His Wicked Reputation

by Madeline Hunter

“Take the carriage, then. I will have no use for it tomorrow.”

  After Sarah left, Eva got into bed and gazed up at the canopy. She had not even tried to paint a view for over a year, after it became obvious that Mr. Stevenson’s patrons had no interest in them. Her last visit to his shop hardly encouraged her to take them up again.

  All the same, she itched to paint one, even though it made no sense financially. It would be her own creation, not a copy of someone else’s. She experienced much more drama when doing her own work. Copying produced pleasant melodies in her heart. Her own compositions played like symphonies. She missed that, and since she had enough money to buy an extra bit of canvas, she could afford to indulge herself.

  Mr. Stevenson’s glee about the recent big sale entered her mind. So did the sight of him counting out twenty pounds. She needed to continue the copies, too, of course. Which meant she needed a new source of paintings, now that Gareth lived at Albany Lodge. She thought she knew where she might find some others to borrow. As soon as she returned to Langdon’s End, she would take steps to arrange that.

  Thinking about the paintings led her to thinking about the ones she had already borrowed, which in turn led her to thinking about the day she had returned the last one. She cursed as her body came alive in the night, reliving too well the sensations Gareth had called forth. She dared not close her eyes, because if she did, she saw him standing there, his chest bare, then wearing nothing at all as she peered around a doorjamb. Her body’s sensitivity grew while fantasy hands caressed her most indecently.

  He had taunted her at the music performance after she said she had not enjoyed his kisses. Even as he apologized, he made sure her body admitted the lie. Damn him and his conceit. He did not only guess what she suffered if she allowed the memories to have their way. He knew.

  CHAPTER 11

  Mr. Mansfield indeed called at Sarah’s house at two o’clock. Eva received him along with her cousin and Rebecca. What followed could kindly be described as a mildly awkward half hour.

  His interest in Rebecca could not be mistaken. He addressed most of his conversation to her. She thus had no choice except to respond. By the end of his visit, the exchanges turned less formal and stilted. Rebecca even laughed at a bit of wit he tried inserting. Unfortunately, Rebecca had prepared herself for the meeting, and just when things were getting friendly, she launched into a lecture on what Voltaire and Rousseau had written about education. For twenty minutes everyone in the room except Rebecca listened to a philosophical comparative analysis with frozen smiles on their faces.

  When Sarah finally interrupted—“You must feed me such elevated thinking in small pieces, dear, and allow me to digest this latest morsel now”—Mr. Mansfield even thanked Rebecca, and promised to give the question some thought. Despite his patience, by Rebecca’s later accounting it had all been a waste of time.

  That evening Sarah posed her idea that Rebecca stay on as her guest. Rebecca quickly accepted, but only, Eva suspected, because she hoped the poet would also call, and because anything would be better than returning to the boredom of Langdon’s End.

  “Leave her to me, Eva,” Sarah said quietly while they kissed good-bye the next morning. “We may not have a proposal in hand when I send her back to you, but we will be very close, I think.”

  Rebecca loitered in the doorway, watching her leave. Eva waved through the carriage window. Her small trunk, rolls of canvas, and new boxes of pigments and brushes rode atop the vehicle.

  She had hired this carriage so that Sarah could use hers to take Rebecca around town to show her off. Eva suspected Sarah intended to chance upon Mr. Mansfield.

  Four blocks from Sarah’s house, she directed the carriage to the closest coaching inn. There she had all her property removed and transferred to an oxen-led wagon that she learned was making a delivery in Langdon’s End. She left Birmingham as she entered it, ensconced in the back of that wagon, thus saving three-fourths of the cost of the carriage hire.

  It was twilight by the time the wagon lumbered up the lane to her house. The waggoneer quickly unloaded her belongings, dumping them without ceremony on her doorstep. He rolled away seconds after she paid him.

  Throwing open the door, she bent and pushed the boxes and canvas over the threshold. She stood while her eyes adjusted to the shadows deepening in the house.

  An ugly thrill of alarm shot up her back to her head. Squinting, she advanced on the stairs and felt a large shadow. Her hand just kept going. The sixth step was gone, removed, revealing the space beneath the stairs like a gaping mouth.

  Her gaze darted around the library on her left. What she saw left her shaking. She made her way to a lamp and tried to light it. Her hands trembled so much that she barely managed it.

  Light spread through the chamber, revealing horrible destruction. The divan had been upturned and its upholstery slashed. Wallboards were peeled off. Even a section of the floor was destroyed, the boards thrown haphazardly around.

  Then she saw the paintings.

  Two of her views decorated this chamber. Only now they lay on the floor. She ran over to them and looked down in horror. Someone had taken the turpentine from her paint box and smeared it all over them, ruining them forever. As if that were not cruel enough, the remnants of mixed paints had been smeared all over one of them, as if the criminals who had done this thought that amusing.

  She feared what she would find in the other chambers. Fighting a shock that threatened to paralyze her, she ventured to the rest of them.

  The same chaos greeted her everywhere. Her mind jumped to her own bedchamber, and the nail in the joist below the floorboards, holding her bag of money. She rushed back to the stairs to go and see if she had been the victim of theft as well as vandalism.

