“I cannot tell you, Eve, how relieved I am to find what a sensible woman I’ve married. Wresting Georgie from her father’s grasp means a great deal to me.”
He did not sound relieved. He sounded wary, which suited Eve nicely, even as it made her sad. She heard more sounds signaling his end-of-day routine. His cravat pin, cuff links, and signet ring dropping into the tray on his bureau. The doors to his wardrobe opening and closing. Wash water dripping into the basin as Deene wrung out a flannel, then the faint scents of lavender and cedar wafting through the air.
He was coming to bed, just as if Eve hadn’t been served up the miserable truth of her marriage a few hours before. In her idiot, grasping, scheming husband’s mind, nothing was to change.
Seven years ago, Eve had been a victim, little more than a child, and left unable to even walk to the close stool without assistance.
She was Marchioness of Deene now, a grown woman, and not without resources or the resolve to use them.
Deene slid under the covers, a clean, warm, devastatingly skilled specimen of a husband, toward whom—despite all—Eve still felt a damnable quantity of attraction. She rolled up to her side, presenting him with her back, but the lunatic man slid an arm around her waist and spooned his body around hers.
“I am sorry you overheard Anthony’s unfortunate sentiments, Eve. They do not reflect my own.”
“Deene?”
“Hmm?” His cheek rested on her hair.
“I’m afraid I’m at risk for a slight headache tonight. I’m sure you understand?”
She felt the understanding go through him physically. He went still, even to a pause in his breathing. Then his hand settled on her shoulder and began to gently knead her muscles.
“Sleep, then. The last thing I want is to impose on you when you might be suffering.”
She waited, waited for that hand of his to slide around and stroke over her belly or her breast, waited for his lips to presume to touch her nape, waited for him to hitch himself closer so the burgeoning length of his erection pressed against her buttocks.
She waited until his hand slowed then stilled on her shoulder, until his breathing evened out and became measured.
She waited until she was sure he’d well and truly dropped off to sleep, until, with her husband’s arm around her and his body pressed close in the darkness, it was at last safe to cry.
Deene found himself in the middle of a wrestling match, though it was as if he were doing battle with his own shadow. He could not anticipate his opponent’s moves, could not divine the rules, could not study the combat long enough to find patterns.
At breakfast, Eve was again all cordial smiles, and Anthony charmed by those smiles.
“Deene says you overheard my plain speaking last evening, my lady, and that I must apologize for such blunt speech over the port.”
“Nonsense, Anthony.” Eve didn’t pause as she topped up her teacup. “Deene and I have a sensible union. I understand he did not marry me out of any excesses of sentiment, nor I him, though we are of course fond of each other. Would you like an orange?”
Eve had fired some sort of shot across Deene’s bow with that offhand observation, but Deene was at a loss to know from which cannon it had been launched or at what particular target. She peeled Deene an orange, the same as she did every morning, and put most of it on his plate.
He watched while she munched one of the three sections she’d kept for herself. “I note you are not dressed for the stables this morning, my lady. Might I inquire as to your health?”
“I did not sleep as well as I might have liked. More tea, Anthony?”
She’d slept well enough. He’d been the one to lie there feigning sleep, arms around her, listening to her tears and wondering how many times he was supposed to apologize—except he had the sense his efforts in that direction had only made the situation worse.
“I’ll accompany you to the stables, Deene,” Anthony said. “I’ve been hearing a great deal about your stud colt, and he’s beginning to show up on the book at White’s.”
Deene glanced up in time to see the interest in Eve’s eyes and the way she masked it behind a sudden need to rearrange the eggs on her plate. “People are placing bets on King William?”
“A few,” Anthony replied. “That he’ll win by so many lengths if rematched against Islington’s colt. That Dolan’s colt would beat him on the flat but not over fences.”
“Dolan’s colt didn’t run all last year,” Deene said. “Word is he’s retired to stud.”
“Would that we all…” Anthony had the grace to leave the sentiment uncompleted. One had to wonder if the lady in Surrey missed Anthony’s company at her table if such was Anthony’s conversation.
“I didn’t know Mr. Dolan had a racing stable,” Eve said. For a woman who’d fended off a headache and slept badly, she was putting away a substantial breakfast.
“He has any accoutrement that would proclaim him a gentleman,” Deene said, “except the right to call himself one. Anthony, pass the teapot.”
Anthony obliged, his expression the usual bland mask mention of Dolan provoked.
“Empty.” Deene passed the pot to a footman. “I will miss you in the stables, Eve. Will you ride out with me later?”
She arranged her cutlery. She folded her serviette on her lap. Deene had the satisfaction of seeing she was at least torn.
“It’s a lovely day,” Anthony said. “I’ll be toddling on back to Kent, there to deal with lame plough horses and feuding tenants. Join your husband on his ride, Lady Deene. All too soon he’ll be absorbed in the race meets, and you’ll hardly see him.”
Anthony was trying to help, but Deene resented his cousin’s assistance, implying as it did that Anthony would be working shoulder to the plough, while Deene drank and gambled and frolicked. If Anthony had kept his big mouth shut…
While Aelfreth put William through his paces an hour later, it occurred to Deene that if Eve hadn’t overheard Anthony, Deene would still be left trying to puzzle out a way to explain the custody suit to her. The papers had sat in the desk drawer for days, with Deene making up a new excuse each day for why he did not give the solicitors leave to prime their barristers and fire off the first true scandal of the Season.
“Yon colt is pouting.” Bannister’s tone was lugubrious. “He wants the lady to watch him go.”
“Lady Deene is a trifle indisposed.”
“Then the colt will be indisposed too. Your horse has fallen in love, and though you breed him to half the shire, he’ll not try his heart out until her ladyship is on that rail, watching him go.”
“For God’s sake, Bannister, he’s a horse. He can’t fall in love.”
Bannister snorted and fell silent, leaving Deene to watch as his prized stallion put in a lackluster performance for no apparent reason.
“He wants her ladyship,” Aelfreth said when the horse was making desultory circles on the rail. “He kept looking at her spot, and she’s not there.”
Even Deene had seen that much. It was pathetic, how a dumb animal…
“Keep walking him, Aelfreth. My wife has taken me into dislike, but she’s as smitten with the damned horse as ever, or I very much mistake the matter. Bannister, have my saddle put on the mare.”
When Deene reached the house, he was relieved to find Eve in one of her divided skirts, her hair neatly arranged into a bun pinned snugly at her nape.
“You’re feeling better.” He made the observation cautiously, no longer certain of anything except that where his marriage ought to be, a battleground was forming.