“Can we have this lecture somewhere with more seating?” Kate inquired. “Sophie has the only chair in the hall.”
Whit glared at his sister. “You’d be a sight more uncomfortable if you’d taken a spill from your horse.”
“I have never fallen from a horse,” Kate said with some indignation. Several pairs of brows rose at that statement. “I have never fallen from a moving horse,” she clarified with a sniff. “I may be clumsy, but I am hardly a danger to myself, generally.”
“Kate is a fine horsewoman,” Sophie said loyally. “We both are, and we have engaged in a number of races in the past without mishap.” Her eyes briefly jumped to Kate. “Significant mishap,” she amended.
“Racing across familiar terrain is not—”
Alex broke off at the sound of Mrs. Summers’s voice coming from farther down the hall. “Good heavens. What is all this?”
Evie poked her head around Whit’s shoulders. “We’ve visitors.”
A round of greetings followed, and then another when Christian arrived. It was a great mass of noise and movement, as bows and handshakes and embraces were exchanged. Sophie held on to Mrs. Summers for an extended period of time, Kate answered questions on the progression of their journey, and Evie sidled up next to Whit to whisper in his ear.
“Handle your wife and sister, can you?” she asked, reminding him of his pronouncement the morning she’d left Haldon.
“Mirabelle’s not here, is she?” Whit pointed out.
Evie doubted Mirabelle had been foolish enough to consider riding cross-country in her condition. “I’m sure convincing her to stay was a great trial.”
Whit pretended not to hear her. “Where’s Mr. Hunter?” he asked Christian.
Christian jerked his head toward that back of the house. “Cleaning a bit of dirt from his boots. I expect we arrived from the north not three minutes after you came from the east.”
“Two minutes for the ladies,” Sophie corrected.
Alex narrowed his eyes. “What if Herbert had been here? What if something had happened to both of us? Where would that have left our son?”
Sophie stood and stretched out the kinks in her back. “I imagine you should have thought of that before insisting you come along.”
When a low growl emitted from Alex’s throat, Mrs. Summers stepped between them. “Would anyone care for a spot of tea in the parlor?”
The answer to that question was delayed by the sudden appearance of McAlistair.
And just as Evie had feared, the sight of him turned her inside out. She felt her fingernails dig into the apple she’d almost forgotten she was holding, and she might very well have winged it at his handsome head if others hadn’t been present. Because the temptation still remained, she turned her attention to Sophie and Kate, who, unfortunately, had their attention turned to McAlistair.
Sophie dipped in a quick curtsy upon their introduction. Kate, on the other hand, had lived with the legend of the hermit McAlistair for a third of her life without having ever seen him. She indulged in a moment of gaping and then a long and obvious perusal of his person.
“The Hermit of Haldon Hall,” she breathed, fascination evident in every syllable. “I could scarcely believe it when Mirabelle told me you were real.”
“I’ve been telling you for nearly a decade,” Whit pointed out.
“Yes, but you’re my brother,” she said dismissively.
“And?”
“Brothers lie.” She ignored Whit’s grumbling and offered McAlistair a sunny smile. “I am delighted to finally make your acquaintance.”
Eventually, tea was prepared and consumed in the parlor, and the story of John Herbert’s plan for revenge summarized and discussed. Though there were still questions Evie would have liked to ask McAlistair about some of the things Herbert had said, she found she wasn’t quite interested enough to speak to McAlistair directly. Not yet.
She answered the questions of others instead, drank her tea and ate her apple, and then excused herself from the early dinner Mrs. Summers suggested, pleading nerves after the trying day.
In retrospect, it hadn’t been a very clever excuse for her exit. No one who knew her well was likely to believe she’d succumbed to a fit of nerves, and so she wasn’t terribly surprised when a knock sounded at her door an hour later.
Though she knew it to be foolish, a small part of her couldn’t help but hope, just for a moment, that it might be McAlistair.
