He had the satisfaction of seeing her eyes widen and that special smile bloom on her lips.
“Oh, Percy.” She cradled his jaw with her hand and kissed his cheek. “The Queen’s Harebell in spring, the scene of no less an occasion than Chocolate at Midnight. That is a splendid idea.”
Yes, it was, if he did say so himself. Esther rested her head on his shoulder, and the moment became one of a countless number His Grace would hoard up in his heart to treasure at his leisure.
Esther’s smile became a little satisfied—not smug; Her Grace was never smug—and His Grace recognized that once again, she’d achieved her ends without ever having to ask for them.
That she could—and that he almost always spotted it when she did—was just one more thing to adore about her.
* * *
Being an upstart, bogtrotting, climbing cit of a quarry nabob was hard work, which Jonathan Dolan minded not one bit.
He thrived on it, in fact, or he did when hard work meant long hours at the quarries, the building sites, and the supply yards. When it meant longer hours, haggling at the negotiation table, poring over ledgers, and hanging about in smoke-filled card rooms, the prospect was much less appealing.
Much, much less.
“If you can’t get your lazy damned crews to put in a full day’s work, that is not my affair. Damages will be assessed per the clause you negotiated, Sloane.”
Sloane paced the spacious confines of the Dolan offices, running a hand through thinning sandy hair while Dolan watched from behind a desk free of clutter.
“The damages will put me under, Dolan. I told you, it isn’t that the crews won’t move your stone, it’s that they can’t move your stone. The rain in Dorset this spring has been unbelievable. This is not bad faith. It’s commercial impossibility.”
The blather coming out of the idiot’s mouth was not to be borne.
“Is that so? The weather is responsible? So we’ve moved from liquidated damages to the commercial impossibility clause?” Dolan kept his tone thoughtful, though even posturing to that extent was distasteful.
Relief shone in Sloane’s squinty brown eyes. “Yes! An act of God, exactly. Torrential rain and no one able to manage. I knew you’d see reason. Hard but fair, that’s what they say about you.”
“Pleased to hear it. Do they also say I’m able to read and write in English?”
They probably speculated to the contrary, but Dolan took satisfaction in seeing Sloane’s gaze grow wary. “I beg your pardon?”
“I can read, Mr. Sloane. I’m sure you’ll be pleased for my sake to learn I can read in several languages. One of them English, though it’s by no means my favorite. And because I own the quarry in Dorset, I also maintain a subscription to the local paper nearest that quarry. Shall I read the weather reports to you?”
Dolan opened a drawer at the side of his desk and pulled out a single folded broadsheet dated about ten days past. “Plowing, planting, and grazing being of central import to much of the shire, the editor is assiduous in his record keeping and prognostication.”
Sloane had sense enough to stop babbling.
“Mr. Sloane, sit down.” Not an invitation, which also should have been a source of satisfaction, considering the man was English to his gloved, uncallused, manicured fingertips.
He dropped into a chair. “I just need a little more time.”
A little more time, a few more potatoes, a little more daylight… The laments were old and sincere, but useless.
“You are late on the deliveries because you do not pay a wage sufficient to attract men who can be relied upon. Because you skimp on wages, your wagons and teams are not properly maintained, and they break down. Knowing you are under scheduling constraints, the smiths, wainwrights, and jobbers take excessive advantage of you when their services are needed on an emergency basis, and once again, to save money, you turn to the most opportunistic and questionably skilled among them.”
He did not add: you are an idiot. He did not need to.
“I have a family.” This was said with quiet desperation, which was probably the very worst aspect of being a quarry nabob. Watching grown men literally sweat while their dignity was sacrificed to their shortsighted greed.
“You also have a mistress, who is likely more for show than anything else. You have too many hunters that you never ride, and you have daughters to launch upward lest your wife have unending revenge on you for your failures.”
Sloane nodded, and Dolan wondered if this was how the priests felt in the confessional: tired, disgusted, and… trapped in their ornate robes and elaborately carved little boxes.
