Between the Devil and Ian Eversea (25 page)

He wanted to touch her to soothe that color away.

He didn’t dare.

He waited.

And waited.

And when her voice came, it was whisper thin.

“I don’t want you to make love to her.”

He sucked in a sharp breath. He took the words like an arrow. The sort that murders.

And the sort that Cupid shoots into its victims.

There were so many things he could say. He could point out hypocrisy and futility and fairness and rightness. He could point out, yet again, that while she was wise in some ways, she was naive in the ways of the world and that men had needs and all that nonsense, and she had no right, no right, to stand there with that look on her face. That everything said about him was true, and she knew it. He could say that she had driven him to it. She had no right.

Too bad for you, Tansy.

It was the most merciful thing to say. It would allow her to go her way and him to go his, which was as it should be. Allow her to loathe him a little, and then a little more, and then finally forget.

It was what he meant to say, anyhow.

“Then I won’t.”

Is what he said instead. Very gently.

It was tantamount to a confession.

He didn’t know who he was anymore.

All he knew is, he wanted her to have whatever she wanted. No matter what it was. No matter what the cost.

And having just sealed his fate, he spun on his heels and left her just as her lovely face suffused with a nearly celestial light, because he didn’t think he could bear to look at that, either.

D
URING A LULL
between dances Stanhope sidled up to him, his handsome young face open and shining. He had a petulant chin, Ian decided, with a surly lack of charity. There was just something about it, the way it sat there, unblemished and square, that bothered him immensely.

“I just wanted to thank you, Eversea, for your letter informing me about Miss Danforth.”

“No need,” Ian said curtly.

“Oh, please don’t deny me the pleasure of my gratitude,” he said quite grandly, looking pleased with the choice of phrase.

“You’re going to be a duke. Far be it for me to deny you a thing.”

Stanhope looked momentarily a little uncertain at this, and then he nodded, missing irony completely. Then again, irony is a defense for those who are at least occasionally disappointed, Ian thought, and surely the young lord hadn’t yet experienced anything of the sort.

“I do think my courtship of Miss Danforth has gone well. Very well, indeed.”

“Has it?” Ian grit his teeth.

“It was easy, old man. Really, there was nothing to it.” He snapped his fingers. “A few bouquets, a few compliments about her eyes and the like, a few rides in the old high flyer, and she’s mine! She’s a simple thing, really.”

“That easy, was it?”

“Certainly. She’s young yet, and so her personality is still forming. Though she’s cheerful and agreeable. I suspect she can be molded.”

“Ah. So she’s that malleable, is she?” He wasn’t aware, but his volume was increasing exponentially with each sentence he uttered. No mean feat when speaking from between clenched teeth.

“Oh, of a certainty, sir,” Stanhope said gravely, on a confiding air. “Oh, she isn’t perfect. She’s a bit vain and frivolous. A bit vapid, I think, and a bit shallow. But that’s due to youth. A few babies will change all of that. And Lord, but she
looks
perfect.”

Ian spent a moment in blank, furious speechlessness.

“Vain? Frivolous? Vapid? Shallow?” Ian hissed the words as if they were darts he were hurling into a board. Stanhope blinked at each one. “Have you . . . seen a mirror lately, Stanhope?”

“Ha ha!” Stanhope laughed. He did laugh an inordinate amount. “Oh, ha ha, Eversea! Witty. But she is beautiful,” he pointed out. “She’ll be a
marvelous
ride, and my heirs will be incredible looking, don’t you think?”

“Did you just call Miss Danforth . . . a marvelous ride?”

“Yes.”

“A . . . marvelous . . . ride,” Ian repeated slowly, flatly. As if learning new vocabulary.

A red haze was moving over his eyes.

“Yes?” Stanhope was a little confused now.

“And you think she’s vapid, shallow, and frivolous.
She
is.” He said this as if he were trying to record the duke’s words for posterity. As if he wanted to get them precisely right.

