Lady Eve's Indiscretion

Seven

Deene’s wife was not asleep on his shoulder as she’d have him believe, and she was nervous.

Like a procession of sensory still lifes, his memories of the day told him as much:

Eve’s hand, slender and cold in his when he’d put the wedding ring on her finger.

Eve’s cheek, equally cool when he’d been unable to deny himself the smallest display of dominion outside the church—and she had not kissed him in return.

Eve, clinging in her oldest brother’s embrace for a desperately long moment, until St. Just’s countess had touched her husband’s arm and embraced Eve herself.

A whiff of mock orange coming to Deene’s nose and bringing with it a sense of calm until he saw the way Eve gripped her wine glass so tightly he thought the delicate stem might break.

He’d been prepared for bridal nerves. He’d even been prepared for his own nerves—this was the only wedding night he ever intended to have, after all—but he had not been prepared for his wife to be on the verge of strong hysterics.

A change of plans was called for, or neither one of them would be sane by bedtime.

“Evie.” He brushed her hair back from her temple. “Time to wake up, love. We must greet our staff.”

She straightened and peered out the window. “So many of them, and this is not even your family seat.”

Our family seat. He did not emphasize the point.

“Let me pin you up.”

She turned on the seat while he fashioned something approximating a bun at her nape. The moment was somehow marital, and to Deene, imbued with significance as a result. Deene had laced up, dressed, and undressed any number of ladies, but there was nothing flirtatious in the way Eve presented to him the pale, downy nape of her neck. He kissed her there and felt a shiver go through her.

“You are going to be the sort of husband who is indiscriminate with the placement of his lips on my person, aren’t you?”

She did not sound pleased.

“When we are private, probably. You always smell luscious, and I am only a man.”

His wife looked surprised, but before she could argue with him, he handed her down and began moving with her along the line of waiting servants standing on the drive. They beamed and bobbed at her. She smiled back with such warmth and graciousness that Deene revised his earlier estimation of her state of mind.

She hadn’t been anxious; she’d been terrified of what was to come—and likely still was. As soon as he scooped her up against his chest to carry her over the threshold, all the warmth left her expression, and the corners of her mouth went tight again.

Deene did not set her down when they gained the foyer but addressed the rotund factotum who’d hurried ahead to get the door for them.

“Belt, we’ll take a tray in our sitting room, and my lady will be needing a soaking bath as soon as may be. We’ll not be disturbed thereafter unless we ring. Understood?”

“Very good, my lord.”

“Deene, you may put me down now.”

He started up the steps. “Not a chance, Wife. You’ll dither and dally and want a tour of the place from top to bottom, or get to talking about menus with the housekeeper. You would leave me to my agitated nerves and no consolation for them but the decanter.”

They cleared the first landing. “Agitated nerves? You cannot possibly be serious, Deene.”

He was, somewhat to his surprise. “Humor me, in any case.”

She went quiet, now when he would have appreciated some chatter, some resistance, some measurable response to distract him from the perfect weight of her cradled in his arms. He reached what was to be their private suite and set Eve down on a blue brocade sofa by the windows.

“You’ll have to assist me out of this attire, Wife. I haven’t worn such finery since I took my seat in the damned Lords, and even then it was mostly robes…”

She was up off the sofa, wandering around the room. “I haven’t seen these chambers before.”

She hadn’t seen her husband completely naked before either, but Deene doubted she’d inspect him quite as assiduously as she was peering at the titles of the books on the shelves in the corner. He came up behind her and put his arms around her waist.

“Evie, have mercy upon me and help me get undressed.”

She turned, and he did not step back, so they remained in a loose embrace. “Haven’t you a valet, Deene?”

“I’m married now. Many married fellows make do with a handy and accommodating wife, the last I recall the arrangements.”

“My father…” She paused and started working the sapphire cravat pin loose from all the lace at his throat.

“Your father is old-fashioned in the extreme. I’m not. What was St. Just whispering in your ear about in the receiving line?”

By virtue of one question after another, one article of clothing after another, she eventually got him out of all but his knee breeches. He took pity on her enough to slip into the dressing room between their bedrooms and exchange the last of his wedding finery for a dressing gown and loose trousers, by which time a quantity of food had arrived in the sitting room.

“We are certainly getting the royal treatment,” Deene observed. “Belt himself wheeled that cart in, did he not?”

“Belt.” Eve shoved a book back onto the shelf. “I will recall his name because butler and Belt both begin with B.”

This was important to her. Getting out of her wedding dress was apparently not.

“Let me be your lady’s maid, Evie.” He wanted to take her in his arms and whisper this in her pretty ear, but she was looking quite… prickly.

