“Am I to felicitate you on your upcoming nuptials then?”

Another silence while the duchess added cream and sugar to the tea.

“You are not. You must know I have no desire to marry.”

“Come drink your tea, Eve, and to be honest, I know no such thing. You’ve had your Seasons. You’ve had many proposals. It’s time you settled down and had some babies to love.”

The duchess trusted implicitly in her husband’s command of tactics, but this course was difficult for a loving mother to carry off in the face of the bleak determination in Eve’s eyes.

“Mama…” Eve sat on the sofa, staring at the empty hearth. “I do not… I cannot…”

Esther passed her the cup of tea, unable to listen to Eve struggle to bring up things that had remained undiscussed for seven years. “Drink your tea, though if there’s to be no wedding, I expect we’ll see more than one duel.”

Eve set her teacup down on its saucer with a clatter. “More than—!”

“I don’t need to tell you His Grace is an old-fashioned man when it comes to a lady’s honor. Your brothers are almost more conservative than their papa.”

“Mama, how can you sit here, swilling tea and contemplating violence as if, as if—somebody could be hurt, somebody could be killed.”

“That would be a pity.” Esther took a sip of her tea, sending up a silent prayer that Percy was faring more successfully with Deene.

“I cannot marry Lucas Denning.” Eve sat forward and dropped her face into her hands. “Mama, I cannot.”

His Grace had patiently pointed out that Eve was not balking at the intimacies of marriage—men could be so blunt!—which had put things in a very different light, indeed.

“If you can ravish the man on a sofa in the broad light of day, Eve Windham, I beg to differ with that conclusion. You can marry him, but you don’t wish to.”

The look Eve shot her was not that of a dutiful, troubled, or even confused daughter. It was the look of a full-grown woman bitterly resenting her circumstances. “I can marry him. I do not wish to marry him. Doesn’t it count for anything that he’s already proposed to me twice and I’ve rejected him both times?”

Esther considered her teacup. She’d had the sense Deene was more than a little interested, and it was hard not to show satisfaction at being right—though two proposals was admittedly fast work.

“Your rejections count for nothing. Deene should have approached your father before mentioning any intentions toward you.”

“I am not a child, Mother, that I can’t be spoken to without permission from my father.”

“You are not a child, but your position is childish. Your refusal to accept an eminently desirable suit will put at least your father, if not your brothers, at risk, and go a very long way toward ruining any lasting chance Jenny has at a family of her own. You are apparently not shy of your marital obligations, Eve, which reservation I might have understood or been able to address, so you are just being stubborn. It does not become you in the least.”

The last statement was downright cruel, implying a disapproval Esther could never feel toward her daughter, but seven years was long enough to punish oneself—and one’s parents—for an understandable misstep.

“I hate this day.”

“You do not hate Deene.”

This remark seemed to double the sorrow in Eve’s eyes. “I like him a great deal, I care for him, I—”

The duchess let a beat of silence go by while words were not said that might have surprised even Eve were they spoken aloud. “If you care for him, then I don’t think you can jeopardize his welfare simply for a stubborn whim, can you?”

While Esther pretended to sip tea, the fight drained out of Eve’s posture. “Jeopardize Deene’s life, Papa’s, my brothers’…” She hunched in on herself. “I can’t do that, and Deene would never consider dodging off to the Continent for a few years.”

“Would you take such a course?”

The idea of Eve running and hiding hadn’t occurred to Percy, but from the duchess’s perspective, it was clearly an option under consideration.

“No, I cannot even be left in peace on some bucolic little French farm, because the idiot men in this family would blame Deene for that, and come after him no matter what I did or said. Everybody would conclude I had left the country to bear Deene’s child, and Jenny’s fate would be sealed.”

“I do believe you’re right.”

Eve slumped back against the cushions while Esther allowed herself a cautious hint of hope. “We’ll obtain a special license, hold the service here if you like. Every debutante making her come out will envy you the match.”

“You must do as you please, Your Grace.”

Your Grace. The chill in that form of address made Esther doubt the wisdom of Percy’s plan. “It’s your wedding, Eve, you ought to—”

But Eve was off the sofa and halfway to the door. “Please, excuse me, Your Grace. I find I need some solitude.”

