She opted for discourse—a small disappointment.
“I do go to Lavender Corner to be alone,” she said. “I always make some excuse, that I’m meeting with my housekeeper, that I want to see how the gardens are coming, but mostly…”
Her words trailed off, and Deene stepped into the breach, even as he wondered what she wasn’t saying.
“I grew up with only the one sibling, and as a child, a five-year age difference made Marie seem like an adult. I always thought a lot of brothers and sisters would be wonderful, but I suppose it has drawbacks too.”
Her grip on his arm eased fractionally. “It is wonderful, unless they go off to war and don’t come back, or have to spend years expiring of blasted consumption. Even then, I would not exchange the people I love for anything in the world.”
What could he say to that? The people he loved encompassed his niece, whom he was barely permitted to see, and Anthony, though Deene would never mistake his cousin for a friend.
“One can tell you love each other,” he said, it not being an appropriate moment for a disagreement. “It’s there in your humor with each other, your protectiveness, your honesty. We’ve reached our pull off.”
For which he was grateful. Talk of love was for women among themselves, where it could safely stray off to that most inane subject, being in love. He pulled up the team, set the brake, wrapped the reins, and jumped down.
“Let’s stretch our legs, shall we?”
He didn’t really mean it as a question. Eve’s face was still pale and she would fare better for using her legs.
“You’ll let them graze?” she asked from her perch on the bench.
“They don’t deserve it, but yes, if you prefer.” He held up his arms to assist her to the ground, and she hesitated. In the instant when he would have remonstrated her for her rudeness, he understood that forcing herself to move at all when there was no driver at the reins was… difficult for her. “Evie, come here.”
He plucked her bodily from the carriage—he was tall enough to do that—and let her slide down his body until her feet were planted on terra firma. When he would have stepped back, she dropped her forehead to his chest.
“I’m an idiot.”
“If so, you’re a wonderfully fragrant idiot.” Also lithe, warm, and a surprisingly agreeable armful of woman. He kept his arms around her as he catalogued these appealing attributes and helped himself to a pleasing whiff of mock orange.
“I panicked back there when the horses startled.”
She sounded miserable over this admission. He took a liberty and turned her under his arm, keeping his arm across her shoulders while they walked a few paces away.
“I know you took a bad fall before your come out, Eve. There’s no shame in a lingering distaste for injury. I still get irritable whenever I hear cannon firing, even if it’s just a harbor sounding its signals.”
And for the longest time, thunder had had the same effect, as had the sound of a herd of horses galloping en masse. She moved away from his side, and he let her go while he released the check reins so the horses could graze.
“Being rattled from years at war is not the same thing at all as letting one fall—one, single fall—turn me into a ninnyhammer seven years and two months later.”
She probably knew the exact number of days as well, which made him hurt for her.
“I beg to differ with you, my lady—though I realize it has become an ungentlemanly habit. Tooling around the park, nobody’s team is going to spook at anything, except perhaps Lady Dandridge’s bonnets. If this is the first startled team you’ve been behind in years, then I’d be surprised if you weren’t a little discommoded. Walk with me.” He held out a hand to her. “There’s a patch of lily of the valley that is not to be missed over by those trees.”
She shot a wary glance at the horses, who were placidly grazing on the verge.
The look she gave his bare hand was equally cautious.
In that moment, he experienced a profound insight regarding Eve Windham, the things that spooked her, and why they spooked her. He ambled along in silence with her, hand in hand, resenting the insight mightily.
He found it much easier to consider Eve a well-bred young lady with ample self-confidence borne of a ducal upbringing, a very appealing feminine appearance, and no small amount of poise. He did not want to think of her as… wounded or in any way vulnerable.
“Have a seat,” he said some moments later, shrugging out of his jacket and spreading it on the ground for her.
Another woman would have argued over this rather than the silly things he debated with Eve—argued over the impropriety of being just out of sight of the road, of sharing a coat with a lone gentleman—but Eve sank gracefully to the ground, tugged off her gloves, and drew her knees up before her.
He sat beside her for a few moments in silence, letting the burbling of a nearby stream underscore what he hoped was a soothing silence. The air was redolent with the scent of lily of the valley, but beneath that he could still catch a little note of mock orange.
And Eve.
* * *
Now would be a fine time for Lucas Denning to share a few of his lovely kisses, but no, he had to sit beside Eve in the grass, all solemn and gentlemanly.
She wanted to scream and lay about with her parasol.
At the ninnyhammer horses and her ninnyhammer self. Also at the ninnyhammer man beside her, gone all proper, when what she could have really used, what she would have appreciated greatly was the heat and distraction of his mouth on hers, the feel of all that fine muscle and man right next to her, his body so close—
A thought popped into her head all at once. A novel, startling thought she’d never had before: if the man was such a blockhead as not to realize this was a kissing moment, then the woman could certainly be astute enough, bold enough—
She rounded on him and swung a leg across his middle before her mind articulated the rest of this brilliant idea. The element of surprise allowed her to push him flat to his back, and perhaps some element of misplaced gentlemanly restraint meant she could get her mouth on his before he reacted.