“I thought my maid came down from Morelands to join this household?”

“And she’s no doubt in the kitchen, partaking of the general merriment occasioned by our nuptials. Hold still.” He moved around behind her and started divesting her of all the layers of clothing hiding her from his view. When she stood only in a sheer white chemise—with a hem lavishly embroidered in gold, blue, and green—Deene took a step back and shrugged out of his dressing gown.

“Take this. The fires aren’t lit yet, and until my naked body is draped over your delectable and satisfied person, it will keep you warm.”

She looked like she wanted to say something off-putting, so he kissed her on the mouth—a swift, no-you-don’t kiss that worked only because he kept his hands to himself rather than pull her tight against his body.

His lady wife took her revenge by shutting the dressing room door when the bath had been delivered. Deene let the wine breathe while he stared at the door and pictured his naked and curvaceous wife all rosy and delicious in her solitary bath. By the time she emerged an hour later, Deene had lowered the level in the champagne bottle by more than half, and the sun had set.

“Shall we light some candles?” Eve asked—perhaps a shade too cheerfully.

“Let’s not. Let’s light the fire and enjoy the shadows.”

She pulled his dressing gown closer around her, but Deene’s lust had been riding him hard, and he could tell she wore nothing beneath the velvet and silk of his clothing.

“My bath revived me,” Eve said, still standing in the dressing room doorway. “I’m quite famished.”

Deene said nothing. The food was before him on the low table in front of the sofa, and Eve was across the room. Unless he was to toss strawberries at her, she’d have to approach him.

“I’ve started the first bottle, Wife. Shall you imbibe?”

“Just a bit, if you please.”

While she perched on the first three inches of the sofa cushion, Deene held his wine glass up to her mouth. She sipped about as much as would inebriate a small Methodist bird.

For a few minutes, he tried—he honestly did—to feed her. She responded with an increasing number of agitated and unhappy looks, until Deene realized the situation was growing desperate.

And between when a man thinks he needs to say something and when the words start spilling from his idiot mouth, insight befell him: Eve’s nerves, her quiet hysteria, whatever she was grappling with, it had to do with her accident.

There would be no teasing her past it, no getting her just tipsy enough, no cajoling or tickling her into more confidence than she honestly possessed. Deene set the wine glass down and rose.

“Come to bed, Evie.”

“To… bed?”

If she’d been pale before, she was a wraith now.

“Going to bed is a signal part of the wedding-night festivities, unless you’d rather spend a few moments before the fire?”

“I would. I very much would. My hair, you see, is still damp, and it goes all to a frazzle if I don’t…” Her voice trailed off, and Deene kept his hand extended to her. When she put her fingers on his palm, they were again—still—ice cold.

It was time to end this. Not because banked lust was beating a physical pulse in Deene’s brain, but because Eve deserved to put these nerves, this lapse of faith in herself—whatever it should be called—behind her. When she came to her feet, he kissed her.

He kissed her the way he’d been longing to kiss her for three weeks, with tenderness and passion and even a little frustration—anger, maybe?—that Eve would bear any lingering burden from a situation she could not have been responsible for.

“Come.” He took her by the hand and led her to the hearth, pausing to retrieve a pair of thick quilts from the dressing room before settling beside her before the fire. “You are nervous, Wife. I would have you explain to me the basis for your disquiet.”

“Wife.”

“That would be you.”

She drew her knees up and laid her cheek on them. “I am not nervous.”

He had the sense she was being honest, which was not encouraging. If she was not nervous, then she was afraid. “There is not one damned thing to be anxious about, Eve Denning. I am the one who has grounds for worry, for it falls to me to ensure your experiences are wholly pleasurable.”

“You do not appear to suffer doubt on this score.”

Her voice was calm enough, but he’d seen her start when he used her married name. “I suffer a proper respect for the challenge before me. Perhaps a kiss for courage won’t go amiss.”

Her hesitation was minute, but then she went up on her knees and kissed him on the mouth. Deene took her by the shoulders and let himself topple back so she was sprawled on top of him.

“That is not a kiss such as would encourage a horny flea, my love.”

“A what?”

“Horny, which indelicate term means a Mister Flea who is hot for his Missus.”

“You are being vulgar and ridiculous.”

Her tone was prim, but his vulgar ridiculousness was working, because she hadn’t moved off him, and her expression bore a hint of curiosity. Deene wrapped his arms around her and started rubbing her back lest she take a notion to retreat.

“Allow me to demonstrate, Marchioness.”