“Well, yes,” Stanhope hastened to reassure him. “But then most women are. The dears. What would we do without them, right, Eversea?” He gazed out over the ballroom at all the other women he might have had so easily, given his title. “And I know you
never
do without them.”

Ian stared at him the way he would stare at a cobra he intended to shoot to smithereens.

For a good long time.

Without blinking.

Stanhope looked at him, began to turn back toward the ballroom, and then recoiled when he really got a look at Ian’s expression.

“You’re worrying me a bit, Eversea. You haven’t blinked. You’re a bit young yet for apoplexy, aren’t you?”

“You
should
be worried, Stanhope,” Ian said pleasantly.

Stanhope looked down and noticed that Ian’s hands were clenched into knots. The better to launch into the jaws of young lords.

“Did you think . . . Oh, I meant no insult. She’s a grand girl. Splendid. I was certain I made that clear.” He gave a short nod. He seemed to think this took care of it.

“That’s all you can say? She’s a
grand
girl?”

And now Ian was shouting.

And conversations in the periphery ceased as people craned to hear.

Stanhope was now clearly baffled, and his feet shifted uneasily. “What higher compliment can I pay? What else is there, really?”

“What else is there? WHAT ELSE IS THERE?” And suddenly he was breathless and hoarse. “She . . . apologizes to flowers. She talks to the stars. She rolls a perfect cigarette. She
thinks
about the servants. She smells like a bloody meadow. She shoots like a rifleman. She rides like a centaur. Just being able to make her laugh is like . . . winning a
thousand
Sussex marksmanship cups.
Better
than that, you pompous,
whinnying
, RIDICULOUS
ARSE
.”

He was distantly aware that it sounded almost as though he was speaking in tongues, in a series of non sequiturs. That he was gesticulating incredulously and possibly somewhat threateningly. That Stanhope was staring wide-eyed at him, and that the brightening he detected in the room around him might just be the whites of dozens of eyes as they widened, too.

He didn’t care. They were visions of her, memories, all queued up at the exit of his mind, every last one of them significant, like linked dreams, and he couldn’t stop them. And yet none of them were adequate. None of them added up to the girl.

Stanhope took another step back.

“Er . . . the whites of your eyes are showing, Eversea . . .”

“She has a wit that can cut right through a man. She’s . . . oh, God, she’s gentle. She’s more forgiving than she ought to be and kinder and braver and wiser and more loyal than you’ll ever be, you worthless, mewling, OVERBRED,
FATUOUS . . .”

He trailed off when he realized that he had quite an audience.

All silent.

All utterly rapt.

“Eversea,” someone muttered in resignation.

“What a pity the syphilis has gone to his brain,” someone whispered. “That must be it.”

“I haven’t lost my mind!” He said this a little too loudly. And then added, “And I don’t have syphilis!”

He
had
lost his mind.

And to the end of his days he would regret shouting “I don’t have syphilis!” in a crowded ballroom.

His brothers would never, ever let him forget it.

The silence that followed was laden with doom.

Young Stanhope stepped toward him and said quietly, “I say, Captain Eversea, perhaps you ought to retire for the evening? I’ll overlook the insult if you apologize. She’s enough to addle any man’s brains. Just look at her in that dress. Like an angel, she is.”

Ian almost sighed.

How very pleasant it would be to shoot this man, he thought idly. How easy it would be to say, “Name your seconds.” He
would
kill him. There was no question about it. But Stanhope’s only fault was that he’d never
needed
to develop character, and likely never would. Stanhope was the most important thing in Stanhope’s world, and that was the lens through which he saw everything and everyone.

And yet Stanhope had enough breeding to forgive him, and this was nearly intolerable.

Ian looked across the crowd and his eyes met Tansy’s wide blue-gray ones. And immediately he felt her everywhere in him.

The expression in them nearly buckled his knees.

And yet . . . if he did kill the young heir, he would destroy her reputation and future, not to mention his own.

