Lady Eve's Indiscretion

by Grace Burrowes

  Kesmore took the drink from her hand. “I will regard your answer as a ladylike affirmative and presume to offer myself in that humble capacity. Let’s sit a few more minutes before we subject ourselves to the company inside once more.”

  While the couples ten yards away continued to chatter, and the throng in the ballroom started up a waltz, Eve wrinkled her nose at her unspiked drink and tried to fathom what on earth could have prompted Kesmore’s peculiar offer.

  Then it occurred to her: on her list—on her private list—of attributes a husband of convenience ought to have, the most important characteristic was that he should be capable of befriending an adult woman.

  What an unlikely coincidence that Louisa’s taciturn spouse should possess this very trait.

  Her companion broke the silence. “Will you be attending the Andersons’ soiree on Friday, my lady?”

  Eve didn’t know what interest her new, self-appointed friend might have in her schedule but saw no reason to dissemble.

  “I am not. Jenny and I are taking a two-week repairing lease at Morelands before the Season starts up in earnest. We miss our sister Sophie.”

  “I have never understood why the social Season must start up just as spring is getting her mitts on the countryside. It’s quite the most glorious time of year, and we spend it here in Town, sleeping the days away, sweating en masse in stuffy ballrooms by night.”

  In the presence of a lady, a gentleman did not typically refer to anybody sweating, except perhaps an equine. Eve did not point this out to Kesmore.

  She patted his muscular arm. “Louisa says you miss your piggies. Perhaps you need a repairing lease as well.”

  His brows shot up, and then the man did smile. He looked positively charming, almost dear, so softly did a simple change in expression illuminate his features. His eyes lost their anthracite quality and developed crows’ feet at the corners, while his mouth, which Eve might have honestly described as grim, became merry.

  “I do miss my piggies. Lady Louisa is correct.”

  “She very often is. One gets used to it.”

  The smile did not entirely fade; it lingered in Kesmore’s eyes as he rose and offered Eve his arm. They left their empty glasses on the bench, and Eve had to admit a short interval in the company of a friend—even such an unlikely friend—had done much to restore her spirits.

  And still, when Kesmore had bowed over her hand and taken himself off to ache for another hour at the edge of the room, Eve found herself visually searching the ballroom again for just a glimpse of the Marquis of Deene.

  ***

  “Come along, Deene.”

  Deene nearly stumbled as Kesmore snagged him by the arm and pulled him toward a staircase at the corner of the ballroom.

  “Taking English peers prisoner went out of fashion several years ago, Kesmore, even among the French.”

  “I’m not taking you prisoner, but if we’re to get a fresh start in the morning, we can’t be dawdling about here until all hours.”

  “So now I’m taken prisoner and kidnapped?” Though leaving was a capital notion indeed. Mildred Staines had been positively ogling Deene’s crotch at the supper buffet. It gave a man some sympathy for the suckling pig in the middle of all the other offerings.

  “You’re due for a repairing lease in the country, a final inspection of the home farm and so forth before planting begins. Then you may take yourself back to Town to be chosen by your bride.”

  Deene paused at the top of the steps. “The fellow still does the proposing, as I recall, not the other way around.”

  “Comfort yourself with that illusion if you must, but as of tomorrow, we’re going to Kent for a couple of weeks.”

  Deene’s retort died on his lips.

  Another two weeks of watching Eve Windham be drooled on, leered at, stumbled over, and danced down the room, and Deene would be left witless indeed.

  “I’ll catch up with my steward and show the colors before the tenants. A fine idea indeed.” He couldn’t get out of the ballroom soon enough, though by rights, they ought to say good night to their hostess first.

  “Shall I make our farewells, Kesmore?”

  Kesmore didn’t answer immediately. Deene studied the man and saw that his gaze was fixed on Lady Louisa twirling around the dance floor as graceful as a sylph in the arms of some dashing young swain.

  “You fetch the coaches. I must retrieve my lady wife and put that poor devil dancing with her out of his misery.”

