“The first time?”
“For God’s sake, man, the first time you tell her you love her. Make it count. Even His Grace knew that much.”
“Of course I love her.” Who could not love such a courageous, generous, fierce, passionate… The words trailed off in Deene’s mind, disappearing into a mist of surprise, wonder, and joy. He was at risk for babbling and laughing out loud, for doing something outrageous, like kissing Kesmore on the cheeks. “Of course I love my wife.”
The feeling settled around Deene’s heart, warm, substantial, and right. He loved his Evie; he would always love her. The certainty was his both to keep and his to share with her when the moment was right.
“Of course you love your wife. Is this the mare Lady Eve came a cropper on?”
“How did you know?”
“Louisa has described her to me in detail. She said Eve used to have dreams or nightmares about this horse. Well done, Deene, to retrieve the lady’s familiar. I had my doubts about you, but this is quite encouraging.”
“Glad to oblige.”
Kesmore’s expression suggested another dry rejoinder was about to be served up, but the man went still, his eyes becoming watchful. “Our ladies approach. I’ll keep my vigil in the clubs, at least when we’re in Town, but so far, Deene, your marriage seems to have worked its magic with the gossips and with your lady wife both. See that you don’t muck it up.”
Deene smiled, walked forward to take Eve’s hand, and bestowed a kiss on her knuckles while Kesmore’s warning faded from his ears.
Nine
Eve was to recall a small moment from the balance of the day, the first moment when she felt well and truly married. Her husband had taken her hand upon greeting her, kissed her knuckles, and then tucked her against his side as they saw Louisa and Kesmore into their coach.
As the conveyance rattled away with Louisa’s handkerchief waving cheerily out a window, Deene sighed gustily. “I am displeased with myself.”
The sentiment sounded at least partly genuine. “Why would you be displeased with yourself, Husband? After a day with the solicitors, my father is usually airing his best vocabulary to regale Her Grace with his displeasure with his factors.”
Deene smiled down at her and began to escort her toward the house. “His best vocabulary?”
“You know.” Eve waved her free hand. “Damned, befouling, toadying, parasitical, blighted, bloated… There, I’ve cheered you up.”
“You could cheer me up further, except I’ve gone and invited Anthony to dine with us tonight.”
Their first dinner guest, and Eve had to like that Deene assumed she’d welcome his cousin without any fuss—for she surely would. “I will cheer you up when we retire.”
“This thought will console me as I reflect upon a confidence Kesmore let slip.”
“Kesmore is not a confidence-slipping sort of fellow.” They slowed as they approached the house. Deene would disappear to their rooms to change; Eve would have to let the kitchen know they were having company for dinner. She’d missed her husband the livelong day and considered helping him undress, attending him at his bath, and then notifying the kitchen, except dinner would be served at midnight if she adopted that course, which did not comport with an early bedtime.
“Kesmore is… He suspects his wife to be in expectation of an interesting event, but he has not confronted her.”
“And he did not swear you into the familial brotherhood of secrecy over this,” Eve pointed out. “He must be rattled, indeed. Louisa suspects she is carrying, but she doesn’t want to burden him with such a hope until she’s certain. They are very… considerate of each other. Surprisingly so, given how brusque each can be individually.”
Deene stopped on the back terrace, wrapped Eve in his arms, and propped his chin on her crown. “Evie? I should not say it, because they’ve scarce been married longer than we have, but I am jealous of this secret they’re keeping from each other.”
Eve leaned into her husband and reveled in the simple closeness of the moment. Because she and Deene were a couple—a unit of marital trust—they knew something about Louisa and Kesmore’s union that the parties to that union had not yet shared openly with each other.
This was what it meant to be married, to have a husband, to no longer stand alone in the world. This was what it meant to love and be cared for in return.
When Deene stepped back, Eve smiled at him, blew him a kiss, and at the foot of the main staircase, sent him off to his bath while she went in search of the cook.
