Lady Eve's Indiscretion (28 page)

“You are suing Mr. Dolan for custody of your niece.”

A silence, while Eve flattered herself she'd surprised him.

“How do you know?”

Eve manufactured a yawn while she cast around for a reply. “I use the estate desk too, Deene. The papers were all but in plain view.”

In the darkness, she felt him measuring her words, trying to decide how long she'd known. “You're not upset?”

“Lawsuits between family members are the very essence of scandal, Deene, but I am merely a wife. If you are determined on this course, I cannot stop you.”

She had intended to plead with him not to file his damned lawsuit. His niece's entire future would be blighted, and even Jenny's remaining Seasons would feel the taint. Their Graces would be disappointed, and the idea that Eve's parents would have to weather one more scandal on her account was enough to make her throat constrict with unshed tears.

“I cannot tell you, Eve, how relieved I am to find what a sensible woman I've married. Wresting Georgie from her father's grasp means a great deal to me.”

He did not sound relieved. He sounded wary, which suited Eve nicely, even as it made her sad. She heard more sounds signaling his end-of-day routine. His cravat pin, cuff links, and signet ring dropping into the tray on his bureau. The doors to his wardrobe opening and closing. Wash water dripping into the basin as Deene wrung out a flannel, then the faint scents of lavender and cedar wafting through the air.

He was coming to bed, just as if Eve hadn't been served up the miserable truth of her marriage a few hours before. In her idiot, grasping, scheming husband's mind, nothing was to change.

Seven years ago, Eve had been a victim, little more than a child, and left unable to even walk to the close stool without assistance.

She was Marchioness of Deene now, a grown woman, and not without resources or the resolve to use them.

Deene slid under the covers, a clean, warm, devastatingly skilled specimen of a husband, toward whom—despite all—Eve still felt a damnable quantity of attraction. She rolled up to her side, presenting him with her back, but the lunatic man slid an arm around her waist and spooned his body around hers.

“I am sorry you overheard Anthony's unfortunate sentiments, Eve. They do not reflect my own.”

“Deene?”

“Hmm?” His cheek rested on her hair.

“I'm afraid I'm at risk for a slight headache tonight. I'm sure you understand?”

She
felt
the understanding go through him physically. He went still, even to a pause in his breathing. Then his hand settled on her shoulder and began to gently knead her muscles.

“Sleep, then. The last thing I want is to impose on you when you might be suffering.”

She waited, waited for that hand of his to slide around and stroke over her belly or her breast, waited for his lips to presume to touch her nape, waited for him to hitch himself closer so the burgeoning length of his erection pressed against her buttocks.

She waited until his hand slowed then stilled on her shoulder, until his breathing evened out and became measured.

She waited until she was sure he'd well and truly dropped off to sleep, until, with her husband's arm around her and his body pressed close in the darkness, it was at last safe to cry.

***

Deene found himself in the middle of a wrestling match, though it was as if he were doing battle with his own shadow. He could not anticipate his opponent's moves, could not divine the rules, could not study the combat long enough to find patterns.

At breakfast, Eve was again all cordial smiles, and Anthony charmed by those smiles.

“Deene says you overheard my plain speaking last evening, my lady, and that I must apologize for such blunt speech over the port.”

“Nonsense, Anthony.” Eve didn't pause as she topped up her teacup. “Deene and I have a sensible union. I understand he did not marry me out of any excesses of sentiment, nor I him, though we are of course fond of each other. Would you like an orange?”

Eve had fired some sort of shot across Deene's bow with that offhand observation, but Deene was at a loss to know from which cannon it had been launched or at what particular target. She peeled Deene an orange, the same as she did every morning, and put most of it on his plate.

He watched while she munched one of the three sections she'd kept for herself. “I note you are not dressed for the stables this morning, my lady. Might I inquire as to your health?”

“I did not sleep as well as I might have liked. More tea, Anthony?”

