He could not have held off at that moment to save his soul.

* * *

In the days following her wedding, Eve dwelled in an ever-expanding bubble of emotion characterized predominantly by the joy of one whose hopes and dreams have received not just a stay of execution, but a full, unconditional, royal pardon.

She was married—happily, joyously married—and not to some mincing, left-handed cipher, or a fortune hunter of dubious motives, but to a man whom she liked and esteemed greatly. She had chosen not just well, she had chosen wonderfully and wisely.

Better still, she’d chosen a man who showed her both affection and desire in abundance. That she’d been starving for both was a sobering realization, one that threw into high relief just how contorted she’d allowed her view of herself to become.

Of course she desired her husband—what sane woman would not want Lucas Denning in her bed?

Of course she enjoyed his company. He was charming, devoted, and open with her in a way she hadn’t expected but supposed characterized even her parents’ marriage behind closed doors.

The desire took her breath away, but the affection… Deene stole her heart with the pleasure he seemed to take in simply touching her and being in her company. They ate every meal together unless Deene was off in Town, meeting with his solicitors, and that was just the start of ways he found to share her company.

“You’ll come down to the stables when you’ve met with Mrs. Belt?”

Deene passed three juicy strawberries from his plate to hers. He’d had strawberries delivered to their rooms last night long after dark, and what he’d done with a mere, unprepossessing fruit… and that was before he’d started with the chocolate sauce.

Eve studied the treat on her plate and mentally reviewed what her husband had asked her. “I’ll be down as soon as we’ve established a schedule for the maids and footmen, worked out next week’s menus, arranged for the windows to be cleaned both inside and out, and—”

He put a finger to her lips. “And then you’ll come down to see us turn out your foal with his playmates for the first time.”

“Yes, Husband.” He did not understand that a household would not run itself, and having the maids clean the insides of the windows a month after the footmen cleaned the outsides meant the windows were never truly clean.

He kissed her on the lips and left her in a rosy, happy silence, contemplating the masculine pulchritude of his retreating form. She was still contemplating it when her sister-in-law, Anna, the Countess of Westhaven, came to call at midmorning.

“I was on my way into Town from Willow Bend and thought I’d just peek in. If you weren’t yet out of bed, I would have been on my merry way.”

Evie linked her arm through Anna’s and drew her along a path winding between beds of blooming irises. “You would have reported to the entire family that I was having a lie-in in the first week of my marriage, and Their Graces would have started getting ideas.”

Anna’s eyes lit with mischief. “Westhaven and I were nearly bedridden the first three months of our marriage. I know he’s your brother, but I want you to understand that the term wedded bliss can be grounded in fact, Eve.”

“We are not… bedridden.” Not when Deene could accost her in the linen closet, the butler’s pantry, the saddle room, and their bed.

“Are you happy with your choice, Evie?” Anna took a bench in the morning sun, and Eve settled beside her.

“I am quite, quite happy with my husband and with the state of holy”—horny, as Deene termed it—“matrimony. Deene is very considerate.”

Doting would have been a more accurate word.

“Considerate, bah.” Anna’s full mouth flattened. “Considerate, cordial, amicable, civilized. Such words have no place in the vocabulary of those newly wed. Your brothers are worried about you, Eve Denning. They like Deene, but they will cheerfully geld him if he’s not being a proper husband to you.”

St. Just had vowed as much on Eve’s very wedding day. “I should not like my husband gelded.”

Anna, blast her, waited while Eve tried to sort out the thoughts she could admit aloud from the ones she’d carry with her to her grave.

“I believe Deene has been lonely.”

Anna rearranged her skirts. “Go on.”

“He seems to want not just… not just to exercise his marital rights, but to have my company. I’m to join him for all of our meals. I’m to watch the lads with the horses. Deene says I have an instinct for what’s needed to make a horse-and-rider combination a partnership and more experience at it than I realize.”

She’d been particularly pleased with that compliment.

“One hopes a new husband would comment on his wife’s obvious gifts.”

Obvious, perhaps, though Eve herself had lost sight of that one. “I had not realized Deene has such an affectionate nature.”

“In what regard?”

This was an interrogation, plain and simple, and yet Eve wanted to share the state of her marriage—the wonderful state of her marriage—with somebody. “He likes to touch me and not just… all kinds of touches. He takes my hand. He puts his arm around my waist or my shoulders. When he takes a seat beside me, there’s no decorous space between us, even if we’re in company or before the servants. He’s like… a cat, or a dog. Proximity seems to comfort him.”

Brushing her hair comforted him, assisting her to dress and undress comforted him, feeding her, and most wonderful of all—cuddling up the entire night long, not just for a few minutes of postcoital lassitude, comforted him each and every night.

Eve admitted to herself that she took comfort from all these casual generosities on Deene’s part too. They nourished her confidence in some way she could not describe and fed some other emotion she wasn’t likely to discuss with anybody, ever.

“This is all very encouraging, Evie. Never forget to demonstrate to your husband that you appreciate his trust in this regard.”

His trust? “Whatever do you mean?”

The smile Anna sported now was diabolically sweet. “I realize Westhaven is a doting and affectionate brother devoted to his family, but it might surprise you to know that as a husband, he was initially plagued with a certain reticence.”