The kitchen took the news of a dinner guest very well, almost as if they too had been waiting to demonstrate their willingness to put their best, most gracious foot forward. The housekeeper sent maids to ready a guest chamber, “just in the event the gentlemen get to lingering over their port,” and dispatched a maid to cut flowers for fresh bouquets.
Leaving Eve free to be preyed upon by the odd worry: If the gentlemen got to drinking their port in the library, would there be a lone pillow peeking out from under a table skirt to betray some of the marital activities pursued yesterday in that same library?
Would all the writing implements still be pushed off to the side of the blotter…?
Merciful heavens, might there still be a certain pink, brocade pillow on the blotter?
Eve was in the library without willing her steps to take her there. No pillows lurked in questionable locations, not a slipper peeked out from beneath the sofa, not an inkwell betrayed the many occasions when the desk had served some purpose other than the composition of correspondence.
Three days ago, however, Deene had stuffed a handkerchief into one of the desk drawers. Eve dreaded to think of Anthony searching for sealing wax and coming across such a thing. She sat in Deene’s high-backed chair and began opening drawers one a time, only to find the very handkerchief—crumpled, but otherwise inoffensive—in a drawer that also sported two bundles of paper, one tied with a red ribbon, the other with gold.
Was this also something Anthony should not happen upon? Deene was very sensitive to the need to avoid slighting Anthony’s feelings, for though he held a courtesy title, the man was essentially the senior steward over the entire marquessate holdings, Deene’s heir, and family into the bargain.
Eve and her husband were a unit of marital trust. She’d coined the term not an hour earlier, and that meant she was bound to protect her husband’s confidences even before such confidences could be bestowed.
In this spirit of protectiveness, she tucked her husband’s linen into a pocket and unrolled the document tied with a red ribbon. By the time she’d rolled up and retied the one with a gold ribbon, three quarters of an hour later, her focus had shifted.
She was feeling protective not of her husband, though she would at least allow him a chance to explain himself in private—but once again of her own heart.
***
Something was off with Deene’s wife. He sensed this without knowing how, sensed it as a certainty all through dinner. Eve was gracious and charming to Anthony, who looked a little dazed to be on the receiving end of such smiles and warmth.
Prior to the meal, when Deene would normally have been helping his wife to dress and perhaps helping himself to a small taste of marital pleasure as well, their timing had been off. Deene had been quick to bathe, while Eve had lingered at her ablutions, the dressing room door closed “to prevent a draft.”
She’d brushed out her own hair, she hadn’t asked his opinion regarding her choice of gown, and most telling of all, she’d worn very plain undergarments. No embroidery, no lace.
As the fruit and cheeses were finally brought out, it struck Deene that his wife was perhaps getting her courses. This little insight was warming in the extreme, an intimacy such as a husband might guess without being told, such as he might intuit before the lady herself realized she was leaving her devoted spouse any clues.
“Wife, if you’d like to retire early, Anthony and I can take ourselves to the library. I’m sure your
day has been long, and I would not tire you unnecessarily.” He added a small, smoldering look, one that had Anthony studying the cheese tray.
“Thank you, gentlemen.” Eve got to her feet and aimed a wide smile at Anthony. “Cousin, you must make our home your home as well for the duration of your stay. Husband, good night.”
She withdrew before Deene could offer to light her way upstairs, before he could do more than bow her from the room and hope Anthony wasn’t going to want to linger over the damned port.
“The library has the best selection of libation,” Deene said. He turned to the waiting footman. “Bring the fruit and cheese along, if you please. Anthony, shall we?”
“Sounds just the thing to settle a wonderful meal. Having spent some time with your marchioness, Deene, I can see why you’re keeping her all to yourself out here in the shires. It fuels the talk, I’m sure, but what’s one more rumor?”
Damn Anthony, anyway. Deene waited until they were in the library, the door closed, drinks in hand, before he inquired further. “What are you hearing now?”