She'd slept well enough. He'd been the one to lie there feigning sleep, arms around her, listening to her tears and wondering how many times he was supposed to apologize—except he had the sense his efforts in that direction had only made the situation worse.

“I'll accompany you to the stables, Deene,” Anthony said. “I've been hearing a great deal about your stud colt, and he's beginning to show up on the book at White's.”

Deene glanced up in time to see the interest in Eve's eyes and the way she masked it behind a sudden need to rearrange the eggs on her plate. “People are placing bets on King William?”

“A few,” Anthony replied. “That he'll win by so many lengths if rematched against Islington's colt. That Dolan's colt would beat him on the flat but not over fences.”

“Dolan's colt didn't run all last year,” Deene said. “Word is he's retired to stud.”

“Would that we all…” Anthony had the grace to leave the sentiment uncompleted. One had to wonder if the lady in Surrey missed Anthony's company at her table if such was Anthony's conversation.

“I didn't know Mr. Dolan had a racing stable,” Eve said. For a woman who'd fended off a headache and slept badly, she was putting away a substantial breakfast.

“He has any accoutrement that would proclaim him a gentleman,” Deene said, “except the right to call himself one. Anthony, pass the teapot.”

Anthony obliged, his expression the usual bland mask mention of Dolan provoked.

“Empty.” Deene passed the pot to a footman. “I will miss you in the stables, Eve. Will you ride out with me later?”

She arranged her cutlery. She folded her serviette on her lap. Deene had the satisfaction of seeing she was at least torn.

“It's a lovely day,” Anthony said. “I'll be toddling on back to Kent, there to deal with lame plough horses and feuding tenants. Join your husband on his ride, Lady Deene. All too soon he'll be absorbed in the race meets, and you'll hardly see him.”

Anthony was trying to help, but Deene resented his cousin's assistance, implying as it did that Anthony would be working shoulder to the plough, while Deene drank and gambled and frolicked. If Anthony had kept his big mouth shut…

While Aelfreth put William through his paces an hour later, it occurred to Deene that if Eve hadn't overheard Anthony, Deene would still be left trying to puzzle out a way to explain the custody suit to her. The papers had sat in the desk drawer for days, with Deene making up a new excuse each day for why he did not give the solicitors leave to prime their barristers and fire off the first true scandal of the Season.

“Yon colt is pouting.” Bannister's tone was lugubrious. “He wants the lady to watch him go.”

“Lady Deene is a trifle indisposed.”

“Then the colt will be indisposed too. Your horse has fallen in love, and though you breed him to half the shire, he'll not try his heart out until her ladyship is on that rail, watching him go.”

“For God's sake, Bannister, he's a horse. He can't fall in love.”

Bannister snorted and fell silent, leaving Deene to watch as his prized stallion put in a lackluster performance for no apparent reason.

“He wants her ladyship,” Aelfreth said when the horse was making desultory circles on the rail. “He kept looking at her spot, and she's not there.”

Even Deene had seen that much. It was pathetic, how a dumb animal…

“Keep walking him, Aelfreth. My wife has taken me into dislike, but she's as smitten with the damned horse as ever, or I very much mistake the matter. Bannister, have my saddle put on the mare.”

When Deene reached the house, he was relieved to find Eve in one of her divided skirts, her hair neatly arranged into a bun pinned snugly at her nape.

“You're feeling better.” He made the observation cautiously, no longer certain of anything except that where his marriage ought to be, a battleground was forming.

“Somewhat. I will try a quiet hack on Sweetness, mostly because I think you and I need a chance to speak privately, Deene.”

This did not bode well. If she was going to tell him she wanted her own bedroom, he'd fight her. If she wanted to visit her parents, he'd go with her. If she was going to try to talk him out of trying to gain custody of Georgie…

He'd listen. He wouldn't make any promises, but he would listen.