  She stopped cold there, with one foot on the first step. A floorboard had creaked above. Terror did a little dance on her skin. She could not breathe. She listened hard, waiting. Then she heard it again. A footfall, as if someone shifted his weight.

  She turned on her heel and bolted from the house and ran as fast as she could down the lane.

  * * *

  Skirt hitched high, Eva ran so hard her side hurt and her breath came in gasps. Her bonnet fell off, lost in the night. She dared not look back to see if anyone followed, but she thought she heard someone else on the road.

  At the crossroads with the road to Langdon’s End, she paused a moment, heaving deeply to catch her breath. She peered down the road, flanked by trees and woods. How fast could she run that mile? Would she even be able to without fainting dead away?

  The road ahead beckoned. Another minute she would be at the bend, and Albany Lodge would be in sight.

  A horse whinnied in the distance behind her, terrifying her. Not debating her choice, not thinking at all, she ran again.

  Rounding that bend gave her some heart. Albany Lodge could be seen in the gathering night, and she thought she spied some light in a window. No one would hear if she were accosted this far away, but she found comfort in that light and ran harder, no longer so afraid and witless.

  She did not worry about going up the lane. Instead she ran cross-country feeling safer with each step. Finally the house loomed in front of her. Only then did she stop, her breaths heaving so hard she feared she would be sick.

  A horse passed on the road. She instinctively dodged behind one of the trees. Was it the intruder in her house, following her? There was no way to know. He could still be in her home.

  She calmed slowly and pressed that tree for support so she would not drop to the ground. As sense returned, she realized her predicament. Had Gareth remained only a friend, she would not hesitate to pound on his door and pour out her fear. That he had become something more made her hesitate, and shy about intruding.

  She only needed to be near him to be safe, she reasoned. She could stay by this tree, although the spring damp would become unpleasant during the night. If she were very quiet, she could sit on the stone steps, however. Dawn would wake her,
and she could then walk to Langdon’s End and find help.

  Moving soundlessly, she walked to the steps and sat on the top one. She rested her back against the wall, and pulled her pelisse close for warmth. Now that panic had receded, the chill of the night entered her bones.

  Suddenly light flooded her. She looked up. Gareth stood in the threshold, candelabra in hand, his shirt blazing from the flames’ reflections.

  “Who is out there?” The light from the candles made a slow arc, finally finding her. “Eva? What the hell are you doing sitting out here?”

  * * *

  Eva just stared at him. Her eyes appeared extremely large, and her face unhealthily pale. She huddled with her knees drawn up to her chest. She looked small and young and terrified.

  He turned and put the candelabra on a table near the door, then returned. He reached down and lifted her to her feet. “What is wrong?”

  She leaned into him as if her legs had no strength. He embraced her. The tremors in her body had nothing to do with him.

  “You are shivering.” It was not that cold tonight. “Where is Rebecca?”

  With a deep inhale, she collected herself. She stepped back, out of his arms. “She is still in Birmingham. I returned today, and—someone was at my house while we were gone. I saw the evidence of that, and”—she covered her cheeks with her hands—“I lost my head. There are no other words for it.”

  He embraced her shoulders with one arm and encouraged her to move. “Of course you did. Come inside.”

  She let him guide her to a chair in the library. Since she still shook, he lit a low fire. Then he poured a finger of brandy and handed her the glass.

  “I do not imbibe strong spirits.”

  “You do tonight. Drink it.”

  He stood over her until she did.

  She made a face after it went down, but some color returned to her skin. She looked around the library’s bare shelves and few chairs and one table.

  “I thought he was still in the house,” she said. “Whoever had entered it, that is. I thought I heard him above, so I ran and”—she gestured helplessly at herself—“you were the closest. I thought he followed me. I may have imagined that part. I don’t know.”

  She was more herself now. Much more, if she felt obligated to excuse her arrival in the middle of the night. She had chosen to sit on cold stones all night lest he misunderstand.

  “How did you know there had been a housebreaking? Was something missing?” He could not imagine what thieves would want to take. So little remained in that house.

  “He—they destroyed things. Threw items all around and poured turpentine on my paintings. They tore up floorboards and pulled off panels. They must have been very angry that there was nothing of value to take. I expect they laughed and thought it all great fun, ruining the home of someone else.”

  “They were probably men who used to make free with this house, and when they saw they could no longer, they went looking for another. Since yours was close and empty, it was vulnerable.”

  “Perhaps.” She frowned over the possibility. “The region is changing. The city grows closer all the time. I see strangers moving about the country, on the roads and lanes and crossing fields. I have been foolish to think my life would remain the same. I do not think I will ever again feel as safe as I used to.”

  The thought had her huddling in on herself again. Her brow furrowed over sad eyes. Left on her own she would ponder the invasion all night, and emerge at dawn afraid of her own shadow.

  “You are very safe now, Eva. Tomorrow we will go to your house and see how bad it is in the light of day. Until then you are not to think about it.” He held out his hand. “Come with me. I was about to find some supper. You can help.”

  She let him lead her down to the kitchen. He lit some lamps and peered at the shelves. Warmth hovered near his shoulder. She stood close and peered up too. Her proximity started his blood simmering. Not now, you ass.

