Between the Devil and Ian Eversea (17 page)

And still she couldn’t speak. She’d once possessed the skill, she was certain of it.

He
could.

“Please stop playing at things you don’t fully understand, Tansy. It will be the undoing of you. It’s so very, very easy to lose yourself this way. ”

She still couldn’t breathe or think properly. She was furious that she needed to leave one hand against him to steady herself. She was furious at him for being right. And for being so bloody
self-righteous
.

And
for being steady on his feet as he regarded her.

And then she realized he was trembling. She could feel it beneath her palm.

He was a seasoned rogue, and that kiss had shaken him.

Suddenly this unnerved her more than the kiss itself.

“Is that why
you
do it?” she asked softly. Ironically. “To lose yourself?”

Swift anger kindled in his eyes again. “Have a care.”

So he didn’t care for having
his
secrets unraveled, did he?

She took her hand away from him finally, slowly, as if he were a rabid dog and would lunge at her if she made any sudden moves. She was steady on her feet now. Her breathing had nearly resumed its usual cadence. She couldn’t yet back away; he maintained a peculiar gravitational pull. She could still feel the warmth of his body on her skin. She wondered distantly if she always would. As if she’d been branded.

“What if I want to be lost?” she whispered.

Something wild and dangerous flared in his eyes. An almost incinerating longing. It was there and gone.

“You don’t know what you’re saying.”

His hair had fallen down over his brow, and he looked faintly ridiculous, and never more beautiful.

Despite the fact that his face was suddenly granite.

“I know one thing. I know that you want me.”

She didn’t say,
As much as I want you.

His head went back sharply. And then he froze. He was utterly motionless apart from the spirals of hair the wind was lifting. Did he look like this when he took aim at a target with a rifle? She suspected he did.

She would love to wind her finger in one of his spirals, let it unfurl.

At last he ducked his head into his chest and dropped his shoulders. Then he spun on his heel and strode to her horse. He wordlessly held the stirrup for her, and with a jerk of his chin beckoned her over.

He helped hoist her up as if she were a sack of flour, and not a woman he’d just kissed witless. Then he mounted his horse and stared down at her, wearing a faint frown.

He gave his head a rough shake. “It’s time we get back.”

He wheeled his horse around and urged it forward.

She thought she heard him mutter a single bemused word under his breath.

She wasn’t certain, but it may have been “devil.”

Chapter 17

I
AN CLOSED HIS EYES.

Two birds were calling a leisurely, liquid sounding duet to each other across the enclosed garden. The hush had a waiting quality, perhaps because the plants had been allowed to flourish with abandon and muffled any sounds that might want to enter or escape.

He opened his eyes again, and slowly—the sound of his footsteps almost an intrusion—followed the inlaid stone path, which was tufted with grass and determined flowery weeds in some places and completely overgrown in others. The loosely serpentine walkway meandered through birches and oaks, walnut and apple and cherry trees, old and solid now, leafed out and healthy. A few lucky flies buzzed over fruit that had plopped to the ground.

The flowers were clearly planted according to a plan, but now every variety had run amuck, brilliant and fighting for room, like a crush at a ball. He didn’t mind it, really. He liked a little chaos.

In the corner, the ivy was dense and inches thick. A peculiar sort of anticipation ramped in him as he approached it. He hefted it like a curtain and it released its grip reluctantly, its dry little fingers scraping against the wall.

He peered.

And there, ambered in the morning light, laboriously scratched into the stone, was one word:
Tansy.

He put his finger on the word, tracing each letter. It had taken determination and a
knife
to do that. He gave a short laugh. A “wallflower” who wasn’t afraid of guns and knives or riding at breakneck speed.

He wasn’t certain why he’d wanted to come here today. It had something about how she’d looked when he said “Lilymont.” Something brilliant and raw and very real had suffused her face, and then she’d tamped it. She’d uttered the word “Oh” with the rawest yearning he’d ever heard when he told her the home was for sale.

In so many ways she remained a walking question mark.

But this was real to her.

And he supposed he wanted to see why.

Because he thought he had tasted all of those things when he kissed her. Desperation and abandon, an unnerving, thrilling, recklessness, a fierce joy, a devastating depthless sensuality. She tasted of endless, endless pleasure and possibility.

It had shocked him badly.

And so he had taken refuge from it all by couching that kiss as a lesson. A dexterous bit of reasoning on his part, he thought.

And it
had
been a lesson.

For him, anyway.

