Lady Eve's Indiscretion (22 page)

“And you are looking engaged.” Hazelton left his wife's side long enough to kiss Eve's cheek. “I don't need to tell you Deene is a fine prospect, Eve Windham—and I've reason to know.”

Deene had had some hand in the matter that had brought Maggie and her Benjamin together, but Eve did not know all of the details. Perhaps when she and Deene were married…

Though likely not.

“He speaks highly of you too, Benjamin. Shall we save you some tea cakes, or are you going out?”

“I'm to meet my cousin Archer at the club for luncheon, so I will decline. Lay waste to the cakes. My love, I will be back in time to drive out with you, if that's your wish.”

They exchanged a look suggesting driving out might not be at the top of Maggie's list of wishes. Eve ate two tea cakes in succession while Maggie left for a moment to walk her husband to the door.

“You can close the door,” Eve said when her sister returned. “I have a delicate question to ask you on behalf of a friend.”

Maggie closed the door and resumed her seat on the sofa. “Ask. If I know the answer, I'll tell you, but if it's about the wedding night, expect it to be lovely. All the idiot notions that circulate among the debutantes are just that.”

Lovely?
In Eve's mind, an image arose of Canby raising his hand to deliver a stout blow. She recalled the sharp pain of a window sash gouging at her back, and the memory of saddling her mare in the predawn darkness, hands shaking, guts roiling.

Her hands did not shake as she sipped her tea—surely a sign of progress?

“As it happens, this question relates to wedding nights, though certainly not to my own. I'm sure Deene will acquit himself competently.”

“Jenny suggested confidence in the same regard when I expressed my concern for you.”

Another cake disappeared, while Eve mentally hopped over what Jenny had likely said, and forged on to even more difficult terrain. “My friend is concerned that on her wedding night, her husband might be disappointed to find his bride had suffered a lapse, one lapse, years previous.”

“He might…?” Maggie's brows drew down. Eve ate the last cake with chocolate icing. The ones with almond icing started to appeal strongly as well.

Maggie nibbled a fingernail. “She's concerned he could detect her lapse, though it occurred years previous? Afraid the physical evidence of her purity was tangibly destroyed?”

Plain speaking. Even married and besotted with her earl, Maggie was still capable of breathtakingly plain speaking.

“That's it exactly. Will he be able to tell?”

The question lay between Eve and her sister, leaden and ugly, just as it lay between Eve and any hope of a decent future with Deene.

“Might your friend not ask a midwife?” Maggie was studying the teapot as if she'd never seen a teapot before.

“Midwives talk. My friend is watched over by her family very carefully, and even arranging such a meeting would be difficult.”

Also beyond daunting.

“Benjamin knew.” Maggie said this softly, her eyes taking on a distant quality. “He knew he was my first, though not until…”

“Not until he
was
your first. I see.” Not the answer Eve had longed for desperately.

“Can't your friend take her intended aside and have a quiet talk with him?”

“I've asked her this myself many times.” Countless times. “She does not want to make any premature or unnecessary disclosures, because if her intended reacts badly, then the choices are to cry off or to go through with a doomed marriage.”

“But he might not react badly at all, and then your friend need not worry herself to death over nothing.”

Might. Might was quite a word to hang one's entire future on. And if Eve cried off at Deene's insistence, would the idiot men in her family start cleaning their dueling pistols again?

They
might
.

“I will suggest to her again that she have this discussion with her fiancé, but there isn't much time—and if the man can't detect her lack of chastity, not much point, either.”

Maggie's lips pursed while a silence stretched, and Eve tried to convince herself again that she should just tell Deene the exact nature of the bargain he was getting.

“Tell your friend something for me.” Maggie chose now to spear Eve with a knowing, older-sister look. “Tell her that when she is tired of trying to manage everything on her own all the time, no matter the odds, a fiancé can be a very good sort of fellow to lean on, and a husband even better. I have learned this the hard way, Eve Windham, under circumstances Deene has my leave to acquaint you with. It is sound advice. Shall I ring for more cakes?”

