“I do.” After the opera—during which a young man had toppled out of the balcony into the pit when he was craning to see the dress she’d been sewn into—she had gone on with the Earl of Wareham and Lord Lisle and the friends to a decadent party. She’d perched on Frederick’s knee while he’d casually wagered sums that made the other players’ foreheads bead in sweat. She hadn’t even sipped at the seemingly endless rivers of champagne. She’d been intoxicated by the risk and the power and the endless wealth. Evie Duggan from the slums could have had her pick of the men present; there was always a part of her that remained watchful, observant.
Last night was in fact the first time she could remember losing herself entirely.
“I remember thinking your arse felt tight as a new plum perched there, Evie,” he said mistily.
“Oh, Freddy, such a beautiful sentiment. What woman doesn’t want to be remembered for her arse?”
To his credit, he laughed.
“Ah, forgive me, Evie. Now you can see how your absence has affected me. I’ve lost the ability to woo graciously. Perhaps we can go for one of those … what did you call them? … ‘walks’—and get reacquainted properly.”
“If you like. I’ll just see if I can fashion a walking stick for you so you can manage it.”
“I’ll walk behind you and enjoy that view, which will be incentive enough to remain upright.”
She couldn’t help it. She did laugh, and the laugh evolved into a sigh. There was comfort in familiarity; she knew how to talk to him. She fell into the familiar rhythms of flirtation and innuendo the way she would the lines of a play or the steps involved in the Sir Roger de Coverley.
“Shall I tell you about the other parts of you I enjoy?”
“Perhaps when we’ve run out of other conversation. Do know when to lay a joke to rest, Freddy. I find originality erotic.”
The footman arrived with sherry, and she was absurdly pleased to note Freddy inspecting the livery, his eyes registering approval. If she’d married Freddy, she wouldn’t look at the poor footman and the livery and calculate how much he cost her every time he appeared in the room
He raised his glass to her. “Do you miss him? Monty?”
“Yes. Rather,” she said truthfully.
“As do I. But time and tide stops for no man or woman.”
He said this meaningfully.
The footman returned in the room, hovered in the doorway.
“My lady, the vicar is here to see you.”
“The vicar?” Freddy said on an amused hush. “Have you found religion, my dear? I didn’t think things were as bad all that. Or have you been very bad, and he’s come to chastise you?”
Another bloody innuendo. Eve would have delightedly taken it up if she hadn’t been frozen in shock.
She could hardly send Adam away.
And God help her; despite how awkward it would be, she wanted to see him. She wanted to see his eyes when he saw her again this morning. He hadn’t been thrilled about Haynesworth.
She doubted he would cheer at the sight of Freddy.
“Of course. Send him in.
In a moment, his tall frame filled the doorway.
Oh, dear Lord. He was carrying a bunch of wildflowers.
And all was silence.
Frederick’s swift expert glance took Adam in from his head to his feet: noted in all likelihood every pore of his face, the lean height, the dusty boots. His gaze slid to the wildflowers wilting on the mantel.
And then back to the ones Adam was holding.
He turned a malevolently amused gaze on Evie. “I thought you said you’d been bored here in the country, my dear.”
Eve suspected her color was something approaching the white of her dress, judging from how icy her hands had gone. But she managed a steady voice when she said, “How lovely to see you, Reverend Sylvaine. Allow me to introduce my friend, Frederick Elgar, Viscount Lisle.”
“How do you do, Lord Lisle?” His voice was as lovely as ever. As steady as hers.
He hadn’t yet looked her in the eye yet, of course.
“How do you do, Reverend Sylvaine? Or should I say, who do you—”
“Are you here to see Henny, Vicar?” Evie interjected, with a brightness that sounded tinsel false to her own ears. “So kind of you.”
Adam at last turned toward her. And here his composure faltered. And his eyes flared with a heat she felt in her very veins: She saw in them the carnal knowledge of her, the possession, the want.
But then he gave her a faint, hard, ironic smile. Imposing distance.
