They left amid the usual casual farewells and the occasional comment on Deene’s upcoming nuptials.
“It’s going to damned rain,” Anthony muttered as they gained the streets. “Am I to hold my tongue all the way home, until we’re behind a locked door, or might I make my case now?”
“I’m meeting with Westhaven later in the day, so you might as well unburden yourself now.”
They paced along in silence, while Deene reflected on the previous two weeks of being engaged. Were it not for the growing sense that Eve remained reluctant, they would have been two happy weeks. The debutantes and even the merry widows were leaving him in peace, his domestics were happy at the thought of a marchioness on the premises, and marital prospects had a way of improving a man’s financial expectations as well—even in the face of Dolan’s damned rumors.
And yet, Anthony was determined to piss on the parade.
“Until the moment the vows are spoken, Deene, I will oppose this marriage if for no other reason than that you’re being coerced. The lady was in no way importuned, in no way publicly compromised, and this entire farce is unnecessary.”
“I say it is necessary.”
“I will damned marry, Deene. I’ve told you this more than once. I have a list of candidates we can select among this evening. She must be well born enough to serve as your hostess, or someday—may God forbid it ever be so—as the Marchioness of Deene.”
Deene found himself walking faster. “Choose all you like and hope the candidate of your choice doesn’t mind that tidy establishment in Surrey, because she’ll find out, Anthony. The ladies always find out.”
His mother had devoted much of her miserable marriage to finding out…
“I do not seek a romantic entanglement with any wife of mine, Deene. If she finds out, so be it. Ours will be a practical arrangement. The point is, I can provide you your heir without you having to make this sacrifice.”
It was heartening to know Anthony’s loyalty truly ran so deep, and it was also disconcerting to admit Deene had questioned his cousin’s integrity to any degree at all.
“So you marry and you even have a son or two, Anthony. Do you know how many sons of titled families I saw fall to the Corsican?”
“Younger sons, of course, the military being their preferred lot. Name me one heir, though, who came to grief in such a fashion.”
“Lord Bartholomew Windham.”
That shut Anthony up for about half a block, but as they approached the Denning townhouse, Anthony started up again. “I am not sending my offspring to war when the succession is imperiled. Do you think I’m stupid?”
“Of course you aren’t stupid. His Grace, the Duke of Moreland, is not a stupid man, either, Anthony, but he lost one son to war and another to consumption. Other families have run through many more heirs than that and turned up without a title to show for it. I can’t allow you to meet an obligation that is squarely, properly, and completely my own.”
“Fine, then. Stick your foot in parson’s mousetrap, but what of the girl?”
“Eve?” Deene glanced at his cousin. This was a new tack, a different argument. “I will make her a doting and devoted husband.”
“For about two years at the most. Get some babies on her, and you’ll be back to those feats of libidinous excess that have characterized the Marquis of Deene since the title was elevated from an earldom and likely before.”
A nasty argument, one Deene would not entertain.
“How is it, Anthony, that you know better than I what sort of husband I shall be? My libidinous excesses, as you call them, date from five, even ten years ago—despite what gossip would inaccurately imply. I could dig into your past or the past of almost any man who came down from university with me and find similar excesses. What is your real objection to this match?”
While Deene waited for Anthony’s answer, the first few drops of a drizzling rain pattered onto the cobbled walk. The scent in the air became damp and dusty at the same time—a spring scent, a fragrance almost.
“You want my real objection?” Anthony glanced around, but the threatening weather had apparently cleared the streets. “All right: my real objection is that you’re forcing the girl into a union she neither sought nor wants. Bad enough when your sister was treated thus, and it ended tragically for Marie, didn’t it? Now you’re repeating history with your prospective bride, and that I cannot abide.”
Anthony fell silent, while Deene absorbed a significant blow to the conscience.
“I am not forcing Eve Windham to do anything.” Except… viewed from a certain angle, not that oblique an angle, perhaps he was.
“If you say so.” Oh, the worlds of righteousness the man could put into such a platitude. “Shall I accompany you to this meeting with Westhaven?”
Because it dealt with finances, the question was logical. Because it was a change from a very uncomfortable topic, Deene answered it.
“You shall not. For once, the transaction flows exclusively to our financial benefit, and that much I think I can handle on my own.”
“About the household books…”
In the flurry of wedding preparations, Deene’s focus on finances had slipped a bit—but only a bit. “I started on the ones you provided last week, Anthony, but with expenses one place and income another, I don’t see how you keep track.”
“One learns to, and that way, nobody else can take the measure of your worth with a single peek at the books. When this wedding business is behind you, we’ll muddle through it all, I assure you.”
This wedding business.
“I shall look forward to that. Don’t wait dinner for me. I’ll likely be dining with Eve and her family.”
“Of course.” Anthony looked like he might say more—apologize, perhaps, for his earlier broadside? “I will stand up with you at the wedding, Deene. Have no fear on that score.”
“My thanks.”
Grudging and belated, but perhaps that was an apology. Deene hurried into the house to change for his meeting with Westhaven—a negotiation Deene looked forward to. Yes, the settlements would benefit him, but they were also the last, necessary step to ensuring that the wedding actually happened.