After that kiss, he wasn’t certain he’d ever truly kissed anyone before in his life.

Is that why
you
do it?

He hadn’t fooled her.

She knew that he wanted her. Had likely known it before he did; the want of her stealthy, creeping into his blood over a series of days.

It infuriated him to be seen through, to the point where a red haze nearly crept over his eyes. It was fury, primarily at himself, for becoming ensnared.

And it also filled him with a sort of helpless, reluctant, very amused admiration.

He sucked in a long breath, held it in for a punishingly long time. Released it slowly, as if she’d been opium he’d inhaled into his lungs and he could expel her.

She would be better served by indignation and hurt pride and by at least attempting to believe that he’d meant to teach her a lesson, and by staying far, far away from him.

He’d been doing his part and avoiding her rather successfully ever since by rising very early and disappearing into good, wholesome, consuming physical work with hammers and boards and the like and taking his meals at the pub and lingering there over the chessboard with Culpepper and Cooke and retiring to his rooms very late at night, too late to peer out his window and catch Miss Danforth in the act of some new vice. He’d managed to allow an
entire
week to go by in just this fashion. He hadn’t thought about her at all.

And yet here he was at Lilymont, as if he’d been driven there with no choice in the matter.

He did want her.

But that was neither here nor there. And while he normally got what he wanted when it came to women, he was sensible enough to know that the danger here wasn’t in the getting of the woman but in the woman herself.

He dropped the ivy, watched her name vanish behind it.

Symbolically dropping the curtain on the entire episode.

The sun was higher now, and he could feel it on the back of his neck.

He wasn’t certain whether it was this that made him turn suddenly. Only that something about the hush in the garden seemed to have shifted slightly, as if to accommodate another presence.

When he swiveled.

The Duke of Falconbridge was standing at the entrance.

There was an absurd moment when he actually wondered whether his conscience had spoken aloud and summoned the duke. Or perhaps he was dreaming, for dreams certainly had a way with presenting one with the worst scenarios possible. He ought to know.

The two of them froze and stared at each from across the silent, woolly garden.

And Ian, as he always did when he saw Falconbridge, felt a certain amount of shame. They had both shamed each other, on that fateful night, and really, it was hardly conversation kindling.

“Good morning,” Ian said politely.

“Good morning.”

Their voices echoed absurdly in the cool morning air.

A silence. Ian supposed it would be just a little too ironic if he scrambled up a fruit tree and clambered over a wall instead of walking past the duke, back to where he’d tethered his horse.

“Interested in Lilymont, Eversea?” The duke asked it idly.

“Yes,” Ian said simply.

“Why?”

A presumptuous question.

It deserved a curt answer. “Curiosity.”

The duke looked around at the trees. He strolled deeper into the garden, and Ian took a subtle step away from the ivy-covered wall, as if it would incriminate him. “I thought I’d stop by to have another look around. Genevieve likes it. It’s a bit on the small side. Needs a good deal of work.”

And it’s a bit too close to where the rest of our family lives, no doubt.

“I can see why she likes it,” Ian said instead.

Another silence. Not even a bird obliged them with a song. They were all collectively holding their little avian breaths, apparently.

“This was Miss Danforth’s childhood home,” the duke volunteered casually. He strolled deeper still into the garden, but not toward Ian. He took a sideways route, as if the apple trees and cherry trees were of critical importance to his decision whether to buy the house.

“It has a good deal of charm.”

The duke turned to look at him. “You aren’t interested in purchasing the property, too.” More of a statement than a question.

“No. I’m departing for a long ocean voyage in a matter of weeks. Every penny of my savings will be devoted to that.”

The duke nodded politely, as if none of this was of any true interest to him. “Ah. Yes. I recall. Your trip around the world.” He paused. “Sometimes movement is precisely what a man needs.”

Ian stared at him. He imagined the duke would be delighted that in a matter of weeks he would be moving inexorably farther and farther away from him. And given the caprices of sea travel, not to mention foreign cultures and food, could very well never return.

The duke simply turned, reached out, gripped a fine branch and pulled it down as if to inspect it. “And sometimes what he needs is someplace and someone who feels like home.”

Ian fought a frown. Why was Falconbridge philosophizing about what a man needed? The duke knew nothing at all about him, apart from what he looked like naked and in the dark, and the fact that he was an excellent climber.

“I imagine you’re right on both counts,” Ian said politely.

The duke paused in front of a cherry tree, his profile to Ian, who could see the deep lines at the corners of his eyes.

