If he’d had doubts about the significance of the locale before, the concern in Lady Jenny’s voice obliterated them. Eve kept walking in the overland direction of the main road, until the rise and fall of the land obscured them from the view of the others.
At some point in their progress, she’d dropped his arm and marched ahead, her intent unquestionably to put distance between them.
“I just need a moment, Lucas.”
“You want me to leave you here?” The notion was insupportable. She’d gone as pale as a winding sheet, and her breathing had taken on an odd, wheezy quality. She didn’t answer, other than to turn her back, so Deene ambled off a few yards and sat on a boulder.
He was not going to marry this woman—she’d made that plain—but fate or the well-intended offices of certain meddlesome individuals had put Deene here with her at this precise moment, and here he would stay until her use for him was done.
She stood in profile, as still as a statue, her arms wrapped around her middle, the breeze teasing at stray wisps of her blond hair.
And something was clearly very wrong. “Eve?”
Her shoulders jerked. “I can’t breathe. Don’t come any closer.”
He hadn’t heard that hysterical note in a woman’s voice since his sister had learned she was to be sold in marriage to a brute of a stranger. The same cold chill shot down his spine as he went to Eve.
“Go away, Lucas.” She held a hand straight out, as if she could stop him so easily. “This is—”
The breath she drew in was loud, rasping, and heart wrenching. He got his arms around her, the only alternative to tackling her if she tried to run off.
“Eve, it’s all right.”
“Go away, damn you. Just leave me alone. It will never be all right.” A hint of tears—tears were far preferable to this cold silence.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“I can’t breathe… Lucas, I can’t—”
He cradled the back of her head, tucking her against his chest. “Then don’t breathe, but for the love of God, cry, Evie.”
He held her close, close enough to feel the cataclysm building in her body, to feel not a simple storm but a great tempest breaking loose from long imprisonment.
Her sobs were more terrible for being silent, and had he not been holding her, Deene knew she’d have collapsed to the ground under the weight of her upset. Where she’d been cold and stiff before, she was giving off a tremendous heat now, her body boneless as she clung to him.
She did not quiet exactly—her tears had been far deeper than a mere noisy outburst—but she shuddered at greater and greater intervals. Deene scooped her up and carried her to the boulder he’d recently vacated. What he wanted was to cradle her in his lap; what he did was sit her beside him and keep an arm around her shoulders.
“This is where you fell.”
She lifted her forehead from where she’d pressed it to his shoulder.
“This is indeed where I fell. Have you a handkerchief?”
He passed her the requisite monogrammed linen, knowing he must not look at her while she used it.
“The scent of you is calming, Lucas, at least to me.”
“Then you must keep my handkerchiefs near at hand. I gather you hadn’t been back here in some while.”
She sighed out a big, noisy sigh. “Not in seven years. The place—the memory—sneaked up on me today, and I thought I was brave enough.”
No count of the months this time. That had to be progress. “You are brave enough.”
He recalled the bleakness in her eyes as she’d stared at the miserable sagging bed, and he wanted to howl and shake his fist at God.
“I’m not so sure. I hadn’t expected to feel such rage.”
If he let her say more, she’d regret it. And he wasn’t certain he was brave enough to hear more.
Repairing lease, indeed.
“You were bedridden for months, Eve. Of course you’re entitled to be angry.”
Her head came up, and though her eyes were red and glistening with the aftermath of her tears, Deene was relieved to have her meeting his gaze.
“What? I can’t divine your thoughts, Evie.”
“You say that so easily, of course I’m entitled to be angry.”
“Your horse tripped and went down in the damn sloppy, spring footing—horses trip every day, but this horse tripping left you having to relearn how to walk, and despite how cheery the letters you wrote to your brothers made it sound, that process was hell.”
“It was hell.” She spoke as if trying the words on and then said them again. “It was hell.” More confidently. “It was awful, in fact. Bloody miserable, and not just for me.”
He knew what she was recalling, because he’d heard her brothers fill in the missing parts: the indignity of bodily functions when one was bedridden, the forbearance necessary when loved ones offered to read yet again a novel that had once been a favorite, the tedium so oppressive it made the pain almost a diversion.
Eve Windham had courage, of that Lucas Denning would never be in doubt.
“Can you walk now, Eve?”
She pulled her lower lip under her top teeth, her expression thoughtful. “Do you mean, can I walk to the coach?”
“Can you walk?”
The thoughtful expression became a frown. “I can walk.”
“Then be as angry as you need to be, for as long as you need to rage, but applaud yourself for the fact that while other women would have taken permanently to their beds, you have given to yourself the great gift of once again walking. This is no small thing.”
She didn’t argue, didn’t diminish her own accomplishment, which was fortunate, because he would have argued at her right back.
“I have always wondered about something, Lucas.” She tried to return his wrinkled, damp handkerchief, but he closed her fingers around it and pushed her fist back to her lap.
“What have you wondered?”
“Did Papa shoot my mare?”
Ah, the guilt. Of course, constraining all the anger she’d been entitled to, all the hurt and bewilderment, would be the guilt. It was all Deene could do not to kiss her temple.