He set his mouth to hers and his will to her seduction. By slow degrees, he investigated her mouth and invited her to do likewise with him, to taste and tease, to explore, to indulge. Somewhere in that kiss, he positioned her so she was straddling him, and he arranged their clothing so he was naked beneath her and they were pressed breasts to chest.

“Deene.” She pulled back and closed the dressing gown.

“I don’t know what you’re fretting over, Evie. We’ve two enormous, fluffy beds to choose from when it comes time to consummate our vows.”

“So we’re just to indulge in these courageous kisses?” By the firelight, her skepticism was evident.

“Precisely so. Kiss me. I was beginning to feel somewhat encouraged.”

She started to smile. He wanted to howl with impatience when he saw caution overtake the curving of her lips. Instead, he palmed her breast through the silk of the dressing gown.

“You’re feeling frisky,” Eve said, watching his hand on her person.

“I’m feeling married.” He levered up by virtue of a dedicated equestrian’s abdominal strength, and continued to fondle her while he reinitiated an openmouthed kiss.

Her control slipped a gratifying degree when Deene applied a gentle pressure to one nipple.

“Husband…” She breathed the word, infused it with a touch of surprise, and graced it with a hint of wonder. He repeated the caress, and she went still, as if her body were listening for the sensations a man intent on pleasuring his lady could create with just his thumb and first finger.

Before she could start thinking about it, Deene rolled with her, so he was above her and she was on her back beneath him.

“Are all husbands as inclined to move their wives about like so much dry goods?”

“Touch me the way I touched you, Evie. We’ll see who’s dry goods.”

She frowned but ran one palm down his chest. “This hair…” She ruffled it, which had Deene’s vitals ruffling as well. He didn’t push his erection any more snugly against her, but neither did he make any effort to disguise it.

“Is it to your liking, Lady Deene?”

“It’s…” She ran her nose through the dusting of hair on his chest, the oddest, most erotic, endearing touch Deene had ever withstood. “It’s peculiar. Soft, but… male. Manly. Even your chest smells good, Deene. I do approve of a fellow who takes his hygiene seriously.”

There followed a bit of torture, while Eve—apparently secure in the notion that marriages could not be consummated on the floor—made a scientific study of Deene’s chest. She listened to his heart. She tentatively, then more firmly, touched his nipples.

The sizzle of pleasure that set off in places low and reproductive had Deene clenching his jaw.

She sniffed at him, and while submitting to all these experiments and investigations, Deene subtly shifted himself above her, until his cock was nestled against the glorious damp heat that was his wife’s sex.

Damp. Thank a merciful God she was damp. Her body was ready for what came next, even if her courage was not. When Eve ran her tongue over Deene’s right nipple, he lowered himself more closely to her and got one arm around her shoulders.

“Evie?”

“Husband.” She blinked up at him. He saw the moment she realized how close their bodies were to joining. As she drew in a breath—no doubt to start another round of prevarications and peregrinations, Deene eased himself forward between her folds.

“Thank Almighty God in a rosy and joyous heaven, that would be me.” He pressed forward one inch, the distance between being a mendicant at the gates of marital bliss and a husband in possession of the key to domestic heaven.

“Lucas?”

He kissed her, a hot, lazy, inflammatory kiss to hide the pleasure and triumph coursing through his blood. “Hmm?”

While Eve fell silent, blinked some more, and lifted a hand only to let it fall beside her head, he eased forward the next blissful inch.

“We are not on the… bed.”

“We’ll get to the bed, Evie. Are you all right?”

God love the woman, she cocked her head as if to consider her answer. Deene started up a slow, shallow rhythm, easing his way to a fuller joining, listening intently for any sign that Eve’s bodily welcome was not as comfortable for her as he’d prayed it would be.

“I am… all right.”

“That is quite too bad.”

She tensed. “I beg your pardon?”

“All right will never suffice. We are consummating our vows. I would have you in transports. Move with me, Evie.”

“Move…?”

He slowed his rhythm more, until she created a sinuous counterpoint to the undulations of his hips, until he was plying her with such focus and purpose it was as if she were inside his body every bit as much as he was inside hers.

“Still all right, Evie?”

“Mmm.” She scooted a little, changing the angle to lock her ankles at the small of his back. The shift was slight and devastating.

“God in heaven, Wife…” His breathing grew harsh, and yet he held off. He did not want her in transports, he needed her in transports—and ecstasies and delights and entire floods of pleasure—before he could think of spending.

Her legs tightened around him, he felt her fingernails gripping his buttocks with a sweet, fierce sting.

And yet for a few more interminable moments, he held off.

“Evie… let go.”

