Lady Eve's Indiscretion (19 page)

The buttons of her outfit pressing hard into his sternum.

The slight tug of her fingers where she'd fisted her hand in the hair at his nape.

The way she wasn't the least shy about plastering herself with gratifying snugness against his growing erection.

To hold her this way felt… glorious.

And he registered a small, muted kick of common sense against his conscience: he should close and lock the door.

This last he could approximate. He scooped her up against his chest and backed against the half-open door until it was closed, then advanced with her to lay her down on the sofa. She lay on her back, smiling a secret, pleased smile, giving Deene the sense she was as cast away as he.

“Don't stop kissing me, Lucas. Kissing you is…”

He paused above her, wanting to know exactly what words she'd choose, but instead she held out her arms and gave them an impatient shake. He shrugged out of his coat and came down over her.

“We should take our boots off, Evie. We'll get dust—”

Absurdities. He was spouting absurdities, and even those fled his awareness as Eve fused her mouth to his and curled her two booted feet around his flanks. He pulled back, pleased to find she was panting.

For a procession of instants, she gazed at him, bestowing on him a look that conveyed glee and arousal and…
tenderness
.

The look in her eyes utterly shifted the moment, from one of celebration to one of anticipation. When he lowered his head to rest his cheek against her hair, he understood that for Eve, this was like a soldier needing to pillage after victory in battle, like the necessary carouse after winning a close race or a bet against very long odds.

And it was his privilege to make sure no lasting harm befell her while she indulged in a few moments of heedlessness… no harm whatsoever.

Even if he wanted to bury himself in her heat, wanted to hear her scream his name with pleasure, wanted to feel her desperate with desire.

“Lucas?” The bewilderment in her gaze when he lifted away from her tore at his heart.

“Boots off, Evie. I have an idea. Trust me.”

Three complete sentences, one declarative, two imperative. Quite an accomplishment when a man's cock was rioting in his breeches. He tugged her up by one arm and knelt to pull off her boots.

While she sat there looking puzzled and a trifle disgruntled, he untied her stock and eased her jacket from her shoulders, then started unbuttoning her shirt.

“Will I like this idea?”

“You will like it.”

“Does it involve my undressing you as well?”

He sat back on his heels, proud of her. “It can.”

And then a cloud passed before the sun in her gaze.

“Lucas, there must be a limit—”

Ah, common sense was nipping at her heels too. He put one finger on her lips. “There must. Trust me to see to it. I promise you're safe with me, Eve.”

She didn't hesitate for even an instant. She reached out and started unknotting his cravat. Before Deene could take three steadying breaths, his shirt was open and Eve was drawing a single, incendiary finger down the length of his sternum.

“Back to my idea, Eve…”

Her lips quirked up. “I liked it better when you were kissing me, not just spouting ideas.”

Eve, impish and intent on her designs, had Deene counting the pulse beats in his groin. “Then we get back to kissing.” He lifted her up and turned, then sat so she straddled his lap. Before she could latch her lips to his, he stared in amazement.

“What on earth are you wearing, Eve Windham?”

Her glance flicked down her front, over an elaborately and very colorfully embroidered set of stays that, thanks to some innovative genius whom Deene would like to genuflect before, laced up the front.

“Jenny makes them. Kiss me.”

It took concentration, to kiss her, to loosen those ingenious stays, to not spend in his breeches at the feel of her breasts all silky and warm beneath his fingers.

It took a little contorting too, to get his hand under her skirts while she used her tongue—hot, wet, wicked—on his ear and undulated her spine so her breast pushed against his palm.

And it took persistence, wagonloads of persistence to get her skirts out of the way and find that slit in her drawers, and then kiss her past the bolt of surprise that went through her when he first made contact with the sweet, damp heat of her sex.

“Lucas, what are you—?”

He did not answer with words; he showed her by repeating a caress of his thumb over the little bud of flesh an aroused man neglected at his peril.

Her breathing changed. She rested her forehead on his shoulder, and he touched her again, more firmly.

“Ohhhh…
Lucas
.”

Eve conveyed wonder and surrender with just his name. He relaxed, certain she'd allow him to give her this pleasure, certain she'd take what he offered.

Though not immediately. He had to experiment a little with pressure and speed, had to pause to pleasure her breasts with his mouth, and pause again to gather the reins of his composure.

He could give them both this much, not more. More was for… not for them.

She hitched against him.

“That's it, Evie. Move if it makes you feel better.”

She heard him. He knew this because her hips started a slow, languid roll to go with the movement of his thumb. Her pace was voluptuous and savoring, so arousing Deene had to count his breaths to keep from spending.

