Lady Eve's Indiscretion (36 page)

“Fine,” Greymoor sputtered. “The race is for—”

“Not a forfeit, for God's sake,” Dolan expostulated. “Declare him the damned winner, and I'll keep my daughter, but the money and the colt will be… wedding presents. Goddamned wedding presents, with the horse going into her ladyship's keeping.”

Deene most assuredly did not want such a large sum of money from another family member, much less another horse for his wife to fall in love with, but before he could take up the argument, Eve had stuck out a small hand.

“You have a deal, Mr. Dolan.” She shook, she kissed the man's cheek, and she looked like she'd hug the sorry bastard while Greymoor cracked a smile and the sound of applause filled Deene's ears.

Eve's family stood around them, Their Graces, her brothers, her sisters, their spouses, all beaming like idiots. The race, it appeared, had been decided.

Westhaven leaned in. “You will not, I hope, choose this moment to indulge in any ninnyhammer behavior, Deene. Shake the man's hand, and get my sister the hell home before she faints again.”

Again?

Deene shook Dolan's hand, endured the moment when Greymoor declared victory for King William, then got Eve the hell home. While she did not faint “again,” she did fall asleep in Deene's arms, such that he had to carry her over the threshold and up to their chambers thereafter.

***

Eve awoke deep in the night to find her husband blanketing her. In one instant, she went from a sweet, sleepy awareness of his body draped over hers, to a focused yearning for intimacy with him.

“I wasn't sure you'd awaken.” His voice held a note of humor in the darkness, also concern.

She wrapped her arms and legs around him, got one hand anchored on his muscular buttocks and the other in his hair. “I'm awake.”

The day had been long, with her family celebrating at great and noisy length, until Valentine had started singing, Westhaven had joined in, then Sophie with her lovely voice, and Her Grace had all but wept to see her brood engaged in such a display of good spirits.

They'd fallen into telling stories next, with every other tale seeming to center around “Remember the time Evie went steeplechasing on Meteor,” or “Recall that it was Evie who wanted to see if the beasts really did speak on Christmas Eve…”

And Deene had waited patiently through it all, occasionally toasting his marchioness, but mostly keeping her by his side while the Windham family recovered from having one of its members in seven years of self-imposed exile.

When Deene had bundled Eve into the coach, she'd fallen asleep on his shoulder, then later had fallen asleep at her bath, literally, and needed her husband's assistance to get from the tub to the bed.

He hadn't bothered to put her in a nightgown, a decision she had to approve of as he kissed his way across her collarbones.

“These bones could have been broken at that bloody oxer.”

“They weren't. My husband had faith in me.”

He shifted up, to rest his chin on her crown. “I have never been so goddamned scared in my life, Evie. I have faith in you, and you rode one hell of a race, but please—I beg you—develop no aspirations involving a career as a jockey. There aren't enough prayers in me or in all of Christendom for that.”

“I won't.”

He sighed a big, husbandly sigh, proof positive he'd truly been concerned about this. And if she'd started spouting plans to work Goblin into better condition, no doubt he would have learned to pray harder and faster.

“Lucas?”

“Beloved?”

“Can we talk later?”

“We will talk later.”

He settled in then to love her. She already knew this about him after only a few months of marriage, knew when he was teasing and testing, knew when he was serious. He was very serious.

He was usually careful to insinuate himself into her body in easy, almost-pleasant stages, but this time, he seated himself at her opening, took her mouth in a voracious kiss, and drove home in one hot, sweet thrust that inspired her body into fisting around him in abrupt, clutching spasms of pleasure.

Eve gathered, as she lay panting beneath him, that her husband was making some sort of point. He waited a few minutes before resuming his diatribe, this time using slow, measured thrusts with a relentless quality to them that made Eve dig her nails into his backside and moan against his throat.

The third time he started up, she realized he was riding some sort of race of his own, an obstacle course of pleasure and persistence, in which she had no choice—in which she had no wish—except to submit and be amazed. When he finally allowed himself to cross his own finish line, she held him tightly, for long, long moments, until she understood what her next obstacle was going to be.

It was time to talk.

She smoothed her hand down the elegant length of Deene's spine, down to the lovely contour of his buttocks. He sighed and lifted half an inch away.

“I have imposed on you,” he said, biting her earlobe. “You must scold me, Eve.”

“I am too well pleasured to scold anybody for anything. Shall I fetch a cloth?”

“Somebody ought to.”

