The Dragon Prince Rejected Me, So I Married His Daddy

The Difficulty

Three days after Tristan told me that wanting me was not the difficulty, the working court prepared to leave for the north, where two landowners had drawn armed men to a disputed river crossing. Tristan ordinarily would have travelled to the nearest royal residence and settled the matter himself.

The carriages remained in the courtyard until noon. Then the luggage was carried back inside. Two councillors departed to negotiate in his name, while Tristan ordered reports twice each day. He had not neglected the problem. He had merely decided that the kingdom could survive without his presence there.

That appeared to alarm the palace more than the disagreement itself.

At half past three, the chamberlain arrived at my rooms.

“His Majesty expects you in the western garden at four.”

“Expects me?”

The chamberlain’s composure faltered. “He requested the pleasure of your company.”

I let the contradiction sit between us until his eyes shifted towards the door.

“Which of you made it sound like a military summons?”

His silence protected the king with admirable loyalty.

Tristan waited beneath the covered walkway, dressed in black with a heavy coat fastened at his throat. My maid and two guards remained several paces behind me.

“I was wondering whether this was an invitation or an order,” I said.

He glanced at me. “I instructed the chamberlain to request your company.”

“He informed me that you expected it.”

Tristan closed his eyes for a moment, evidently reviewing the failings of his household. “I will speak to him.”

“Please don’t. I enjoyed watching him decide whether honesty was worth treason.”

A sound escaped Tristan that was not quite a laugh, but came closer than anything I had heard from him before.

We entered the garden together.

Winter had stripped most of it bare. Dark hedges divided the paths, and the last white roses had browned at their edges. Gardeners worked beneath the trees, gathering fallen branches before the next snow.

Everyone noticed us.

The glances held surprise but little disapproval. Most of the household had watched me grow from a frightened girl into a woman who knew their laws and remembered their names. One of the older gardeners bowed to us with unmistakable approval.

“You have terrified the household,” I said.

Tristan followed my attention to the watching gardeners. “I have done nothing.”

“You remained in your own palace when there were badly behaved landowners available elsewhere.”

His mouth shifted before he could prevent it. A gardener holding a rake stared openly, and the expression disappeared at once. The man immediately became fascinated by a patch of frozen soil.

I laughed—not the careful sound I used when an ambassador believed himself amusing, but something bright enough to turn several heads. For ten years, I had trained every visible emotion into something suitable for court. Beside Tristan, suitability felt less urgent.

“You appear pleased with yourself,” he said.

“I made King Tristan Aerionar smile in public. I expect the event to enter the royal records.”

“You are mistaken.”

“The gardener would testify.”

“He values his position.”

That made me laugh again.

We continued towards the western wall. Tristan told me about the northern dispute, then the damage winter rain had caused to a retaining wall. From there, he moved to a bridge that required new stone before spring. I let him explain where the river narrowed and why the eastern support had weakened, partly because the subject clearly mattered to him and partly because I was beginning to understand what he was doing.

Tristan did not know how to fill a quiet walk with charming stories or harmless compliments. He knew how to govern. Faced with the unfamiliar task of courting a woman, he had apparently decided to offer me the kingdom one damaged structure at a time.

I kept my expression composed until he began describing the drainage beneath the western approach.

“Have you brought me here to court me or to inspect the drainage?”

Tristan stopped walking. He glanced towards the path behind us, perhaps checking whether he had somehow missed the moment when the excursion became an official inspection. When he faced me again, the confusion in his eyes was entirely genuine.

“I believed we were speaking.”

“We have discussed armed landowners, a retaining wall and a damaged bridge.” I counted them against my gloved fingers. “You have yet to ask me a single question that cannot be answered by one of your engineers.”

His attention dropped briefly to my hand. I could almost see him reviewing the conversation and finding, to his displeasure, that I was right.

“The bridge is strategically important,” he said at last.

He offered the defence with such grave sincerity that my amusement escaped before I could contain it.

“I am beginning to understand why you remained unmarried.”

For one long second, Tristan merely stared at me. Then the severity around his mouth gave way. His smile was slight, almost reluctant, but it remained long enough for me to be certain of it.

The first drops of rain struck the branches above us. Before my maid reached us with my hood, Tristan pointed towards the old glasshouse near the wall.

He rested one hand lightly at my back as we crossed the wet path. Even through my cloak, I felt each separate finger.

The glasshouse was warm for the citrus trees inside. Moisture filmed the panes, turning the garden indistinct. My maid and the guards waited beneath the covered entrance while Tristan closed the inner door.