It was Kate, holding a plate of cold meat and cheese. The early dinner, Evie surmised.
Without bothering to wait for an invitation, Kate swept past Evie into the room, took a seat on the bed, and shoved the plate at Evie. “Sit, eat, and tell me what’s happened.”
Left with no other choice, Evie took the plate, but set it on the nearby desk. “You know what happened. John Herbert—”
“Oh, devil take John Herbert. What’s the matter with you?”
“A run-in with a murderer isn’t enough?”
“He didn’t murder anyone—”
“That we know of.”
“From the sound of it, a man like that would have bragged. And that’s beside the point. You don’t suffer from nerves.” Kate accented the last with a roll of her eyes.
“Well, I might. I—” Evie gave up the fight and sat down heavily next to Kate on the bed. “Oh, all right. It’s McAlistair.”
“What about him?”
“I’m in love with him.” Oh, it hurt just to say.
Kate’s face expressed shock for a moment before it brightened. She gave one long, dramatic sigh. “Oh, that’s lovely.”
“It certainly is not.”
“Is so,” Kate countered in the silly way only sisters can manage. “I should dearly love to fall in love with someone.”
“You were in love with Lord Martin not three years ago,” Evie reminded her. “And look what that got you.”
“It got me my first kiss,” Kate countered. “And I rather doubt I was in love with him. In retrospect, I believe I merely had a long-standing tendre for him.”
Evie couldn’t think of anything else to say but, “You told me he kissed like a fish drowning on land.”
“He does, or did, which is why I no longer have a tendre for him.” She scooted a little closer. “Have you kissed McAlistair?”
And a great deal more. “Yes.”
“And?”
Sophie’s appearance at the door kept Evie from responding.
“What’s all this?” Sophie asked.
“Evie’s in love with McAlistair.”
“Kate!”
“Well, you are, and you would have told her.”
True and true. “You could have given me the opportunity to do so for myself.”
Completely unrepentant, Kate leaned over to deliver a kind pat to her knee. “I’ll leave it to you to tell Mirabelle.”
“Thank you so much.”
Sophie sat down on the other side of Evie with a dreamy sigh. “Hmm. McAlistair. He’s a fine one to look at, isn’t he? All that dark and broody…” She waved her hand about. “…what have you.”
That statement was met with wide-eyed silence. Sophie blinked at her friends. “What?”
“You’re married,” Kate said. “Happily married.”
Sophie studied the gold band on her finger. “Oddly enough, it hasn’t struck me blind as of yet.” When the other women only continued to stare—Kate in a fascinated sort of way, and Evie with a slightly suspicious scowl—Sophie laughed and dropped her hand. “A happily married woman can appreciate a handsome man without being attracted to him. I suppose you’ll discover that for yourself soon enough,” she added to Evie.
Though her scowl remained in place, suspicion was replaced by misery and frustration. “Not if things continue to progress as they have been,” she grumbled. “He told me…he told me I need keeping.”
The pouring of outrage that followed went a very long way toward soothing Evie’s pride. She suspected some of the out
rage was a direct result of—and perhaps targeted at—Whit and Alex’s own brand of keeping for the last two days, but a shared indignation only added to the sense of camaraderie.
The three spent the next hour sharing Evie’s tray of food and condemning all men for their monstrous arrogance.
It was most satisfying.
And it was most disappointing when Kate announced it was time for her to seek an early bed. Evie couldn’t imagine trying to sleep at present, and she certainly didn’t care for the idea of sitting up alone without the laughter of her friends to distract her from the ache in her heart.
But she couldn’t ask Kate to stay. Not when she’d ridden all this way only to learn she’d be turning around and riding all the way back the next day.
“I suppose you must be exhausted,” Evie commented to Sophie when Kate had gone.