He sought out other pairs of eyes. Genevieve was staring at him with two hot spots of disbelief high on her cheekbones.

She shook her head just a little, to and fro.

Falconbridge was watching him, too.

Ian met his eyes evenly. He’d thought to read murder there.

But he saw nothing of the sort. He in fact couldn’t read the duke at all.

For a moment he held that fixed gaze. Unapologetically. Defiantly.

And suddenly he knew what he had to do.

It was as clear, almost painfully clear, as if a blind had been yanked up in his bedroom on the morning of the worst hangover of his life.

But then it was exhilarating. And so very, very simple.

But first things first.

“I apologize, Stanhope.”

He turned on his heel and walked out of the ballroom, and that was a sound he would never forget, either: his boot heels echoing on the wooden floor as everyone watched him walk away.

“
M
ADNESS.
T
HAT’S ALL
it was. You know how old soldiers can be. And you can inspire anyone to madness. You’re very lovely, my dear.”

He’d taken to calling her “my” this and “my” that, and every time he did, Tansy wanted to swat him, which surely wasn’t the way she should feel about someone who was allegedly about to propose to her.

“He’s not old,” she said sharply.

“Old
er
,” Stanhope indulged placidly. Amused with her, apparently.

There was a certain peace in knowing she was about to be proposed to. It would mean that years of upheaval would end. Life would take on a certainty it had lacked for too long. She would acquire a husband who could be managed. She would obtain what remained of her parents’ fortune. She would never want for anything. He hadn’t yet tried to kiss her, but she knew, thanks to a waltz or two, that he smelled of starch and almost nothing else, and she suddenly had grave difficulty imagining him naked or breaking wind or roaring in the morning.

Or kissing her.

Or making love to her.

The night had continued after Ian’s outburst, and the dammed conversation had flowed again to fill in the brief shocked silence, and then everyone had drunk and danced enough to mostly forget about it.

Ian, she was certain, had left the ball entirely. She knew he wasn’t in the ballroom as surely as she was certain she would know if the sun suddenly disappeared from the sky.

She’d stayed. For a short time.

She was certain she’d held conversations and danced dances and fielded and issued compliments, but she couldn’t remember any of them when she returned to her chambers. She’d begged a headache, and allowed Stanhope to believe it was nerves.

And Stanhope had parted from her, telling her he’d arranged to call upon the duke at eight o’clock the following morning.

When she was in her room again, she leaned her cheek against the wall as if she could hear Ian’s heartbeat right through it.

He was leaving tomorrow. Or so she’d heard.

She finally made herself undress and crawl into bed, but she didn’t sleep at all.

Finally, when it was just past dawn, she tipped herself out of bed and followed the little road of light to the window.

But he wasn’t outside on his balcony.

And so she sat down and took out her list of requirements one final time.

She emphatically crossed out
of fine moral character
and carefully—and very painstakingly in even, small letters, smaller now, because she was running out of room—wrote something else there instead.

She blew on it impatiently, waiting for the ink to dry.

Then a tear plopped on it, and she was forced to carefully blot it, and wait even longer, which was maddening.

And then with a sort of blind purpose she snatched it up and carried it down the hall to the office where the Duke of Falconbridge liked to conduct business.

She gave a sharp rap on the duke’s door. Sharper than she’d intended.

“You may enter,” he called. Very alert for that hour of the morning.

He looked up and began to rise.

“Titania.” He sounded surprised.

She curtsied, but otherwise wasted no time on the niceties.

“This is my revised list, Your Grace. I wanted you to have it.”

He reached out and gingerly took it. She supposed it was starting to look a little disreputable.

“From the looks of things, it’s grown quite a bit.”

“As have I.”

She had the satisfaction of seeing the duke blink.

She whirled and left without being dismissed.

Falconbridge’s eyes fell to the item that was clearly the newest.