My sister loves this man
.

And suddenly he knew a moment of regret. A wish that he could turn back time and know him, too, to see in him the things Genevieve valued in him.

“I’ll be off then, Falconbridge. My cousin expects me at the vicarage. Repairs, you know.”

“Of course. Good day, then.” The duke nodded, but didn’t quite look at Ian.

They subtly skirted each other at a safe distance, like tomcats too conscious of each other’s strengths to make even a token fuss about territory. Falconbridge going deeper into the garden, and Ian heading for the arched gate.

Once he’d seen the hem of Ian’s coat whipping around the corner, the duke moved swiftly toward the ivy in the corner. He’d been watching Ian a little longer than Ian knew.

He lifted up the ivy and shaded his eyes. It was a moment before he saw the word.

Tansy.

He went still.

Ian Eversea had caressed that word with something like . . .

The duke could only describe it as reverence.

He pivoted slowly and shaded his eyes, stood listening thoughtfully, grimly, as the hoofbeats of Ian’s horse tore away, like a man trying to escape something.

T
HIS AFTERNOON THE
duke had asked Tansy to pour during their visit, and she was delighted with the ritual and the comforting sounds: The
tinks
of cubes of sugar dropped against porcelain, the bell-like music of the tiny silver spoons against sloped sides as they stirred.

“I’ve had word Lord Stanhope will be visiting his properties here soon. He’s the Duke de Neauville’s heir.”

A duke!

The word jolted her pleasurably, and a bit of tea splashed into the saucer.

She couldn’t help it. Duchess Titania de Neauville. She tried on the sound of it in her head. Good heavens, it was almost the only time the name Titania seemed appropriate.

Clearly she was
born
to be a duchess.

Would he be handsome? Clever?

Would he try to kiss her until she forgot her name?

Would he try to pretend it was all her fault that he’d kissed her, and that it had been a lesson, then dodge her for a week, when she knew better?

Oh
, how she knew better.

She bit down on her back teeth against a little surge of righteous anger.

And to squelch the sensation again, which she found, both to her delight and dismay, she could conjure at will, of his fingertips trailing her throat then sliding into her bodice.

She looked down into the tea and remembered the hot demanding sweetness of his mouth, and a wave of weakness swamped her. And she didn’t dare look up at the duke.

Ian Eversea was infinitely more sensible than she had credited. For he had made himself scarce after that kiss. Then again, she was not eligible for a complete seduction, unlike a certain attractive widow, for instance, and what use was she to him in that regard?

Although she suspected the reason for his absence was quite different, she couldn’t help but regret his wisdom in keeping his distance.

Her face was heating, and she looked up, to find the duke’s eyes on her speculatively. Perhaps he thought she’d gone rosy over the idea of a fledgling duke. The notion of whom had been introduced not a moment too soon.

“I thought
you
were the only duke.”

He smiled faintly, indulging her. “We’re a small club, to be certain. His son is a decent fellow. Pleasant, well-bred, educated, not a shred of controversy associated with his name. I daresay even handsome, and possessed of a certain amount of moral turpitude.”

“Kind of you to remember my list.”

He smiled again. “And wealthy. Very wealthy.”

She hadn’t listed wealth, oddly enough, because she would possess her own once she married. She certainly had nothing at all against it. She imagined the carriages, the gowns, the servants, the parties, the horses.

The home. The family. The children.

“He has a beautiful home here in Sussex,” the duke added, when she didn’t speak. “About twice the size of Lilymont.”

The word, as it always did, made her stop breathing for just a moment.

“Lilymont always struck me as a very good size,” she said. “But then, I was very small when I lived there. It’s for sale, I understand,” she added tentatively.

“Genevieve is interested in it. But we haven’t yet made a decision about it.”

A ferocious, rogue little surge of envy took her, and then she tamped it.

“How lovely it would be to keep it in the family.” It would be lovely to know she would be welcome there, at the very least.

She did like saying the word “family.” It occurred to her then that she was glad they were her family: the duke and his wife.

“The gardens were quite lovely, then, when you were a little girl. You used to run about there with your brother.”

“I did,” Tansy said faintly, smiling. “We used to play at being soldiers. And then he went off to be one.”

She didn’t say,
And didn’t come back.
The duke knew that.

“So often the ones that return . . . never really leave war behind. In so many ways. War changes a man irrevocably. There’s a roughness and a recklessness that can . . . sink in, become integral to his character.”