Lady Eve's Indiscretion

Eight

Deene did not rush her, so Eve knew not how long she stood suffused with happiness outside the mare’s stall. The lightness in her body was… celestial, like flying over a whole course of jumps in perfect footing, from perfect spots, in perfect rhythm, to perfect landings.

Like riding this very mare.

When Eve had thoroughly abused Deene’s handkerchief and probably her husband’s poor nerves as well, she managed a question. “Is she sound?”

She felt the tension ease out of him, as if all through her weeping he’d been holding his breath. “Dead sound. She rides to hounds, Evie, and the squire who parted with her said she’s his best afternoon horse.”

Sound, indeed. “All this time, all these years, I’ve wondered, but I haven’t known how to ask. I haven’t known whom to ask. I have prayed for this horse nightly, prayed she was not suffering a painful life, longing for her misery to end, or worse…”

He gently pushed Eve’s head to his chest. “She has been in the care of a hounds-and-horses fellow by the name of Belmont, farther south of us. He gave her a year off then bred her twice. Her first foal has been under saddle for a year, which is probably the only reason he allowed me to buy her. Her progeny—both fillies—show every sign of having their dam’s good sense and heart.”

“Then St. Just chose very well for her. I must thank him.”

“There’s something else you have to do, Evie.”

Sheltered against Deene’s body, Eve knew exactly what he intended to say. It should provoke all the panic she hadn’t felt at the sight of the mare. It should have her ears roaring again and her hands going cold.

“You want me to ride her.”

“No.” He held her so gently. “What I want does not matter. I hope you believe that. What matters—the only thing that matters at all—is what you want, and what you want at this moment, Eve Denning, more than anything in the world, maybe more than you’ve ever wanted anything, is to be up on your mare again.”

There was… a tremendous gift in being known and understood like this. A relief from loneliness at a fundamental level. There was healing in it, and more joy, and also… truth. While Eve remained in her husband’s embrace, letting that truth seep through her mind and heart, Deene went on speaking.

“I’ll take you up with me—the mare is in quite good condition, she’ll tolerate it for a bit—I’ll put you on a leading line or a longe. I’ll mount up on Beast and stay right at your stirrup, if you prefer. I’ll walk by your boot. I’ll lead her where no one else can see us, but, Eve, you want to get back on that horse.”

Eve felt tears pricking her eyes again, tears that had something to do with the horse but more to do with the man who’d brought the horse back into Eve’s life.

She held on tightly to her husband even while she figuratively grabbed her courage with both hands. “I think astride will do for a start.”

She’d surprised him. When she glanced up, he was smiling down at her with more tenderness than she’d beheld in his eyes even under intimate circumstances.

“Astride makes perfect sense. The lads are under orders to stay clear of the loafing paddock, and I bought the mare’s saddle and bridle when I purchased her.”

He’d thought of everything, bless him. And when Eve said she wanted to saddle up her own horse, Deene dutifully took himself off to fetch her a pair of boys’ breeches.

“And, Deene, bring Beast along too. We can go for a ramble down to the stream.”

His smile at this pronouncement would have lit up the entire world—and it scotched any second thoughts Eve had about the wisdom of her decision. As Eve took down the headstall and lead rope hanging outside the horse’s loose box, her smile was quieter but no less joyous.

War changed a man, Deene reflected, and not often for the better. He watched his wife knotting Aelfreth’s signature red kerchief around the boy’s head, and realized marriage was changing him too.

A soldier knew to be only guardedly protective of his fellows. The man sharing a bottle over the evening campfire might be taken prisoner by the French while bathing in a river the next morning.

The promising young lieutenant reciting ribald poetry at breakfast might be shot dead by noon.

When Deene had stopped recently to make a list—something he hadn’t done in the years since Waterloo—he’d realized that, save for St. Just, Wellington himself, Kesmore, and several others, few of Deene’s comrades-in-arms had survived the war.

This made the protectiveness he felt toward his wife somewhat easier to tolerate, but it did nothing to explain the shift Deene had felt toward everything from the weather, to his properties, to the children Anthony claimed to be raising on a tidy manor only several miles away.

Eve patted Aelfreth’s arm and gave him some last-minute instructions before approaching her husband. “My lord, it’s going to rain. Do we remain here or repair to the books?”

She was smiling at him—he had a whole catalogue of her smiles by now, both with and without her dimple—and she was ready to accommodate whatever his pleasure might be.

“We tend to the books.” He could have her to himself that way, and she made even something as tedious as ledgers more bearable. “Aelfreth and Willy can go for a mud gallop while we stay warm and dry.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.” She slipped an arm around his waist and wandered with him toward the house. “I’ve had a note from Louisa. She and Kesmore will be calling on us soon, and then I suppose the floodgates will open.”