“Your brothers talked him out of it, possibly abetted by your mother.”
“How do you know this?”
“Sieges are the very worst way to conduct a military campaign, in one sense. The effort is tedious beyond belief.” He fell silent, memories resonating with other associations in his mind. “Your men spend days, even weeks, digging trenches while the sappers dig their tunnels and the artillery batters the walls, and pretty soon, morale goes to hell—pardon my language. The drinking and brawling pick up, nobody sleeps, and by the time you’re ready to breach the walls, men will volunteer for even the suicide details just to end the siege.”
“What has this to do with my mare?”
“When sleep wouldn’t come, and Old Hooky wasn’t inclined to permit inebriation among his staff, we’d lie awake and talk, or sit around a campfire and talk. Your brother St. Just was profoundly comforted to have gotten your mare out of His Grace’s gun sights before reporting back to Spain with Lord Bart.”
Eve hunched in on herself, becoming smaller against Deene’s side. “Her name was Sweetness, but she had tremendous grit. I know both her front tendons were bowed. As I lay on the ground, she could barely stand beside me, but she would not leave me. I told myself if Papa shot her, it would have been out of kindness.”
Deene sat beside her and tried not to react. That passing comment about shooting a horse was not just about a horse: Eve had considered taking her own life. Right there, sitting on that cold, miserably hard boulder, Deene made a silent promise to the woman beside him that had nothing to do with marriage proposals and everything to do with being a gentleman.
“Bowed tendons can heal. All it takes is lengthy rest and proper care.”
Eve was not placated. “A horse who’s gone through such an injury can never be as good as new, Lucas.”
“We’re none of us as good as new.” He rose lest he wrap her in his arms and never let her go. “I expect your sisters have gotten themselves sorted out by now.”
He did not offer his hand. She stood on her own.
“I expect they have. Would that I could say the same for myself.”
Deene did not pounce on the lure of that comment; he instead walked beside her, not touching her, until they returned to the coaching inn.
“A fine day for a constitutional,” Kesmore remarked briskly. “Lady Jenny and Lady Louisa went ahead with the maids, and Deene, your nag is tied to the back of the coach. If you will both pardon me, I’ll go on ahead lest I eat your dust for the rest of the afternoon.”
He bowed to Eve and swung up onto his black horse, cantering off with a salute of his riding crop.
“Will you keep me company, Lucas?”
He did not want to. He wanted to put as much distance between himself and Eve Windham’s tribulation as he could. She had borne too much for too long with too little real support, though, and he knew what marching on alone entailed all too well.
He climbed into the coach and sat beside her, but that was as far as he could go. He did not put his arm around her.
In fact, the sensible part of him—the part that would be heading back to Town in two weeks—hoped never to put his arms around her again.
* * *
Eve’s thoughts bounced around like skittles in her head:
Her sisters had taken off, probably without a second thought—or had they?
Deene was so wonderfully warm next to her, but how was she to face him after such a display?
She was hungry.
What had Kesmore made of this situation?
And when all that effluvia had been borne away by the passing miles: Why was I so bitterly angry?
At some juncture, she’d taken Deene’s arm and put it about her shoulders, the better to use him for a bolster. He was being delicate, as he’d call it. Keeping his silence out of deference to her feelings. Dratted man.
She wished he’d kiss her—not a wicked, naughty kiss, but a comforting kiss, a kiss to anchor her back in her body, to steady her courage. Such a wish was foolish, allowable only because she and Deene were bound to become nothing more than cordial acquaintances. On that list of possible convenient husbands, she’d have to put the contenders with family seats in Kent toward the bottom of the pile.
That would cut down on chance encounters with Deene… and his future marchioness.
“Why was Mildred Staines ogling you like you’d hidden the entire table of desserts in your smalls, Lucas?”
To prevent him from removing his arm, Eve laced her fingers with his.
“Why, indeed? Kesmore informs me there are rumors going around regarding my past, among other things.”
“You’re the catch of the Season, of course there will be rumors.”
“These are nasty rumors.”
Damn him and his delicacy. “Do these rumors involve red-haired beauties of dubious reputation?”
She felt him tense up, then relax.
“You’ve heard them too?”
“No. Westhaven, duke-in-training that he is, won’t tell us, and if he tells Anna, she doesn’t pass along the best gossip either. We’ve hardly seen Maggie since she married Hazelton—and I know you had a hand in that, Lucas, so get your prevarications ready for the day I inquire about it. But as to your rumors, I thought men strutted about the gaming hells, twitting one another over such things where the decent women couldn’t hear them.”
“They do.”
He said nothing more, but rather than return to her own brown study, Eve decided to further investigate his.
“Are the rumors untrue?”
“They are… exaggerations and inaccuracies, also very ill timed.”
“Then they’re very likely started by those fellows who want to knock you out of contention for the best marital prospects. It’s ruthless business, acquiring the right spouse. I wish you the joy of it.”
He did remove his arm. “Are you enjoying your own endeavors in this regard? Having turned down my suit, Evie, are you now recruiting more appropriate candidates?”