He was deciding, she thought, that he’d been an utter fool. And that everyone had been right about her except him.
She could feel it, the distance, like a door slamming shut.
“Yes. I thought the flowers might cheer her,” he said to her, and no would ever have guessed she’d muffled her first-ever screamed release into his smooth throat the night before, and that he’d tenderly tucked her hair behind her ear.
“Are we discussing the same Henny? Can she be cheered?” Frederick wondered.
Adam said nothing at all. He was watching Frederick with a faintly pleasant, detached expression. But there was a fixed brilliance in his eyes that unnervingly reminded Eve of the time she’d watched a cat peruse a rat it had just killed, deciding where it should take its first bite.
“Henny’s been ill.” Evie’s voice seemed to hear her own voice from a peculiar distance. She tried a smile, and all the muscles of her face protested against doing something it clearly felt was unnatural under the circumstances. She finally did manage to get the corners up. “The vicar has been a great comfort to her. She’s still doing marvelously well, Vicar. Marvelously. But I believe she’s sleeping. But sleeping well.”
And now she was babbling.
“Well, then! We’re having an early supper. Perhaps you’d like to join us for it, Reverend Sylvaine?” Lord Lisle nearly purred it.
She didn’t dare look at Frederick. The only look she was capable of giving him would kill him, of that she was certain. Then again, the ton already had just the perfect nickname at the ready.
Adam transferred his gaze to Frederick. His face registered only a sort of mild, pleasant curiosity. As if Freddy were an unusual species of mushroom he’d stumbled across in the forest. Evie thought, not for the first time, that he likely didn’t give any visible warning at all before he threw a fist into someone’s jaw.
And then he smiled, slowly, the sort of slow smile that boded no good at all.
“Thank you for your invitation, Lord Lisle. I think I will.”
She wondered if she could find a moment to ask the housekeeper not to set the table with knives.
Chapter 23
SO THIS WAS Lord Frederick Lisle, the man who had lost the right to marry her in a card game. She hadn’t mentioned she was expecting a visitor.
Then again, the night before had featured very little conversation.
Plates of steaming food were placed in front of each of them by the silent housekeeper. The chandelier overhead, Adam noticed, dripped with crystals pointed as fangs. Reflected in the silverware, in the candelabra.
“How did you come to know my dear friend Lady Wareham, Reverend Sylvaine?”
Dear friend, was it?
“She fell asleep during one of my sermons. It was rather unforgettable.” He smiled politely.
Evie’s dress and the color of her complexion remained a startling unison of white. She stared at her lamb chop as if she didn’t know quite the way into it. She hadn’t yet picked up a utensil.
“Really tremendously rude of me,” she said brightly.
Lord Lisle laughed. “After the life she’s led in London, she needs all the rest she can muster.”
“Oh, yes,” Adam said, after a moment. “I’ve heard a good deal about her life in London. Her life in Sussex has been rather active, too.”
Funny. He’d just discovered one of the pleasures of innuendo.
It coul
d be used to punish. To lash out when one was wounded.
“Has it now? And Eve was telling me how very little there is to do in Sussex that doesn’t require … healthful exercise. Perhaps you’d fancy a card game, Vicar? Or are you allowed to gamble?”
“Frederick,” Evie’s voice was clipped. It was unmistakably a warning.
Which meant she unmistakably understood his intent.
“I don’t see the point in gambling, Lord Lisle, when what I want is simply given to me without even asking.”
Adam said this easily. He chased a few peas about his plate and coaxed them onto his fork.
Eve turned her head toward him then, slowly. Her eyes were flints, and as dangerously cold and hard as the dangling shards of chandelier overhead. Imagine that. So she understood his meaning, too. He perhaps had rather a knack for innuendo. He was loathing himself more and more by the minute, too, but that seemed neither here nor there.
“Did you know that Evie once winked an eyelash from her eye and caused a duel, Reverend Sylvaine? Two men each thought she was winking at them, and jealousy ensued. It’s a rare woman who can inspire that kind of primitive competition in two sane men.”