“Must they?”

He liked her family, liked them a great deal, but he’d loved these weeks to get to know his wife and her smiles. He was developing some sense of her silences too, though, so he settled his arm around Eve’s shoulders. “Tell me, Wife.”

“I should not resent it when my sisters observe the civilities, but, Deene, I do. I am jealous of my time with you.”

“How gratifying to know.”

She punched him in the ribs. “Rotten man. You’re supposed to say you feel the same way.”

Of course he felt the same way. He did not admit this. Instead, as soon as they had gained the library, he closed the door behind them and locked it. At the one small, additional click of the latch, Eve looked up from where she stood by the fire.

“We’re to attend our ledgers, Lucas Denning.”

“Quite. I’ve consulted my accounts and found it has been more than twelve hours since I’ve enjoyed my wife’s considerable intimate charms. Almost eighteen hours, in fact, which deficit must be immediately rectified if I’m to concentrate on anything so prosaic as ledgers.”

“And what of luncheon? What of being conscientious about one’s duties? What of—oof.”

He lifted her bodily onto a corner of the estate desk and stepped closer. “I am being conscientious about my duty to the succession.”

“No one could ask more of you in this regard, Husband, but it’s the middle of the—”

As if they hadn’t made love at practically every hour of the day and night. He’d worried at first about asking too much of her, and he still did. Eve never refused him, but neither did she initiate lovemaking.

Not yet.

“Kiss me, my lady. If you kiss me long enough, it will no longer be the middle of the day.”

She looped her arms around his neck. “You have made a wanton of me, Deene.”

“You worry about this?” Something a little forlorn in her voice had him lifting his face from the soft, fragrant juncture of her shoulder and neck to peer into her eyes. “You do. You worry that a perfectly lovely passion for your new husband is something untoward. What am I to do with you?”

She didn’t contradict him. Didn’t tease or flirt. She regarded him steadily out of green eyes shadowed by doubt. “I know I shouldn’t fret over such a thing. We’re newly wed, after all.”

He had the sense she recited that fact to herself in more moments of self-doubt than he’d perceived. Far more than she should. Was this why she never approached him with amatory intent?

Rather than increase her sense of self-consciousness, Deene started frothing her skirts up at her waist. “Tell me something, Lady Deene. Are you ogling the footmen hereabouts? There’s one fellow in particular, the blond with the cheeky smile, with a nice set of shoulders on him.”

“Godfrey. He’s sweet on the tweeney. Why would I ogle him?”

Deene set aside a moment’s consternation that Eve knew the man’s name and the name of his current interest. “Because he’s devilish handsome, and I suspect some sort of relation to me on the wrong side of the blankets.”

“He’s a boy. I do not ogle—Deene, what are you doing?”

“Removing these wildly embroidered silk drawers. Your sister Jenny should have a shop for gentlemen to patronize, where they might buy such underthings for their chères amies.”

“She’d die of mortification first. Stop looking at me.”

Deene loved to look at his wife. In intimate places, her hair had a reddish tint to the gold, and her skin had a luminous quality. “Lie back, Evie, but tell me: If you are such a wanton, do you ever think of what it would be like to make love to, say, my cousin Anthony?”

She did not lie back. She glared at Deene as if he’d stolen her last bite of cherry tart. “Are you mad? Anthony is a nice enough man, and he bears a pale resemblance to you, but—I cannot think when you touch me like that.”

Like that was with just his thumb, ruffling her curls and glancing over the little bud at the apex of her sex. “You never think of anybody but me in these intimate circumstances, do you, Wife?”

“I cannot think—You’re still looking at me.”

He intended to look a good deal closer, too. Had been thinking about it ever since he’d assisted her at her bath just a couple of hours earlier in the day. “A truly wanton woman would be seeing every man as an opportunity to copulate, Evie. She’d be restraining herself from flirting with everything in breeches, and on occasion, with other women too. She’d be eyeing the lads, the footmen, her husband, as if plagued by a hunger that knew no satiety.”

Deene kissed her, mostly to get her to lie back on the desk, but when he opened his eyes, Eve was studying him.

“And you, Deene. Do you find yourself interested in other women?”

He straightened and ambled over to the couch to retrieve two pillows. One he tossed to the floor for his knees—he intended to be kneeling for some little while—the other he placed in the middle of the desk blotter. This was a delaying tactic to allow him to choose his words carefully.

A man wanted to say the right thing, to be honest, but not more honest than he had to be.

