“Not a headache. Let’s join the others.”

Not a headache, but something. Something almost as bad, if not worse. At lunch, she said little and ate less, and seemed oblivious to her sisters’ looks of concern. Kesmore proved a surprisingly apt conversationalist, able to tease even the demure Lady Jenny with his agrarian innuendos.

When lunch was over, Deene offered to see Eve out to the coaches.

She paused at the bottom of the stairs in the common. “Deene, will you indulge me in a whim?”

“Of course.” Though whatever she was about, it wasn’t going to be a whim.

“I’d like to see one of the front rooms.”

He followed her up the stairs, dread mounting with each step. This whim was not happy, it was not well advised, and yet he did not stop her.

The guest room doors stood ajar, two at the front of the building and, very likely, two at the back, just as she’d said. She moved away from him to stand motionless in the doorway on the right-hand side.

Over her shoulder, he saw plain appointments: a sagging bed that might accommodate two people if they were friendly with each other and diminutive; a wash stand; a scarred desk gone dark with age; and one of those old, elaborately carved heavy chairs that would be uncomfortable as hell and absolutely indestructible. Curtains gone thin from many washings, a white counterpane that might once have sported some sort of pattern.

Just a room, like a thousand others along the byways of Merry Olde England.

And yet… He rested a hand on Eve’s shoulder when what he wanted was to pull her back against his body, or better still—take her from this place altogether, never to return.

For an interminable moment while he could only guess her thoughts, Eve looked about the room. Her gaze lingered on the bed then went to the window.

“Thank God for the window.” She spoke quietly but with a particular ferocity. And yet she stood there until Deene felt her hand cover his own.

Her fingers were ice cold.

“Thank you, Deene. We can leave.”

She made no move to return below stairs, so Deene turned her into his embrace. “We’ll stay right here until you’re ready to leave, Eve Windham.”

All of her was cold and stiff. Whoever this woman was, she could bear no relation to the warm, lithe bundle of Eve with whom he’d stolen so many delightful moments. A shudder went through her, and she drew back. “Take me to the coach, Lucas.”

And still, her voice had that awful, brittle quality.

He took her to the coach, and when he wanted to bundle her directly inside, shut the door, and tell the driver to make all haste to Morelands, the inevitable delays associated with a party of women ensued.

Lady Jenny decided to travel with the maids so she might have somebody to hold the yarn while she wound it into a ball. Lady Louisa’s maid had yet to take a stroll around back—to the jakes, of course.

Kesmore bore it all with surprising patience, but then, the man had likely traveled with small children, which was trial by fire indeed.

At Deene’s side, Eve stood silent and unmoving.

“Shall we walk a bit, Eve?”

A pause, and then, “Yes, we shall. That direction.”

She pointed down the road toward what was likely unenclosed common ground, a gently rolling expanse of green bordered by a woods no doubt prized by every local with a fowling piece.

When Eve moved off, she did so with purpose, while behind them, Deene heard Lady Jenny mutter to Lady Louisa, “Let her go, dearest. It’s better this way.”

If he’d had doubts about the significance of the locale before, the concern in Lady Jenny’s voice obliterated them. Eve kept walking in the overland direction of the main road, until the rise and fall of the land obscured them from the view of the others.

At some point in their progress, she’d dropped his arm and marched ahead, her intent unquestionably to put distance between them.

“I just need a moment, Lucas.”

“You want me to leave you here?” The notion was insupportable. She’d gone as pale as a winding sheet, and her breathing had taken on an odd, wheezy quality. She didn’t answer, other than to turn her back, so Deene ambled off a few yards and sat on a boulder.

He was not going to marry this woman—she’d made that plain—but fate or the well-intended offices of certain meddlesome individuals had put Deene here with her at this precise moment, and here he would stay until her use for him was done.

She stood in profile, as still as a statue, her arms wrapped around her middle, the breeze teasing at stray wisps of her blond hair.

And something was clearly very wrong. “Eve?”

Her shoulders jerked. “I can’t breathe. Don’t come any closer.”

He hadn’t heard that hysterical note in a woman’s voice since his sister had learned she was to be sold in marriage to a brute of a stranger. The same cold chill shot down his spine as he went to Eve.

“Go away, Lucas.” She held a hand straight out, as if she could stop him so easily. “This is—”

The breath she drew in was loud, rasping, and heart wrenching. He got his arms around her, the only alternative to tackling her if she tried to run off.

“Eve, it’s all right.”

“Go away, damn you. Just leave me alone. It will never be all right.” A hint of tears—tears were far preferable to this cold silence.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“I can’t breathe… Lucas, I can’t—”

He cradled the back of her head, tucking her against his chest. “Then don’t breathe, but for the love of God, cry, Evie.”

He held her close, close enough to feel the cataclysm building in her body, to feel not a simple storm but a great tempest breaking loose from long imprisonment.

Her sobs were more terrible for being silent, and had he not been holding her, Deene knew she’d have collapsed to the ground under the weight of her upset. Where she’d been cold and stiff before, she was giving off a tremendous heat now, her body boneless as she clung to him.

She did not quiet exactly—her tears had been far deeper than a mere noisy outburst—but she shuddered at greater and greater intervals. Deene scooped her up and carried her to the boulder he’d recently vacated. What he wanted was to cradle her in his lap; what he did was sit her beside him and keep an arm around her shoulders.