She did not moan, but he felt it when the shocks of pleasure started to grip her body. She twisted her fingers in his hair, her breathing became harsh, she pushed against his thumb, and then went still while, even with his relevant parts outside her body, Deene could feel her drawing up inside, convulsing for long moments with silent ecstasy.

The need to finish pounded through him even as Eve hung over him, panting against his neck. He got his falls undone on one side, extracted himself from his breeches and was spending all over his belly within half a minute.

Likely less.

And then… more bliss, just to hold her, to hold her and marvel at what had gone before—and mourn that it could not have been more.

***

Sensations registered with heightened clarity while Eve drowsed on Deene's shoulder:

The scent of lavender and cedar about his person.

The cherishing quality in the way his hand smoothed slowly over her hair.

The feel of his heart, beating in his naked chest against her naked breasts.

The exact temperature of his neck, the weight of his cheek against her hair.

The luminous and novel lightness suffusing her body.

Each impacted her awareness with bell-tone perfection.

And this was just a taste, just a delectable sample of what and whom Eve must give up for the rest of her life. Further intimacies were out of the question, and thank a God in the mood to show some rare mercy, Deene had somehow understood this.

She could not have borne for him to be disappointed in her, could not have borne to see the warmth and approval in his gaze shift to speculation and disdain.

To whom had she surrendered her virtue?

Upon how many had she bestowed her favors?

Was she diseased from all that excess?

Had she borne a child, perhaps, as a consequence of her folly?

But no, Deene had not disappointed her, had not let her down by asking too much or giving too little.

All those promises Canby had made—
glorious
pleasure, nothing like it, you'll want it again and again, you'll want
me
again
and
again
—what lies they'd been.

While Deene had asked nothing and given her true pleasure.

What a goddamned perishing shame they were destined never to share more.

Eve was marshaling her courage to draw back and remove herself from Deene's lap when his hand tightened on the back of her head, and a shocked, very familiar voice sounded from the doorway.

“Good gracious God in heaven.”

And then Jenny's voice, urgent, low, and miserable. “Mama, come away. Come away now, please. We must close the door.”

Eve tried to scramble away from the man holding her so gently on the couch, but his embrace became inescapable.

“They've gone, love. Stay a moment more. There's nothing to be gained by haste at this point, and we need to sort this out before we face your family.”

Love?
Now
he called her
love
?

“Let me go. I can't breathe…” She tried to wrestle free, but he had his hand on the back of her head, his arm around her back.

Out in the hallway, the front door didn't close; it banged shut with the impact of a rifle shot ricocheting through the house… and through the rest of Eve's blighted, miserable life.

“Mama slammed that door, Lucas Denning. Her Grace, the Duchess of Moreland,
slammed
a door, because of me, because of my stupid, selfish, useless, greedy, stupid, asinine…”

There were not words to describe the depth of the betrayal she'd just handed her family. She collapsed against Deene's chest, misery a dry, scraping ache in her throat.

“Eve, many couples anticipate their vows, even a few couples closely associated with the Duchess of Moreland.”

The reason in his voice had her hands balling to fists.

“I will not marry you.” She
could
not, not him of all men. That signal fact gave her scattering wits a rallying point.

Deene did not argue. When an argument was imperative, he did not argue. His hand stroked slowly over her hair, and as the fighting instinct coursing through Eve's body struggled to stand against a swamping despair, some part of Eve's brain made a curious observation:

Deene was breathing in a slow, unhurried rhythm, and as a function of the intimacy of their posture, Eve was breathing in counterpoint to him. The same easy, almost restful tempo, but her exhale matched his inhale.

“We cannot marry, Deene. I won't have it. A white marriage was as far as I was willing to go, and then only to the right sort of man, a man who would never seek to… impose conjugal duties on me.”

His arms fell away, when Eve would very much have liked them to stay around her. Better he not see her face, better she not have to see his lovely blue eyes going chill and distant.

“We need to set you to rights.”

His hands on her shirt were deft and impersonal, his fingers barely touching her skin. The detachment in his touch was probably meant to be a kindness, but it… hurt.

“Lucas, I cannot think.”

“We'll think this through together. I can guarantee you not a soul will be coming through that door until we decide to pass through it ourselves.”

“I hate that you can be so calm.”

And—worst thought yet—she loved him for it too, just a little. He wasn't stomping around the room, trying to subtly blame her, cursing his fate while figuring out how to duck away from it. He wasn't thrusting her aside so he could put himself together while he left her floundering to right herself with clumsy fingers and a clumsier mind.

