“I like the French soaps.” She said this very quietly, glancing about as she did. “They’re very dear, but the scents are such a pleasure. And there’s a particular tea at the Twinings shop. Everybody should have a favorite tea.”

She had fine gray eyes, a lovely smile, an excellent figure, and she could make small talk.

“I quite agree, Miss Ingraham. My preference is Darjeeling. What’s yours?”

* * *

For an entire day, Eve tried to study the welter of thoughts and emotions roiling through her.

At breakfast she listened to Aunt Gladys prattle on about how pretty the gardens were—while Eve contemplated ripping up every tulip on the property.

She endured a social call from Louisa and Kesmore, trying not to see the concern in either of their gazes or to allow them to see in her own eyes the nigh overwhelming desire to smash the teapot on the hearthstones.

She held Jenny’s yarn and considered strangling her sister the very next time the word “dearest” was uttered aloud.

After tossing away half the night, Eve overslept and woke up ready to discharge the entire senior staff for allowing it. She was eyeing all the pretty, proper demure clothing in her wardrobe with a view toward burning the lot of it when her gaze fell on an old outfit she’d had for years.

It would still fit her.

While she studied the ensemble, an insight—dear God, at long last, an insight—struck her: what was wanted was not destruction per se, but action.

No more weeping, wondering, and wandering the house. She yanked the dress out of the wardrobe and tossed it on the bed, then pulled her chemise over her head and regarded her naked body in the mirror.

She bore no visible scars, deformities, or disfigurements as a legacy of her fall. She could walk, she was healthy, and by heaven it was time to start acting that way too.

Her hair went into a practical braid that she coiled up into a bun at her nape. From under the bed, she pulled a pair of boots she hadn’t worn in seven years. She dressed without assistance, dodged the breakfast parlor and headed for the kitchen, there to cut up some apples.

She left the kitchen, realizing for all she’d had an insight, it had been only a limited insight: it was time for action, yes, but what action?

“I don’t suppose you have any answers?” She fed Meteor an apple slice without receiving a reply.

While Grendel sidled closer, she scrambled over the fence to give Meteor’s withers a scratching. “I feel like I am going to explode with indignation, horse. Like having a tantrum nobody will be able to ignore, like starting a fire in the formal parlor…”

Like what?

She fed him another apple slice then attended to the spot behind his chin that had him stretching out his neck. “You are no help. I come here for wisdom, and I get horsehair all over my outfit.”

Grendel came within a few steps, and Eve realized the pony wasn’t going to allow her to entirely ignore him. She held out an apple slice to him.

Ponies were not prone to insights. They usually lived a scrappy life among larger animals and inconsiderate children, or casually negligent former owners. A pony was generally left to manage as best it could, and the average pony managed quite well.

Grendel did not take the treat. He regarded Eve out of eyes that seemed at once knowing and blank.

“Eat your apple, you idiot. Meteor won’t stand for it to go to waste.”

Grendel took a step closer while Eve held the apple slice a few inches from his fuzzy, whiskered muzzle.

“You are no kind of pony if you can’t see a perfectly lovely treat—oof!”

He’d butted her middle with his head, once. Stoutly.

“That was rude.” She passed the apple slice over her shoulder to Meteor and stood there, hands on hips, feeling as if the pony were glaring right back at her. It was enough to drive an already overset woman—

Yes.

Yes, yes, and yes.

“You.” She grabbed Grendel’s thick forelock. “You come with me, and don’t even think of giving me any trouble, or I shall deal with you accordingly.”

The little beast came along. He did not give her any trouble.

* * *

Deene climbed into the saddle, patted his gelding on the neck, and turned the horse down the drive. Anthony had departed a couple of days ago, the plan being for him to go on reconnaissance in the clubs and ballrooms and unearth whatever intelligence there was to be found.

While Deene… buried himself in ledgers that made little sense, rode out to visit tenants who were wary and carefully polite when enduring his calls, made lists of eligible women of good fortune and reasonable disposition… and did not call on the Windham sisters or even on Kesmore.