“Rather. But I wished to discuss something with you before I find my own bed.” She cleared her throat and gave Evie a hard look. “I was downstairs in the parlor with Mrs. Summers just now, and she told me the single most unbelievably, outrageously, ridiculous thing.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Matchmaking, Evie?” Sophie huffed out a breath. “Honestly.”
“Well, it’s not as far-fetched as all that.”
“It’s more. However did you come up with such an implausible theory?”
“Implaus—” She gaped, simply gaped. “I heard them, with my own ears, discussing the death-bed promise to Rockeforte, the threatening letter they would send, my intended rescuer—”
“The promise?” Sophie started at little. “You know of it? All of it?”
“Yes…well, nearly all.”
“Oh.” She blinked rapidly for a moment. “And you heard them plotting to send you a letter like the one you received, and a gentleman to rescue—”
“Yes.”
“Oh,” Sophie repeated and turned narrowed eyes in the general direction of the parlor. “She neglected to mention that bit.”
It wasn’t a bit; it was the whole bloody thing. “What did she tell you?”
Sophie had the grace to wince. “Only that you’d taken it into your head that the whole affair was nothing more than a ruse to see you matched. She never quite got around to mentioning why.”
“You could have asked.”
“Yes, well.” Sophie fidgeted a little. “Questioning her doesn’t come naturally to me.”
“You’re a duchess,” Evie pointed out.
“But she was my governess. Also, she gets that look. You must know the one I mean. With the haughty brows and…” Sophie titled her chin up and stared down at Evie. “Not quite an accurate impression, I’ll grant you. I haven’t the nose for it. But—”
“I know the one you mean,” Evie admitted with a small laugh. “Lady Thurston has a similar expression.”
“Doesn’t she just? Though Kate seems to be less affected by it of late.” She dismissed that last thought with a shake of her head. “I am sorry for the hasty judgment, Evie.”
“No harm done.” She slipped an arm over Sophie’s shoulders for a brief hug. “Although, if you were to explain why a deathbed promise to Rockeforte required I make a trip to the altar, it would go a very long way to appeasing my indignation.”
Sophie laughed and scooted back on the bed to rest comfortably against the headboard. “It’s a simple enough, if ridiculous, matter. William Fletcher promised—or was tricked into promising, to hear him tell it—into seeing that each of you found love.”
“Each of—”
“Alex, Mirabelle, Whit, yourself, and Kate. The story goes, he considered all of you the children of his heart.”
“Did he?” With nothing else to occupy her hands, Evie found herself picking idly at the bedspread. “I barely knew the man.”
“Hardly follows that he shouldn’t have known you.”
“Yes, I suppose, but…it seems so odd, really. I…” She trailed off, uncertain what to say.
“You would have been a small girl when he died, correct? Only just come from your mother’s home?”
Evie nodded.
“I should think that a child’s perception is very different from an adult’s.” Sophie tilted her head. “Do you love Henry?”
“Your son? Of course, how can you ask—?”
“For the purpose of illustration. What if you were not to see him again for twenty years? Would you love him still?”
“With all my heart.”
“And yet he might have no idea who you are,” Sophie said softly.
“I…that’s true. Dreadfully maudlin but true.” She picked at the bedspread a moment longer. “He loved me.”
“Like a father.”
“A father.” It was a tremendous revelation that a man, a good man, had loved her as a daughter. Loved her well enough that he had thought of her, of her happiness, on his very deathbed. Suddenly, the matchmaking ruse seemed not at all silly. Rather, it seemed a priceless gift.
“Whit has told me he was the best of men,” she said quietly.
“Alex tells me he was the best of fathers.”
It would seem that he had been.
The return journey to Haldon might have been an enjoyable experience for Evie. The weather remained fine, she had a comfortable carriage from Charplins to ride in, and Kate, Sophie, and Mrs. Summers to keep her company. But despite these luxuries, Evie was hard-pressed to find any real pleasure in the journey.