Then too, it was not a crime for a man to profit from marrying a woman for whom he cared for a great deal. No crime at all. He had myriad uses for the money, not the least of which would be maintaining the kinds of establishments Eve deserved to have for her homes.
And he was not forcing Eve to the altar.
***
Likely thanks to Her Grace’s influence with the Deity, the day of the wedding brought the most glorious spring weather London could offer. The Windham family had gathered en masse, including even the Northern contingent, represented by St. Just and his increasing coterie of female dependents—two daughters and one countess, plus a happy gleam in the man’s eye that presaged further developments.
As His Grace eyed the packed pews of St. George’s on Hanover Square, he reflected that a father better versed in the essential parental art of self-deception might be telling himself he was relieved to be seeing his youngest, smallest daughter off into the keeping of an adoring swain.
The organist took his seat while the crowd in the pews and balconies exchanged their final tidbits of greeting and gossip.
His Grace was not relieved. He himself had been the most adoring of swains once upon a time, and yet Her Grace had had her hands quite full with him, for at least the first ten or twenty years of their union.
Possibly more.
Marriage—a good, loving union such as the Almighty contemplated and sensible people longed for—was a damned lot of work, and much was going to be asked of Evie and her swain before His Grace could aspire to anything approaching relief on his daughter’s behalf.
He turned back to the small chamber where Eve stood in her finery, and the sight caused something like a small seizure in his heart. Evie was so petite, but she’d been a fighter since she’d surprised them all by showing u
p several weeks prior to her expected birth date.
“Daughter, you are the most beautiful sight in the realm today.”
She glanced up from her bouquet, an odd little gathering of pink and white heather, orange blossoms, and a few sprigs of hawthorn—for solitude, loveliness, and hope, if His Grace’s memory served. Her expression was more anxious than radiant.
“Thank you, Papa. How much longer?”
He turned back toward the nave. “Not long. Your mother has taken her place.”
Her Grace had been subdued in the carriage, but the duke suspected he understood why: they’d lost Eve in some sense seven years ago. Losing her again today revived the old aches, old doubts, and guilt. Since that long-ago day, there had been a chasm of bewilderment between Eve and her parents, one they all possessed enough love to want to breach, and yet the chasm remained.
His Grace turned his back on Polite Society in all its spring finery and once again surveyed his daughter. “Tell me something, Evie.”
She set the bouquet aside and offered him a painfully brave smile. “Papa?”
“Why are you marrying Deene? Is it because I was wroth with him for trespassing on your… for taking liberties?”
She blinked, looking very like her mother after His Grace had made some inelegant remark before the children. “I was not comforted to think of either you, my brothers, or Deene coming to harm on your idiot field of honor, but that wasn’t the entire reason.”
His Grace closed the door to the chamber, signaling, he hoped, that he’d have an answer, and Polite Society could go hang until he did. “I should wish regard for your intended played some role. Deene’s not a bad fellow.”
“Lucas is a good man, and I esteem him greatly.”
He crossed his arms, as that little recitation wouldn’t fool the most dense of fathers.
“I’ve seen Deene’s racing stables in Surrey, you know.” She picked up her bouquet and started fussing the little sprigs of hawthorn. “It’s a lovely place, very peaceful. We’ll be there for the next few weeks, possibly through the Season.”
Which His Grace took for a bit of genius on Deene’s part. The newlyweds would get no peace in Kent or in Town. “What has this to do with marrying the man, Evie? And don’t think to bamboozle your old papa. I was young once, and I know marriage is a daunting business even when you’re entirely besotted with your intended.”
She frowned. She did not smile hugely and assure him with a mischievous wink that she and Deene were quite besotted, though His Grace suspected, hoped, and prayed they were.
“When I was with Deene in Surrey last time, I helped birth a foal. The colt had a leg back, and the mare was small. I was best suited to aiding her, and Deene says the foal is thriving.”
What this had to do with anything was… His Grace tried not to show his surprise. Eve had recently started driving out. That signal fact had contributed to her being unchaperoned at Lavender Corner, but it had also given Her Grace the first glimmer of hope Eve was “putting that whole sorry business behind her.” Hope was a welcome if anxious burden for both of Their Graces.
“You always enjoyed foaling season, always enjoyed the stables.” He made the observation cautiously, pretending to make a final inspection of the ducal regalia in the mirror while he instead studied his daughter’s reflection.
“If I hadn’t been there, Papa, the mare and foal both might have perished, or they’d have lost the mare for sure and tried to save the foal. But I was there, and Lucas allowed me to help her.”
Lucas. That Eve thought of her prospective husband as Lucas was encouraging. Only Her Grace called His Grace by name, and likely conversely.
“I’m to name the colt, Papa, but it’s as you used to say: you can’t just slap a name on an animal willy-nilly, you must first learn who the beast is. I want to learn who that little, bucking, playing, gorgeous beast is.”
He cracked open the door and peered into the church, lest he interfere with whatever point Eve was leading up to. “And you needed to marry Deene to do that?”