A clear focus was called for, and proximity to Eve Windham created rather the opposite.

He worried about her. He worried about Georgie. He worried about his finances. He worried about Anthony, so newly a father and trying to appear casual about it.

“I do not worry about you.”

Beast flipped an ear back, then forward.

Beast, being a gelding, seldom evidenced worry unless his ration of oats did not timely appear in his bucket. Deene let his unworried mount canter over much of the Denning Hall home farm, then down the track that separated the Hall from the Moreland home-wood.

The land was in the last stages of coming back to life after winter’s sleep. The trees were still a gauzy, soft green, the earth had the fresh, cool scent of spring, and daffodils winked from the hedgerows. Deene crossed onto Eve’s property, Lavender Something, and crested a rise to see the little manor house, a picture of Tudor repose snug at the bottom of the hill.

As he studied the scene, he had a tickling sense of something being out of order. There were pansies here and there, the windows sparkled in the midday sun, the drive was neatly raked but for—

A groom was leading a pony trap away toward the stables, a fat little pony in the traces.

Beast—or perhaps Deene—decided to amble down and investigate. Eve’s property was supposed to be more or less vacant but for staff, which meant nobody had cause to be paying a call.

He hitched Beast to the post in the drive—the stables likely sported only the one groom—and went up to the house. A knock on the door yielded no response; a slight push on it gained him entry.

The interior upheld the promise of the exterior: pretty, cozy, and warm to the eye in a way having nothing to do with temperature. Eve would be comfortable amid all this light and domesticity.

He spotted her before she detected him. She stood at the window in a second, homey little parlor done up all in gold, cream, and soft hues of brown. Her outfit was brown as well, but sported fetching little details in cream and red—a touch of piping, a dab of lace.

Why did she have to be so damned pretty?

She turned and uncrossed her arms. “Lucas.”

As she came toward him, the force of her smile nearly knocked him physically on his arse. She’d never smiled at him like that; he hoped she’d never before smiled at anybody like that.

Luminous, radiant, and soft with pleasure and joy. Even as his mind comprehended that she was going to embrace him—and welcomed the idea wholeheartedly—his thinking brain also latched onto one detail: she was wearing a driving ensemble.

For a long, precious moment, he held her while his heart resonated with the happiness and pride he’d seen in her eyes. “You soloed at the ribbons.”

She nodded, her hair tickling his chin. “I drove here, Lucas. I drove here by myself, and I can’t wait to drive myself home. Just saying the words feels good. It feels marvelous.”

He clamped his arms around her, lifted her, and whirled her in circles. “You drove yourself here. You’re going to drive yourself home. You’re going to drive yourself wherever you damned well please.”

Her laughter was a marvelous thing, her body against his every bit as wonderful. He could feel the joy in her, the relief.

“I’m going to drive myself wherever I please, whenever I please, however I please. Nobody will be safe from Eve Windham when she takes a notion to tool about. I might drive up to Yorkshire and call upon St. Just, or out to Oxford to check on Valentine. I shall certainly call upon Westhaven in Surrey, and Sophie and Maggie and… all of them. I can see them anytime I please.”

He set her on her feet, letting her slide slowly down his body. “You might nip out to Surrey to see how Franny’s foal is getting on. You might take a notion to peek in on the next meet at Epsom.”

She stood there, beaming up at him, a woman transfigured by her own courage.

He must kiss her. The moment called for nothing less, and even if it had, he was helpless not to kiss her.

Kissing Eve had been a lovely experience each and every time: tipsy and bold under the mistletoe, surprised but eager in the privacy of shadowed ferns, hesitant but sweet in the confines of a landau…

When she was ebullient, when she was in roaring good spirits with her recent accomplishment, kissing her was… beyond description. Her confidence pulled him in; her joy pulled him under.

Any thought of trouble in London, any thought of the tedium of the Season awaiting him, any ability to think deserted Deene between one breath and the next. He registered impressions only:

The buttons of her outfit pressing hard into his sternum.

The slight tug of her fingers where she’d fisted her hand in the hair at his nape.