A Game of Hearts

by Joanna Barker

I would win, but I would do my best not to embarrass my opponent.

I did not know if he realized I was holding back, but he had to know he was in dire straits. I’d outshot him last year, and the year before, though it still hadn’t been enough to prove myself. Nothing was enough. I chewed the inside of my cheek. At least I could defeat the baron. That was more than I could say for a different, equally provoking gentleman. I surreptitiously glanced around as Lord Beauford prepared to shoot again. The crowd was thick, but I wasn’t searching for a bystander. I was searching for calculating brown eyes and a maddening smirk. I was searching for my real competition.

I hadn’t seen him in six months, not since I’d left for London for the Season, but his clipped baritone still sent a skitter up my spine. Tristan had always been like that, cold and immovable as a boulder. A handsome, irritating boulder.

He was trying to irk me. Lucky for him, Tristan Gates irked me just by existing.

My lips pulled upwards. I might look like Mama, but I’d always been more like Papa in terms of temperament. We loved without reservation, but we also held grudges. And heavens, did I feel a grudge now.

I sighed dramatically. “You are no fun at all.” “If I had any influence with the man, you know I would have used it by now,” he said. “But he holds no fondness for me either.” “Yes, thank you for that,” I said. “Do try to lose to him more often at the gaming tables.” He laughed. “Never. Despicable man.” I grinned, slipping my arm through his. “Excellent answer.” We sat in silence for a few moments, the waves breaking a few feet away, the sun bright overhead. Finally, he patted my hand. “Come. Your mama is waiting.”

Archery was not just another pastime to me. It wasn’t like arranging flowers or painting, something to fill the day. Archery drove me. It pushed me. It demanded perfection, and when I failed, it cut to the bone.

Even as heartbreaking as it could be facing rejection and humiliation, I never felt more right than when I had a bow in my hands, an arrow pulled to my ear, and a target in my sights.

The man had no social graces—it was one of the reasons I liked him so well. No pretense, just hard work and skill. That was precisely what I looked for in a business partner.

But I knew well enough that there was usually a grain of truth in every rumor. My instincts were rarely wrong, and they had certainly been on alert after speaking with Mrs. Penrose yesterday. Now I knew why. She’d set her aim at my uncle’s fortune. My inheritance. Well, she would find that I was not so easily fooled.

I never planned to spar with Marigold. The girl always managed to taunt me into it with that infuriating spark in her eyes.

“If ever I heard an offer of marriage from you, I would laugh before the words finished leaving your mouth.” “And I’d hope Uncle would send for the doctor because surely I would be suffering from an episode of madness.”

My eyes locked onto her mouth. For a moment, I forgot that Miss Kingsley was coming at me like I had a target on my back. I forgot that we stood amidst a hundred or more guests, and somehow, inexplicably, I even forgot how much I disliked Marigold Cartwell. Instead, I was distracted entirely by those smooth, pink lips. Their tempting fullness.

I tore my eyes away, cursing myself. I did not believe in witchcraft, but there was little else to explain what had just happened. Or perhaps she was a siren, luring me to my death. That seemed more likely.

“Wonderful,” she snapped. “Now we both lose.” “Better than you winning.”

“You do recall the steps?” she asked crisply as we waited for the music to begin. “That is one downside of avoiding balls, I’m afraid." “I know the steps,” I said. “So you may give up the hope of me falling on my face.” “You know just how to disappoint a girl.”

I was Marigold Cartwell, the ideal eldest daughter. I never caused gossip or scandal. And while I did enjoy fairly beating the baron on the archery range, I certainly did not argue with him during balls.

I let myself look out across the sea of faces. Most turned away from me. But there were a few that gave me hope: my parents, pride in their eyes. Cora, nodding her support. Sylvia, winking at me over her glass. A few men offered sympathetic looks. Most thrilling, however, were a few women—married and unmarried alike—who did not flinch from my gaze but instead looked excited and invigorated.

I was impressed with her initiative, though I would rather be eaten by a lion than admit it.

Generally, Marigold and I stayed safely within the confines of mild insults and spirited arguments. This was uncharted territory.

I did not fear a challenge, and Marigold was the very definition of the word.