Warm air settled against my cold face. The room smelled of damp earth and orange blossom. Rain drummed against the glass roof.

Tristan removed his wet coat and placed it over the back of a stone bench. Without it, the breadth of his shoulders seemed more apparent, not less. Rain had darkened the hair near his temples, and a single drop travelled from the edge of his beard towards the open collar of his shirt before disappearing beneath it.

I watched longer than politeness permitted.

Three days earlier, those same shoulders had filled the council chamber while he told me that wanting me was not the difficulty. He had left the words between us without explaining them.

In the garden, surrounded by servants and guards, I had been able to pretend that I had not considered the unfinished answer since. The warm, narrow glasshouse made the pretence harder to maintain.

Tristan straightened from the bench and found me watching him. His gaze remained on mine, giving no indication that he meant to rescue me from the question.

“You never explained the difficulty,” I said.

He did not answer at once. His fingers rested against the wet fabric of his coat, then slowly released it. The pause felt less like uncertainty than a decision about how much truth he was prepared to give me.

“I thought it was obvious.”

Perhaps it was to him. Tristan had lived so long behind silence that he seemed to regard it as a complete language. I had spent ten years trying to understand what people refused to say and had no intention of beginning another relationship that way.

“You may discover that I dislike being expected to guess.”

His eyes moved over my face, measuring the seriousness beneath the lighter tone. A trace of recognition appeared there, followed by the smallest movement at the corner of his mouth.

“I am beginning to.”

He stepped away from the bench, though he did not come closer. The glasshouse was narrow enough that the distance felt deliberate.

For a moment, only the rain spoke, running down the panes and blurring the figures outside. I remained where I was. If he wanted me to understand, he would have to use words.

At last, Tristan drew a slow breath.

“You chose me after ten years of having your future decided by other people,” he said. “I told you I would give you time. If I use that time to persuade you with something other than reason, the freedom becomes questionable.”

“Something other than reason?”

His gaze lowered to my mouth. The meaning arrived before he answered, warming the space beneath my ribs.

“If I touch you now, I will want more than you have had time to choose.”

The distance he had kept between us no longer felt like reluctance. It was restraint, maintained so carefully that I wanted to test it.

“You are remarkably determined to protect me from my own decisions.”

“One of us should be.”

I crossed the space between us. Tristan remained still as I placed my hands against the front of his coat. The fabric was cool beneath my palms; the body beneath it was not.

“You said you would give me the opportunity to know you.”

His attention dropped to my fingers as they moved towards his collar. When he spoke, the roughness in his voice made the warning unnecessary.

“This is not what I meant.”

“Then your explanation was inadequate.”

His breath changed beneath my hands.

“Odette.”

He could have stepped away. The fact that he did not gave me the answer his warning tried to conceal.

“If you want me to stop,” I said, “tell me.”

His gaze held mine. “That will not be the problem.”

I rose onto my toes and kissed him.

For one suspended moment, Tristan did nothing, his body held in the same rigid control with which he faced councils and armies.

Then one hand closed around my waist.

He kissed me once as though proving he could stop.

The second kiss proved he had been mistaken.

His other hand slid into my hair as his mouth opened over mine. He drew me against him, and the hard line of his chest gave way to unmistakable heat lower down.

My fingers tightened in his coat. A rough sound caught in his throat when I pressed closer. He turned us without breaking the kiss until my back met one of the stone supports between the panes.

The scrape of his beard against my skin sent a shiver through me as his mouth moved to my jaw and then lower.

“Cold?” he murmured against my throat.

The question might have been believable if his arm had not been holding me upright.

“No.”

His mouth found the place beneath my ear. My hands slipped beneath his coat, and when my fingertips moved across his chest, his breathing lost its rhythm.

Tristan’s hand travelled down my side and gathered a fold of my skirt. His palm closed around my thigh through the layers, lifting it just enough to bring our bodies together.

The sensation pulled a breathless sound from me.

He stopped.

One moment his mouth was open against my throat; the next, every muscle in him had gone rigid. His forehead came to rest against mine. His hand remained on my thigh, as though removing it required more control than leaving it there.

Rain struck the glass above us. My own breathing sounded indecently loud beneath it.

“I will not begin this,” Tristan said, his voice rough, “by taking you against a wall where anyone might enter.”

I glanced towards the fogged glass, then back at him. The refusal would have been more convincing if his fingers had not tightened around my thigh.

“That sounds less like a refusal than an objection to the location.”

“It is.”