He would have heaved himself away, except Eve clutched him a little tighter for a moment—for courage. Deene waited, then climbed out of the bed and crossed the room to the washbasin. Eve watched while he rinsed off by the glowing embers of the fire, then accepted the cool cloth from him and felt his gaze on her while she did likewise.

“Being married to you is very intimate, Lucas.”

He accepted the cloth from her and tossed it in the general direction of the hearth. “Are you complaining?”

A guarded note in his voice betrayed the sincerity of his question.

“I am rejoicing. Also a trifle chilled, so please get under these covers and stay awake for a bit longer.”

She caught one corner of his mouth tipping up slightly before he scooted under the covers and moved to spoon himself around her.

“Not like that.” Eve wrestled him about, so he was over her. “What are we to do about Anthony?”

“Anthony has taken ship for Boston, his consort and children with him. I expect he also has at least a small fortune in coin packed among his bags, which I will choose to regard as compensation for his years of service.”

“He stole from you, Lucas.”

“Not as much as you'd think. He skimmed liberally, but as best I can reason, he liked more the sense of being the one who held the power and the purse strings. He didn't want me discovering his schemes, but more to the point, he didn't want me to figure out that he was merely a well-paid cipher, not the linchpin of some convoluted, ailing financial empire.”

“A lying, well-paid cipher.”

Deene nuzzled her ear, which tickled. “We ought to be grateful all Anthony's talk of rumors was mostly exaggeration of his own efforts to slander me, and that nobody has been paying the least mind to us or to my misspent youth.”

Misspent youth. The term reminded Eve of the topic she had yet to broach. “I have something difficult to say to you, Husband.”

“I do hope that white marriage business isn't going to come up, Eve Denning.”

He snuggled his body in closer, as if to admit that the white marriage business had been lurking somewhere in his male brain, creating havoc these weeks past, and to further clarify that he'd have no part of it.

“God love you, Husband, a white marriage is the last thing I could contemplate with you. I would be devastated…”

He left off nuzzling her neck. “Go on.”

This wasn't at all the tack she wanted to take. She wanted to be brisk, informative, and unsentimental. To pass along a few minor facts in the interests of easing her conscience and showing the same faith in him he'd shown in her.

A marriage needed to be based on mutual respect, after all.

“There are things I've needed to tell you, Lucas, but haven't found quite the right moment. Things that want privacy.”

“I'm listening, and this is as much privacy as we're likely to get anywhere.”

His reply was not at all helpful, but he stroked a hand over her hair then repeated the caress, and that… It reminded Eve of the way he'd patted her shoulder before the race. The way he'd stayed near her all day, the way he'd carried her over the threshold.

“My courses are late, Husband.”

This merited her a sigh and a kiss to her cheek.

Her
cheek
?

“Being the sort of intimate husband I am—and being married to the lusty sort of wife you are—one noticed this.”

She liked that he thought she was lusty… But he'd
noticed
?

What else had he noticed?

“Did you notice that I was scared to death on that horse today?”

“Of course. The more frightened you are, the calmer you get. Usually.” Another kiss to her other cheek. “Though you were not particularly calm on our wedding night.”

Oh, he would bring
that
up. Eve had wanted to ease into the topic, to whisk right over it, to drop hints and let him draw conclusions.

Subtlety was wanted for the disclosure she had in mind.

“I was not chaste.”

God
help
her, she'd spoken those words aloud.
Deene's chin brushed over her right eyebrow then her left; his arms cradled her a little more closely. “You were chaste.”

“No, I was not. I had given my virtue… Lucas, are you listening to me?”

“I always listen to you. You did not give your virtue to anyone. It was taken from you by a cad and a bounder who'd no more right to it than he did to wear the crown jewels.”

Eve's husband spoke in low, fierce tones, even as the hand he smoothed over her hair was gentle.

“How did you know?”
He'd known? All this time he'd known and said nothing?

“I thought at first you were simply nervous as any bride would be nervous of her first encounter with her husband, but then I realized you were not nervous, you were frightened. Of me, of what I would think of you. As if…”

He rolled with her so she was sprawled on his chest and his arms were wrapped around her. By the limited light in the room, Eve met his gaze.

“Your brother Bartholomew caught up with the fool man first, and the idiot was so stupid as to brag of the gift you'd bestowed on him. He was further lunatic enough to brag about the remittance his silence would cost your family. He bragged on his cleverness, duplicity, bad faith, and utter lack of honor to your own brother.”