“Just more of the same, and that you’re ruralizing with your wife to make sure your firstborn is truly yours. The usual innuendo and nastiness. How did the interview with Dolan go?”
Deene turned to study the fire. “The stage lost a considerable thespian talent when Dolan decided to keep his dirty hands in trade. He was angry to think I’d invite him to my wedding, then turn around and accuse him of spreading vile gossip regarding the nature of the union. Shocked and livid.”
But quiet with it, not reeling with melodramatic outrage, which was puzzling.
“Did you tell him about the lawsuit?”
“In no uncertain terms. Suffice it to say an amicable settlement is not in the offing.”
A soft rustling in the shadows near the door suggested the fruit and cheese had been brought along.
“You’re married now,” Anthony said, coming up on Deene’s elbow. “Eve’s dowry can finance the lawsuit, her respectability will lend your petition impeccable credibility, and if you can knock her up posthaste—I assume you’re giving that a decent go as well—then you’ll be a parent yourself by the time anything reaches a public courtroom. Well done, Deene. Too bad the rest of our family business doesn’t come as neatly to hand as your litigation strategies have. And from the look of the lady, you’re even enjoying the duties the union has imposed on you, while she believes this whole marriage to have been at least half her idea.”
Deene was forming some snappish, off-putting rejoinder in the ensuing silence—he did not care in the least for Anthony’s tone—when a cultured female voice spoke from the door.
“I’ll put the food on the desk, gentlemen, and once again bid you good night.”
Eve had turned her back before Deene could utter a word, while Anthony reached out and plucked a succulent bunch of grapes off the tray, and the door clicked quietly closed.
“She even waits on you hand and foot, Deene. Very well done of you. Well done, indeed.” Anthony popped a grape into his mouth, his smile conspiratorial.
Eve’s voice had been calm and more than civil. She’d spoken with a terrible, ducal cordiality Deene found as unnerving as the prospect of charging into a French artillery barrage.
“You will excuse me, Anthony, and if you ever make such cavalier comments again about the nature of my marriage, my motives for marrying, or my regard for my wife, I will disinherit you, call you out, and aim to at least terminate your reproductive abilities.”
Deene stalked toward to the door, only to be stopped by Anthony’s hand on his arm.
“You are not going to fly into high dudgeon and act the besotted spouse on me, are you?”
“I am in high dudgeon, and I am a besotted spouse, but more to the point, Eve has every right to be in high dudgeon.” She had every right to go home to her parents, to eviscerate Deene in his sleep, to bar Anthony from the house… Deene recalled Anthony’s words phrase by phrase, and aimed a thunderous scowl at his cousin.
“If she’s truly that sensitive, Deene, then give her a few moments to compose herself. She’ll want her guns at the ready before you wrestle her into coitus forgiveness, and believe me, I know of what I speak in this regard.”
He popped another grape into his mouth, the picture of a man undisturbed by what could be the end of Deene’s domestic bliss. Deene’s determination to join his wife wavered in the face of such sangfroid. “You will apologize to her at breakfast, Anthony. You will apologize on your knees and mean it.”
And still, Anthony merely smiled. “But of course. Now, you’ve been pestering me these weeks for a discussion of the profits to be had from the estates in Kent. Pull up that decanter and prepare to listen.”
Now, now when Deene wanted nothing so much as to crawl into his wife’s bedroom and explain that his only adult relation was an insensitive oaf with execrable timing, Anthony started spouting facts and figures at a great rate. The very information Deene had been seeking for weeks, provided in an orderly, articulate fashion.
He listened, he asked questions, he asked more questions, and even though he nearly glared a hole in the door and paced a rut in the carpet, Deene did not join his wife above stairs until it was quite late indeed.
***
Eve did not cry. Not this time, perhaps not ever again. She wasn’t going to give the situation that much effort.
She’d been a fool, again, believing herself cared for and valued, when what had been sought was her wealth, her position, her standing, her status.