  Deene watched as Kesmore all but swaggered down the stairs, and wondered if Lady Louisa would protest—even for form’s sake—over the early end to her social evening.

  ***

  Evie had long ago concluded that some edict had gone forth from Their Graces that no Windham coach was ever to stop or even pause to water horses in the hamlet of Bascoomb Ford. She’d been complicit in this ducal fiat by making certain she always had a book with her on the journeys to and from Town, always had knitting, or—failing all else—a nap she absolutely had to take.

  And in a nice, comfortable traveling coach shared with her sisters, there was no reason to suspect the day’s trip to Morelands would be any different.

  Which meant once again Eve put aside the nagging thought that someday, someday when she had the time and the privacy, she was going to come back to Bascoomb Ford and revisit the scene of her worst memories.

  “I’m thinking of dodging the Season.” Louisa lobbed this cannonball into the middle of a perfectly amiable silence.

  Jenny looked up from her knitting. “The notion always has a forbidden sort of appeal, doesn’t it? I couldn’t imagine leaving Mama to make the explanations though. We might have given up, but she has not.”

  Such a forthright reply from Jenny was not to be brushed aside. “Papa hasn’t given up either,” Eve pointed out. “His darling girls must find their true loves.”

  Louisa’s smile was subdued. “Or their convenient husbands. You were certainly trolling the ballroom diligently last night, Eve. Make any progress?”

  There was understanding in Louisa’s eyes, no taunting, not a hint of teasing.

  Eve let her gaze go to the window. Bascoomb Ford was just over the rise and down a long, gentle declivity. The approaches to the town she knew well, but the inn, the green, the little church… they were hazy in her mind and sharp at the same time.

  “I need a longer list. I’m thinking a couple dozen names, and we should start with the men known to have left-handed preferences.”

  Jenny’s needles ceased their soft clicking. “Such preferences can get a man hung, dearest. If he has a title, it could be attainted, his wealth confiscated. Why would you marry into such a possibility?”

  Yes, why would she? And who would have thought such direct counsel would come from Jenny?

  “It’s my best hope of finding a situation where my willingness to accept a white marriage is viewed as an asset to the fellow. My alternatives are the men seeking my fortune, and that leaves me no guarantee my spouse would honor the terms of the bargain.”

  “An unenforceable bargain at law,” Louisa agreed.

  Eve had given up her innocence to learn that a man intent on exploiting her as a means of wealth was no bargain on any terms—her innocence, her ability to trust, and for months, her ability even to stand without excruciating pain.

  “Ladies,” Jenny said, putting her knitting back into her workbasket, “I find I must ask you to permit me a short delay here at the next inn. Nature calls in a rather urgent fashion.”

  Louisa did not react with anything more telling than a yawn. “I could tolerate stretching my legs. The horses will appreciate a rest and some water.”

  With no more ado than that, after seven years of seeing the place only in her nightmares, Eve Windham was once again at the modest posting inn of Bascoomb Ford.

  “I’ll be along in a minute,” Eve said as the coach carrying the ladies’ maids and extra footmen came rumbling up before the inn. “I want to move around a
bit as well.”

  They did not even exchange a glance. Jenny slipped her arm through Louisa’s, and they disappeared into The Coursing Hound. Eve got as far as the bench on the green across from the inn, though even that was a struggle. Her legs felt a peculiar weakness; her breath fought its way into her lungs. When she sat, it was of necessity.

  The little inn stood across the rutted street—spring was a time for ruts and treacherous footing—looking shabby and cozy at once. A white glazed pot of pansies graced the front door, just as it had seven years ago—purple and yellow flowers with one orange rebel in the center of the pot.

  The orange pansy was different; not much else had changed.

  The white glaze on the pot was still smudged with dirt, the boot scrape was still rusty and encrusted with mud, and in the middle of the inn yard, an enormous oak promised shade in summer.