And still Sloane sat there, quivering like a fat, beautifully attired hare waiting for the fox to pounce.
“Lie to me again, Sloane, and I will have your vowels. I will use them to discredit you from one end of the kingdom to the other. You will have no mistress, no stable at all, no fancy clothes, and very likely no family worth the name. You have two weeks before the damages will start to toll. Get out.”
Sloane’s relief was a rank, rancid thing. The odds of the man making a delivery in the next two weeks were not good, but Dolan built slack into every schedule he negotiated, then added more slack, because most of the time, it did rain like hell in Dorset in the spring.
When Dolan was sure Sloane had vacated the entire premises, he grabbed hat, gloves, and cane and left the office, locking the door behind him.
A clerk glanced up from his desk as Dolan passed. “I’m away until tomorrow’s meeting with Ruthven, Standish. Have the files on my desk first thing, send out for crumpets, and dust the damn place before I get here.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Dolan.”
The day was glorious, almost warm, and brilliantly sunny because the trees weren’t leafed out yet. Dolan strode along in the direction of Mayfair, when what he wanted was to enjoy the day amid the graciousness and privacy of Whitley.
At home more work awaited, a short interlude with Georgina to tuck her in, then more work over a solitary dinner. How was it a quarry nabob felt just as much a slave as if he were still a five-year-old boy, his fingers perpetually cold and muddy from tending the tatties?
The memory was never far from his awareness, which explained in part why he almost plowed over a slight woman carrying some small parcels down the street in the oncoming direction. The parcels scattered, the woman stumbled, and Dolan grasped her by both of her upper arms as she pitched against him.
She righted herself with his assistance, and Dolan found himself looking into a pair of fine gray eyes. “Miss Ingraham. I beg your pardon.”
“Mr. Dolan. My apologies.”
She tried to draw away, but he held her steady. “The fault is mine. I wasn’t watching where I was going.”
Her slightly frayed collar and less-than-pristine gloves added to her usual air of constrained dignity. He let her go and bent to pick up her packages. “I gather today is your half day?”
“Yes, sir. If you’ll just pass me those boxes, I’ll be on my way.”
“Nonsense. Where are you going?”
Her ingrained manners wouldn’t allow her to entirely withhold the information, but she was a female. She could prevaricate, and he couldn’t stop her. Instead, she did the most peculiar thing: she blushed, and she smiled. “I was going to the park.”
The park, a monument to England’s democratic leanings, a place where anybody could enjoy fresh air and sunshine. Dolan cast back and could not recall seeing that quiet smile on any previous occasion. That smile went well with her fine gray eyes and exceptional figure. “Then we’ve a bit of a walk ahead of us.”
He tucked her packages under one arm and winged the opposite elbow at her, and damned if the infernal woman’s smile didn’t fade to be replaced by a look of reproach.
“Mother of God, it’s simply a courtesy, Miss Ingraham. It isn’t as if you’re the scullery maid.”
Her spine straightened, she wrapped her hand around his arm, and they moved off, leaving
Dolan with a rare opportunity to observe his daughter’s governess outside the child’s presence.
“Have you been shopping?” Inane question, of course she had. Dolan wished again his late wife might have spent more time teaching him the difference between interrogation and small talk, for he’d yet to grasp the distinction.
“Just a few personal things. This really isn’t necessary, sir.”
He did not reply—let her be the one to demonstrate some conversational skills. He was sure she had them, though whether she’d take pity—
“I like the French soaps.” She said this very quietly, glancing about as she did. “They’re very dear, but the scents are such a pleasure. And there’s a particular tea at the Twinings shop. Everybody should have a favorite tea.”
She had fine gray eyes, a lovely smile, an excellent figure, and she could make small talk.
“I quite agree, Miss Ingraham. My preference is Darjeeling. What’s yours?”