She exchanged no more than a few words in passing with McAlistair for the entire trip. She asked after his wound. He assured her it didn’t trouble him. She offered a seat in the carriage should he tire, but he declined. He rode beside the carriage, was distantly polite during their stops, and took meals in his room at the inn.
It was maddening to have him so near but not be able to speak to him or touch him or shove him off his horse.
Bloody “keeping.”
She waited for him to apologize. Waited for him to admit he was wrong and make amends.
She waited for him to give her some sign that he respected her, that he trusted her, that he loved her.
But in the end, he simply left her on the front steps of Haldon, surrounded by her friends and family and staff.
He bowed just once. “If you need me, Whit knows where to find me.”
Then he remounted his horse and rode away.
Thirty
She would come today.
Hands clasped behind his back, jaw set, and a line of worry etched across his brow, McAlistair stared out the front window of what might loosely be called his front parlor and told himself what he had been telling himself for the last four days.
Evie would come today.
He was certain of it. Why else would he have cleaned the cabin from top to bottom? Why else would he have furnished it with an actual bed and settee and dishes? She would want those things. She would need them while they lived in the cabin and waited for their new house to be built.
Wouldn’t she?
“Bloody hell.”
He spun away from the window, tired of looking out at the narrow drive and seeing only trees and dirt. He couldn’t stand the wait anymore. He couldn’t stand the silence.
She had ruined that for him, he thought darkly. She had taken away the pleasure of solitude. It had been a refuge for him. It had been peaceful and restorative.
Now it seemed only empty.
He took up pacing the small room in a show of nerves that had recently become routine rather than exceptional.
He needed to hear her voice, damn it. He needed to see her smile, hear her laugh, taste her lips. He needed to touch her, to breathe her in…
It would be lemons and mint. He bit back a groan at that recurring thought. Now that she was back at Haldon with her own things, she would once again smell and taste of lemons and mint.
The idea of it was driving him mad. He’d woken up every damn night since returning, certain he could smell that intoxicating combination. And every damn time he ha
d lain awake afterward wondering about her, worrying over her, missing her.
Was she safe? Was she happy? Did she miss him? Or had William and the others introduced her to some arrogant, pinched-faced dandy who played chess nightly and read poetry with an affected lisp?
“To hell with that.” He stormed over to the front door, yanked his overcoat off a hook on the wall, and strode outside. “To bloody hell with that.”
He could play chess, damn it. Maybe not as well as Mr. Hunter, but he could play. He could read poetry too, if that’s what she needed. He could…well, no, he wasn’t going to fake a lisp. But he could damn well do everything else.
Anything else, if it meant she’d come back to him…even find the words to admit he’d been wrong. That he’d acted out of fear. That he wanted her as his wife for every reason but the one he’d hurled at her. That he’d been a coward.
The ride to Haldon took no more than ten minutes, but that was long enough for McAlistair to lash down his temper and come up with a plan.
He would do things right this time. Nothing would be left to chance. Evie would have no reason to turn him away again…unless she no longer loved him.
Refusing to dwell on that fear, he left Rose in the stable and, desiring privacy for the first part of his plan, once again let himself in a side door of Haldon without being seen.
He wasn’t surprised to find Whit in his study, the door open, and his head bent over a stack of papers. When it came to running his estates, the man was as predictable as clockwork.
“I want to talk to you.”
Whit started in his chair. “Devil take it, man. Can’t you learn to knock?”
“Yes.”
Whit snorted and set down his pen. He gestured toward a chair in front of the desk. “You might as well have a seat. Care for a drink?”
“Yes. No.” Damn it, he’d never had trouble making up his mind before. “Yes.”
Whit eyed him speculatively—as well he might—but said nothing as he retrieved two glasses of brandy. He handed McAlistair one and resumed his seat. “Right then, what’s on your mind?”
“I’ve come to ask after Evie.” He’d come to ask for Evie, but he figured a man was allowed a bit of nerves in a moment such as this.
Mcalistairs Fortune Page 28