Her breath came harsh against his throat as she started panting. “I can’t get my… I can’t…”

“You shall…” He anchored a hand under her derriere and held her steady for an onslaught of deep, measured thrusts that sent her over the edge. With her mouth open on his neck, he heard and felt the low, keening moan that slipped from her and felt the way her body seized around his cock in glorious, fisting spasms of gratification.

In the middle of it, as her passion was cresting audibly, she found his free hand, laced her fingers with his, and whispered his name.

He could not have held off at that moment to save his soul.

In the days following her wedding, Eve dwelled in an ever-expanding bubble of emotion characterized predominantly by the joy of one whose hopes and dreams have received not just a stay of execution, but a full, unconditional, royal pardon.

She was married—happily, joyously married—and not to some mincing, left-handed cipher, or a fortune hunter of dubious motives, but to a man whom she liked and esteemed greatly. She had chosen not just well, she had chosen wonderfully and wisely.

Better still, she’d chosen a man who showed her both affection and desire in abundance. That she’d been starving for both was a sobering realization, one that threw into high relief just how contorted she’d allowed her view of herself to become.

Of course she desired her husband—what sane woman would not want Lucas Denning in her bed?

Of course she enjoyed his company. He was charming, devoted, and open with her in a way she hadn’t expected but supposed characterized even her parents’ marriage behind closed doors.

The desire took her breath away, but the affection… Deene stole her heart with the pleasure he seemed to take in simply touching her and being in her company. They ate every meal together unless Deene was off in Town, meeting with his solicitors, and that was just the start of ways he found to share her company.

“You’ll come down to the stables when you’ve met with Mrs. Belt?”

Deene passed three juicy strawberries from his plate to hers. He’d had strawberries delivered to their rooms last night long after dark, and what he’d done with a mere, unprepossessing fruit… and that was before he’d started with the chocolate sauce.

Eve studied the treat on her plate and mentally reviewed what her husband had asked her. “I’ll be down as soon as we’ve established a schedule for the maids and footmen, worked out next week’s menus, arranged for the windows to be cleaned both inside and out, and—”

He put a finger to her lips. “And then you’ll come down to see us turn out your foal with his playmates for the first time.”

“Yes, Husband.” He did not understand that a household would not run itself, and having the maids clean the insides of the windows a month after the footmen cleaned the outsides meant the windows were never truly clean.

He kissed her on the lips and left her in a rosy, happy silence, contemplating the masculine pulchritude of his retreating form. She was still contemplating it when her sister-in-law, Anna, the Countess of Westhaven, came to call at midmorning.

“I was on my way into Town from Willow Bend and thought I’d just peek in. If you weren’t yet out of bed, I would have been on my merry way.”

Evie linked her arm through Anna’s and drew her along a path winding between beds of blooming irises. “You would have reported to the entire family that I was having a lie-in in the first week of my marriage, and Their Graces would have started getting ideas.”

Anna’s eyes lit with mischief. “Westhaven and I were nearly bedridden the first three months of our marriage. I know he’s your brother, but I want you to understand that the term wedded bliss can be grounded in fact, Eve.”

“We are not… bedridden.” Not when Deene could accost her in the linen closet, the butler’s pantry, the saddle room, and their bed.

“Are you happy with your choice, Evie?” Anna took a bench in the morning sun, and Eve settled beside her.

“I am quite, quite happy with my husband and with the state of holy”—horny, as Deene termed it—“matrimony. Deene is very considerate.”

Doting would have been a more accurate word.

“Considerate, bah.” Anna’s full mouth flattened. “Considerate, cordial, amicable, civilized. Such words have no place in the vocabulary of those newly wed. Your brothers are worried about you, Eve Denning. They like Deene, but they will cheerfully geld him if he’s not being a proper husband to you.”

St. Just had vowed as much on Eve’s very wedding day. “I should not like my husband gelded.”

Anna, blast her, waited while Eve tried to sort out the thoughts she could admit aloud from the ones she’d carry with her to her grave.

“I believe Deene has been lonely.”

Anna rearranged her skirts. “Go on.”

“He seems to want not just… not just to exercise his marital rights, but to have my company. I’m to join him for all of our meals. I’m to watch the lads with the horses. Deene says I have an instinct for what’s needed to make a horse-and-rider combination a partnership and more experience at it than I realize.”

She’d been particularly pleased with that compliment.

“One hopes a new husband would comment on his wife’s obvious gifts.”

Obvious, perhaps, though Eve herself had lost sight of that one. “I had not realized Deene has such an affectionate nature.”

“In what regard?”