Eve saw the plate was empty. Now, how had that happened?

“Yes, if you please. More of the chocolate, if you have them.”

***

“I want one more opportunity to talk you out of this marriage.” Anthony kept his voice down, thank God. He knew as well as Deene did that the primary function of a gentlemen's club, besides providing a refuge from the long reach of female society, was fomenting gossip.

“Not here, Anthony. I'm on foot—perhaps you'd like to accompany me home.”

They left amid the usual casual farewells and the occasional comment on Deene's upcoming nuptials.

“It's going to damned rain,” Anthony muttered as they gained the streets. “Am I to hold my tongue all the way home, until we're behind a locked door, or might I make my case now?”

“I'm meeting with Westhaven later in the day, so you might as well unburden yourself now.”

They paced along in silence, while Deene reflected on the previous two weeks of being engaged. Were it not for the growing sense that Eve remained reluctant, they would have been two happy weeks. The debutantes and even the merry widows were leaving him in peace, his domestics were happy at the thought of a marchioness on the premises, and marital prospects had a way of improving a man's financial expectations as well—even in the face of Dolan's damned rumors.

And yet, Anthony was determined to piss on the parade.

“Until the moment the vows are spoken, Deene, I will oppose this marriage if for no other reason than that you're being coerced. The lady was in no way importuned, in no way publicly compromised, and this entire farce is unnecessary.”

“I say it is necessary.”

“I will damned marry, Deene. I've told you this more than once. I have a list of candidates we can select among this evening. She must be well born enough to serve as your hostess, or someday—may God forbid it ever be so—as the Marchioness of Deene.”

Deene found himself walking faster. “Choose all you like and hope the candidate of your choice doesn't mind that tidy establishment in Surrey, because she'll find out, Anthony. The ladies always find out.”

His mother had devoted much of her miserable marriage to finding out…

“I do not seek a romantic entanglement with any wife of mine, Deene. If she finds out, so be it. Ours will be a practical arrangement. The point is, I can provide you your heir without you having to make this sacrifice.”

It was heartening to know Anthony's loyalty truly ran so deep, and it was also disconcerting to admit Deene had questioned his cousin's integrity to any degree at all.

“So you marry and you even have a son or two, Anthony. Do you know how many sons of titled families I saw fall to the Corsican?”

“Younger sons, of course, the military being their preferred lot. Name me one heir, though, who came to grief in such a fashion.”

“Lord Bartholomew Windham.”

That shut Anthony up for about half a block, but as they approached the Denning townhouse, Anthony started up again. “I am not sending my offspring to war when the succession is imperiled. Do you think I'm stupid?”

“Of course you aren't stupid. His Grace, the Duke of Moreland, is not a stupid man, either, Anthony, but he lost one son to war and another to consumption. Other families have run through many more heirs than that and turned up without a title to show for it. I can't allow you to meet an obligation that is squarely, properly, and completely my own.”

“Fine, then. Stick your foot in parson's mousetrap, but what of the girl?”

“Eve?” Deene glanced at his cousin. This was a new tack, a different argument. “I will make her a doting and devoted husband.”

“For about two years at the most. Get some babies on her, and you'll be back to those feats of libidinous excess that have characterized the Marquis of Deene since the title was elevated from an earldom and likely before.”

A nasty argument, one Deene would not entertain.

“How is it, Anthony, that you know better than I what sort of husband I shall be? My libidinous excesses, as you call them, date from five, even ten years ago—despite what gossip would inaccurately imply. I could dig into your past or the past of almost any man who came down from university with me and find similar excesses. What is your real objection to this match?”

While Deene waited for Anthony's answer, the first few drops of a drizzling rain pattered onto the cobbled walk. The scent in the air became damp and dusty at the same time—a spring scent, a fragrance almost.