“Swords or pistols?” Adam asked, if he were measuring Lisle for one or the other. Perilously like he was calling him out.
Enough so that Lisle paused. And Evie’s eyes had gone wide with disbelief.
Eyes that had been so warm and vulnerable last night, then heated and slit, then closed with wild pleasure.
“Swords,” Lisle said finally. “Nearly a gory end to that one.” Implying that it was just one of many, many others. “Did they teach you to how to fence at Oxford, Reverend Sylvaine? That’s where I learned.”
“Oh, I learned that from my brothers. And from my cousins, the Everseas. We practice rather a lot. I learned how to fence, as well as sense for what and who was worth dueling over. Very little, it seems, is actually worth it.”
She hadn’t stopped staring at him. Each word he said was a deliberate blow, and he saw her go paler as he said them, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself.
“Of course. You likely haven’t dueled. But then I suppose dueling is a pastime generally confined to gentlemen,” Frederick said offhandedly, then flashed a brilliant smile
“Oh, of course,” Adam agreed cheerfully, sawing off a piece of lamb. “Then you don’t know anything about it, either.”
He said it so casually, with such an easy smile, that it took even clever Freddy a moment to hear the words.
And then his smile froze as if he’d just realized a stiletto had been slid between his ribs.
The smile drifted from his face. It was like watching a lake disappear in a thaw.
And suddenly he seemed to begin to really see Adam.
“Perhaps we ought to discuss something other than guns?” Evie suggested rapidly. Her hand had closed over her napkin, and she was squeezing it as though she were imagining someone’s neck between her fingers instead.
“But there’s not much to do in the country other than shoot things,” Adam explained to Freddy.
He smiled faintly. Almost disinterestedly.
Frederick was staring thoughtfully at him. He leaned back in his chair, his elbow resting on the table. He remained in that position of repose, entirely as if he was lord of the manor
And then he leaned toward Eve, and very familiarly lifted her cross delicately in his fingers, rested it on his thumb, which skimmed her silky skin.
Adam’s knuckles went white on his knife.
Frederick smiled slowly, enjoying this. “I admit it’s been too long since I’ve seen her, and I’ve never seen her looking lovelier. So fresh … so deceptively innocent. And I must compliment the necklace, Evie—how it adds that necessary flare of innocence. But she’s so artful about appearing to be whatever she’d like to be. A talent all actresses share.”
Adam slowly, deliberately laid the knife down next to his plate.
And then he pushed out his chair, stood abruptly.
“Reverend, are you leaving us?” Lisle was all feigned innocence.
Despicable bastard.
“Parish business never ends, Lord Lisle. I apologize for my abrupt departure. I hope you enjoy your visit.” He got the words out without spitting them like a furious animal.
“I expect I shall,” Lisle said. Leaning back away from Evie, content as a cat curling up next to a fire. Satisfied he’d won. Whatever winning meant under these circumstances.
“I’ll just escort you to the door, Reverend.”
Evie’s voice was a glacial warning as she pushed her chair back with significant force that nearly tipped it to the floor.
But he was walking so swiftly she nearly had to run to catch up to him.
“Adam …” she hissed. “What in God’s name … What on earth makes you think you have the right to—”
He halted abruptly then and turned, with a finger to his lips.
She fell silent instantly.
They stared at each other for a moment.
And then he leaned down slowly, deliberately, and whispered in her ear:
“I hope you took the time to wash the scent of me off your body, my lady, before you rode him.”
She reared back, eyes blank in shock.
Her breath gusted from her as though she’d fallen a great height.
For a moment they stared at each other. Pure, cold fury snapping between them.
Her eyes narrowed, and her hand flew up to slap him.
Effortlessly, he caught it in midair.
Effortlessly, he held it. To prove that he could. And that he quite simply wouldn’t allow her to hurt him. Ever again.
“Slapping me would be redundant, Eve.”