This was an interrogation, plain and simple, and yet Eve wanted to share the state of her marriage—the wonderful state of her marriage—with somebody. “He likes to touch me and not just… all kinds of touches. He takes my hand. He puts his arm around my waist or my shoulders. When he takes a seat beside me, there’s no decorous space between us, even if we’re in company or before the servants. He’s like… a cat, or a dog. Proximity seems to comfort him.”

Brushing her hair comforted him, assisting her to dress and undress comforted him, feeding her, and most wonderful of all—cuddling up the entire night long, not just for a few minutes of postcoital lassitude, comforted him each and every night.

Eve admitted to herself that she took comfort from all these casual generosities on Deene’s part too. They nourished her confidence in some way she could not describe and fed some other emotion she wasn’t likely to discuss with anybody, ever.

“This is all very encouraging, Evie. Never forget to demonstrate to your husband that you appreciate his trust in this regard.”

His trust? “Whatever do you mean?”

The smile Anna sported now was diabolically sweet. “I realize Westhaven is a doting and affectionate brother devoted to his family, but it might surprise you to know that as a husband, he was initially plagued with a certain reticence.”

Reticence ought to have been one of Gayle’s several middle names. “I am dumbfounded to hear this.”

Anna sailed along, either missing the irony or choosing to ignore it. “He required reassurances that his small displays of affection and protectiveness were not merely tolerable but welcome.”

Westhaven requiring reassurances was an intriguing notion. “Do tell.”

“I take my lead from him, of course, but try not to miss an opportunity to reciprocate his advances. If I do not assure him I am charmed by his devotion, he might fall prey to doubt. Doubt is the serpent in the marital garden, Eve. Self-doubt, doubt in one’s partner. You must protect your husband from such a torment. Even when he is a ninnyhammer and cannot bring himself to ask you simple questions, you must give Deene the simple answers.”

My, my, my. Being married was becoming marvelously complicated. “It shall be my pleasure to offer Deene all the reassurances he could possibly want.”

Anna fell silent for one moment while a breeze sprang up and brought the scent of the stables into the garden. “The simple answers too. You tell him you’re glad to be his wife. You tell him you desire him. You tell him you care for him. The actions suited to the words have more meaning when you give your husband both… And then…”

“Then?”

“One fine, fine day, you will find him giving you the words too—if he hasn’t already.”

He had not. This realization was troubling. Not troubling enough to constitute a serpent of doubt, exactly, but a small point to consider.

“Can you stay for tea, Anna?”

“I would not impose. You’ve been glancing toward the stables since I arrived. I hazard Deene will find an excuse to seek you out in the next ten minutes if I do not take my leave.”

Anna was as good as her word, tooling on her way after more smiles and hugs, leaving Eve to change into attire suitable for the stables and go in search of her husband. As she wandered through the garden, Eve took a minute to savor another darkly potent emotion coloring all her days.

She felt… vindicated. Fiercely, unendingly vindicated, for having held her peace for more than seven years, for having carried in her heart the true dimensions of her folly as a much younger woman. For having never told a single soul the exact extent of her heartache and loss.

Never again would the name of her malefactor be allowed to form even in her mind. She had, by virtue of relentless determination and a willingness to bear a load of sheer, nerve-wracking anxiety, been given a fresh start—in her marriage, in her life.

She fully intended to grab that fresh start with both hands, and to never let go.

If that meant she continued to bear alone the full measure of her regrets and losses, then she’d gladly bear that lonely burden. She was not foolish enough—innocent enough—to believe a gift the magnitude of her fresh start could be won without some private cost that must, must remain forever hers alone.

“My lord, we must continue to advise you against pursuing this course.”

Hooker appropriated not the royal “we,” not even the pontifical “we,” but a new pronoun, the legal “we.” Deene had been hearing it a lot in the past few weeks, and with each hearing, it grated all the more.

Hooker inhaled audibly, no doubt ready with another sermon about the follies of bringing suit against a father whom nobody could seriously criticize, despite—“albeit, granted, nevertheless, and notwithstanding”—Dolan’s deplorable antecedents and regrettable associations with trade.

“Stow it, Hooker.” Deene gathered up the papers that had at long last been drafted for submission to the courts. “I will read these in the next several days, make any needed corrections, and expect to have suit joined by this time next week.” Deene rose, rolling the bundle into a neat sheaf and holding it out to the thin clerk to be tied with a red ribbon.

“If it is your lordship’s wish, we shall proceed with all due, deliberate, and purposeful haste, however there is the small matter of the, um, fees, for the filing and so forth.”

In other words, unless Hooker’s bill was brought up to date, there would be some delay in the filing of the petition, then another delay involving some redrafting, then a delay to further research some specious detail, all of which would add substantially to the unpaid bill.

“Have you an accounting prepared, Hooker?”