“Bart never said… Devlin never breathed a word.”

“I don't think Devlin knew. By the time Devlin arrived on the scene, Bart had beaten the man near to death and summoned a press gang. I know of this only because I happened to share a bottle—a few bottles—with Lord Bart the night before we broke the siege at Ciudad Rodrigo. He regretted the harm to you. He regretted not avenging your honor unto the death. He regretted a great deal, but not that you'd survived your ordeal and had some chance to eventually be happy.”

“You have always known, and you have never breathed a word.”

“I have always known, and I have done no differently than any other gentleman would do when a lady has been wronged. You are the one who has kept your silence, Evie, even from your own husband.”

He was not accusing her of any sin; he was expressing his sorrow for her. Eve tucked herself tightly against him, mashed her nose against his throat, and felt relief, grief, and an odd sort of joy course through her.

“All these years I thought I was alone with what had befallen me, but I had a friend in you, didn't I?”

“I haven't always been a friend to you, Evie. When a man finds himself damnably attracted to a woman who has suffered enough at the hands of…”

She shut him up with a kiss, a soft, helpful kiss such as a wife bestows on a husband inclined to temporize when he ought to be listening.

“I love you, Lucas. I love you for the faith you have in me, for your patience, for your honor, for so many reasons. I love you and I trust you and I love you.”

He heaved the biggest sigh ever. “And you won't feel compelled to ride in any more races to demonstrate these lovely sentiments you hold toward me?”

“Not on horseback.”

Though she did spend much of the remaining night—as well as most of the ensuing decades—demonstrating those same sentiments in myriad other ways.

Read on for a sneak preview of
Grace Burrowes's

Lady Maggie's
Secret Scandal

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From Sourcebooks Casablanca

“The blighted, benighted, blasted, perishing thing has to be here somewhere.” Maggie Windham flopped the bed skirt back down and glared at her wardrobe. “You look in there, Evie, and I'll take the dressing room.”

“We've looked in the dressing room,” Eve Windham said. “If we don't leave soon, we'll be late for Mama's weekly tea, and Her Grace cannot abide tardiness.”

“Except in His Grace,” Maggie replied, sitting on her bed. “She'll want to know why we're late and give me one of those oh-Maggie looks.”

“They're no worse than her oh-Evie, oh-Jenny, or oh-Louisa looks.”

“They're worse, believe me,” Maggie said, blowing out a breath. “I am the eldest. I should know better; I should think before I act; I am to set a good example. It's endless.”

Eve gave her a smile. “I like the example you set. You do as you please; you come and go as you please; you have your own household and your own funds. You're in charge of your own life.”

Maggie did not quite return the smile. “I am a disgrace, but a happy one for the most part. Let's be on our way, and I can turn my rooms upside down when I get home.”

Evie took her arm, and as they passed from Maggie's bedroom, they crossed before the full-length mirror.

A
study
in
contrasts
, Maggie thought. They were the bookends of the Windham daughters, the eldest and the youngest. No one in his right mind would conclude they had a father in common. Maggie was tall, with flaming red hair and the sturdy proportions of her mother's agrarian Celtic antecedents, while Evie was petite, blonde, and delicate. By happenstance, they both had the green eyes common to every Windham sibling and to Esther, Duchess of Moreland.

“Is this to be a full parade muster?” Maggie asked as she and Evie settled into her town coach.

“A hen party. Our sisters ran out of megrims, sprained ankles, bellyaches, and monthlies, and Mama will be dragging the lot of us off to Almack's directly. Sophie is lucky to be rusticating with her baron.”

“I don't envy you Almack's.” Maggie did, however, envy Sophie her recently acquired marital bliss. Envied it intensely and silently.

“You had your turn in the ballrooms, Maggie, though how you dodged holy matrimony with both Her Grace and His Grace lining up the Eligibles is beyond me.”

“Sheer determination. You refuse the proposals one by one, and honestly, Evie, Papa isn't as anxious to see us wed as Her Grace is. Nobody is good enough for his girls.”

“Then Sophie had to go and ruin things by marrying her baron.”

Their eyes met, and they broke into giggles. Still, Maggie saw the faint anxiety in Evie's pretty green eyes and knew a moment's gratitude that she herself was so firmly on the shelf. There had been long, fraught years when she'd had to dodge every spotty boy and widowed knight in the realm, and then finally she'd reached the halcyon age of thirty.