She opened the door, and Esther had every intention of letting her go without another word, but there stood His Grace, and Eve’s… intended, the latter sporting a right cheek a good deal more pink than the left.

* * *

Papa had his tempers, his rants, his perpetual frustrations with the Lords, with Prinny, with the way the old mad king was treated, but nothing Eve had seen before prepared her for the cold-eyed stranger standing next to Deene.

She’d always known His Grace had served in the cavalry, known he’d faced Canadian winters, wolves, and worse, but the look in his eye now…

For the first time in her life, Eve Windham was afraid of her father. Not afraid he would harm her, afraid he would stop at nothing to protect her, even when such protection was hopelessly misguided.

She stepped back as His Grace stormed into the room, Deene following a few paces behind.

The duke had struck him. Such a blow in the context of a duel meant no apology could mend the situation. The beginning of a headache threaded itself into all the other miseries ricocheting around in Eve’s body.

“Eve.” His Grace turned a glacial stare on her. “Deene has something to say to you. I suggest you give him your entire attention, but mind me: he can apologize to you all he wants. That does not address the disrespect done to me and my house this day. Your Grace.” He turned to the duchess and offered his arm. “You have ten minutes, Deene. I suggest you spend them on your knees—in prayer if nothing else.”

They swept out, leaving Eve alone with a man who had every reason to think her daft or worse.

“Not here.” Deene took her by the hand and led her to the French doors. “They’ll post a damned sentry in the corridor, and what we have to say to each other requires privacy.”

He took her into the garden, which helped ease a claustrophobic sense gathering in Eve’s chest. While they walked along in silence amid beds of tulips and hyacinths, what registered in Eve’s benumbed brain was that Deene’s hand was warm and dry, not cold and clammy as hers felt.

“Here.” He gestured to a bench behind a privet hedge. Roses were leafing out in the nearby beds, but only a few tight buds had yet formed. When Eve took a seat, Deene lowered himself beside her and once again took her hand.

“Well?” It was all she could manage.

“Well.” He did a curious thing: he smoothed his fingers over her knuckles and brought her hand to his mouth, pressing his lips to her palm. “A kiss for courage. His Grace has given me three days to notify my seconds—Anthony is in Town, and I suppose Kesmore will serve in addition—while Rothgreb and Sindal are put on notice on His Grace’s behalf. We’ve agreed to recruit Fairly to serve as the surgeon.”

Such a cozy family murder they were planning. “Three days?”

“A bit biblical, but His Grace and I agree this needs to be wrapped up before the Season officially starts.”

They agreed. What they were agreeing to was obscene, but no more obscene than that Eve would allow it to go forward.

“Deene, if I married you, you would be more displeased with your choice than you could possibly know.” She hoped and prayed he’d listen to reason.

“Disappointed has a great deal to recommend it over dead, though you must do as you see fit. I cannot promise you your father will delope, Eve, though I assuredly will. Then, too, he has not discounted your brothers issuing their own challenges, and deloping does not seem in character for any of them.”

She’d condemn Deene to facing four firing squads, then, and what was to stop her three brothers-in-law from joining the fun? She had never known her father to back down, not ever. Her brothers were just as bad.

And she… She was the one being monumentally, murderously stubborn. None of her menfolk would have a chance at Deene if she would just say yes to his proposals.

One glimmer of hope penetrated her misery, a tiny, chimerical possibility: if it came down to a wedding night, Deene might not notice her lack of chastity.

Except he would. He wasn’t a stupid man or lacking in perception.

“I can make you a promise, Eve Windham. Several promises, in fact.”

“Just not vows, please. I cannot abide the thought of vows.”

“If we marry, we will consummate the union for legal purposes and to put the compulsory obligations behind us. Thereafter, I will not press you for your attentions until such time as you indicate you are willing to be intimate with me in a marital sense.”

She peered over at him. His cheeks were the same color now. “You would leave me in peace after one night?”

“Not entirely. For appearances, we will live together as man and wife, share chambers, and go down to breakfast together. We will dote and fawn in public and make calf eyes at each other across the ballrooms, but I will not importune you.”