“It so happens I do, your lordship.” He snapped his fingers at the clerk, who melted from the room. “Allow me the honor, your lordship, of congratulating you on your recent nuptials. I understand one must act with dispatch sometimes in arranging the ceremony, though might I inquire as to when the settlement negotiations will take place?”

This question, with its unflattering implications toward Deene and his bride, Hooker did not ask before his minion.

Deene tugged on a pair of riding gloves. “The negotiations are concluded. I’ve reached a private agreement between me and the Windham family, a copy of which is kept with my personal papers, and another given into the keeping of the lady’s brother, the Earl of Westhaven. The arrangements did not affect the business of the marquessate.”

“That is very unusual, my lord.”

“I want control of my situation, Hooker, just as I want control of my niece’s future. I should hope you are clear on that point, if no other.”

The clerk returned with another sheaf of papers bundled together, this time with a gold ribbon. Such wits, these lawyers.

“I’ll bid your lordship good day, then. Again, congratulations, my lord.”

Deene did not leave in any particular hurry, but the more time he spent among his solicitors, the more he dreaded the very scent of the place: old books, anxiety, and greed. That he would pollute the early days of his marriage with these trips to Town was a measure of how desperately he wanted to resolve Georgie’s situation.

He was unmercifully plagued with the knowledge that he had yet to fully explain the matter to Evie. He waited for a quiet moment when he might casually mention it, but the quiet moments were so precious with his new wife, and they invariably became, or immediately followed, passionate moments.

He sought for a pause in the activities in the stables when he might casually pass along some relevant asides, but how to frame such a problem as this?

“By the way, I’ll be plunging us into scandal and penury, attempting to gain custody of my niece.”

“Don’t take this amiss, but I’ll be wrecking the peace of our union by litigating a family issue in public.”

Almighty God in heaven, he had to tell her and soon, before some well-meaning gossip—or Windham family member—decided to see to the matter. If his marriage was to enjoy one-tenth of the potential he sensed it had, then he must find a way to make Eve understand Georgie’s situation, and soon.

Deene climbed into his coach, equally preoccupied with the thought of joining his wife for dinner and the notion that he ought to pay a call on Dolan and make one last offer to settle Georgie’s future like… civilized men.

“Gentleman” being too far a stretch for such a one as Deene’s brother-in-law.

“Was this meeting any more successful than its predecessors?”

Anthony lounged against the squabs, looking as if he’d had nothing better to do than catch a nap in the middle of the afternoon.

“You’ve taken to lurking in coaches, Cousin?” Deene settled beside him on the forward-facing seat.

“Discretion seemed the better part of valor, and no, I didn’t plan on this. Rather than loiter in the street, I appropriated a bit of privacy. I didn’t know you’d be in Town today.”

“I did not particularly want to be in Town, but the pleadings in Georgie’s case are finally drafted.”

Anthony smiled faintly. “So holy matrimony is agreeing with you?”

“Quite.”

His cousin’s smile became wolfish. “And your marchioness, is she similarly pleased with the institution?”

The question rankled. “It is my pleasure and duty to ensure she is.”

Anthony’s smile faltered. “Quaint, Deene. I give it two years or one healthy son, whichever shall first occur, and you’ll be living separately.”

“I believe we’ve had this discussion. How goes the planting in Kent?”

Deene managed to keep the conversation oriented toward innocuous matters until they reached the Mayfair townhouse. The footmen were waiting outside the coach, the steps in place, when it occurred to Deene that marriage had put an option in his hands he needed to exercise.

“Eve and I will be spending more time in Town as time goes on, Anthony.”

“Is it wise to be showing her off when the rumors are still circulating at a great rate?”

“I want her to show me off, you idiot. The wedding should have the rumors scotched quite neatly.”

Now Anthony looked pained.

“Spit it out, Cousin. I was going to say I’d understand if you wanted your own establishment in Town, since dwelling with a pair of newlyweds might not be to your taste.”

Anthony’s brows rose. “My own…? You think I’d desert the cause now, when just last night some jackass had the temerity to intimate your situation with Georgina might be comparable to Byron’s with his half sister?”

Rage welled at Anthony’s quiet question. Rage and a determination to see Jonathan Dolan ruined. Byron was rumored to be the father of his half sister’s third child, though proving such a thing was impossible.

“Who said that?”

“I will not tell you. The man was far into his cups, and his fellows shut him up immediately with apologies and excuses all around. I did not want you to know, because now you’ll challenge Dolan and you a newlywed and it all just being talk and a duel being no better for Georgina’s situation than outright murder.”

“Talk that vicious is going to ruin Georgina’s life, Anthony. Dolan has to be stopped.”