“This is where you fell.”

She lifted her forehead from where she’d pressed it to his shoulder.

“This is indeed where I fell. Have you a handkerchief?”

He passed her the requisite monogrammed linen, knowing he must not look at her while she used it.

“The scent of you is calming, Lucas, at least to me.”

“Then you must keep my handkerchiefs near at hand. I gather you hadn’t been back here in some while.”

She sighed out a big, noisy sigh. “Not in seven years. The place—the memory—sneaked up on me today, and I thought I was brave enough.”

No count of the months this time. That had to be progress. “You are brave enough.”

He recalled the bleakness in her eyes as she’d stared at the miserable sagging bed, and he wanted to howl and shake his fist at God.

“I’m not so sure. I hadn’t expected to feel such rage.”

If he let her say more, she’d regret it. And he wasn’t certain he was brave enough to hear more.

Repairing lease, indeed.

“You were bedridden for months, Eve. Of course you’re entitled to be angry.”

Her head came up, and though her eyes were red and glistening with the aftermath of her tears, Deene was relieved to have her meeting his gaze.

“What? I can’t divine your thoughts, Evie.”

“You say that so easily, of course I’m entitled to be angry.”

“Your horse tripped and went down in the damn sloppy, spring footing—horses trip every day, but this horse tripping left you having to relearn how to walk, and despite how cheery the letters you wrote to your brothers made it sound, that process was hell.”

“It was hell.” She spoke as if trying the words on and then said them again. “It was hell.” More confidently. “It was awful, in fact. Bloody miserable, and not just for me.”

He knew what she was recalling, because he’d heard her brothers fill in the missing parts: the indignity of bodily functions when one was bedridden, the forbearance necessary when loved ones offered to read yet again a novel that had once been a favorite, the tedium so oppressive it made the pain almost a diversion.

Eve Windham had courage, of that Lucas Denning would never be in doubt.

“Can you walk now, Eve?”

She pulled her lower lip under her top teeth, her expression thoughtful. “Do you mean, can I walk to the coach?”

“Can you walk?”

The thoughtful expression became a frown. “I can walk.”

“Then be as angry as you need to be, for as long as you need to rage, but applaud yourself for the fact that while other women would have taken permanently to their beds, you have given to yourself the great gift of once again walking. This is no small thing.”

She didn’t argue, didn’t diminish her own accomplishment, which was fortunate, because he would have argued at her right back.

“I have always wondered about something, Lucas.” She tried to return his wrinkled, damp handkerchief, but he closed her fingers around it and pushed her fist back to her lap.

“What have you wondered?”

“Did Papa shoot my mare?”

Ah, the guilt. Of course, constraining all the anger she’d been entitled to, all the hurt and bewilderment, would be the guilt. It was all Deene could do not to kiss her temple.

“Your brothers talked him out of it, possibly abetted by your mother.”

“How do you know this?”

“Sieges are the very worst way to conduct a military campaign, in one sense. The effort is tedious beyond belief.” He fell silent, memories resonating with other associations in his mind. “Your men spend days, even weeks, digging trenches while the sappers dig their tunnels and the artillery batters the walls, and pretty soon, morale goes to hell—pardon my language. The drinking and brawling pick up, nobody sleeps, and by the time you’re ready to breach the walls, men will volunteer for even the suicide details just to end the siege.”

“What has this to do with my mare?”

“When sleep wouldn’t come, and Old Hooky wasn’t inclined to permit inebriation among his staff, we’d lie awake and talk, or sit around a campfire and talk. Your brother St. Just was profoundly comforted to have gotten your mare out of His Grace’s gun sights before reporting back to Spain with Lord Bart.”

Eve hunched in on herself, becoming smaller against Deene’s side. “Her name was Sweetness, but she had tremendous grit. I know both her front tendons were bowed. As I lay on the ground, she could barely stand beside me, but she would not leave me. I told myself if Papa shot her, it would have been out of kindness.”

Deene sat beside her and tried not to react. That passing comment about shooting a horse was not just about a horse: Eve had considered taking her own life. Right there, sitting on that cold, miserably hard boulder, Deene made a silent promise to the woman beside him that had nothing to do with marriage proposals and everything to do with being a gentleman.

“Bowed tendons can heal. All it takes is lengthy rest and proper care.”

Eve was not placated. “A horse who’s gone through such an injury can never be as good as new, Lucas.”

“We’re none of us as good as new.” He rose lest he wrap her in his arms and never let her go. “I expect your sisters have gotten themselves sorted out by now.”

He did not offer his hand. She stood on her own.

“I expect they have. Would that I could say the same for myself.”

Deene did not pounce on the lure of that comment; he instead walked beside her, not touching her, until they returned to the coaching inn.

“A fine day for a constitutional,” Kesmore remarked briskly. “Lady Jenny and Lady Louisa went ahead with the maids, and Deene, your nag is tied to the back of the coach. If you will both pardon me, I’ll go on ahead lest I eat your dust for the rest of the afternoon.”

He bowed to Eve and swung up onto his black horse, cantering off with a salute of his riding crop.

“Will you keep me company, Lucas?”

He did not want to. He wanted to put as much distance between himself and Eve Windham’s tribulation as he could. She had borne too much for too long with too little real support, though, and he knew what marching on alone entailed all too well.