Lady Eve's Indiscretion (16 page)

“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?

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 offspring 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.

Meteor was in his paddock, one shared by an aging pony named Grendel. They paused in their grazing as Eve approached, but only Meteor sidled over to the fence.

“Hello, old friend.”

Between his cheekbones, at the throat latch where his neck and his head joined, Meteor had a sweet spot, a place he couldn't reach himself that he loved to have scratched. Eve's ritual with this horse started with attending to that spot for him, and Meteor's ritual with her with allowing the familiarity.

“Have you ever been so angry you're sick with it?”

The pony flicked an ear, but being a pony, did not abandon his grass merely to watch another horse being cosseted.

“Deene said,
of
course
I'm angry. What does he know? Would you like an apple?”

The horse did not answer, except by ingesting the proffered slice and turning big, brown, beseeching eyes on Eve.

“You are such a gentleman, my friend.”

Deene had been a gentleman. Eve was going to have to thank him, and that would rankle, but not thanking him rankled more.

Everything
rankled. “I can hardly think. I'm so overset these days. If I were a girl, I'd saddle up and go for a gallop, leave the grooms behind, and let the wind blow the cobwebs from my soul. Another slice? Grendel will soon come to investigate.”

Grendel did not investigate, exactly, but he turned his grazing in the direction of Eve's tête-à-tête with Meteor.

“I keep recalling things, things that make no sense. We had an early spring that year, and then an onion snow, so as I lay there in the mud, I smelled both green grass and snow. Snow has no scent, but it did that day.”

She fed the stallion another slice. “I did not call for help because I was afraid Canby would find me.”

And oh, the shame of that, to lie in the cold mud not just helpless and hurting, but terrified—and afraid she'd wet herself from fear if nothing else. Grendel lifted his head as if considering the probability of cadging an apple slice and took a step closer to the stallion.

“All I could think was I would never be able to face my family, though if I hadn't been in such a tearing hurry to get back to them, I might not have overfaced my mare on bad ground, and lamed us both for the duration. Thank God my brother Devlin found me first. I had been such a fool. I did not know the half of it then.”

Meteor had another sweet spot, just below his withers. As a girl, Eve had scratched that spot for him until her arm had ached. She pushed the cloth full of apples near the fence and climbed between the boards.

“I don't have to marry. I know this.” When she applied her fingernails to the horse's shaggy spring coat, a shower of coarse dark hairs cascaded to the ground. “But where would that leave me? Papa's little charmer, the doting maiden aunt who isn't a maiden.”

Who
will
never
be
a
maiden
again.

Who threw away her greatest treasure on a worthless, scheming, lying, manipulative,
evil
man.

The anger hit her then like the initial staggering gust of wind announcing a brutal tempest, had her leaning into Meteor's neck just to stay on her feet.
Yes
, she was angry. She was infuriated, enraged, magnificently wroth over a past she could not change and a future with too few choices.

Deene had been right about that, but as Grendel sidled close enough to poke his nose under the fence and help himself to an apple, Eve identified the emotion fueling all her anger, and maybe some of her shame as well.

As the tears came down again, what Eve felt was bitter, heartrending sorrow.

***

“Where the hell have you been?”

Anthony stopped short at Deene's tone, and from the surprise on his cousin's face, Deene surmised nobody had warned Anthony that Deene was in residence at Denning Hall.

“Good morning to you, too, Cousin.” In a blink, Anthony's features had composed themselves into a slight smile.

“I beg to differ.” Deene aimed a look at the footmen stationed at either end of the breakfast buffet, and they silently left the room. “I thought you were summoned here from Town, Anthony. I come down on your heels and find my cousin is nowhere to be found.”

“I'm to report all my comings and goings to you now?” His tone was mild as he helped himself to a full plate.

“Since you are my only adult family, my heir, and what keeps my senior stewards in line, yes, I think that would be both courteous and prudent. Tea?”

“Please.”

Deene moved the pot that had been sitting by his left elbow to Anthony's place on his right. “I came out here in part to find you, Anthony, and instead spent more than a few minutes wondering what had become of you. They were not comfortable minutes.”

“I'm touched. Pass the cream, if you please.”

The alternative to bracing his cousin on sight would have been an interview in the library, with Deene seated at the estate desk and Anthony called onto the carpet like a truant schoolboy awaiting a birching.

That would not serve. They were family first, employer and employee second—or so Deene hoped. Deene passed the cream and the sugar.

“I was in Surrey, and congratulations are in order. I've become a papa again. Where's the salt?”

Deene passed the salt cellar too, but took a moment forming his reply. “A papa,
again
? Did I miss a wedding, Anthony?”

“Of course not. There is cheese in this omelet.”

“I prefer cheese in my omelets, and because the kitchen had no notion you'd be gracing us with your presence, my preferences carried the day. Anthony, explain yourself.”

“There's little to explain.” Anthony put a spoonful of egg on a toast point and took a bite. “I maintain a household in Surrey for my domestic comfort, and as happens in the usual course, the household includes children. I have two girls and now a boy. There was a stillbirth too, so the children's mother was a trifle worried this time around.”

Deene looked at the fellow munching on toast and eggs beside him and saw a familiar figure: blond hair, blue eyes, a lanky, elegant build, and the Deene family features on his face.

And yet he saw a stranger. “One can understand why you would detour to greet your son upon his arrival into the world. I gather mother and child—children—are doing well?”

“She's from peasant stock. Mary Jane knows how to look after herself, and I provide amply for her and the children. Do I take it you also like cinnamon on your toast?”

Deene's gaze fell on the little container sitting near the butter. “Occasionally, and in my coffee.”

“Bit of an extravagance, don't you think?”

A casual question, but it might also be an attempt to shift the interrogation away from Anthony's bastard children and to put Deene on the defensive.

Or were the rumors in Town just taking a greater toll on Deene's composure than he'd realized?

“I have larger problems than whether I can afford to stock my spice rack, Anthony, or perhaps I should say, we have greater problems.”

Anthony frowned at him. “If you're going to harangue me about the ledgers, old boy, I haven't had a decent night's sleep in nigh a week, and much of what you want is kept in Town.”

“Anthony, while you have the luxury of maintaining a casual establishment with a female, I am very publicly soon to be in the market for a wife.”

Anthony topped off his teacup and stared at his plate. “I know you feel you must marry, Deene, but you're hardly at your last prayers, and if need be, I can stick my neck in the marital noose. If nothing else, we know I can get children. Mary Jane will raise ten kinds of hell, but sometimes a little liveliness has enjoyable results.”

“You'd marry to spare me the effort?”

Anthony's gaze when he met Deene's eyes was hard to read. “I
am
your heir. I
am
your only adult family. I
am
your cousin. Yes, I would marry if you asked it of me. I don't like to think I've spent most of my life laboring in the Denning vineyards so Prinny can get his fat fingers on all our wealth should the title go into escheat.”

Something eased in Deene's chest, a doubt, a worry, something he was relieved not to have to name.

“You cannot know how grateful I am to hear it, Anthony, because our situation might come to such a pass.”

They spent more than an hour in the breakfast parlor, dissecting each rumor, tracing its likely impact.

“Kesmore isn't a gossip, but he lurks in the usual places—at the clubs, in the card rooms, and at Tatt's. I trust his information.”