Defends me in a crowded ballroom at the risk of his own dignity, because he knows me and loves me better than anyone ever has and ever will, even if he can’t say it.

Yet.

Chapter 26

B
Y EIGHT O’CLOCK IN
the morning, Ian had already been awake for four hours, accomplishing something that would surprise a good many people.

He immediately took himself up to the room Falconbridge had been using as an office during his stay.

The duke’s door remained shut. The clock had yet to strike eight.

“What ho, Stanhope.”

For there Stanhope already sat, just as a footman had told Ian, jouncing one leg nervously.

When he saw Ian he shot to his feet and then staggered backward a few steps.

“Eversea.”

He looked nervous. As well he might. For numerous reasons.

Ian, however, was all soothing contrition.

“I’m sorry again about last night, old man. I drank a bit too much, and you know how it is when you’ve worked a bit too hard . . .”

He was utterly certain Stanhope hadn’t worked a day in his life.

“Certainly, certainly.”

“Nervous?” Ian smiled enigmatically.

“Well, of course. Ha. I’m about to ask for Miss Danforth’s hand in marriage.” He
was
decidedly green about the mouth.

Ian whistled, long and low. “Marriage is forever.”

Forever
. A portentous word, forever.

“Ah, yes. I know. Long time, forever.”

“It is, indeed. It is, indeed. Listen, old man, I was sent to tell you that the duke isn’t actually in—he’s waiting for you instead at the vicarage. He’s there on a bit of parish business and the notion took him—he’d like you to meet him there.”

“The vicarage?” Stanhope was confused. “The Pennyroyal Green vicarage? I was certain he would have liked to speak to me here. We made an appointment last night, you see, and when the footman admitted me I was directed to wait right here.”

“Ah. I think it was an impulsive decision on Falconbridge’s part, and perhaps word hasn’t yet reached all the servants,” Ian improvised smoothly. “I think he thought the vicarage would more accurately reflect the gravity of the event. Confer a little more of the sacred upon it.”

“Ah. Certainly, certainly. I can see that, I suppose. Very well, then. Thank you for conveying the message, Eversea. No hard feelings about the night before?”

“None at
all
.” Ian smiled.

Stanhope glanced at the door of the office uncertainly.

He glanced toward the stairwell.

“You’d best hurry. He dislikes tardiness. Considers it a character flaw.”

“Thankfully I have my new high flyer.”

“
Thank
fully.” Ian sounded relieved.

“Good day, Eversea, and thank you.”

He turned and hurried past him, jamming his hat down on his head.

“Thank
you
, Stanhope.”

And Ian settled into the chair to wait, and put his hand over the pistol in his pocket.

T
HE DUKE’S MOOD
was edging toward foul, because he’d just opened a message this morning from the solicitor responsible for Lilymont’s sale. It had been sold just that morning.

Bloody hell. He knew Genevieve would withstand the disappointment, but there was nothing he loathed more than disappointing her.

Deciding Stanhope had in all likelihood marinated in his own nerves long enough, and that he could probably expend a little of his mood upon the boy, the duke called him in.

“Enter, please,” he said irritably.

A clean-shaven, crisply dressed, white-faced, granite-jawed Ian Eversea slowly walked in, clutching his hat in one hand.

And a pistol in the other.

Ian strolled deliberately over to the desk and lay the pistol on it.

“I’d like you to be able to make an informed decision, Falconbridge,” he said, “after you hear what I have to say. We will settle everything between us here and now. And then if you wish to shoot me, I’d like you to have that option.”

The duke stared at him. Ian had the satisfaction of knowing he’d at least nonplussed the man a little.

Something darkly amused twitched across the duke’s face. Then he gave a subtle nod. “Very well. What can I do for you, Eversea?”

The tone wasn’t . . . warm. To say the least.

“I’m here to speak to you about Miss Danforth.”

There was a silence.

Ian fancied it was the sort of silence once experienced before the guillotine dropped.

