If the weather was fine, they’d taken to picnicking at various secluded spots on the property. Sometimes Deene made love to his wife in the lazy afternoon sunshine, sometimes he dozed with his head in her lap, and sometimes—the times he suspected they both liked the most—they mostly talked.
“I had something else in mind today.”
Her expression became… guarded. “Husband, we got a late start this morning because you had something else in mind, and while I always enjoy what you have in mind—”
“As I enjoy what you occasionally have in mind, Wife, but this is not that kind of something else.”
And still she was wary. When it came to lovemaking, Eve took a little—a very little—convincing to try new things. Whether it was a new position, a new location, a new variation on something he’d shown her previously, she always hesitated:
“Lucas, this cannot be decent…”
“Husband, I am not at all sure…”
“Deene, are you quite certain things can go that way…?”
She was not shy, exactly, so much as she lacked confidence in her responses—or confidence in her entitlement to enjoy the God-given passion of her own nature.
And yet, she always gathered her courage and met him halfway, something he loved about her almost as much as he loved the way she gave him small touches and caresses throughout the day.
“Where are you taking me, Deene?”
He laced his fingers with hers and drew her in the direction of the unused foaling stalls. “This is a surprise, Evie. I wanted to give you this surprise the morning after our wedding.”
“You did give me a surprise, as I recall.”
He’d awakened her with an introduction to the pleasures of making sweet, sleepy love spooned around each other amid the warmth of the covers.
“One can’t offer his new wife too many pleasant surprises.”
“Is this a pleasant surprise then?”
Always, the wariness. “I hope and pray you find it so.” At the serious note in his voice, Eve paused to peer over at him. He could not back out now, and maybe because of that, the vague anxiety in his chest gathered into a tighter knot. “If you don’t like this surprise, you don’t have to keep it. I can send it back.”
She resumed their progress, moving into the mostly empty barn. “This is a gift then?”
“Customarily, a husband presents his wife with a token of his esteem following consummation of the nuptials.”
“You are being sentimental, then. I love it when you dote on me, Deene, but I understand we must be mindful of the economies, and I’d have you freed from any—”
She stopped dead outside a roomy stall bedded in fresh, deep straw.
“Lucas, what have you done? Good God… what have you done?”
Eve could not draw breath. She could only stare and cling to her husband’s hand.
“I am going to faint.”
“You shall not.” Deene moved behind her and wrapped his arms around her, a bulwark against the roaring in her ears and the constriction in her chest. “Breathe, Evie. It’s just one more horse.”
Oh, but not just any horse. Eve knew those gorgeous brown eyes, the deep chest, the little snip of pink skin on the end of the mare’s big, velvety nose.
“She’s white now, no longer gray. This is my Sweetness, isn’t it? Tell me this is my dearest… oh, Husband. What have you done?”
“I can send her back, if you’d rather not… I didn’t want to upset you, Evie. But you’d asked, and I thought perhaps you’d worried…”
“Hush.” She turned in his arms to put her hand over his mouth, but then craned her neck to keep the mare in her sight. “Oh, hush. She will never leave my care again, never. You must promise me, Lucas. Right now, swear to me she is mine to keep.”
“She is yours to keep, always. I swear it, vow it, and promise it. It’s in the settlements, it’s in the bill of sale, it’s in my last will and testament. She will always be yours to keep.”
That he would do such a thing and do it so thoroughly… Eve could not hold to her husband tightly enough, could not take her eyes from the mare even when tears made the horse’s image blurry.
And while Deene stroked Eve’s back and held her upright on her shaking knees, Eve did breathe. She breathed in, she breathed out, and she made a tremendous discovery. The emotion welling up from her soul made her lungs feel too small and her heart beat hard in her chest. It affected her perceptions, slowed down her senses of sound and vision, made her sense of scent more acute. In many particulars, her body was mistaking the moment for one of anxiety approaching panic.
Except… except her husband held her securely, and her mind understood now—seven years later—that the other casualty of Eve’s great fall was well and happy. The mare was content, in good weight. Sweetness’s eyes bore the same steady, clear gaze Eve had long associated with her, and her coat was blooming with good health and proper nutrition.
Eve’s physical symptoms might resemble panic, but the emotions flooding her were gratitude, relief, and overarching all others, what she felt was soaring, unbounded, bottomless joy.
Eight
Deene did not rush her, so Eve knew not how long she stood suffused with happiness outside the mare’s stall. The lightness in her body was… celestial, like flying over a whole course of jumps in perfect footing, from perfect spots, in perfect rhythm, to perfect landings.
Like riding this very mare.
When Eve had thoroughly abused Deene’s handkerchief and probably her husband’s poor nerves as well, she managed a question. “Is she sound?”
She felt the tension ease out of him, as if all through her weeping he’d been holding his breath. “Dead sound. She rides to hounds, Evie, and the squire who parted with her said she’s his best afternoon horse.”
Sound, indeed. “All this time, all these years, I’ve wondered, but I haven’t known how to ask. I haven’t known whom to ask. I have prayed for this horse nightly, prayed she was not suffering a painful life, longing for her misery to end, or worse…”
He gently pushed Eve’s head to his chest. “She has been in the care of a hounds-and-horses fellow by the name of Belmont, farther south of us. He gave her a year off then bred her twice. Her first foal has been under saddle for a year, which is probably the only reason he allowed me to buy her. Her progeny—both fillies—show every sign of having their dam’s good sense and heart.”
“Then St. Just chose very well for her. I must thank him.”
“There’s something else you have to do, Evie.”
Sheltered against Deene’s body, Eve knew exactly what he intended to say. It should provoke all the panic she hadn’t felt at the sight of the mare. It should have her ears roaring again and her hands going cold.
“You want me to ride her.”
“No.” He held her so gently. “What I want does not matter. I hope you believe that. What matters—the only thing that matters at all—is what you want, and what you want at this moment, Eve Denning, more than anything in the world, maybe more than you’ve ever wanted anything, is to be up on your mare again.”
There was… a tremendous gift in being known and understood like this. A relief from loneliness at a fundamental level. There was healing in it, and more joy, and also… truth. While Eve remained in her husband’s embrace, letting that truth seep through her mind and heart, Deene went on speaking.
“I’ll take you up with me—the mare is in quite good condition, she’ll tolerate it for a bit—I’ll put you on a leading line or a longe. I’ll mount up on Beast and stay right at your stirrup, if you prefer. I’ll walk by your boot. I’ll lead her where no one else can see us, but, Eve, you want to get back on that horse.”