“A hack is exactly what I had in mind.” He took her by the hand and led her to the stables, almost as if he were afraid she'd go marching off somewhere else did he turn loose of her.

When they reached the stables, Eve stopped in her tracks and dropped his hand. “My lord, what is your saddle doing on my mare?”

“A change of pace, so to speak. Willy was stale this morning. I was thinking you could hack him out, and I'd take your mare.”

Ah, the reaction was satisfying. Eve came to an abrupt halt, blinked, and then… she smiled. A slow, sweet curving of her lips, a genuine expression of pleasure that had nothing to do with firing shots or joining battles.

Until she cocked her head. “Are you trying to bribe me, Deene?”

“I am not—unless you want me to bribe you?”
Though
bribe
her
in
what
regard?

“Bribe me.” She put her hands on her hips and glared at him, as if…

“Oh. As in, you will not suffer any more headaches if I put you up on Willy?” Crudely put, but he'd apparently gotten the right of it. “This has not crossed my mind. The horse was dull this morning, not mentally engaged in his work, and I think having you up on him will address what ails him. And as for the rest of it…” He glanced around and saw the lads were all giving them a wide berth. “I need an heir, Evie, and you are my wife.”

He'd kept his voice down, but where such idiot words had come from, he did not know. They were the truth, of course, and no insult to anybody, but they'd come out of his mouth like so much ammunition, when what he'd wanted to say was something else entirely. Something to do with needing her in his arms and in his life.

Eve tugged on her riding gloves, looking damnably composed. “Shall we mount up?”

He tossed her onto Willy's back—such a little thing, his wife, and so full of dignity—then swung onto the mare. Willy was a gentleman and Sweetness not given to coming into season at the first sight of a stallion, else the ride would have been a disaster, though Deene privately considered Bannister was right: as long as Willy had Eve's attention, the horse would have nothing to do with mares or work or anything else.

Rather like his owner.

When the horses had cantered and trotted and hopped logs and otherwise had a good little romp—with Eve and Willy looking like they'd been hacking out together for years—Deene brought the mare back to the walk.

“If we're to have a private discussion, Wife, then we have exactly one more mile in which to have it before every lad on the property will overhear us.”

She readjusted her reins then petted her horse. “Can you be dissuaded from filing this suit, Deene?”

“I don't think so.” He spoke slowly, wondering where even the smallest doubt might come from. “Dolan was not my sister's choice, and as far as I'm concerned, he cost her her life.”

Eve grimaced. “How does a husband cost his wife her life?”

“He forces children on her when she has already shown that her constitution is not suited to childbearing. I can only think what my sister suffered…”

He fell silent and disciplined himself not to tighten his hands on the reins. “She begged me with her dying breath to look out for her family, Eve. I cannot abandon the child now.”

“You've tried being a doting uncle?”

“Dolan won't have it.”

“Here is what I will not have, Deene. I will not have you spending us into the poorhouse to create scandal, when in a few years, I am likely the one who will be responsible for presenting Georgie to Polite Society. I can prevail on Mr. Dolan to see reason in this regard if you'll allow it.”

The mare came to a halt without Deene consciously cueing his mount. “It's ten years until her come out, Evie. I cannot wait ten years to keep a promise to my sister, not when Dolan can betroth the girl wherever he pleases at any point, and have the contracts be binding on all parties. He can ship her to Switzerland, or France, to her relations in Boston or Baltimore, for God's sake… Marie wanted her daughter raised here, in the style befitting…”

Eve regarded him steadily, Willy standing as still as a statue beneath her. “You need an heir, Deene, and I am happy to give you as many heirs as the Lord sees fit to bless us with, but I will not bring down more scandal on my family, much less allow you to use my good name, my standing, and my entire dowry to do it. Find another way to keep your promise to your sister, or until I do present your niece to the sovereign ten years hence, I'm afraid—should you file those papers—I will be besieged by an entire, possibly never-ending plague of headaches.”