* * *
For an entire day, Eve tried to study the welter of thoughts and emotions roiling through her.
At breakfast she listened to Aunt Gladys prattle on about how pretty the gardens were—while Eve contemplated ripping up every tulip on the property.
She endured a social call from Louisa and Kesmore, trying not to see the concern in either of their gazes or to allow them to see in her own eyes the nigh overwhelming desire to smash the teapot on the hearthstones.
She held Jenny’s yarn and considered strangling her sister the very next time the word “dearest” was uttered aloud.
After tossing away half the night, Eve overslept and woke up ready to discharge the entire senior staff for allowing it. She was eyeing all the pretty, proper demure clothing in her wardrobe with a view toward burning the lot of it when her gaze fell on an old outfit she’d had for years.
It would still fit her.
While she studied the ensemble, an insight—dear God, at long last, an insight—struck her: what was wanted was not destruction per se, but action.
No more weeping, wondering, and wandering the house. She yanked the dress out of the wardrobe and tossed it on the bed, then pulled her chemise over her head and regarded her naked body in the mirror.
She bore no visible scars, deformities, or disfigurements as a legacy of her fall. She could walk, she was healthy, and by heaven it was time to start acting that way too.
Her hair went into a practical braid that she coiled up into a bun at her nape. From under the bed, she pulled a pair of boots she hadn’t worn in seven years. She dressed without assistance, dodged the breakfast parlor and headed for the kitchen, there to cut up some apples.
She left the kitchen, realizing for all she’d had an insight, it had been only a limited insight: it was time for action, yes, but what action?
“I don’t suppose you have any answers?” She fed Meteor an apple slice without receiving a reply.
While Grendel sidled closer, she scrambled over the fence to give Meteor’s withers a scratching. “I feel like I am going to explode with indignation, horse. Like having a tantrum nobody will be able to ignore, like starting a fire in the formal parlor…”
Like what?
She fed him another apple slice then attended to the spot behind his chin that had him stretching out his neck. “You are no help. I come here for wisdom, and I get horsehair all over my outfit.”
Grendel came within a few steps, and Eve realized the pony wasn’t going to allow her to entirely ignore him. She held out an apple slice to him.
Ponies were not prone to insights. They usually lived a scrappy life among larger animals and inconsiderate children, or casually negligent former owners. A pony was generally left to manage as best it could, and the average pony managed quite well.
Grendel did not take the treat. He regarded Eve out of eyes that seemed at once knowing and blank.
“Eat your apple, you idiot. Meteor won’t stand for it to go to waste.”
Grendel took a step closer while Eve held the apple slice a few inches from his fuzzy, whiskered muzzle.
“You are no kind of pony if you can’t see a perfectly lovely treat—oof!”
He’d butted her middle with his head, once. Stoutly.
“That was rude.” She passed the apple slice over her shoulder to Meteor and stood there, hands on hips, feeling as if the pony were glaring right back at her. It was enough to drive an already overset woman—
Yes.
Yes, yes, and yes.
“You.” She grabbed Grendel’s thick forelock. “You come with me, and don’t even think of giving me any trouble, or I shall deal with you accordingly.”
The little beast came along. He did not give her any trouble.
* * *
Deene climbed into the saddle, patted his gelding on the neck, and turned the horse down the drive. Anthony had departed a couple of days ago, the plan being for him to go on reconnaissance in the clubs and ballrooms and unearth whatever intelligence there was to be found.
While Deene… buried himself in ledgers that made little sense, rode out to visit tenants who were wary and carefully polite when enduring his calls, made lists of eligible women of good fortune and reasonable disposition… and did not call on the Windham sisters or even on Kesmore.
A clear focus was called for, and proximity to Eve Windham created rather the opposite.
He worried about her. He worried about Georgie. He worried about his finances. He worried about Anthony, so newly a father and trying to appear casual about it.
“I do not worry about you.”
Beast flipped an ear back, then forward.