  Just a humble country inn, and yet… Eve saw not the inn, but what had transpired there, just there in that upstairs bedroom. Canby hadn’t even pulled the curtains shut, hadn’t gotten them a quiet room at the back. He’d jammed a chair under the door, muttering something about not being able to trust the locks in these old places.

  She’d forgotten that. Forgotten the sight of him hauling the chair across the room, and the excitement and dread of knowing what would come next.

  Though she hadn’t known. She hadn’t had the first clue that a man could profess his love and show her only tender regard for weeks, then turn up crude and businesslike about enjoying his intimacies. She hadn’t known he might backhand her and tell her to be quiet lest somebody be concerned and all her lovely money slip through his greedy hands.

  His lovely money, and not even the dowry she might have brought him, but money her family would pay him to keep quiet about ruining her. When he’d finished with her and gone back to his celebratory drinking, she’d pretended to sleep until he’d passed out beside her on the bed. She’d spent hours afraid he’d come at her again, until she’d realized she had another option.

  Her slight stature had allowed her to slip out the window at the first sign the sky was lightening. She’d crossed the roof of the porte cochere and dropped to a pile of dirty straw raked into a corner of the inn yard, dreading each rustle and squeak as she’d made her way to the stables.

  The same dread she’d felt all those years ago—no giddy anticipation about it—welled up from her middle in a hot, choking ball of emotion. She forced herself to breathe, in… out… in… out, and the ball only grew larger.

  As if she were watching a horse race where she held no stake, Eve tried to observe this monstrous, long-unacknowledged feeling, but it had turned to sheer pain, to oppression of every function she possessed—heartbeat, thought, breath—and she might have fainted right there on that worn bench except a sound penetrated her awareness.

  Hoofbeats, regular, rhythmic, more than one horse. Not the dead-gallop hoofbeats of her brothers coming at last to rescue her, but a tidy, rocking canter.

  Even to turn her head was an effort, but one well rewarded.

  Two men approached riding a pair of smart, substantial mounts. The chestnut on the left looked particularly familiar.

  Her heart, her instincts, some lower sense recognized the animal before her brain did. “Beast.”

  The awful emotion subsided, not into the near oblivion she’d been able to keep it at before, but enough for Eve to realize there was no other horse she’d have been more grateful to see.

  Save perhaps one gray mare, of whose fate Eve had allowed herself to be kept in ignorance for more than seven years.

  ***

  “As I live and breathe, that’s the Windham crest on those coaches. My lady is making good time.”

  Deene was too disturbed by the journey’s earlier revelations to wonder why Louisa would be traveling in a Windham coach rather than Kesmore’s own conveyance. Though it occurred to him Louisa might be traveling with her sisters, and what Deene would do when next he and Eve Windham crossed paths again, he did not know. Throttle the woman.

  Or kiss her—or both, though not in that order.

  And there she sat, serene and lovely, on a bench across the way.

  Kesmore flicked his hand in an impatient motion. “Give me your reins, Deene, and I’ll see the horses tended to and some luncheon procured.”

  “My—?”

  “Or you can stand here gawping like the village idiot for a few moments longer. I’m sure Lady Eve is admiring the sight of you in all your dirt.”

  Kesmore snatched the reins from Deene’s hand, and nodded at Eve on her bench. She lifted a hand but did not rise, of course, her being the lady, and Deene being… the gentleman.

  He sauntered over and offered her a bow. “Lady Eve, good day. Might I join you?”

  “Deene, good day. Of course you may.”

  She pulled her skirts aside in that little maneuver women made that suggested a man mustn’t even touch their hems, despite any words of welcome.

  “I gather your mother and sisters are within?” His Grace would be riding, of course. Not even a duke could be expected to have the fortitude to ride in the same coach with four women on anything less than an occasion of state.

  “Louisa and Jenny, along with the three Fates.”

  “Beg pardon?” There was something off about Eve’s voice. Something distant and subdued.

  “Our lady’s maids.”

  She said nothing more, and when Deene studied her, she looked a trifle pale. There was an uncharacteristic grimness to her mouth, as if she’d just taken a scolding or would dearly like to deliver one.