She loved him for his simple gestures of consideration, though one could love and hate simultaneously. When she'd been recovering from her accident, this truth had borne down upon her every time Jenny or Louisa offered to read her another hour's worth of bucolic poetry.

“I feel just as if I were lying in that filthy sheep meadow, the scent of sheep dirt all about me, the cold in my bones, the…”

Eve snapped her jaw shut. What on
earth
was she babbling about?

Deene paused in his tucking and buttoning and put a warm hand on either side of her jaw. He kept his hands there until Eve managed to meet his gaze. “If you are in some stinking sheep meadow, I am there with you. Is there tea in this house?”

Tea. Oh,
of
course
, tea. “Yes.”

And still he did not lift her from his lap. While she watched, he withdrew a handkerchief from a pocket and swabbed at his flat belly.

He had a moderate dusting of chest hair. That she would notice this made Eve doubt her sanity—Canby had had no chest hair—because her impulse was not to look away, it was to touch him.
What
would
it
feel
like
to
run
her
fingertips
over
that
chest
hair?
With self-discipline making far too late an appearance, she denied herself the appeasement of this one small curiosity.

When they were both more or less tidied up, Deene wrapped his hand around the back of Eve's head and once more drew her face down to his shoulder.

“You shall not blame yourself for this, Eve Windham. You are a lady, innocent of any wrongdoing, and I have breached the bounds of gentlemanly behavior altogether.”

Not quite
altogether
, though the distinction would make no difference. “Lucas, you have no idea…”

He squeezed the back of her neck, gently, just as he had when Eve had been suffering a megrim weeks ago. “We'll sort this out, Eve. You have nothing to make apology for, not to me, not to Their Graces, not to anybody.”

Papa's heart would be broken. She closed her eyes at that realization. Her Grace would be disappointed; she'd get that tight “where did I go wrong?” look about her eyes and mouth, but Papa…

“Come along.” Deene patted her hip. “We'll make some tea and get the color back in your cheeks. It won't be so bad, Eve.”

He waited for her to extricate herself from his lap, and this took some doing because her hip was stiff—it hardly ever gave her trouble anymore, but of course it would today. When she was on her feet, Deene rose as well, tied her stock around her neck in a neat, graceful bow, saw to his cravat, and offered her his arm.

She took it, a reflex—one she resented even as they arrived to a spotless, empty kitchen.

“May I rummage for some food?” He asked her this as she tossed kindling on the coals in the hearth and took the kettle from the hob.

“There should be bread in the bread box.”

Maybe it was a propensity for self-preservation in the adult male, maybe it was the instincts of a former soldier, but as Eve assembled a tea tray, Deene's foraging produced bread, butter, strawberry jam, and cheese. They domesticated in the kitchen in an oddly comfortable quiet, and by the time the tea was steeping in a plain white ceramic pot, Eve realized Deene had been giving her time to settle her nerves.

Or perhaps to settle his own—a cheering thought.

When she lowered herself to a bench at the worktable, Deene came down beside her, meaning she had to scoot a little.

“Don't run off.” He poured her tea, buttered her a slice of bread, then spread a liberal portion of strawberry jam on it.

If he tried to feed her, she was going to bite off his hand. “I'm not helpless, Lucas.”

The look he gave her was impassive. “Pleased to hear it. Pass the sugar.”

So they sat there side by side, swilling tea, and not arguing. As Eve filled her belly—the food was a surprising comfort, as was Deene's bulk beside her—she tried to reconcile herself to her fate while she topped up their cups.

“This is worse than if we'd been happened upon by strangers.”

“Your mother and sister will never mention what they saw if you don't want them to, Eve.”

Eve studied his profile and saw he believed this made a difference. “They will never mention it in any case, though Her Grace will likely tell Papa. That they know makes a difference, Lucas. To me.”

“To me as well. I am formally renewing my proposal for your hand in marriage, Evie. Don't hog the butter.”

“I am refusing your suit, though you do me great—don't you hog the jam.”

“You want a white marriage. I cannot give you that. The responsibility for the succession lies with me, despite Anthony's willingness to step in, if necessary. I wonder if your father will call me out.”

He reached for another slice of bread as he spoke, the observation so casual Eve wanted to slap her hand over his mouth. With no more regard than if he'd asked, “I wonder if Islington will put his colt in the second heat at Epsom?” Deene had heaped terror on top of Eve's dread.