Beast, being a gelding, seldom evidenced worry unless his ration of oats did not timely appear in his bucket. Deene let his unworried mount canter over much of the Denning Hall home farm, then down the track that separated the Hall from the Moreland home-wood.
The land was in the last stages of coming back to life after winter’s sleep. The trees were still a gauzy, soft green, the earth had the fresh, cool scent of spring, and daffodils winked from the hedgerows. Deene crossed onto Eve’s property, Lavender Something, and crested a rise to see the little manor house, a picture of Tudor repose snug at the bottom of the hill.
As he studied the scene, he had a tickling sense of something being out of order. There were pansies here and there, the windows sparkled in the midday sun, the drive was neatly raked but for—
A groom was leading a pony trap away toward the stables, a fat little pony in the traces.
Beast—or perhaps Deene—decided to amble down and investigate. Eve’s property was supposed to be more or less vacant but for staff, which meant nobody had cause to be paying a call.
He hitched Beast to the post in the drive—the stables likely sported only the one groom—and went up to the house. A knock on the door yielded no response; a slight push on it gained him entry.
The interior upheld the promise of the exterior: pretty, cozy, and warm to the eye in a way having nothing to do with temperature. Eve would be comfortable amid all this light and domesticity.
He spotted her before she detected him. She stood at the window in a second, homey little parlor done up all in gold, cream, and soft hues of brown. Her outfit was brown as well, but sported fetching little details in cream and red—a touch of piping, a dab of lace.
Why did she have to be so damned pretty?
She turned and uncrossed her arms. “Lucas.”
As she came toward him, the force of her smile nearly knocked him physically on his arse. She’d never smiled at him like that; he hoped she’d never before smiled at anybody like that.
Luminous, radiant, and soft with pleasure and joy. Even as his mind comprehended that she was going to embrace him—and welcomed the idea wholeheartedly—his thinking brain also latched onto one detail: she was wearing a driving ensemble.
For a long, precious moment, he held her while his heart resonated with the happiness and pride he’d seen in her eyes. “You soloed at the
ribbons.”
She nodded, her hair tickling his chin. “I drove here, Lucas. I drove here by myself, and I can’t wait to drive myself home. Just saying the words feels good. It feels marvelous.”
He clamped his arms around her, lifted her, and whirled her in circles. “You drove yourself here. You’re going to drive yourself home. You’re going to drive yourself wherever you damned well please.”
Her laughter was a marvelous thing, her body against his every bit as wonderful. He could feel the joy in her, the relief.
“I’m going to drive myself wherever I please, whenever I please, however I please. Nobody will be safe from Eve Windham when she takes a notion to tool about. I might drive up to Yorkshire and call upon St. Just, or out to Oxford to check on Valentine. I shall certainly call upon Westhaven in Surrey, and Sophie and Maggie and… all of them. I can see them anytime I please.”
He set her on her feet, letting her slide slowly down his body. “You might nip out to Surrey to see how Franny’s foal is getting on. You might take a notion to peek in on the next meet at Epsom.”
She stood there, beaming up at him, a woman transfigured by her own courage.
He must kiss her. The moment called for nothing less, and even if it had, he was helpless not to kiss her.
Kissing Eve had been a lovely experience each and every time: tipsy and bold under the mistletoe, surprised but eager in the privacy of shadowed ferns, hesitant but sweet in the confines of a landau…
When she was ebullient, when she was in roaring good spirits with her recent accomplishment, kissing her was… beyond description. Her confidence pulled him in; her joy pulled him under.
Any thought of trouble in London, any thought of the tedium of the Season awaiting him, any ability to think deserted Deene between one breath and the next. He registered impressions only:
The buttons of her outfit pressing hard into his sternum.
The slight tug of her fingers where she’d fisted her hand in the hair at his nape.
The way she wasn’t the least shy about plastering herself with gratifying snugness against his growing erection.
To hold her this way felt… glorious.
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