Grace Burrowes - Lady Eve’s Indiscretion

“Belt said you were nesting in here.”

Eve’s husband stood in the library doorway, looking windblown and tired—and devastatingly attractive. Also hesitant.

The hesitance tore at her spirit, and yet she understood it, too. “Deene.” She rose and crossed the room, holding out her arms so he would know they hadn’t yet descended to nodding at each other in greeting. “I thought perhaps you might stay the night in Town.”

His arms came around her, bringing with them the scents of horse, rain, and husband. “A little dirty weather is to be expected in spring.” He hugged her to him, making Eve wonder if he meant to imbue his observation with comforting symbolism. “Shall we have a nightcap? I’ve rung for a tray to be brought in here.”

They were to stay on neutral territory for a bit, which was a relief. “A biscuit or two and some tea wouldn’t go amiss.”

He walked with her to the sofa before the hearth, where Eve had indeed been nesting. Pillows and blankets marked her preferred end of the couch, and a novel lay on the side table.

“I do not expect you to wait up for me, Evie, but I appreciate that you did.”

He was being conciliatory or simply polite. In either case, Eve did not want to fight with him, not silently, not politely, not in any way.

“William was in good form today. Bannister let me take him over some proper jumps.”

Deene came down beside her on the sofa. “Which might have scared me witless, had I watched. Bad enough I let you and that colt hop logs and ditches and streams all over the shire.”

“William is a horse in a million, isn’t he?”

Something flickered across Deene’s tired features. “For you, he is. Kesmore sends his regards.”

“And Westhaven his.”

“They are spies, the lot of them. What did you tell your brother, Evie?”

She picked up Deene’s arm and put it around her shoulders, where it lay unmoving for a moment. When she put her head on his shoulder, that arm curled a little, so the side of his thumb could stroke her neck.

“I told him we’ve hit a rough patch, and it’s tearing at me awfully. He said I must find a way to compromise.” To say this out loud was to take a risk; but with a flash of insight, Eve realized that to keep it inside, to pretend there was no problem worth mentioning, was a worse risk yet.

Deene blew out a sigh. “I said much the same thing to Kesmore, who gave me much the same advice. And I want to, Evie… I want to find a way through this, but Georgie…”

Eve put a finger over his lips. “I want to as well, and perhaps that’s as much progress as we can hope for in one day.”

They ate mostly in silence, exchanging just a few safe comments about the horses, until Deene took Eve by the hand and helped her to her feet.

“Something about this room is different.” He was peering at her as he spoke, the room being mostly in shadows.

“I’ve not been exactly tidy.” Eve kept her gaze away from the far wall, where something was very different indeed. Deene studied her, then took a candle from the mantel, and as if he’d divined her thoughts, he took the candle across the room.

“I had forgotten this portrait entirely.”

Eve’s feet took her to stand beside her husband, when her flagging courage ought to have had her making her good nights. “You were handsome even as a boy.”

“And Marie was pretty. She looks like a child, though, and this was painted right before her wedding.”

“She was a child, Deene. Sixteen? Seventeen? Certainly not a woman grown at that point.”

“And yet…”

The look he gave Eve was inscrutable, and she wished she could just ask him if hanging the portrait served as a peace offering or an irritant. She’d meant it as a peace offering, but now, hours later…

“We can take it down if you think it doesn’t suit.”

“It suits.” He leaned in and kissed her cheek, then winged his free arm at her. “It suits exactly.”

A tension in Eve’s middle eased, though not entirely. She was coming to expect a subtle dyspepsia to plague her throughout the day, a symptom of a marriage in trouble and a wife who knew not what to do about it.

Deene must have felt the same way, for he was particularly solicitous as they prepared for bed. He did not undress in the dressing room, but remained where Eve could see him and feast her eyes on his nakedness.

Had he lost weight? Were his ribs and the bones of his hips a trifle more in evidence?

“Will you be going to Town tomorrow, Deene?”

“After I watch William go, very likely. Would you like to come with me?”

He hadn’t extended such an invitation in more than week. “Perhaps I shall.”

He shrugged into a forget-me-not blue dressing gown that made his eyes look positively electric, and shifted to stand behind where Eve sat at her vanity.

“Have I told you lately, Wife, what beautiful hair you have? The feel of it…” He closed his eyes and let her gathered hair run through his hands. “I have missed the feel of your hair.” He brought a lock to his nose. “The scent of it, the warmth of it tickling my chin when I hold you.”

He might have whispered these things in her ear two weeks ago. Now he had merely to recite them, and Eve’s insides started churning.

“It wants braiding, Deene.”

He opened his eyes, and in the vanity mirror, Eve saw him smile. There was a hint of mischief in that smile—also a touch of sadness. He braided her hair with brisk efficiency and then laid his dressing gown across the foot of the bed. “I’ll get the candles, Wife.”

So she watched him move naked around the room, watched the play of firelight on his lean flanks when he knelt to bank the coals, watched him stretch up to blow out the candles on the mantel, watched him stalk over to the bed and climb in with no ceremony whatsoever.

“You will keep those cold feet to yourself, Deene.”

“Cold feet?”

Oh, what an opening she’d handed him, and without meaning to. Entirely without meaning to—he had her that rattled.

“You run them up my calves, and then we’re both shivering.”