She touched her heels to Willy's sides, and the colt bounded off, a flat chestnut streak against the undulating spring grass, the woman on his back completing a picture of grace, beauty, and strength as she rode him home.

Eve realized after about a week that her strategy wasn't working. Part of the problem was that other than preventing Deene from starting his lawsuit, she wasn't entirely sure what her aim had been.

To keep him at arm's length?

That wasn't happening. Each night, he made deeper inroads on her attempts to separate their routine: he brushed her hair, he attended her baths, he helped her into and out of her clothing, and he asked for her assistance with his.

The staff was colluding with him, telling him when she ordered a bath, when she'd asked not to be disturbed in the middle of an afternoon. It was maddening, really, to find such a pleasant, considerate husband where Eve needed to find a calculating, underhanded, self-interested opponent.

And if she'd intended to keep him from her bed?

That wasn't happening either. Each night he tended to his ablutions, then climbed between the sheets and took her in his arms. If she turned her back to him, he rubbed her back or her neck and shoulders. His attentions were unselfish, pleasurable, and in no way could Eve consider them intimate advances.

And for all Eve had been denying her husband—and herself—marital congress, the damnable papers were still in the drawer in the library. That was beyond maddening. He'd
said
he needed an heir. She'd
said
she'd oblige him as long as suit was not joined. What was the damned man waiting for?

“I do not understand you men.” Eve announced this to her brother when Westhaven stopped by ostensibly to offer good wishes to the newlyweds. Deene was out spying on some promising three-year-old colt, which meant Eve had her brother's company to herself.

“We often don't understand ourselves, much less you women. You are looking a trifle fatigued, Eve. Do I tell Her Grace married life agrees with you or make up some other fabrication?”

He spoke quietly—Westhaven was not given to dramatics—but Eve was relieved at his insight.

“Deene and I are quarreling.”

Westhaven picked up a sandwich and demolished it in about two bites. “I can't very well call him out for you, love—he's your husband now, and I was under the impression this marriage was motivated at least in part by your desire to see the man remain above ground.”

“You are no help.”

He studied her for a moment over his tea. In the opinion of his sisters, marriage was maturing Westhaven from being merely handsome into a sort of breathtaking elegance. He was going to make a marvelous duke—though this did not mean he lacked for shortcomings as a brother. “Anna and I went through a ninnyhammer stage, though we were fortunate to tend to it before the nuptials, for the most part. Even if I don't call Deene out, I can talk to the man if you want me to.”

“What would you say?” Eve rose, wondering if her sisters had brought their marital troubles to Westhaven, and whether his prospective role as head of the family meant they had the right to do so.

“I would say that time, honesty, and kindness can see two people in love through almost any difficulty.”

“My husband is not in love with me.” She realized immediately what she'd admitted. “We are not in love with each other.”

A silence, a damnable, knowing silence from her brother had Eve wanting to cry. She crossed her arms over her middle and pretended to be watching the flowers bob in the breeze, when what she was really doing was looking for her husband to come in from the stables.

“Evie?” Westhaven had risen as well to stand by her elbow. “What is the problem?”

There was such concern in his eyes, Eve had to swallow three times before she could trust her voice. “He wants to sue Georgie's father for custody, and I have forbidden it.”

“Forbidden it?” An ominous note of puzzlement laced Westhaven's voice.

“I have… intimated that my favors would be withheld did Deene pursue this course, and not just because I want to avoid the scandal, Westhaven.”

“You have forbidden your new husband to keep a deathbed promise to his only sibling?”

“You don't understand.” And that Deene had explained the situation to Westhaven was disconcerting. “He married me to finance the lawsuit—I saw the estimated costs, projected out over five to eight years, Westhaven. The costs of litigation exceed even the settlements I brought to the marriage, plus interest.”

“A man doesn't typically expect to lose money when he marries a duke's daughter.”