He apparently wanted a nice, rousing argument, but Eve was too wrung out to oblige him.
“I was taking pity on the unfortunate, like a gentleman dances with the wallflowers. Would you be very offended if I attempted a nap, Lucas?”
Under no circumstances was she going to allow him an opportunity to interrogate her about all that drama back at Bascoomb Ford. She needed to interrogate herself first, and at some length.
“Nap if you can.”
She lifted his arm across her shoulders again, needing the comfort of it. Today had been an exceptional day, and Eve permitted herself the indulgence of Deene’s proximity on that basis alone.
For once the Season started and they were off hunting their respective spouses, who knew when they might ever be private again?
Five
Eve Windham did not snore, and she had the knack of being pretty even in sleep. Deene tormented himself with these guilty secrets—secrets only a husband ought to know. Better by far that he suffer to know them, however, than that he hear any explicit confidences from her.
He knew there was a great deal more to her bad fall than either of them had acknowledged, and for the sake of his peace of mind, he wanted it kept that way.
Let her tell her sisters, or her mama. Let her write letters to her brother Devlin in the North; let her learn what she could from the family who’d loved her since birth. For if Deene were to accept her most intimate confidences now, he would be unable—flat helpless, in fact—to let any other man assume responsibility for her.
Any situation involving him, helplessness, and a woman was to be avoided at any cost.
He instead turned his mind to the gossip Kesmore had passed long, for even the weight of Eve’s head resting against his thigh was insufficient to distract him from that bit of news. According to the talk in the clubs, Deene’s profligate raking on three continents—or was it four, considering that Turkey was part of Asia?—had left him with unfortunate health consequences that could potentially disfigure or even end the life of any marchioness of Deene.
The effects of disease—nobody used the specific word “syphilis”—had been evident in the late Lord Deene, too, hadn’t they? A wicked temper, unfettered spending, intemperate drink…
That such characteristics were common to many an aging peer was apparently beyond the grasp of the average gossip, and in truth, such rumors were only bothersome in passing.
The ones intimating Deene was close to financial ruin were the more difficult to bear. Coming as they did upon the very opening of the Season in which Deene sought to take a wife, there could be only one possible source of such malice.
And before too much more time had passed, Deene intended to make Jonathan Dolan pay for every nasty, sly, vulgar lie ever to pass the man’s lips.
* * *
Jenny stared at the apple in her hand. “I am disloyal for saying so, but I am enjoying this respite without Mama and Papa. With just us and Aunt Gladys here, it’s peaceful.”
Eve paused halfway through paring the skin from another piece of fruit. “You aren’t disloyal, you’re honest. Mama is probably saying the very same thing to Papa about us as we speak.”
Louisa was demolishing her apple in audible bites. “Eve’s right, and this way, I get to spend another couple of weeks rusticating with my dear Joseph. Do we have enough for the last pie?”
Eve eyed the pile of peeled and sliced apples before her. She generally avoided association with apples, but the Windham daughters enjoyed a secret fondness for cooking, and her sisters’ choice today had been pies. “Do we really need seven pies?”
“Five will do if the bounty is limited to us and the senior house staff.” Jenny set her apple down. “Six allows us to spare one for Kesmore.”
“So our heathen offspri
ng can smear it in one another’s hair.” Louisa got off her stool and started untying her apron. “Eve, why don’t you take the remaining slices down to the stables? Jenny can come with me to surrender the pie to the Vandal horde in my nursery.”
Which horde, Eve simply lacked the fortitude to deal with cheerfully today. “I’ll clean up here, in any case.”
They didn’t argue with her, which was a mercy. Kesmore had seen Eve’s face splotchy and pink. He’d all but galloped off to avoid the awkwardness of her loss of composure—or perhaps he’d meant to spare her feelings.
It hardly mattered. Since arriving to Morelands several days ago, Eve had slept a great deal, stared off into space almost as much, and taken a few long walks.
And when she walked, she remembered to be grateful for the ability, but she also found her peace punctuated by odd thoughts.
Canby had referred to her repeatedly as “Eve, the temptress.” At the time, she’d thought it made her sound grown-up, alluring, and mysterious. In hindsight, the implication that she was responsible for his behavior, that she’d caused him to violate every rule of decency was… infuriating.
Apples could be infuriating by association.
At services, Eve had volunteered to attend the children in the nursery, and this time—this time—she’d looked at all those boisterous, healthy children with their clean faces and broad smiles, and considered that her life would be devoid of the blessings of motherhood. For the rest of her life, while her sisters were raising up children, and her brothers were raising up children, and her cousins were raising up children, she would be… childless.
That was infuriating too.
And now, Louisa and Jenny would hop into the gig and tool over to Kesmore’s without a backward thought for their safety, their nerves, their ability to cope with a darting hare or approaching storm.
Eve loved her family, but still, there was much to be angry about.
She scooped up the apple slices that hadn’t gone into a pie and wrapped them in a cloth. The day was a pretty day. She was in good health and had the afternoon to herself—she’d try not to be angry about that too.
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