was more than an inconvenience caused by her own indiscretion. ‘We have both been saved from ruin. The marriage will be a nine-day wonder, if that. Undoubtedly someone somewhere will do something worse and it will be forgotten.’
‘I am no stranger to scandal but I had no wish to be outside society for ever. It is not good business.’ His eyes showed no signs of softening. ‘Neither of us had any choice in the matter, Lottie, but we do have a choice about the life we lead. Shall we look to the future, rather than live in what might have been?’
‘The ice-cold wind of disapproval.’ Lottie adjusted her bonnet and ignored the rip in her sleeve that appeared to grow each time she moved her arm. She hated the thought of being dressed like this in public, but there was nothing she could do. She had to hope no one would notice. She moved so her arm was next to Tristan’s, hiding the worst. ‘I need to know, Tristan. Why did you marry me, since you had already experienced society’s disapproval?’
‘Once you ruin a virgin…there is very little way back.’ Tristan ignored her invitation to take her arm and stood staring down at her. His voice did little to restore her confidence.
‘And did you want a way back?’ Lottie asked. She wanted to believe that there was more to this, that he had wanted to marry her.
‘I am no cad. And perhaps I no longer wanted to be an orphan.’ A cold smile touched his lips. ‘Does it matter about the reasons? We are married now, and we will go forwards without scandal. I will lead the sort of life my father had envisioned for me. Upright. Solid. The sort of life I intend to lead now that I have returned to Britain.’
‘You appear to have made a number of promises to your father.’
‘They were all part of the same promise. My father and my uncle were not friends.’ He gave a bitter laugh. ‘I wanted to torment my uncle.’
‘And what did your uncle predict?’
‘That I would come to no good, that I would blacken the family’s name and die in an unmarked grave.’
‘It is hard when families fight, particularly if one of them is titled.’ Lottie placed her hand on his arm. ‘Didn’t your mother try to help? Or your aunt? It is the duty of the women in the family to mend quarrels.’
‘My uncle’s wife was concerned with…other matters and my mother died when I was three.’ A flash of pain crossed Tristan’s face and Lottie’s heart constricted. In that instant she caught a glimpse of the young boy Tristan must have been. How truly awful to have this long-ago quarrel blight his life. ‘I doubt she could have mended this quarrel, but I like to think she would have understood.’
‘I am sorry. I lost my father when I was twelve. I cried for