“You want my real objection?” Anthony glanced around, but the threatening weather had apparently cleared the streets. “All right: my real objection is that you're forcing the girl into a union she neither sought nor wants. Bad enough when your sister was treated thus, and it ended tragically for Marie, didn't it? Now you're repeating history with your prospective bride, and that I cannot abide.”

Anthony fell silent, while Deene absorbed a significant blow to the conscience.

“I am not forcing Eve Windham to do anything.” Except… viewed from a certain angle, not that oblique an angle, perhaps he was.

“If you say so.” Oh, the worlds of righteousness the man could put into such a platitude. “Shall I accompany you to this meeting with Westhaven?”

Because it dealt with finances, the question was logical. Because it was a change from a very uncomfortable topic, Deene answered it.

“You shall not. For once, the transaction flows exclusively to our financial benefit, and that much I think I can handle on my own.”

“About the household books…”

In the flurry of wedding preparations, Deene's focus on finances had slipped a bit—but only a bit. “I started on the ones you provided last week, Anthony, but with expenses one place and income another, I don't see how you keep track.”

“One learns to, and that way, nobody else can take the measure of your worth with a single peek at the books. When this wedding business is behind you, we'll muddle through it all, I assure you.”

This wedding business.

“I shall look forward to that. Don't wait dinner for me. I'll likely be dining with Eve and her family.”

“Of course.” Anthony looked like he might say more—apologize, perhaps, for his earlier broadside? “I will stand up with you at the wedding, Deene. Have no fear on that score.”

“My thanks.”

Grudging and belated, but perhaps that was an apology. Deene hurried into the house to change for his meeting with Westhaven—a negotiation Deene looked forward to. Yes, the settlements would benefit him, but they were also the last, necessary step to ensuring that the wedding actually happened.

Then too, it was not a crime for a man to profit from marrying a woman for whom he cared for a great deal. No crime at all. He had myriad uses for the money, not the least of which would be maintaining the kinds of establishments Eve deserved to have for her homes.

And he was
not
forcing Eve to the altar.

***

Likely thanks to Her Grace's influence with the Deity, the day of the wedding brought the most glorious spring weather London could offer. The Windham family had gathered en masse, including even the Northern contingent, represented by St. Just and his increasing coterie of female dependents—two daughters and one countess, plus a happy gleam in the man's eye that presaged further developments.

As His Grace eyed the packed pews of St. George's on Hanover Square, he reflected that a father better versed in the essential parental art of self-deception might be telling himself he was relieved to be seeing his youngest, smallest daughter off into the keeping of an adoring swain.

The organist took his seat while the crowd in the pews and balconies exchanged their final tidbits of greeting and gossip.

His Grace was not relieved. He himself had been the most adoring of swains once upon a time, and yet Her Grace had had her hands quite full with him, for at least the first ten or twenty years of their union.

Possibly more.

Marriage—a good, loving union such as the Almighty contemplated and sensible people longed for—was a damned lot of work, and much was going to be asked of Evie and her swain before His Grace could aspire to anything approaching relief on his daughter's behalf.

He turned back to the small chamber where Eve stood in her finery, and the sight caused something like a small seizure in his heart. Evie was so petite, but she'd been a fighter since she'd surprised them all by showing up several weeks prior to her expected birth date.

“Daughter, you are the most beautiful sight in the realm today.”

She glanced up from her bouquet, an odd little gathering of pink and white heather, orange blossoms, and a few sprigs of hawthorn—for solitude, loveliness, and hope, if His Grace's memory served. Her expression was more anxious than radiant.

“Thank you, Papa. How much longer?”

He turned back toward the nave. “Not long. Your mother has taken her place.”

Her Grace had been subdued in the carriage, but the duke suspected he understood why: they'd lost Eve in some sense seven years ago. Losing her again today revived the old aches, old doubts, and guilt. Since that long-ago day, there had been a chasm of bewilderment between Eve and her parents, one they all possessed enough love to want to breach, and yet the chasm remained.