But why now? Why must this issue be coming to point non plus now, when all Deene wanted was to spend time with his wife?

Very likely because Dolan had planned it that way.

“If I need a second, Anthony, will you serve?”

“Of course. Is there anybody else you’d like me to speak to?” The reply was gratifyingly swift and certain.

“Not yet. Even asking such a thing will fuel the rumors.”

“Then I shall keep my counsel and wait for further orders from you. My regards to my new cousin, the marchioness.”

Anthony climbed out, and when Deene wanted to head directly for Surrey, he instead followed his cousin into the town house, wrote several notes to be delivered by messenger, and only then allowed himself to turn his direction toward home.

“My love, I grow concerned.”

Kesmore’s expression suggested he wasn’t quite teasing, though in the course of their marriage, he teased his lady wife a great deal.

“Then I am concerned as well,” Louisa replied. She had to stifle a yawn as she spoke though, since his lordship’s version of a late-afternoon nap could leave even a stalwart wife more drowsy than refreshed.

“Such loyalty.” Kesmore rolled to blanket her naked body with his own. “I should kiss you for it.” He did, a lovely, thoughtful coda to the beautiful composition that was Joseph Carrington in an amorous mood.

When Louisa could form coherent sentences again, she seized the moment. “What’s bothering you, Joseph?” Whatever it was, it could not be of too great moment, given that her husband’s body was indicating a notion to add another movement to his most recent marital sonata.

He nuzzled her neck. “I got a note from Deene this morning, delivered out from Town by private messenger.”

No man had ever used his nose to such great advantage in the course of marital relations. Louisa’s husband had a way of breathing her in, canvassing her features with his proboscis, gathering her scents the way other husbands might gather up compliments to toss back at their wives.

“That tickles, Husband.”

“Tickling is a fine thing, you might consider—given the magnitude of your devotion to my ever-precarious well-being—reciprocating. How well do you know Deene?”

Louisa did not tickle her husband. If the man wanted tickling, he was going to have to beg for it. She did, however, meet his gaze and saw his question was serious.

“Very well. He’s a lifelong neighbor, he served with Bart and St. Just, he’s of the same political persuasion as Papa most of the time, and he was always underfoot as a boy because he had neither male siblings nor much family with whom to associate.”

“And he served with me, and now he is family in fact. A situation is brewing, and while I do not know the exact extent of it, I believe Deene and his lady need our help.”

Louisa loved her husband for any number of reasons: because he was a wonderful father, because he made her feel like the loveliest woman on earth, because he was protective of those he cared for right down to the smallest runt piglet ever to squeal its way into their keeping.

At that moment, she loved him because he had neither charged off to Deene’s aid without confiding in her, nor had he even considered such a notion. To be married to Joseph Carrington was to have not just an adoring and passionate husband, but to have a friend, a best, most loyal, devoted friend, and—almost as wonderful—to be that sort of friend to him as well.

Louisa brushed his hair back from his brow, wrapped her legs around his flanks, and kissed him on the mouth. “Tell me what’s to be done, Husband. If there’s something amiss with Deene, then it’s amiss with our Evie too, and that we cannot allow.”

It took another half hour, but when they did get around to discussing the matter further, they were—as usual regarding anything of consequence—of one mind about it.

“You see how Aelfreth looks down and to the left?”

Deene saw no such thing. He saw the way his wife never took her eyes off the combination of Aelfreth and King William as they circled the practice arena. She had the same focus in bed sometimes, even when her eyes were dreamy with heat and desire.

“And the significance of this?”

“It’s a matter of attention, Deene. Aelfreth signals the horse to pay attention in the same direction just by where he looks.”

“For God’s sake, Eve, the horse can’t see where the man on his back is looking.”

A particular dimple flashed on the left side of Eve’s mouth. Deene had only recently discovered this dimple, and it fascinated him.

“When I’m… sitting on you, Deene, straddling your lap, and your eyes are closed, can you tell where I’m looking?”

“Of course.”

“Tell Aelfreth to lift his eyes up, then, unless you want William thinking the only interesting things in the arena are on the ground to the left of him. He’ll eventually go crooked like that if you don’t break Aelfreth’s habit now.”

“This is just a schooling session, Evie, a little variety in the routine. When they’re on course, Aelfreth will be looking from jump to jump, from straightaway to turn.”

She folded her arms, looking as prim as a governess. “Every time we’re around King William, we’re teaching him something, Deene. I have explained this to you.”

She had, and her little lectures and homilies were charming—also very insightful, and in just the two weeks his marchioness had been in residence, Deene could see a difference in the way his equine youngsters and their lads were going on.