Reticence ought to have been one of Gayle’s several middle names. “I am dumbfounded to hear this.”

Anna sailed along, either missing the irony or choosing to ignore it. “He required reassurances that his small displays of affection and protectiveness were not merely tolerable but welcome.”

Westhaven requiring reassurances was an intriguing notion. “Do tell.”

“I take my lead from him, of course, but try not to miss an opportunity to reciprocate his advances. If I do not assure him I am charmed by his devotion, he might fall prey to doubt. Doubt is the serpent in the marital garden, Eve. Self-doubt, doubt in one’s partner. You must protect your husband from such a torment. Even when he is a ninnyhammer and cannot bring himself to ask you simple questions, you must give Deene the simple answers.”

My, my, my. Being married was becoming marvelously complicated. “It shall be my pleasure to offer Deene all the reassurances he could possibly want.”

Anna fell silent for one moment while a breeze sprang up and brought the scent of the stables into the garden. “The simple answers too. You tell him you’re glad to be his wife. You tell him you desire him. You tell him you care for him. The actions suited to the words have more meaning when you give your husband both… And then…”

“Then?”

“One fine, fine day, you will find him giving you the words too—if he hasn’t already.”

He had not. This realization was troubling. Not troubling enough to constitute a serpent of doubt, exactly, but a small point to consider.

“Can you stay for tea, Anna?”

“I would not impose. You’ve been glancing toward the stables since I arrived. I hazard Deene will find an excuse to seek you out in the next ten minutes if I do not take my leave.”

Anna was as good as her word, tooling on her way after more smiles and hugs, leaving Eve to change into attire suitable for the stables and go in search of her husband. As she wandered through the garden, Eve took a minute to savor another darkly potent emotion coloring all her days.

She felt… vindicated. Fiercely, unendingly vindicated, for having held her peace for more than seven years, for having carried in her heart the true dimensions of her folly as a much younger woman. For having never told a single soul the exact extent of her heartache and loss.

Never again would the name of her malefactor be allowed to form even in her mind. She had, by virtue of relentless determination and a willingness to bear a load of sheer, nerve-wracking anxiety, been given a fresh start—in her marriage, in her life.

She fully intended to grab that fresh start with both hands, and to never let go.

If that meant she continued to bear alone the full measure of her regrets and losses, then she’d gladly bear that lonely burden. She was not foolish enough—innocent enough—to believe a gift the magnitude of her fresh start could be won without some private cost that must, must remain forever hers alone.

* * *

“My lord, we must continue to advise you against pursuing this course.”

Hooker appropriated not the royal “we,” not even the pontifical “we,” but a new pronoun, the legal “we.” Deene had been hearing it a lot in the past few weeks, and with each hearing, it grated all the more.

Hooker inhaled audibly, no doubt ready with another sermon about the follies of bringing suit against a father whom nobody could seriously criticize, despite—“albeit, granted, nevertheless, and notwithstanding”—Dolan’s deplorable antecedents and regrettable associations with trade.

“Stow it, Hooker.” Deene gathered up the papers that had at long last been drafted for submission to the courts. “I will read these in the next several days, make any needed corrections, and expect to have suit joined by this time next week.” Deene rose, rolling the bundle into a neat sheaf and holding it out to the thin clerk to be tied with a red ribbon.

“If it is your lordship’s wish, we shall proceed with all due, deliberate, and purposeful haste, however there is the small matter of the, um, fees, for the filing and so forth.”

In other words, unless Hooker’s bill was brought up to date, there would be some delay in the filing of the petition, then another delay involving some redrafting, then a delay to further research some specious detail, all of which would add substantially to the unpaid bill.

“Have you an accounting prepared, Hooker?”

“It so happens I do, your lordship.” He snapped his fingers at the clerk, who melted from the room. “Allow me the honor, your lordship, of congratulating you on your recent nuptials. I understand one must act with dispatch sometimes in arranging the ceremony, though might I inquire as to when the settlement negotiations will take place?”

This question, with its unflattering implications toward Deene and his bride, Hooker did not ask before his minion.

Deene tugged on a pair of riding gloves. “The negotiations are concluded. I’ve reached a private agreement between me and the Windham family, a copy of which is kept with my personal papers, and another given into the keeping of the lady’s brother, the Earl of Westhaven. The arrangements did not affect the business of the marquessate.”

“That is very unusual, my lord.”

“I want control of my situation, Hooker, just as I want control of my niece’s future. I should hope you are clear on that point, if no other.”

The clerk returned with another sheaf of papers bundled together, this time with a gold ribbon. Such wits, these lawyers.

“I’ll bid your lordship good day, then. Again, congratulations, my lord.”

Deene did not leave in any particular hurry, but the more time he spent among his solicitors, the more he dreaded the very scent of the place: old books, anxiety, and greed. That he would pollute the early days of his marriage with these trips to Town was a measure of how desperately he wanted to resolve Georgie’s situation.

He was unmercifully plagued with the knowledge that he had yet to fully explain the matter to Evie. He waited for a quiet moment when he might casually mention it, but the quiet moments were so precious with his new wife, and they invariably became, or immediately followed, passionate moments.