Perhaps even her body—her womb—but not her heart. Again, she’d tossed the best part of herself at an undeserving, scheming, handsome man, and found her greatest treasure of no value whatsoever.
And where was her husband now? Munching grapes and swilling brandy one floor and several universes of arrogance away. Well, so what? His cavalier behavior gave Eve time to marshal her composure, to recall that if she had given her heart into Deene’s keeping, she could just as well snatch it back without him being the wiser. She’d made no declarations; she’d let no impassioned endearments slip even in their most intimate moments.
Her pride was intact, and she intended to keep it that way.
In the dark, the door to the dressing room eased open. Eve knew exactly the way it creaked, the top hinge being the culprit. She’d purposely not had the thing oiled, because she liked knowing Deene was coming to bed.
“Evie?”
“I’m awake.” A war started up inside Eve’s chest. Part of her wanted to throw herself into Deene’s arms and make him tell her he’d blistered Anthony’s ears for his disrespect of their marriage, and another part of her wanted to order her husband from the room.
“I didn’t mean for you to wait up.”
What was that supposed to mean? “Do you need assistance undressing?”
“No, thank you.” She felt him sit on the bed, heard first one boot then the other hit the floor. “I suppose you have some questions?”
So civilized. The offer was tired, almost casual—not the least wary or apologetic. “About?”
“You overheard Anthony mentioning litigation strategy.”
“You are suing Mr. Dolan for custody of your niece.”
A silence, while Eve flattered herself she’d surprised him.
“How do you know?”
Eve manufactured a yawn while she cast around for a reply. “I use the estate desk too, Deene. The papers were all but in plain view.”
In the darkness, she felt him measuring her words, trying to decide how long she’d known. “You’re not upset?”
“Lawsuits between family members are the very essence of scandal, Deene, but I am merely a wife. If you are determined on this course, I cannot stop you.”
She had intended to plead with him not to file his damned lawsuit. His niece’s entire future would be blighted, and even Jenny’s remaining Seasons would feel the taint. Their Graces would be disappointed, and the idea that Eve’s parents would ha
ve to weather one more scandal on her account was enough to make her throat constrict with unshed tears.
“I cannot tell you, Eve, how relieved I am to find what a sensible woman I’ve married. Wresting Georgie from her father’s grasp means a great deal to me.”
He did not sound relieved. He sounded wary, which suited Eve nicely, even as it made her sad. She heard more sounds signaling his end-of-day routine. His cravat pin, cuff links, and signet ring dropping into the tray on his bureau. The doors to his wardrobe opening and closing. Wash water dripping into the basin as Deene wrung out a flannel, then the faint scents of lavender and cedar wafting through the air.
He was coming to bed, just as if Eve hadn’t been served up the miserable truth of her marriage a few hours before. In her idiot, grasping, scheming husband’s mind, nothing was to change.
Seven years ago, Eve had been a victim, little more than a child, and left unable to even walk to the close stool without assistance.
She was Marchioness of Deene now, a grown woman, and not without resources or the resolve to use them.
Deene slid under the covers, a clean, warm, devastatingly skilled specimen of a husband, toward whom—despite all—Eve still felt a damnable quantity of attraction. She rolled up to her side, presenting him with her back, but the lunatic man slid an arm around her waist and spooned his body around hers.
“I am sorry you overheard Anthony’s unfortunate sentiments, Eve. They do not reflect my own.”
“Deene?”
“Hmm?” His cheek rested on her hair.
“I’m afraid I’m at risk for a slight headache tonight. I’m sure you understand?”
She felt the understanding go through him physically. He went still, even to a pause in his breathing. Then his hand settled on her shoulder and began to gently knead her muscles.
“Sleep, then. The last thing I want is to impose on you when you might be suffering.”
She waited, waited for that hand of his to slide around and stroke over her belly or her breast, waited for his lips to presume to touch her nape, waited for him to hitch himself closer so the burgeoning length of his erection pressed against her buttocks.
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