Marigold was stubborn and impossible—yet somehow, the tiniest root of begrudging admiration had taken hold inside me.

our conversation had veered into strange territory. First his questions about Mrs. Penrose, then his unexpected admission about Lord Beauford. And at the end, he’d had an odd look in his eyes, looking down at me as if he did not quite recognize me. Though, that might be a better description of how I felt about him at the moment. To have had any amount of sympathy from Tristan was unheard of.

After all, what was the point of being a ladies’ society if the food was not infinitely better?

“I am not worried in the slightest. If you need to teach them, you will become a teacher. If you need to solve disagreements, you will become a diplomat. If you put your mind to it, it will happen.”

I’d had a golden opportunity dropped into my lap. I could not and would not squander it.

Mama would groan if she knew how I’d spoken to Lord Beauford—a baron—but a baron was still just a man. And a man I could beat, no less.

Then again, I enjoyed teasing Marigold, and this seemed a prime opportunity that I would be foolish to squander.

My chest lit up like the fireworks I’d seen as a child. It was exasperating how aware my body was of her every curve, her every movement. The dark only heightened that awareness, my other senses coming alive in a swarm of sparks.

He would never let me forget what a position I’d woken in, wound around him like I . . . like I . . . like I liked it. Because I did not. Yes, it was warm, and rather comfortable. And yes, Tristan smelled surprisingly good for a man trapped in a mine—like the spray of the salty waves and sun-warmed grass. Like summer.

“Only that hiding parts of yourself from a potential spouse seems a recipe for disaster. It would be better to discover you don’t suit before the vows, wouldn’t you think?”

Tristan leaned heavily on me, and my stomach twisted. What if . . . what if he was not all right? What if his injury was more serious than I’d thought?

And yet I knew. I knew deep in my bones that Uncle was right. I was a gentleman, and I had to take responsibility for what had happened, no matter that we’d simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time—victims of an unlikely accident. I was duty-bound. I raised my head, staring at the grass waving in the wind. I had to propose to Marigold Cartwell.

I understood it, but that did not make the misery any more bearable.

I set my jaw as I looked back up at him. “We questioned Fate and it answered.” I held up the broken bow. “Is there no more clear omen than this? We cannot marry.” He stared at me. “Is marrying me such a horrible prospect that you must rely on superstition to avoid it?”

Why, on this of all days, did I have to discover how absurdly attractive Tristan Gates was?

It was exhausting, pretending that I was perfectly fine. Pretending that I had any control over my life. Because in reality, I was drained and afraid and overwhelmed. Had I made the right choice?

I pulled on my gloves, hesitating a moment as my eyes caught on the thin pink line of my still-healing cut. For half a second, I hated the sight of it, marring the smooth skin of my forearm. But then I set my jaw. That scar meant I had survived. That I had people who loved me enough to dig through the night to reach me. I decided right then that every time I noticed my scar, I would say a prayer of gratitude for each and every blessing that I had.

I looked down at the white rose still in my hands. Though he might deny it, I knew it was a symbol of something. Perhaps a small, barely-there hope for the future. I had to have hope as well.

But I would have to guard myself better next time. I couldn’t very well go around kissing my betrothed.

Tristan had changed so much. Or perhaps it wasn’t that he’d changed, but that I’d grown to understand him better. And the more I understood him, the more I liked him.

If we hadn’t been trapped in that mine, would I ever have realized who Marigold truly was? I did not think so. I was so convinced of my own opinions, I literally needed a crack to the head to change them. Bless that rock.

An engagement itself has no ability to produce love, or every arranged marriage would have a happy ending.”

“It is certainly not the life I dreamed of,” I said, laughing softly. “But I am beginning to think it is the one I should have wanted all along.”

In her green shooting dress and her hair braided into a golden crown around her face, she looked like a wood nymph—impossibly beautiful and lively.

I looked fearsome. Like Robin Hood, if he’d been a woman with golden braids and an insatiable itch to win.

“Marigold,” he said fiercely, “I am to be your husband. I will stand by your side, no matter the battles you face. You will never be alone. Not now. Not ever.”

“I know I was not your first choice, or even your hundredth. But you are mine, Marigold. My first and only choice. And I’ll choose you every day, without pause, for the rest of my life.”

I wanted to remember this, the moment when we both knew.