He bellowed at Aelfreth that the marchioness said to look the hell where he was going, which provoked a sheepish grin from the jockey—and immediate compliance such as Deene’s command alone would likely not have merited.

“You’ve made slaves of my lads, Wife. The horses are no better.”

“Such flattery. Are we to drive out today?”

If the weather was fine, they’d taken to picnicking at various secluded spots on the property. Sometimes Deene made love to his wife in the lazy afternoon sunshine, sometimes he dozed with his head in her lap, and sometimes—the times he suspected they both liked the most—they mostly talked.

“I had something else in mind today.”

Her expression became… guarded. “Husband, we got a late start this morning because you had something else in mind, and while I always enjoy what you have in mind—”

“As I enjoy what you occasionally have in mind, Wife, but this is not that kind of something else.”

And still she was wary. When it came to lovemaking, Eve took a little—a very little—convincing to try new things. Whether it was a new position, a new location, a new variation on something he’d shown her previously, she always hesitated:

“Lucas, this cannot be decent…”

“Husband, I am not at all sure…”

“Deene, are you quite certain things can go that way…?”

She was not shy, exactly, so much as she lacked confidence in her responses—or confidence in her entitlement to enjoy the God-given passion of her own nature.

And yet, she always gathered her courage and met him halfway, something he loved about her almost as much as he loved the way she gave him small touches and caresses throughout the day.

“Where are you taking me, Deene?”

He laced his fingers with hers and drew her in the direction of the unused foaling stalls. “This is a surprise, Evie. I wanted to give you this surprise the morning after our wedding.”

“You did give me a surprise, as I recall.”

He’d awakened her with an introduction to the pleasures of making sweet, sleepy love spooned around each other amid the warmth of the covers.

“One can’t offer his new wife too many pleasant surprises.”

“Is this a pleasant surprise then?”

Always, the wariness. “I hope and pray you find it so.” At the serious note in his voice, Eve paused to peer over at him. He could not back out now, and maybe because of that, the vague anxiety in his chest gathered into a tighter knot. “If you don’t like this surprise, you don’t have to keep it. I can send it back.”

She resumed their progress, moving into the mostly empty barn. “This is a gift then?”

“Customarily, a husband presents his wife with a token of his esteem following consummation of the nuptials.”

“You are being sentimental, then. I love it when you dote on me, Deene, but I understand we must be mindful of the economies, and I’d have you freed from any—”

She stopped dead outside a roomy stall bedded in fresh, deep straw.

“Lucas, what have you done? Good God… what have you done?”

Eve could not draw breath. She could only stare and cling to her husband’s hand.

“I am going to faint.”

“You shall not.” Deene moved behind her and wrapped his arms around her, a bulwark against the roaring in her ears and the constriction in her chest. “Breathe, Evie. It’s just one more horse.”

Oh, but not just any horse. Eve knew those gorgeous brown eyes, the deep chest, the little snip of pink skin on the end of the mare’s big, velvety nose.

“She’s white now, no longer gray. This is my Sweetness, isn’t it? Tell me this is my dearest… oh, Husband. What have you done?”

“I can send her back, if you’d rather not… I didn’t want to upset you, Evie. But you’d asked, and I thought perhaps you’d worried…”

“Hush.” She turned in his arms to put her hand over his mouth, but then craned her neck to keep the mare in her sight. “Oh, hush. She will never leave my care again, never. You must promise me, Lucas. Right now, swear to me she is mine to keep.”

“She is yours to keep, always. I swear it, vow it, and promise it. It’s in the settlements, it’s in the bill of sale, it’s in my last will and testament. She will always be yours to keep.”

That he would do such a thing and do it so thoroughly… Eve could not hold to her husband tightly enough, could not take her eyes from the mare even when tears made the horse’s image blurry.

And while Deene stroked Eve’s back and held her upright on her shaking knees, Eve did breathe. She breathed in, she breathed out, and she made a tremendous discovery. The emotion welling up from her soul made her lungs feel too small and her heart beat hard in her chest. It affected her perceptions, slowed down her senses of sound and vision, made her sense of scent more acute. In many particulars, her body was mistaking the moment for one of anxiety approaching panic.

Except… except her husband held her securely, and her mind understood now—seven years later—that the other casualty of Eve’s great fall was well and happy. The mare was content, in good weight. Sweetness’s eyes bore the same steady, clear gaze Eve had long associated with her, and her coat was blooming with good health and proper nutrition.

Eve’s physical symptoms might resemble panic, but the emotions flooding her were gratitude, relief, and overarching all others, what she felt was soaring, unbounded, bottomless joy.