  “The ham would be good,” she said. “I have not eaten all day, and would accept some if you offered it.”

  He brought down the ham, cheese, and some bread that wasn’t too stale. He filled thick glasses with beer from the small keg against the wall. “Harold has taken to making sure there are basic provisions here.”

  She found dishes and knives. “I expect he and Erasmus hope to work here all the time someday. When you staff your household, they want to be first in line.”

  “That will not happen until some legalities regarding the property are settled. I have explained that to them so they do not pass up other opportunities should any arrive.”

  She sat at the rough-surfaced worktable. He sat across from her so he would not be tempted to touch her.

  She carved at the ham. “I am surprised you do not already have whatever servants you may need. You appear the sort of man who would.”

  When he had thought to distract her with a meal, he had not expected to end up talking about himself. “I have never felt the need for them. I am alone and move around a lot.”

  She made a display of concentrating on how she cut up her ham. Curiosity poured off her as clearly as fear had less than a half hour ago.

  “Ask if you want,” he said.

  Her knife went to work cutting her cheese into mouth-sized morsels. “That would be rude.”

  “You are wondering how the bastard son of a duke lives, if he has no obvious living.”

  Slice. Slice. Slice.

  “My father left me a respectable income. I also serve as a go-between on some business affairs, Eva. A broker. Normally one side is in England, and one side is on the Continent. I travel there often.”

  “Is that why you never married? Because you move about so much?”

  Thus, inevitably, did a woman’s curiosity lead.

  He laughed. “The question assumes that marriage is a good idea, and a state to aspire to.”

  “You do not think it is?”

  “I suppose as a financial arrangement it has much to recommend it, with the right person. Since I am not such a person, it never came up with a woman who might be the right one in turn for me. The truth is I have never once thought about getting married.”

  “Never? Not once? Even if it were hopeless, not even one thought in passing while you were with someone you loved?”

  Her earnest tone charmed him. How to explain? She need only think about it from a different direction to understand. It meant leaving behind her old notions of how the world expects one to view such things.

  “No, not once, Eva. As for love— Love is really desire, prettied up to justify physical needs. Some call it love, because calling it what it really is sounds too base, and because it promises longevity after desire inevitably fades.”

  A flush rose from her neck to color her face. Not from embarrassment with the subject, as it would be with most women. Anger brightened her eyes. “You are very cynical.”

  “I am honest, when so few people are about these things.”

  “What about your mother and father? Was that mere desire?”

  “It was most definitely desire, and little else. The duke hardly knew her when he struck that arrangement.”

  “But he stayed, you said. He remained after it should have faded, by your telling.”

  “He stayed because she became a friend, and a confidante, and the only person he trusted without question. He stayed because she made it very easy for him to stay. He also stayed to spite his duchess whom he came to loathe. If he loved my mother at the end, it was like any kind of familial love, not special and different the way the poetry and romances lead one to think.”

  She rose and started clearing the table with abrupt, jerking motions. Plates clattered into the sink. “I think you are wrong.” She pushed the ham platter back on its shelf. “I think your experiences have badly affected your way of looking at these things.”

  “My experience was better than most. I saw a better relationship between the duke and my mother than my brothers saw betwe
en him and their mother.”

  “I am not talking about that experience.” She pulled up the pail. “If you get some water I will wash these plates.”

  He stood and took the pail. He set it down. “What experiences do you refer to?”

  She angled back, leaning against the sink. “I expect you have had many experiences that might badly affect you. That is all I meant.”

  “You sounded like you spoke of particulars.”

  With a display of annoyance, she picked up the pail and tried to pass. He did not allow it.

  “I will only say this, since I would never insult my host after I sought sanctuary in his home. Your reputation has followed you to Langdon’s End. That is all.”

  “What reputation is that?”

  “It was said that you leave women so enthralled by pleasure that they lose all sense and will do anything to keep you nearby.” She blushed hotly, but also looked him right in the eyes.

  “The gossip both flatters me and insults me,” he said. “I do not know whether to get angry or to preen like a plumed bird. There are not many men reputed to make a woman lose all sense due to pleasure, after all.”

  “I do not know how you can make light of it. Reputations matter in this world.”

  “Mine is wicked, that is true, but in the best of ways. I would rather be known for this than as someone who is cruel, or ruthless, or unprincipled.”

  Her brow puckered. “Yes, I see what you mean. As character flaws go, yours involve the least of sins. Still, to indulge one’s mere desires without restraint—to lure others to do the same . . . ”

  “There is nothing mere about it sometimes. It can be a maddening force. An internal tempest. A compelling necessity.” He bent until his eyes were inches from hers. “But you already know that, Eva.” He touched her lips with his fingertips. “Don’t you?”

  CHAPTER 12

  She should turn her head, so he could not touch her like this. Only that tiny caress on her lips almost mesmerized her, and his closeness created a horrible tease to her body. Not dangerous, however. Her bedazzlement felt wonderfully normal. Almost comforting, after the way the evening had begun. The remnants of the fear that sent her running down the road vanished as she enjoyed his attention and allure.