This was not sympathy she was hearing from her brother. Normally, his misplaced capacity for common sense would provoke Eve to railing at him or smacking his meaty shoulder.

She felt instead a need to make him—to make somebody who cared about her—see the entire mess her marriage was becoming from her perspective.

“In addition to the money, Deene wanted my consequence as a proper wife, and he wanted to be able to present himself as a doting father by the time the suit reached the courtroom. He has been diligent in assuring this aim.”

“For God's sake, Evie, he's a man newly married. Anna and I were so diligent in the first few months of our marriage we were out of our clothes more than we were in them. Ask any of our siblings, they'll say the same,
and
so
would
our
parents
.”

Were the circumstances different, this revelation would have fascinated Eve—and warmed her heart in some way not possible prior to her marriage.

“You love your countess, Westhaven, and she loves you. It makes a difference.”

“And Deene is merely a convenience to you?”

“I am a convenience to him.”

Westhaven ran a hand through his hair, a gesture Eve associated with the few times he found himself at a loss. “You ride out with this merely convenient husband of yours, Evie. I'm told you ride his prized stallion.”

“I weigh no more than a jockey, and we only hack.”

“You are being deliberately obtuse, Sister. That horse has the potential to earn Deene as much coin as all his acres in Kent put together.”

This set Eve to pacing the room, because she hadn't realized King William's financial promise was of such magnitude. “He's a wonderful horse, but even there…” She trailed off, while Westhaven watched her tack around the room.

He was damnably patient, was Westhaven.

“I'm back in the saddle, Gayle, but my riding is… off. There's something missing. I have the skills, and I enjoy it tremendously, and I love… I enjoy the time I spend with the horses, but it isn't what I thought it would be.”

Maybe this was why Westhaven cultivated silence so assiduously, because it inspired people to make confessions to him they hadn't even realized they were about to make. That something was missing in Eve's riding had lurked just below her awareness, an inchoate grief she feared had something to do with her marriage or with parts of herself she was never going to recover.

“I'm going to send Anna to you,” Westhaven said. “She is a very good listener and can offer you sympathy where I can offer you only sense. From my limited, admittedly male perspective, you've forced your husband to choose between his vows to you at the altar—which contemplate his duty to the succession—and his vows to his sister. I do not see how you've left him an honorable course, Eve, so it remains to you to find the compromise.”

He fell silent, looking unhappy with his own pronouncements, and then he surprised Eve by taking her in his arms. “And I think, Evie, part of you wanted this reckoning from your new husband, for reasons you have not examined very closely yourself, valid reasons though they must seem to be.”

He spoke quietly—his worst insights were always delivered quietly—and then he kissed her cheek, swiped a last tea cake from the tray, and left her alone to… resume watching the flowers bob in the breeze.

***

“I will write you a glowing character, of course.”

Dolan strolled along through his perfectly manicured gardens, telling himself the young woman at his side would see the sense in his offer. Miss Ingraham had been hired in part because she was sensible enough to earn coin at honest work rather than starve or accept just any proposal of marriage to come her way.

“Let me understand you, Mr. Dolan. You are warning me that Georgie is about to become the object of a contested lawsuit, in which her uncle, the Marquis of Deene, seeks to take her from your care and keeping.”

“He'll try his damn—I beg your pardon. He'll try very hard. The situation will become unsavory, Miss Ingraham. Your character will likely come under scrutiny, as will every aspect of my own. Every time you've scolded Georgina in public, every time you've seen me be short-tempered with her, every time I've stayed out all night…”

He trailed off, though the exact measure of the indignities looming close at hand had kept him up many an hour since Deene's last visit. Staying out all night, however, was invariably the result of a protracted negotiation rather than of time spent with a mistress of tireless charms.

Dolan could not explain such a thing to his daughter's governess, of course.

“Sir, may we sit?”

“For God's sake, woman. You don't ask me such a thing.”

She cocked her head, a smile lurking at the corners of her full mouth. “You are my employer, Mr. Dolan. It is for me to ask you.”