“What about Miss Danforth?” His tone was deceptively casual. But the vowels were elongated. Nearly drawled. It was the duke’s way of warning him. His eyes flicked over to the pistol.

“I would die for her,” Ian said simply.

Drama was as good a place to begin as any.

The duke blinked.

Ian didn’t wait for the duke to speak. “But it will never come to that, because I, more than anyone, am uniquely qualified to keep her safe all of her born days. Because I love her. And I know her. I know her heart. No one will ever love her better. I will endeavor to deserve her every day of my life.”

The duke’s fingers took up an idle, slow drumming on the edge of his desk.

He said nothing. He hadn’t yet blinked.

“I know you’ve cause to despise me, Falconbridge. I know you’ve cause to doubt my honor. To apologize for my past offenses against you only now would seem self-serving. But I
am
sorry. I was driven then by motivations I can scarcely explain to myself, let alone you. But one reckless night should not define a man for a lifetime. If you can look me in the eye and tell me your soul is stainless, I’ll leave now. And if you can look me in the eye and tell me that you don’t think I deserve happiness, I’ll leave now. And if you truly believe I cannot make Tansy happy, I will leave now. I don’t know if she loves me. But I love her. And I would die for her.”

The duke listened to this with no apparent change in expression. The silence was a palpable thing. Brittle as glass.

“I thought you were leaving, Eversea.” He sounded pensive. “A trip around the world.”

“
She
is the world. She is
my
world.”

Something glimmered in the duke’s eyes.

“And what about your savings?”

“I think you may have already guessed what I’ve done with them.”

Falconbridge gave a short laugh. Surprised and seemingly perversely impressed.

“Very well. What do you want from me now?” The duke’s voice was a little abstracted. He sounded, in truth, fascinated.

“I’ve come to ask you for the honor of Titania’s hand in marriage.”

There ensued a silence so long and painful it was as though time itself had been stretched on the rack. Ian worried for a moment that he’d given the duke apoplexy, and would now have his death on his conscience, to boot.

And then the duke stood up slowly.

Ian didn’t budge.

He moved deliberately around the desk. Not quite in a stalking fashion. More of a careful one. As if giving himself time to change his mind about what he was about to do.

Ian consoled himself that the man hadn’t snatched up the pistol.

He stood directly in front of Ian, eye-to-eye.

Ian stood his ground. He didn’t like knowing that he could count his brother-in-law’s eyelashes if he so choose, but he didn’t blink.

Which is why it took him a moment to realize the duke was holding something in his hand.

The last time the duke had slinked toward him like that he’d been holding a pistol.

This time he was holding what appeared to be a sheet of foolscap.

“Titania delivered this to me this morning. It’s a list she made of requirements for a husband. She thought it might be . . . helpful . . . to me.”

He handed the sheet to Ian. Urged him to take it with the launch of one eyebrow.

Ian eyed him skeptically.

He took it between his fingers.

The duke gave an impatient jerk of his chin, urging him to read.

So Ian bent his head over it.

His heart lurched when he saw that her fingerprints darkened the edges. And that it was stained faintly by what he suspected were tears. Despite this, he could read it well enough.

And by the time he’d read all the way to the bottom, the foolscap was rattling.

Ian’s hands were trembling.

He took a long, slow breath and looked up at the duke. “I think it’s fair to say she loves you, Eversea.” Falconbridge sounded ever-so-slightly resigned. But surprisingly, his voice was gentle.

Even amused.

Ian found he could barely breathe.

“And our accounts?” he managed finally.

A hesitation. “Are even.”

Ian gave a short nod.

“Very well. My life is in your hands again, Falconbridge. What will you do with it this time?”

“
T
ANSY, WHY DON’T
we go for a drive?”

Tansy jumped. She’d managed to dress herself, and had taken a single cup of tea in her room, and picked the scone Mrs. deWitt had sent up into powdery smithereens. It now lay untouched on a plate. And she had stayed put, jumpy as a prisoner about to be led to execution, which was hardly the way she ought greet the day she might very well become engaged.