And then he dropped her arm as if he were dropping the carcass of a snake and walked away.
OF COURSE, BY the time he’d returned to the vicarage, he felt like a thoroughgoing bastard, a raving infant, a spoiled innocent. All of these were entirely new sensations.
Then again, he told himself mordantly, allegedly you like new experiences, Sylvaine.
“I don’t want to see anyone this morning,” he said abruptly to Mrs. Dalrymple.
Since he’d exhausted the possibilities of the woodpile, it became plain there was simply no escaping himself. The best punishment for his despicable behavior, he thought sardonically, was to be alone with himself and really, truly dwell on it.
Such a delightful panoply of emotions she’d introduced into his life. Everything heightened and intensified, thrown into stark relief. Every emotion possible unearthed, presented to him to juggle, to absorb, to combat, to savor, to wonder at.
She was part of him now. With an intensity, an irrevocability, a sweetness, a fire, a torture, that had transformed every cell of his being until he was now and forever a different person entirely. There could be no one else for him.
This, he realized, was entirely his problem.
She’d given him pleasure, she’d promised him nothing, she’d asked for nothing—unless one counted a little assistance obtaining friends.
Which was just as well, as he could give her nothing, and likely Lisle could give her everything.
I thought I might never be whole again, is what Colin had said when he’d thought he lost Madeline. And he thought of Lady Fennimore, living a life divided, which wasn’t far different from never being whole.
She would never again be at the mercy of any man, she’d said.
And round and round his thoughts went, chasing each other and never catching, never solidifying into any conclusion.
“Reverend Sylvaine.” Mrs. Dalrymple’s voice was so gentle it took some to penetrate his emotional morass. She’d already said his name twice.
He looked up.
“Jenny has sent for you. It’s Lady Fennimore’s time.”
“I WANT YOU to go, Freddy,” Eve told him the moment she returned to the table. She didn’t sit down. She stood hovering over him. She was tempted to give him a go
od prodding with a fork.
He looked up, genuinely shocked.
“Eve … why, Evie, you’re upset.”
“How observant you are, Freddy. I was upset all through our meal, and you’ve only now just begun to look at me.”
“Come sit beside me … I’m so sorry, my dear. I didn’t mean to … you know how I hate to lose. I could see that man—”
“Reverend Sylvaine.”
“I could see he means something to you. Or you mean something to him. And I couldn’t help it, Eve. Old habits of competition die hard.”
She remained icily silent.
“I couldn’t help myself, Eve,” he repeated. “The man is a gorgeous bastard, and my pride was abraded, I suppose I just took it a bit too far.”
“You’re hardly a gargoyle, Freddy, but that’s neither here nor there. You humiliated me. I don’t like the game anymore, Freddy. I, in fact, never did. I don’t want to be a bloody pawn in any man’s game!”
Her voice rose and rose and rose until the last three words were wince-level pitch.
Frederick eyed the candelabra, certain one was about to be hurled across the room.
“It’s almost as though you don’t know any other way to be, Freddy.”
“I don’t understand,” he tried soothingly.
“I know, and that’s the trouble.”
He was flailing now. “You know I care for you. Genuinely. I’m hardly a gargoyle, as you said, and I could still have my pick of any of the eligible young ladies in the ton, and yet I’m here, with you, now.”
“Ah, Freddy. Lucky, lucky me. I think I might fall in love with you any minute. Listen to how you woo me.”
He did laugh. Albeit shortly.
And then he said almost tenderly, “That’s why, Eve. When you say things like that … it’s not the plum for an arse, or not only. That’s why I can’t forget you. It’s you I care about, and that’s why I’m here. I’m offering marriage, you know. You and the motley characters you call a family. I’ll take them all on. From a distance, mind you.”
It really only sounded like he was raising the stakes in a game because he wasn’t getting what he wanted immediately.
She sighed. “Oh, Freddy. Go.”
“Are you banishing me, Eve?”
A Notorious Countess Confesses: Pennyroyal Green Series Page 26