“Horses can live a long time, thirty years or more with luck and good care. Someday, I want to walk down to that colt’s paddock with my granddaughter and feed the old boy some apples. I might tell her tales of his races and his sons, tell her how magnificent he was when he swept across the finish line, or what heart he had in the hunt field.”
What on earth was she saying?
“I often enjoyed taking you children to the stables on fine summer evenings. You would talk to me then. I could have you to myself one or two at a time.”
He’d forgotten this. It was a dear, dear memory, and he’d forgotten it.
Now she smiled at him, perhaps not radiantly, but genuinely.
“I have not forgotten those fine summer evenings, Papa. And when I take my granddaughter down to see my old friend, I will tell her he had to struggle very hard to come into the world and make his way here. I will tell her… he could have given up, but he didn’t—he fought and struggled and eventually prevailed, and I did not give up on him either. Not ever, not for a single moment.”
Good… God.
Mercifully for His Grace’s composure, the organist chose that moment to begin the fanfare, sparing the duke from any reply. As he led his dear daughter up the aisle, past all the curious smiles and doting acquaintances, all he could think was that on her wedding day, Eve had talked to him of never giving up on a loved one, and of horses.
It had been seven years since she’d spoken to anybody of horses, and she’d chosen to start with her papa—which only made it harder today, of all days, to give her away.
***
No thunderbolt had stopped the ceremony at the last minute; no messenger of God had spoken up to state a reason why the union should not go forward. Eve Windham had been pronounced a wife, though the bishop’s voice had sounded as distant to her as the hunting horn blowing “gone away” on a far, windy hill.
“Eat something, Evie.”
Deene bent close to her, his smile doting though concern lurked in his blue eyes.
“I couldn’t possibly.”
His smile slipped, and Eve wondered if they were to have another bad moment. They’d already avoided one when Deene had realized Mr. Dolan had been present at the wedding, little Georgina dutifully turned out in her finest, the governess looking a good deal more spruce at her side than when Eve had met them in the park.
“Perhaps you’d like to leave?” Deene made the offer quietly.
“May we?”
“At some point it’s obligatory, if these good people are to truly indulge in the excesses of a ducal wedding breakfast.”
“How do we do this?”
She did not want to leave with him, did not want to take any single step closer to the ordeal facing her at the end of the day, but neither could she abide the noise, the good wishes, the concerned looks from her family, and the increasing ribaldry from the guests.
And her wishes became moot, for Deene had apparently colluded with her brothers to choreograph the moment. At some subtle signal, Westhaven stood up and tapped his spoon against a delicate crystal glass.
“Friends, esteemed guests, beloved family—if I might have your attention?”
The long tables filled with guests grew silent as Westhaven went on speaking. “For reasons understandable to any who beholds my baby sister and her adoring groom, we must now bid Deene and his bride farewell. A round of applause to speed them on their way!” Westhaven lifted his glass, and Eve was scooped into her intend—her husband’s arms. Deene had her out the door and bundled into a waiting carriage before the last guest stumbled onto the terrace, and then she was on her way to Surrey… and God knew what kind of confrontation with her intend—her husband.
“You had the grays put to. Papa likes to save them for special occasions because they look so smart with the black coach and red trim.”
Deene gave her an odd smile, and it occurred to Eve that small talk wasn’t going to get them
very far. Not at this moment, not in this marriage.
“Eve?” He turned on the seat beside her and undid the veil and headpiece she’d worn all day. “This is a very special occasion.”
“Oh. Of course.”
He withdrew pins from her hair, making Eve realize how uncomfortable that part of her wedding ensemble had been. He had kissed her once outside the church as the reception line was forming, just a little buss to the cheek she’d found both fortifying and alarming.
“Come here, Wife.”
Merciful heavens. To have a husband was one thing, to be a wife quite another. Deene’s deft hands had undone even her bun, so her hair hung down her back in a braid.
“Husband.”
“That would be me.” His arm settled around her shoulders.
“I’m practicing. I have neither had a husband before nor been a wife. This will take some adjustment.”
Now she was babbling. Deene shifted beside her, so his fingers closed on her nape and gently kneaded her neck. “We will adjust together. So far, I regard my station as an improvement over the unwed state.”
He wasn’t teasing. “In what regard?”
“It’s more peaceful, for one thing. I’m not prey to the matchmakers, the rumors have lost a great deal of their interest for everybody, and I can look forward to spending much of the Season in our honey month rather than being stalked like a sacrificial goat.”
Not very romantic of him, but honest. “Did those rumors trouble you?”
“A bit.”
Maybe a decade from now she’d be able to fathom exactly how much “a bit” was when uttered in just that tone while Deene glanced out the window with just that grim expression. Or maybe by then they’d be entirely estranged.
“You were troubled when you saw Mr. Dolan and Georgina at the wedding.”
He scowled at the lovely spring day, probably the first nasty expression Eve had seen on her… husband’s face.
“He had no business attending.”
Did she pry, or did she back away and start mentally listing the things they would tacitly agree not to discuss? “I don’t think Her Grace gave it a thought when she made up the guest list, Deene. He’s raising your niece and thus he’s a part of your family. I gather you and he are not cordial?”
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