Anthony picked up his newspaper, a bland smile on his face. “A man newly out of mourning cannot neglect his carousing. Once the Season starts, you’ll be waltzing the night away. Then there’s every house party and shooting party in the land to attend while each ambitious mama in the realm tries to put you on a leash for her darling daughter.”
“If you’re trying to cheer me up, Cousin, you are failing spectacularly.”
Though the solicitors had mentioned that a man with a wife might stand a better chance in the courts than one without.
What a dolorous, uncomfortable thought.
Lady Eve Windham’s great fall had happened on her sixteenth birthday. In the eyes of Polite Society, it was a bad fall from a fast horse.
Eve’s family knew it to be a fall from grace, while Eve understood it to be a fall of even more disastrous dimensions than that. A long, hard fall, involving injury to her heart—not just her left wrist and hip—and requiring years of convalescence. Seven years later—she found something ominously biblical about the length of time—she still hadn’t gotten back on a horse.
Nor entirely mended her heart.
Neither situation merited much notice though, because she’d been born the youngest daughter of Their Graces, the Duke and Duchess of Moreland. The Windham family’s consequence was such that the exact nature of this youthful indiscretion was never allowed to reach the ears of the gossips, sparing Eve that most inconvenient and troublesome Windham family tradition—Great Scandal.
Great Scandal might as well have the status of a great-aunt, so frequently did it come to call upon the Windhams. His Grace’s offspring included two by-blows, both fortunately conceived prior to his acquisition of the title, and also—God be thanked—before his acquisition of a duchess.
When Windhams married, the firstborn was typically not a nine-months babe. In fact, nobody could recall when a Windham firstborn had been a nine-months babe, not even back to the present duke’s late grandfather. And yet, Windham infants were notoriously healthy from birth.
The Windham sisters had by a narrow margin evaded what amounted to the family curse. With Maggie and Sophie wed, that margin was so narrow as to suggest Windham brides conceived on their very wedding nights. The third Windham sister to marry, Louisa, Countess of Kesmore, was being closely watched to see if she too was going to present her earl with an heir in such spanking time.
Eve Windham, by contrast, had no intention of allowing herself to encounter those circumstances conducive to the subsequent appearance of a baby.
Not now, not ever.
And therein lay a problem of disastrous—even scandalous—proportions, for no less a person than Esther, Her Grace, the Duchess of Moreland, had lately taken a notion to see her two remaining unwed daughters escorted up the aisle.
Locked in wed, as Eve’s brothers used to say.
All three brothers were married now, and saying very different things indeed.
“Smile, Evie. Trottenham is on his way over.”
Eve pasted the requisite smile on her face and glanced around the ballroom. “Be still my tender heart.” The tone of her words was at variance with their content, which caused Eve’s sister Genevieve to smile as well.
“He’s not so bad, or you wouldn’t have given him a minuet.”
Eve said nothing as her latest admiring swain wove ever closer through the crowd. Jenny was right: he wasn’t so bad, or so good. He’d serve as one of this Season’s decoys if need be.
Eve kept her smile in place, though the thought of another entire Season—months!—of social prevarication made her oppressively tired.
“My lady.” Trottenham bowed over her hand, bringing his heels together like some stuffy Prussian officer.
“Mr. Trottenham, a pleasure.” Though it wasn’t.
“I believe the sets are forming for my dance.” He wiggled his blond eyebrows, probably his attempt at flirtation. Jenny took a whiff of her wrist corsage, though Eve thought her sister might be hiding a smirk.
Eve placed her gloved fingers over his hand, and for the thousandth time, prepared to tread that fine line between reeling a man in and casting him away. In the course of the dance, she batted her eyes, though twice she forgot the name of Mr. Trottenham’s estate. She let him hold her a trifle too close—as she tittered. The grating titter was a rarefied art form.
“Lady Eve, has my conversation grown tiresome?” Trottenham twirled her gently under his arm while he spoke, and the slight resulting vertigo was Eve’s first clue she was in trouble.
“Nonsense, Mr. Trottenham. I’m merely concentrating a bit on the steps of the dance.” She treated him to her most fatuous simper, while sounds around her altered as if from far away, including the sound of Eve’s own voice. Each sound became both clearer—more detached from other noises—and less real.
“One can’t expect such a pretty little lady to dance and follow a conversation.” Trottenham beamed an indulgent smile at her. “Though my sisters tell me…”
He prattled on, while Eve dealt with the peculiar sense that her head was three feet wide and that she could feel sensations with her hair. By the time the dance concluded, the visual distortions had begun.
“Jenny, I must leave.” Eve kept her voice down. The next afflictions would be nausea and much-worse vertigo, and there was no way on earth Eve could afford talk to circulate that she had been unwell or dizzy at a social function.
Jenny’s perpetual smile dimmed. “Is it a megrim, dearest?”
“A bad one.” Though there was no such thing as a good megrim. “There must have been red wine in the punch.”
“Mama’s playing cards with Aunt Gladys. I can fetch her and have the coach brought around.”
“There’s not time.” Before Eve’s eyes, odd lights began to pulse around Jenny’s head.
“Deene is here. He can see you home.”
Eve made no protest, which was surely a measure of abject misery. “Fetch him.”
Jenny moved off while Eve sidled closer to the French doors letting in fresh air from the terrace. The Season was still a few weeks off, so the night was brisk. The darkness beckoned, as did the quiet.
Quiet and darkness were her only friends when a headache struck. Laudanum was a last resort, lest she become dependent on it.
“Lady Eve.” Deene stood before her, tall and strikingly handsome in his evening finery. He bowed over her hand, doing a credible impersonation of a proper gentleman. “You don’t look well.”
How perceptive. At least he’d spoken quietly.
She managed to bat her eyes at him. “Get me out of here without causing talk. Please.”
His gaze traveled over her quickly, assessingly. Eve would have hated that, except it was a completely impersonal inventory. “A breath of fresh air is in order.”
“Deene, nobody is going to believe—”
He tucked her hand over his arm, beamed a brilliant smile at her, and led her out to the terrace. As soon as they’d gained the edge of the illumination cast by the torches, he paused and took off his jacket. “Unless you start squawking, nobody remarked our departure.”
He settled his jacket over Eve’s shoulders and gave the lapels a little tug to bring it close around her. Eve’s first impression was of blessed warmth.
“Thank you.”
“My pleasure.” He didn’t exactly sneer the words, but neither were they sincere. No matter. If he could get Eve home without further embarrassment, she’d suspend their skirmishing for one evening and be grateful.
He offered his arm again. “There’s a gate this way we can use.”
Eve hadn’t meant to hesitate, but it was difficult even to think when that ominous ache started up at the base of her skull.