“I am not shivering, Evie.” He scooped her up and arranged her on her side, so the warmth of his chest blanketed her back. His hairy, muscular legs snugged up to her bottom, and his arm came around her middle.

She loved it when he held her like this, loved the way it made her feel safe and cherished and toasty all over. The only thing that might have made it better would be if she had thought to take off her nightgown so she might be as naked as he.

“You will tell me if there’s anything else I can do to make you more comfortable, Wife.”

His lips grazed her nape. A casual caress, one he’d indulged in many times before, and each time, Eve felt the impact of it in low, wonderful places. She wanted him to do it again.

And he did, more lingeringly, more tenderly.

Never in their marriage had he made her ask for his attentions, and Eve was not about to start now—no matter how badly she needed the reassurance, no matter how passionately she wanted… him.

And yet… she needed to find the compromise that would allow them to move ahead, and Deene had not filed his lawsuit.

She shifted so they were facing each other on the mattress. “Do you think to get me with child and then file your lawsuit, Deene?”

He looked for a moment as if he’d rise up from the bed and not come back, but then his features composed themselves. “And if you had a girl child, Evie, would you then expect me to wait to file the petition until you were carrying a second child? To withdraw the suit until we had a son, and then file yet again? And what of a spare? Anthony does not want to marry, and the burden of the succession is ours.”

He was so angry.

And so hurt. They were both hurt, and even as Eve despaired, she also recognized that any common ground was better than none.

“Please make love to me, Lucas. I need you to make love to me.”

He was on her in an instant, poised over her, one arm under her neck, the other on her hip, pushing her nightgown up. “We cannot go on like this, Wife, but if I tell you I will not file that damned lawsuit, will you agree not to take any rash measures yourself?”

Rash measures? With her husband’s weight pressing her into the mattress, Eve tried to fathom his meaning.

Women could prevent conception, or try to. They could take herbs to make it less likely a child quickened. She’d had reason to learn these terrible things seven years ago.

“I will not betray the vows I took at the altar, Deene.”

“For God’s sake, call me Lucas. At least here, at least when we’re like this…”

He fell silent, and Eve closed her eyes, feeling the hot length of his engorged manhood against her belly. “Lucas, please… I want… I need…”

He slid into her, a slow, hot glory that had her body fisting tightly around him in a welcome that should have been ecstatic. He loved her slowly, thoroughly, ravishing her with physical pleasure until she understood that until that night, he’d been holding back with her.

He’d been her husband and her lover but had denied them both the greatest depth of his passion. When at long last he allowed himself to spend in her body, when Eve had lost awareness of anything save the pleasure he showered upon her, she lay beneath him, sheltered in his arms and saddened beyond measure.

Deene had made his point: if they did not find a way through their current difficulties, Eve would be giving up not just her husband’s expert lovemaking, not just passion and pleasure and companionship of the deepest order, she would also be giving up the only man she would ever love.

“The Marquis of Deene, sir. He calls upon you alone.”

Deene pushed past the butler—a stuffy old fellow who smelled of camphor—and found Dolan in his shirtsleeves at a massive desk much like the one in Deene’s own library.

“We’re family, Brampton. I hardly think I need be announced.”

Dolan did not rise, which showed exactly the kind of animal cunning Deene expected from his brother-in-law.

“That will be all, Brampton, though have the kitchen send up a tray. Marriage has apparently put his lordship off his feed.” Dolan waited until the butler had withdrawn before turning an expression with a lot of teeth—and no welcome whatsoever—on his guest. “How is it you know my butler’s name?”

“They all know one another’s names, Dolan. It’s what we overpay them for.”

Dolan did not roll down his shirtsleeves, though Deene had the sense it wasn’t an intentional rudeness; it was instead a function of having been caught off guard by an opponent.

“How’s Georgie?”

Dolan’s brows rose. “Still protesting her French lessons, though she has an aptitude for them. You may use that against me in court: I force her to learn French by withholding my granny’s Irish lullabies from her.”

“You had a granny? I am astonished to find you were not whelped by some creature sporting scales and breathing fire.”

Dolan fiddled with a gleaming silver penknife. “Insult my sainted mother, Deene, and a lawsuit will be the least of your problems.”

“My apologies. I meant only to insult you.”

Except he hadn’t, exactly. Antagonize, of course, but not quite insult. If Evie would not countenance a lawsuit, she’d certainly not countenance a duel.

Dolan brushed his thumb over the blade of the penknife. “I was under the impression a gentleman—using the term as loosely as present company necessitates—plotting to do murder on the field of honor generally slapped a sweaty riding glove across his opponent’s chin before witnesses of similar rank.”

“I cannot challenge you to a duel, Dolan, though every day you draw breath offends me.”

“Oh, of course. Because I married your dear sister, whose hems I was not fit to kiss, though I certainly paid enough to have them trimmed in lace. You’ll not be seeing your niece very frequently if this is the tack you take, Deene. A bit more charm is wanted or some lordly attempts at groveling—one’s in-laws ought to be a source of amusement at least.”

“I don’t see Georgie at all as it is, Dolan. I have nothing to lose.”

This point must have struck Dolan as valid. He rose from his desk, his expression thoughtful. It remained that way until a lavish silver tray fit for the highest tea before the highest sticklers was brought in and set on the desk.

“You will please pour,” Dolan said. “I haven’t the knack.”