“I desire only you, Eve Denning, and cannot foresee a time when I will desire anybody else but you. I desire you right now, in fact, and in less than five minutes, I will desire you even more than I do at this moment. My fervent wish is that your inclinations are similar with regard to the person of your husband. That you enjoy his attentions—and his attentions only, I might point out—makes you a devoted wife and the farthest thing from a wanton.”

She wasn’t fooled. He could tell by the exact, curious angle of her head that she understood his words were only a limited reply. As Deene sank to his knees between her legs and breathed in the clean scent of his wife’s intimate person, he realized he was not going to tell her he loved her until he’d also been honest about how far he was willing to go to achieve his ends where Georgie was concerned.

“Deene?” Eve’s hand landed in his hair. “Lucas, what on earth are you—?”

He settled his mouth on the seat of her pleasure, and for long moments thereafter, the only sounds in the library were the cozy hiss and pop of the fire, and Eve’s sighs of pleasure.

When he’d introduced his wife to one more avenue of sexual pleasure, Deene let her bring him off with her hand—something she had a positive genius for—then set their clothing to rights, unlocked the door, and ordered luncheon from the footman in the corridor.

Married life worked up a man’s appetite.

“I do wonder, you know.” Even though she wasn’t quite as prim and tidy as she had been thirty minutes earlier, Eve still managed to project an air of domestic calm.

“What do you wonder about?”

“Are all new couples as… enthusiastic about their marital duties as we are?”

Her question was fraught with insecurity, making Deene regret his earlier reference to the damned succession. “Ask your sisters, why don’t you? I’m sure they’re dying to hear what you think of marriage and of my efforts as a husband and lover.”

Her brows rose. “One doesn’t think to discuss such things, even with sisters.”

“Yes, one does. I trust your reports will be flattering, so you can’t accuse yourself of breaching any kind of marital loyalty.” He frowned at her. “Your reports will be flattering, won’t they?”

She beamed at him. “They will be adoring, Deene. Gushing, breathless, and quite appreciative as well. Also lengthy—quite lengthy and fulsome. And you’re right: Sindal, Hazelton, and Kesmore all needed either an heir or a spare. I’m sure my sisters will want to compare notes.”

Which wasn’t at all what he’d meant. His muttered, “Hang the blooming succession,” however was obscured by a stout knock on the door. “Our staff knows not to knock softly when we’re behind a closed door. That ought to tell you something, Wife.”

They spent the afternoon together in the library on the sofa, Eve with the household books, Deene trying to focus on the racing-meet schedule for the upcoming season.

While he mostly studied his pretty wife.

“I’ll be going into Town tomorrow, my lady. Is there any errand I can run for you?”

She glanced up, a pair of his reading glasses perched on her nose. “You do not enjoy these visits to Town, Husband. Shall I go with you?”

He reached over to remove her spectacles. “Not this time. If you want a shopping outing, I am happy to plan one of those and trot about at your heels like an obedient swain.”

For an instant, he thought she was going to pry, but for what he had to say to Dolan, he could not have an audience, much less one as tenderhearted as his marchioness. “Will you have time to ride out with me before you go, Deene?”

“Of course.” He folded the glasses and passed them back to her. “Was it hard for you to ask that of me?”

She nodded. “I should just take the lads, make it a hack in company, but I feel… more comfortable when you’re up on Beast. I think Sweetness has a fondness for your gelding.”

“My gelding has a fondness for you. Every creature on this property is in your thrall, Wife, including me.”

He’d meant it as a tease, but in her grave smile, he saw she’d heard the truth of it too.

“I worry, Lucas Denning.” She climbed across a cushion and tucked herself against his side. It wasn’t a sexual overture, but it was an overture, and he treasured it as such.

“About?”

“I have not been this happy… ever. Not ever. I thought I was once, as a girl, but I was a fool. You know I got into some difficulties earlier, before my come out?”

Instinct told Deene that with no warning whatsoever, the moment had become fraught. He knew very well there had been difficulties, but he had not hoped she’d confide the nature of those difficulties to him quite so early in their marriage. Deene considered distracting her with kisses, but instead wrapped his arms around her.

“Your brothers mentioned some menial who’d gotten ideas far above his station. I understood it came to naught.”

He let the words hang between them while he nuzzled her temple and waited.

“I made a complete, bleating fool of myself, Deene. I jeopardized everything and everybody I loved. No young lady was ever as stupid as I, or so lucky to escape the worst consequences of her folly.”

“You were very young, as I understand it. I cannot begin to tell you the idiocies I committed when I was very young. I should be dead several times over, of drink, of stupidity, of excess.”