By then, even Papa had been willing to concede not defeat—he still occasionally got in his digs—but truce. Maggie had been allowed to set up her own establishment, and the time since had seen significant improvement in her peace of mind.

There were tariffs and tolls, of course. She was expected to show up at Her Grace's weekly teas from time to time. Not every week, not even every other, but often enough. She stood up with her brothers when they deigned to grace the ballrooms, which was thankfully rare of late. She occasionally joined her sisters for a respite at Morelands, the seat of the duchy in Kent.

But mostly, she hid.

They reached the ducal mansion, an imposing edifice set well back from its landscaped square. The place was both family home and the logistical seat of the Duke of Moreland's various parliamentary stratagems. He loved his politics, did His Grace.

And his duchess.

One of his meetings must have been letting out when the hour for Her Grace's tea grew near, because the soaring foyer of the mansion was a beehive of servants, departing gentlemen, and arriving ladies. Footmen were handing out gloves, hats, and walking sticks to the gentlemen, while taking gloves, bonnets, and wraps from the ladies.

Maggie sidled around to the wall, found a mirror, and unpinned her lace mantilla from her hair. She flipped the lace up and off her shoulders, but it snagged on something.

A tug did nothing to dislodge the lace, though someone behind her let out a muttered curse.

Damn
it?
Being a lady in company, Maggie decided she'd heard “drat it” and used the mirror to study the situation.

Oh, no.

Of all the men in all the mansions in all of Mayfair, why
him
?

“If you'll hold still,” he said, “I'll have us disentangled.”

Her beautiful, lacy green shawl had caught on the flower attached to his lapel, a hot pink little damask rose, full of thorns and likely to ruin her mantilla. Maggie half turned, horrified to feel a tug on her hair as she did.

A stray pin came sliding down into her vision, dangling on a fat red curl.

“Gracious.” She reached up to extract the pin, but her hand caught in the shawl, now stretched between her and the gentleman's lapel. Another tug, another curl came down.

“Allow me.” It wasn't a request. The gentleman's hands were bare and his fingers nimble as he reached up and removed several more pins from Maggie's hair. The entire flaming mass of it listed to the left then slid down over her shoulders in complete disarray.

His dark eyebrows rose, and for one instant, Maggie had the satisfaction of seeing Mr. Benjamin Hazlit at a loss. Then he was handing her several hairpins amid the billows of her mantilla, which were still entangled with the longer skeins of her hair. While Maggie held her mantilla before her, Hazlit got the blasted flower extracted from the lace and held it out to her, as if he'd just plucked it from a bush for her delectation.

“My apologies, my lady. The fault is entirely mine.”

And he was laughing at her. The great, dark brute found it amusing that Maggie Windham, illegitimate daughter of the Duke of Moreland, was completely undone before the servants, her sisters, and half her father's cronies from the Lords.

She wanted to smack him.

Maggie instead stepped in closer to Hazlit, took the fragrant little flower, and withdrew the jeweled pin from its stem.

“If you'll just hold still a moment, Mr. Hazlit, I'll have you put to rights in no time.” He was tall enough that she had to look up at him—another unforgivable fault, for Maggie liked to look down on men—so she beamed a toothy smile at him when she jabbed the little pin through layers of fabric to prick his arrogant, manly skin.

“Beg pardon,” she said, giving his cravat a pat. “The fault is entirely mine.”

The humor in his eyes shifted to something not the least funny, though Maggie's spirits were significantly restored.

“Your gloves, sir?” A footman hovered, looking uncertain and very pointedly not noticing Maggie's hair rioting down to her hips. Maggie took the gloves and held them out to Hazlit.

“Can you manage, Mr. Hazlit, or shall I assist you further?” She turned one glove and held it open, as if he were three years old and unable to sort the thing out for himself.

“My thanks.” He took the glove and tugged it on, then followed suit with the second.

Except his hand brushed Maggie's while she held out his glove. She didn't think it was intentional, because his expression abruptly shuttered further. He tapped his hat onto his head and was perhaps contemplating a parting bow when Maggie beat him to the exit.

She rose from her curtsy, her hair tumbling forward, and murmured a quiet “Good day,” before turning her back on him deliberately. To the casual observer, it wouldn't have been rude.

She hoped Hazlit took it for the slight it was intended to be.

“Oh, Mags.” Evie bustled up to her side. “Let's get you upstairs before Mama sees this.” She lifted a long, curling hank of hair. “Turn loose of that mantilla before you permanently wrinkle it—and whatever happened to put you in such a state?”