  Perhaps being leered at and drooled upon was exhausting.

  “Kesmore is ordering up some luncheon in whatever passes for a private parlor at yonder hostelry. We’ll make a party of it, I’m sure.”

  “The inn boasts a private dining parlor and four rooms upstairs. Two at the back, two at the front. The front rooms should be cheaper, because they’re noisier and dustier, but the innkeeper claims they have a pretty view of the green, so the difference in cost is slight.”

  She did not offer these lines as conversation so much as she recited them. The subtle detachment in her voice was mirrored in her green eyes. And how would she—a lady through and through—have reason to know the cost of the rooms at such an unprepossessing establishment?

  He studied her a moment longer, and any thought of teasing her over her choice of dance partners—her choices in any regard—fled Deene’s mind.

  “Shall we go in to lunch, Eve?” He rose and offered her his hand. She stared at it—a well-made, slightly worn and very comfortable riding glove on a man’s hand—then put her palm to his.

  Deene was mildly alarmed to find it wasn’t merely a courtesy. Eve borrowed momentarily from his strength to get to her feet. When she rose, she stood next to him, making no effort to move away, their hands still joined.

  He shifted her grasp so he could assume the posture of an escort, but kept his hand over hers on his arm. “Eve, are you feeling well? Is a headache trying to descend?”

  “Not a headache. Let’s join the others.”

  Not a headache, but something. Something almost as bad, if not worse. At lunch, she said little and ate less, and seemed oblivious to her sisters’ looks of concern. Kesmore proved a surprisingly apt conversationalist, able to tease even the demure Lady Jenny with his agrarian innuendos.

  When lunch was over, Deene offered to see Eve out to the coaches.

  She paused at the bottom of the stairs in the common. “Deene, will you indulge me in a whim?”

  “Of course.” Though whatever she was about, it wasn’t going to be a whim.

  “I’d like to see one of the front rooms.”

  He followed her up the stairs, dread mounting with each step. This whim was not happy, it was not well advised, and yet he did not stop her.

  The guest room doors stood ajar, two at the front of the building and, very likely, two at the back, just as she’d said. She moved away f
rom him to stand motionless in the doorway on the right-hand side.

  Over her shoulder, he saw plain appointments: a sagging bed that might accommodate two people if they were friendly with each other and diminutive; a wash stand; a scarred desk gone dark with age; and one of those old, elaborately carved heavy chairs that would be uncomfortable as hell and absolutely indestructible. Curtains gone thin from many washings, a white counterpane that might once have sported some sort of pattern.

  Just a room, like a thousand others along the byways of Merry Olde England.

  And yet… He rested a hand on Eve’s shoulder when what he wanted was to pull her back against his body, or better still—take her from this place altogether, never to return.

  For an interminable moment while he could only guess her thoughts, Eve looked about the room. Her gaze lingered on the bed then went to the window.

  “Thank God for the window.” She spoke quietly but with a particular ferocity. And yet she stood there until Deene felt her hand cover his own.

  Her fingers were ice cold.

  “Thank you, Deene. We can leave.”

  She made no move to return below stairs, so Deene turned her into his embrace. “We’ll stay right here until you’re ready to leave, Eve Windham.”

  All of her was cold and stiff. Whoever this woman was, she could bear no relation to the warm, lithe bundle of Eve with whom he’d stolen so many delightful moments. A shudder went through her, and she drew back. “Take me to the coach, Lucas.”

  And still, her voice had that awful, brittle quality.

  He took her to the coach, and when he wanted to bundle her directly inside, shut the door, and tell the driver to make all haste to Morelands, the inevitable delays associated with a party of women ensued.

  Lady Jenny decided to travel with the maids so she might have somebody to hold the yarn while she wound it into a ball. Lady Louisa’s maid had yet to take a stroll around back—to the jakes, of course.

  Kesmore bore it all with surprising patience, but then, the man had likely traveled with small children, which was trial by fire indeed.