In his arms, he felt her relax fractionally. He might not have said the exact right thing, but neither had he said the wrong thing.

“You are such a comfort to me, Husband. I should tell you this more often.”

Deene propped his chin on her crown. “You are a comfort to me as well, Evie. I used to abhor rainy days, for example, and now I enjoy them even though you keep me preoccupied with things like ledgers, accounts, and other inescapable duties.”

She extricated herself from his arms. “Duties? Duties only, Deene?”

He nodded, his expression solemn—until she hit him with a pillow and started tickling him.

Eve endured a kiss to her cheek, and then a slow, thorough perusal from her brother-in-law, Joseph, Lord Kesmore. He sat beside his wife for two cups of tea, and then bowed to Eve in parting, muttering something about having to see to the horses.

“Louisa, did you or did you not somehow just give your spouse permission to withdraw?”

Louisa paused in the middle of chewing on a tea cake. “Give Kesmore permission? You must joking. He does as he pleases, and I am happy to have it so, that I might enjoy the same license. What shall I report to Their Graces regarding your situation here, Evie? Is Deene acquitting himself adequately?”

Oh, the reports. No doubt Anna had made one, and soon Sophie and her baron would be dropping by, followed by Maggie and the entire world.

“You may tell all and sundry that I thrive in my husband’s care.” This was nothing less than the truth. Eve glanced at the door, which Kesmore had closed upon his departure. “Louisa, might I ask you something?”

“Of course. Excellent cakes, by the way.”

Which were fast disappearing. “Does Kesmore… study you?”

“Study me?”

“Study your person? Examine you in detail?” When Louisa looked blank, Eve shifted her gaze to the fire crackling in the hearth. “Does he acquaint himself with the details of you… with the candles lit?”

There was no hiding Eve’s blush, but neither was there any disguising Louisa’s grin. “Oh, to be sure, though when I take a notion to study him, the curtains are drawn back, there being a deal of Kesmore to study, him being such a handsome specimen.”

Louisa and… Kesmore.

Studying each other.

“Merciful heavens.”

“Maggie sometimes has to tie Benjamin to the bed, for he’s not inclined to be docile about it when it’s his turn to be studied. I expect Sindal is a more obedient sort of husband. Somehow asking Sophie directly is beyond me, but she has that rosy, well-examined look about her sometimes. Makes a lady feel wickedly special when her husband takes such an interest.”

Wickedly special. Louisa had the right of it. Not just wicked, but wickedly special. “Deene says he is making a science of being my husband.”

“Good for Deene, and good for you, Evie Denning. We worried for you.”

For just an instant, Louisa’s teasing smile slipped, and Eve had to wonder exactly how much her sisters suspected regarding her past. “You need not worry. I am happily married, and I daresay my husband is too.”

“Usually works that way. Where is this husband of yours, by the way? I think Kesmore was looking forward to interrogating him.”

“I expect him back from Town momentarily. Deene is ferociously determined to gain control of the marquessate’s finances, and this requires much in the way of meetings with his cousin Anthony and what I gather are armies of solicitors, merchants, and factors. He’s offered to take me shopping.”

Why she felt she had to add this, Eve did not know.

“He wants to show you off, then, but mind you, he’ll also be spying.” Louisa spoke with great confidence.

“Spying? On me?” That did not sound promising at all. “Why?”

“He’ll lurk in the corner of the shop and watch as you make your selections. He’ll see what you linger over, what you almost purchase, what you consider giving to someone else as a gift but not for yourself. Next thing you know, there will be a little box beside your bed one night or at your place when you come down for breakfast.”

“Kesmore indulges in such activities?”

“Joseph is the most generous man I know. I’m hard put to keep up with him when it comes to the doting and spoiling, but one contrives lest a husband get to feeling smug.”

To think of Louisa—managing, competent, brisk Louisa—being doted upon and spoiled… it warmed Evie’s heart toward her taciturn, unsmiling brother-in-law, and toward Louisa too.

And while she was about it, such thoughts warmed her heart toward Deene as well.

“Come with me, Louisa. I must show you what Deene found for me not two weeks past. It is the best thing ever, though it would not fit in a box to place by my bed.”

Evie rose and took her sister’s arm, steering Louisa toward the door.

“Eve Denning, is that a divided skirt you’re wearing? I haven’t seen you in such a costume since Jenny made one for you years ago.”

“This is the one Jenny made for me, and before you ask, yes. I ride out regularly, provided Deene is with me. That’s part of the surprise.”

Louisa stopped just inside the parlor door. “Did I hear you aright? You’re riding out? Not just driving out? Climbing aboard a horse and trotting around?”