“He wouldn't. Papa
likes
you.” The tea in her stomach started to rebel at the image of Lucas, facedown, bleeding his life away in some foggy meadow… Papa, facedown… Or—it had been known to happen—both men, dead or permanently incapacitated over Eve's idiocy.

Oh, merciful, merciful heavens.

“Westhaven might see to it,” Deene went on, “given that His Grace should not be involved in such a scandal at this point in his life. All of your brothers are tiresomely good shots. I suspect Lord Val might be pressed into service—time spent in Italy generally improves a man's command of the art of the sword.”

He munched away on his bread, while Eve concluded there was never a species, a gender, or a creature on earth as blockheaded as the honorable English male in possession of a pair of dueling pistols—or swords, foils, whatever the proper term was.

Unless it was she, herself, for allowing such folly to be contemplated.

Whatever was she going to do?

They tidied up the kitchen and put the parlor to rights—this involved arranging pillows so the smudges left by Eve's dusty boots were covered up, but as one mundane, simple task followed another, Eve faced the growing realization that the last time she'd fallen so far from sense and proper behavior, the consequences had been disastrous.

This time, if she did marry Lucas Denning, they would be equally disastrous.

And if she did
not
marry him, they could be even worse.

When the groom led Grendel from the stables, the little trap rattling along behind, Deene tied Beast to the back and deposited Eve on the seat. He climbed in and sat beside her, not touching the reins.

She wasn't going to drive. The man was a lunatic if he thought she could manage the reins in her present state. Grendel stomped a small hoof, likely quite aware that this journey would lead homeward and back to his nice grassy paddock.

“Deene, this proves nothing.”

“You're not helpless. I have that on the best authority. It's not two miles by the lanes, and you know the terrain intimately.”

Intimately.
To elbow him in the ribs or not to elbow him in the ribs?

She hated him, no dispute about that now. She hated him, her life, this day, and herself.

But she took the reins.

***

Her Grace never paced, never worried a fingernail between her teeth, never appeared anxious. His Grace watched while she did all three, until he could bear it no more.

“Esther, come sit with me. Let me pour you a cup, and we'll think this through.”

She paused at the window to their private sitting room, arms crossed, spine straight, and yet her posture testified to despair in the very rigidity of her shoulders.

“Percival, they had been intimate. I could smell it. Dear God…”

There had been more Dear God-ing going on in the previous twenty minutes than His Grace could recall in the past twenty years—and all over young people acting exactly like young people were slated to behave from the beginning of time. He took his wife by the hand, seated her on the sofa, then came down beside her.

“What is it, exactly, my love, that has you so overset about the situation? Deene is honorable. If Eve wants him, there's an end to it.”

“But Eve…” She laid her head on his shoulder. “We've raised ten wonderful children, Percival. We've known heartache and grief.”

That she would speak of it was unusual and gave His Grace a pang. After more than three decades, the glances and silences were often articulate enough that painful words need not be spoken. “We've known wonder and abundant joy, too, Esther.”

“We've buried two, Percival.”

He couldn't argue with that, but thank God it had been only two. Most families somewhere along the way bore the sorrow of an infant taken before the first year, an elder snatched away… as he'd almost been snatched away.

“We still have eight, Esther, and though that cannot compensate for the loss of Victor and Bartholomew, it does console, as do the grandchildren.”

She nodded, but His Grace knew she was working up to something, something that might allow her to finally cry, which—as harrowing as it would be for him—was probably necessary before they could sort out Eve's latest contretemps.

“Percy, I will always miss the boys, I will always worry over the others, but Eve…”

He put his arm around her shoulders.

“Tell me, my love.”

“Death will come for all of us, and in Victor's case, it was almost a blessing. I am selfish to say so, a bad mother—”

That nonsense required immediate contradiction. “You could not be a bad mother, Esther, not ever.”

“But Eve… Our sons were taken from us, and it was awful, but what was taken from Eve… Percy, that broke my heart, over and over. I grieved for our daughter every day she lay in that bed, hurting in body and spirit. And yet, I have never been as angry, either, never been as upset as when I watched our baby girl lose all her spark, all her joy, and all her confidence. That awful, awful man, whom we brought into the household as an employee… I wanted to strangle him with my bare hands. I wanted to aim a pistol at his… directly at him. I wanted to pour oil on him and watch while he was consumed by flames…”

He loved this about her, the ferocity, the soul-deep protectiveness toward those she loved. He hated, however, for her to be distressed.

“Eve was daunted, but she did not lose all her fight, Esther. As long as we love her, she'll never lose the God-given strength to fight. She is a Windham, and one tempered at a young age by vicissitudes her siblings cannot fathom. She'll win through.”