“But . . .” Suddenly, she didn’t have an excuse. And going out seemed better than staying in. And movement better than not moving.

Movement. Ian was likely on his way to London, anyway. He could even now be standing on the deck of the ship.

Genevieve looped her arm through Tansy’s and tugged. “Come. It’s an
excellent
day for a drive. Some might even say a transformative day for a drive.”

S
HE STARED LISTLESSLY
out the window as Pennyroyal Green scenery unfurled.

Genevieve pointed out landmarks.

“Look, there are the two oak trees entwined in the town square! There’s a legend about them, you know.”

Tansy didn’t care.

“Doesn’t the vicarage look lovely with all the new repairs? And look, there’s Miss Marietta Endicott’s academy. They’ve added a wing since you were a little girl. Do you remember it?”

She shook her head noncommittally. She remembered it. Vaguely. She just didn’t want to
discuss
it.

“Now we’re passing the O’Flahertys’ home. It certainly has improved over the past year or so. They’ve a new roof and paddock fence.”

Who were the O’Flahertys’? Why should she care about their paddock fence?

She began to wonder where on earth they were going. It had begun to feel less like an idle drive meant to distract her and more like a means to a destination.

But then Tansy straightened as the scenery began to look a trifle more familiar. Just something about the jut of the rocks to the left . . . the slight rise and curve in the road . . .

A peculiar tingle started along the backs of her arms.

“Where are we going, Gen—”

When the house came into view, she gasped.

“And look. Here we are at Lilymont,” Genevieve said quite unnecessarily. “It occurred to me that you hadn’t seen it since you were a girl.”

“No,” Tansy managed.

She was helped down from the carriage by a footman and began drifting toward the house, reflexively. It looked the same, if a bit in need of paint and a bit of weed-tugging. The mellow stone walls still glowed amber in low sunlight. The windows all glinted at her, like smiling eyes. She could almost imagine her five-year-old self and her brother gazing down from one of them.

Genevieve remained next to the carriage.

“And look,” she said, “the garden gate is open.” She pointed at it.

Tansy turned. The wooden gate was ever-so-slightly ajar. As if it had been anticipating her arrival.

“Do you mind?” Tansy turned to Genevieve eagerly. “May we?”

“Yes! Let’s do have a— Oh, drat! I’ve just dropped my glove in the carriage . . . you go on ahead, Tansy, I’ll be right on your heels. I know you’re eager to see it.”

Tansy gave the little gate a push to open it wider, and stood motionless at the entrance.

Her childhood came back at her in a rush that gave her vertigo. Everything had gotten larger and woollier, but the path was still there, obscured as it was by tufts of grass, and all the beloved trees, and the ivy still spilled over the walls, and there was a man standing in the garden.

There was a
man
standing in the garden!

“Ian.”

Her hand flew to her heart. It was more a gasp than a word. It had leaped into her throat so swiftly she thought it would choke her.

He didn’t say anything for a good long time. They stared at each other like witless people who had never before encountered another human.

“Am I dreaming?” she said finally, softly.

“No.”

She jumped and swiveled around at the sound of the carriage pulling away at a swift clip. She took a step toward the gate, and froze.

And turned around again.

Her heart began to hammer.

“Please don’t leave without hearing me out, Tansy.”

“Well, I can’t leave,” she pointed out, practically. “I do believe I’ve been abandoned here.”

He began to smile.

She turned away from it, because his smile was almost too beautiful to bear.

And restlessly she began to move.

She could scarcely hear her own footfall, or the birdsong, as she wandered wonderingly into the garden over the woolly overgrown ground. She touched a flower. And another. She stretched out an arm and lovingly drew her fingers along the warm stone of the garden wall. She set one foot in front of another along the path. And yet she couldn’t look at him. She didn’t dare look at him. Not yet.