Though it was such a wonderful reaction. He growled into her mouth, lashed his arms around her, and rolled with her, so she was beneath him amid the lilies of the valley, his kisses mixing with the lush fragrance of the flowers, the scent of crushed green grass, and the feel of the cool earth at Eve’s back.
Then he went still, and the disappointment Eve felt was so keen she was tempted to punch his shoulder… until his mouth came back to hers, sweetly, slowly, like a sigh feathering across her cheek, easing its way to her lips.
She relaxed, in her body and in her mind. He wasn’t going to deny her, and this was really a much nicer approach. She winnowed her hands through his hair, marveling at the softness of it, like light embodied beneath her fingers.
His tongue was soft too, and hot and tempting against her lips. Lovely appendage, a man’s tongue. She hadn’t always thought so and probably wouldn’t think so, but for—
Her articulate mind ground to a halt as Lucas gave her a little more of his weight, right there, where for seven years, a kind of loneliness and shame had mixed together to create an unnameable heaviness. As he pressed his body to hers, the weight inside her shifted, becoming somehow lighter and lovelier.
“Evie.”
He sighed her name against her throat in a voice she’d not heard from him before, one imbued with longing and passion.
Ah, God, the pleasure of his open mouth on her skin. It was like horses galloping for joy inside her, like…
She arched up into him, knowing full well what that rising column of flesh was. To hold him to her and glory in his desire for her should have been unthinkable, but when his hand settled over her breast, she buried her nose against his throat and rejoiced.
It had been so terribly long, and this was what a spring day was for. This was what youth and life were for.
He closed his fingers gently arou
nd her breast, and lightning shot from her nipple to her womb. Lovely, sweet, piercingly pleasurable lightning that made her squirm for more.
And then, when she would have started tearing at his clothing, a sound intruded. A rude, wrong sound that had Lucas going still above her and shifting himself up onto his knees and forearms so he crouched over her.
The wheels of a large conveyance lumbered past on the other side of the swale. Over the clatter of the vehicle, Eve heard a man’s voice.
“…Probably off in the trees taking a piss. Pass me yon flask, Jordie…”
Above her, Deene let out a held breath.
There were men with pretty manners, and then there were men who were not always gallant, and yet they were truly chivalrous. Eve accounted Deene some points in the chivalry department when he didn’t immediately roll away from her but stayed for a moment tucked close to her, his hand brushing her hair back from her temple.
His caress soothed her and helped her settle. It kept inchoate shame from gaining a toehold over the warmth still pooling in her middle.
She might have initiated the kiss, but Deene was showing her that he’d participated in it willingly. When she turned her face into his palm, he sighed and kissed her cheek, then drew back.
“Evie, tell me you’re all right.”
“I am fine.” When he took himself away, she’d be bereft, but to hear honest concern in his voice made even that eventuality bearable.
He rested his forehead against hers then shifted away, leaving Eve lying on her back amid the lilies of the valley, mourning his loss but also consoled by his rueful smile.
“You pack quite a wallop, my lady.”
Wallop. She smiled back at him, for she had walloped him without even using her parasol.
“I was either going to kiss you or give in to some other kind of upset.” She liked lying there amid the flowers, despite what it was probably doing to her fashionable brown ensemble. “And your kisses are lovely, Lucas.”
In the spirit of chivalry, she had to tell him that much.
“As are yours. But, Eve, we’ve had a narrow escape.”
And with that one solemn comment, Eve felt not the lovely, fragrant breeze of a joyous spring day, but that she was lying in the dirt, looking a fright, very likely having destroyed whatever grudging respect Deene had felt for her.
“Don’t poker up on me.” Deene used one finger to trace her hairline, then took her hand in his and drew her to a sitting position. “I’m not displaying the crests on the landau today, and that was hardly a fashionable conveyance that just passed.”
But his warning was clear: but for those two happenstances, she’d be ruined. A party from Town who recognized the Denning family crest would have remarked to one and all that the Marquis of Deene had been off in the bushes all alone with Lady Eve Windham. A little digging might have been necessary to find out with whom he’d driven out, but somebody—many, gleefully helpful somebodies, more likely—would have seen Eve leaving Mayfair up on the bench with Deene.
“Merciful heavens.” Eve dropped her forehead to her knees. “I’m sorry, Lucas. I did not think. I wasn’t—”
“Hush.” He stayed beside her, apparently in no hurry to rise. “A near miss is by definition not a disaster, and I could never regret such a pleasurable interlude, except that it does rather contradict the trust your family has placed in us both.”
She nodded and liked that he didn’t start fumbling around, blaming himself, when she’d been the one to accost him. If he’d taken that away from her, she would have had to use her parasol.
“It was just a kiss,” Eve said. “We’ve kissed before.”
“And it has been a delight on each occasion.” He sounded puzzled and pleased, if a little begrudging, which made Eve smile despite the rest of the thought he was too kind to say:
And this occasion must be the last.
He needed to marry, and she needed to avoid marriage. If they kept up with the kisses, sooner or later their near misses and narrow escapes would yield to the inescapable forces of Polite Society.
And that she could not allow.