“And cantering, and the day before yesterday, we galloped and even hopped two logs. Why?”

“Bless this wonderful, wonderful day. Westhaven said I was being a ninnyhammer, and for once I cannot mind that he was right. At long last, my baby sister once again rides out.”

Standing right there in the parlor, in full view of the footman across the corridor, Louisa, the Countess of Kesmore, threw her arms around Eve’s neck and burst into tears.

“If our wives have been weeping when next we see them, you must not remark it.” Kesmore kept his voice down, but the man’s characteristic diffidence was nowhere in his tone.

“Whyever would they weep?” The thought of Eve weeping was alarming, though Deene kept his expression calm as they ambled up the barn aisle.

“I have reason to suspect my wife is with child, and no less personages than Westhaven himself, seconded by Sindal, St. Just, Hazelton, Lord Valentine Windham, and His Grace have assured me a penchant for lachrymosity is to be expected even in such a bastion of sense as my estimable Louisa.”

“Is there a married fellow whom you have not canvassed on the matter?”

“You, for obvious reasons.”

“Eve doesn’t cry much.” Except sometimes, deep in the night, when they’d made a particularly tender kind of love, and then she clung and wanted to be held securely until she dropped off to sleep in Deene’s embrace.

And he wanted to hold her.

Kesmore glanced over sharply. “Your wife had best not be crying on your worthless account, Deene. My lady would take it amiss, and you do not want such a thing on your conscience, presuming you survived the thrashing I would be bound to mete out.”

“Marriage has made you quite ferocious, Kesmore.”

Kesmore paused outside a roomy foaling stall. “On behalf of a woman I care about, I will always be capable of ferocity. See that you recall this should you ever be inclined toward the wrong sort of weak moment. This mare is new, but what is she doing in a foaling stall when she’s neither gravid nor boasting a foal at her side?”

Kesmore was not a charming man, something Deene was coming to like about his brother-in-law more and more. “This is Eve’s mare, and she will always merit the very best care we have to offer.”

“This is a mature animal.” Kesmore was a former cavalry officer, gone for a country gentleman sort of earl who rode regularly to hounds. He extended a gloved hand toward the mare, who sniffed delicately at his knuckles. “She’s in good condition—I suppose she’s come off a winter hunting?”

“She is, and Eve takes her out almost daily. So what have you heard in the clubs about your new brother-in-law’s licentious nature?”

“Not one word, if you must know. I have swilled indifferent wine by the hour, read every page of every newspaper, and all but lurked at keyholes, and I have heard not one thing to your detriment, save that you are unfashionably enamored of your new wife. The suppositions are that you are tending to the succession and dodging all the disappointed debutantes. I saw no reason to disabuse anybody of such notions.”

The mare went back to her hay. “I am enamored of my new wife.”

“I am in transports to hear it. Likely she is as well.”

Deene turned and hooked his elbows over the mare’s half door. “I wasn’t aware a man bruited such sentiments about, or is this another aspect of domestic life about which I am too newly married to be knowledgeable?”

Kesmore looked like he might be considering parting with a smile in a few weeks time, provided the weather held fair. “You’ll learn. They teach us, no matter we’re slow to absorb the lesson. Make the first time count, though.”

“The first time?”

“For God’s sake, man, the first time you tell her you love her. Make it count. Even His Grace knew that much.”

“Of course I love her.” Who could not love such a courageous, generous, fierce, passionate… The words trailed off in Deene’s mind, disappearing into a mist of surprise, wonder, and joy. He was at risk for babbling and laughing out loud, for doing something outrageous, like kissing Kesmore on the cheeks. “Of course I love my wife.”

The feeling settled around Deene’s heart, warm, substantial, and right. He loved his Evie; he would always love her. The certainty was his both to keep and his to share with her when the moment was right.

“Of course you love your wife. Is this the mare Lady Eve came a cropper on?”

“How did you know?”

“Louisa has described her to me in detail. She said Eve used to have dreams or nightmares about this horse. Well done, Deene, to retrieve the lady’s familiar. I had my doubts about you, but this is quite encouraging.”

“Glad to oblige.”

Kesmore’s expression suggested another dry rejoinder was about to be served up, but the man went still, his eyes becoming watchful. “Our ladies approach. I’ll keep my vigil in the clubs, at least when we’re in Town, but so far, Deene, your marriage seems to have worked its magic with the gossips and with your lady wife both. See that you don’t muck it up.”

Deene smiled, walked forward to take Eve’s hand, and bestowed a kiss on her knuckles while Kesmore’s warning faded from his ears.