“On your day off, you were not so prickly, Amy Ingraham.”

His use of her first name visibly surprised her, though he was intrigued to see it did not displease her. When he took the place beside her on the bench, she spoke easily, as if maybe this were another day off.

“I am under the impression, sir, that lawsuits take years to come to a hearing, so many years that Georgina might well reach her majority before you have a decision in the matter.”

“Then Deene will modify his petition to become her guardian rather than her custodian, or guardian of her property. He will not give up on this, though I'm not sure what exactly drives him. I have taken some steps to try to flush out his motivation, but they have been unavailing.”

Miss Ingraham studied her hands in her lap. “You have thought this matter through? You're not inclined to make any concessions to his lordship?”

If there was anybody—anybody on the face of the entire earth—who might understand his position, it was the woman beside him. This realization was a little sad, but also heartening.

He would miss her, the quiet Miss Ingraham of the fine gray eyes and wonderfully pleasing figure. Georgina would miss her too, and that… gave him a pang.

“I'm not inclined to make any concessions at this point, but there will ensue some period of bargaining—I'm not sure how long. Deene hasn't filed the papers yet, though he gave me to understand I'm to be served notice any day, likely in an intentionally public manner. You have some time to find other employment before the scandal actually breaks, though as to that…”

He fell silent. If he offered to pension her off, she'd take it amiss. Late at night after a few too many brandies, Dolan had contemplated learning the exact shape of Miss Amy Ingraham's feminine form, and he had not censored himself for such imaginings. He was… male, single, in good health, and she was an attractive woman near at hand.

He did not admit to himself they were both lonely, but the realization was there.
He
was certainly lonely—if she was, she hid it well.

But a gentleman did not bother the help.

“I have been in your employ for several years now, Mr. Dolan.”

Dolan mentally prepared himself for a pretty little farewell speech, though the part of him still comfortable with a stonemason's tools wanted to hit something with his bare, callused fists.

“I will give you the highest possible recommendation, Miss Ingraham, and do all in my power to see you properly placed and well compensated in your next position.”

“Will you?” She arched an eyebrow, her tone so dry and starchy Dolan risked meeting her gaze. “I am touched. Also puzzled.”

“Regarding?”

“Do you intend to win this lawsuit, or lose it? For if you intend to win it, then surely you will want to curry my favor, Mr. Dolan. I am the only party who can credibly testify that you have never in any manner neglected your daughter's upbringing, that you are a doting—no, a loving and devoted—papa, that you would cheerfully die a thousand painful deaths for this one little girl, and yet you seek to disengage my services. This is quite, quite puzzling.”

She said nothing more, but left Dolan there beside her on the bench, rearranging the chess pieces he'd put on the board between himself and Deene.

“Miss Ingraham…
Amy
. I cannot allow you to be involved in… I have connections in Dublin, York, Edinburgh, Paris, even Boston, if you'd…” He fell silent, wondering how much she guessed, how much she knew, and if Deene had already tried to bribe her.

“What's it to be, Jonathan Dolan? Will you win or lose, and don't think to dissemble with me. I've seen you with your daughter.”

It took him long silent minutes to understand that he was being offered a sort of conditional friendship, a cooperation on a level he had not anticipated, from an ally he could never have approached directly, not about this.

He considered prevarications, outright lies, and near-truths, but…

Amy Ingraham had called him Jonathan. His mother had called him Jonathan, and his dear departed wife had—at least toward the end of their marriage—and now this quiet, sensible woman had used his given name and asked him for the truth. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, she'd linked her arm with his there on the bench.

“The truth, sir. I'll know if you're lying—just ask Georgina.”

To his very great surprise, and even greater relief, he did indeed tell her the truth.

***

“If you could define the problem, I might know better how to advise you to solve it.” Kesmore passed his guest a drink but doubted Deene was even aware of the glass in his hand.