* * *
To be thirty years of age, an experienced man of the world, and yet utterly flummoxed by the kiss of a proper Mayfair lady was… not lowering, exactly, but astonishing—and little had astonished Lucas Denning since his first pitched battle on the Peninsula.
If he’d had sisters to ask, he might have put it to them: Was it usual for a woman well past her come out to shift from composedly sitting beside him on the driver’s bench, making conversation, to flat panic, to scorching passion in a matter of moments?
Except the insight of genteel womenfolk probably had less to do with Eve’s behaviors than did the sieges he’d witnessed in Spain. When the walls were finally breached, mayhem of the worst kind ensued. Decorated veterans became animals, their most primitive natures ruling all their finer inclinations.
To think Eve Windham was besieged by fear was not comforting at all.
What was comforting—also unnerving—was to see how King William reacted to the woman.
“If I’d taught him to bow, he’d be on both knees before you, Eve Windham. That cannot be good for a horse who’s destined to compete for a living.”
“But he’s such a magnificent fellow. How could I not be smitten?”
The smile she gave the colt was dazzling, so purely beneficent Deene could not look away from the picture she made billing and cooing with the big chestnut horse. Willy was shamelessly flirting right back, batting his big, pretty eyes at her, wuffling into her palm, and wiggling his idiot lips in her hair. It wasn’t to be borne.
“Would you like to hack out with me, Eve?”
The smile disappeared. “I’m not dressed appropriately. Thank you for the invitation, nonetheless.”
He hadn’t expected her to accept, though he had wanted to hear her reply. He shifted closer to her in the stall, close enough that he could stretch out a hand to his horse and not be overheard by the lads.
“I’d put you up on Willy here. He’s gentle as a lamb under saddle.”
“You’d let me ride your prize racing stud?” The longing in her voice was palpable.
“I don’t think he’s going to hear, see, or obey anybody else when you’re in the vicinity. Willy’s in love.”
The blighted beast nickered deep in its chest as if in agreement.
“What a charming fellow.” Eve’s bare hand scratched right behind Willy’s ear, and if he’d been a dog, the stallion’s back leg would have twitched with pleasure.
What was wrong with a man when he wanted to tell his horse: She petted me first, so don’t get any ideas?
“I’d love to see you on him, Lucas. I’ll bet he has marvelous paces.” Now the smile was aimed at Deene, and even the horse seemed to be looking at him beseechingly.
“I cannot disappoint a guest. We’ll have some luncheon up at the house, and the lads can saddle him up.”
As Deene escorted the lady from the loose box, Willy managed to look crestfallen before he went back to desultorily lipping at his hay.
“Some horses just have the certain spark, you know,” Eve said as they wound through the gardens. “They have a sense of themselves. The breeding stock have it more often, but my sister Sophie has a pair of draft horses…”
She nattered on, a woman enthralled with horses, while Deene speculated about just one more kiss, this one in the greening rose arbor. Rose arbors were intended to facilitate kissing—his own reprobate father had explained this to him not long after Deene had gone to university.
Except… Deene recalled the duchess, waving them on their way just a few hours prior, recalled the fear he’d seen on Eve’s face when the horses had startled… and recalled how long it had taken him to get his unruly parts under control after kissing Eve—being kissed by Eve—amid the lilies of the valley.
There was nothing wrong with kisses shared between knowledgeable adults, but that kiss had threatened to e
scalate far beyond what Deene felt was acceptable when neither party had intentions toward the other. Nonetheless, the scent that was supposed to evoke return of happiness would forever after bring to his mind a walloping passionate interlude with a lovely woman—who was enamored of his horse.
“So if we were to come back out here, say, next week, might you be willing to hack out with me then, Lady Eve?”
She paused midreach toward her tea—she preferred Darjeeling—and pursed her lips. “I want to.”
“Then, Evie, what’s stopping you?”
Now she glowered at the teacup. “Nothing.”
She was lying again, though he had to allow her the fiction. She alone knew the worst of the specifics, but it was common knowledge she hadn’t been on a horse for years.
“Tell me about your accident.”
She glanced up. “You aren’t going to taunt me by snatching away the invitation to hack out, dangling it just out of my reach, pretending it’s a matter of indifference to you?”
It was Deene’s turn to glower, for she’d just listed his best tactics when sparring with her. “Would that help?”
She sat back. “Sometimes it has helped. When you had me drive home from the park… I hadn’t even taken the reins in years, Lucas. To find myself driving a team right in the middle of Town put me quite at sixes and sevens.”
This was not an admission; it was a confidence. A puzzle she was sharing with him and only him, as intimate as a kiss and in its own way even more exquisite.
“I have faith in you, Eve Windham. You were a bruising rider, a thoroughgoing equestrienne in the making. I’d like to see you on a horse again, if that would make you happy.”
She did not beam a dazzling smile at him, which was the intended effect of such a pretty speech. She instead looked like—God help them both—she might tear up and start bawling right here on the sunny, sheltered back terrace of his country retreat.
This would necessitate that he comfort her, which might not be a bad thing if he’d had the first clue how to go about it.
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