Almost as if they were truly…

“If you didn’t come here to show off your ring and glory in making a magnificent catch, then what else is there that could possibly merit discussion?”

Eve glanced at the half-open door, and was gathering her courage to get up and close it when Maggie’s husband stuck his head past the jamb. “May I interrupt for a moment?”

“Husband.” Maggie was on her feet, her arm twined around Hazelton’s waist in a move that looked comfortable and natural.

Eve topped up her teacup. “Greetings, Benjamin. You’re looking well.”

Well, handsome, content, quietly glowing just like his wife.

While Eve was back to wanting to smash teapots.

“And you are looking engaged.” Hazelton left his wife’s side long enough to kiss Eve’s cheek. “I don’t need to tell you Deene is a fine prospect, Eve Windham—and I’ve reason to know.”

Deene had had some hand in the matter that had brought Maggie and her Benjamin together, but Eve did not know all of the details. Perhaps when she and Deene were married…

Though likely not.

“He speaks highly of you too, Benjamin. Shall we save you some tea cakes, or are you going out?”

“I’m to meet my cousin Archer at the club for luncheon, so I will decline. Lay waste to the cakes. My love, I will be back in time to drive out with you, if that’s your wish.”

They exchanged a look suggesting driving out might not be at the top of Maggie’s list of wishes. Eve ate two tea cakes in succession while Maggie left for a moment to walk her husband to the door.

“You can close the door,” Eve said when her sister returned. “I have a delicate question to ask you on behalf of a friend.”

Maggie closed the door and resumed her seat on the sofa. “Ask. If I know the answer, I’ll tell you, but if it’s about the wedding night, expect it to be lovely. All the idiot notions that circulate among the debutantes are just that.”

Lovely? In Eve’s mind, an image arose of Canby raising his hand to deliver a stout blow. She recalled the sharp pain of a window sash gouging at her back, and the memory of saddling her mare in the predawn darkness, hands shaking, guts roiling.

Her hands did not shake as she sipped her tea—surely a sign of progress?

“As it happens, this question relates to wedding nights, though certainly not to my own. I’m sure Deene will acquit himself competently.”

“Jenny suggested confidence in the same regard when I expressed my concern for you.”

Another cake disappeared, while Eve mentally hopped over what Jenny had likely said, and forged on to even more difficult terrain. “My friend is concerned that on her wedding night, her husband might be disappointed to find his bride had suffered a lapse, one lapse, years previous.”

“He might…?” Maggie’s brows drew down. Eve ate the last cake with chocolate icing. The ones with almond icing started to appeal strongly as well.

Maggie nibbled a fingernail. “She’s concerned he could detect her lapse, though it occurred years previous? Afraid the physical evidence of her purity was tangibly destroyed?”

Plain speaking. Even married and besotted with her earl, Maggie was still capable of breathtakingly plain speaking.

“That’s it exactly. Will he be able to tell?”

The question lay between Eve and her sister, leaden and ugly, just as it lay between Eve and any hope of a decent future with Deene.

“Might your friend not ask a midwife?” Maggie was studying the teapot as if she’d never seen a teapot before.

“Midwives talk. My friend is watched over by her family very carefully, and even arranging such a meeting would be difficult.”

Also beyond daunting.

“Benjamin knew.” Maggie said this softly, her eyes taking on a distant quality. “He knew he was my first, though not until…”

“Not until he was your first. I see.” Not the answer Eve had longed for desperately.

“Can’t your friend take her intended aside and have a quiet talk with him?”

“I’ve asked her this myself many times.” Countless times. “She does not want to make any premature or unnecessary disclosures, because if her intended reacts badly, then the choices are to cry off or to go through with a doomed marriage.”

“But he might not react badly at all, and then your friend need not worry herself to death over nothing.”

Might. Might was quite a word to hang one’s entire future on. And if Eve cried off at Deene’s insistence, would the idiot men in her family start cleaning their dueling pistols again?

They might.

“I will suggest to her again that she have this discussion with her fiancé, but there isn’t much time—and if the man can’t detect her lack of chastity, not much point, either.”

Maggie’s lips pursed while a silence stretched, and Eve tried to convince herself again that she should just tell Deene the exact nature of the bargain he was getting.

“Tell your friend something for me.” Maggie chose now to spear Eve with a knowing, older-sister look. “Tell her that when she is tired of trying to manage everything on her own all the time, no matter the odds, a fiancé can be a very good sort of fellow to lean on, and a husband even better. I have learned this the hard way, Eve Windham, under circumstances Deene has my leave to acquaint you with. It is sound advice. Shall I ring for more cakes?”

Eve saw the plate was empty. Now, how had that happened?

“Yes, if you please. More of the chocolate, if you have them.”

* * *

“I want one more opportunity to talk you out of this marriage.” Anthony kept his voice down, thank God. He knew as well as Deene did that the primary function of a gentlemen’s club, besides providing a refuge from the long reach of female society, was fomenting gossip.

“Not here, Anthony. I’m on foot—perhaps you’d like to accompany me home.”

They left amid the usual casual farewells and the occasional comment on Deene’s upcoming nuptials.

“It’s going to damned rain,” Anthony muttered as they gained the streets. “Am I to hold my tongue all the way home, until we’re behind a locked door, or might I make my case now?”

“I’m meeting with Westhaven later in the day, so you might as well unburden yourself now.”

They paced along in silence, while Deene reflected on the previous two weeks of being engaged. Were it not for the growing sense that Eve remained reluctant, they would have been two happy weeks. The debutantes and even the merry widows were leaving him in peace, his domestics were happy at the thought of a marchioness on the premises, and marital prospects had a way of improving a man’s financial expectations as well—even in the face of Dolan’s damned rumors.

And yet, Anthony was determined to piss on the parade.

“Until the moment the vows are spoken, Deene, I will oppose this marriage if for no other reason than that you’re being coerced. The lady was in no way importuned, in no way publicly compromised, and this entire farce is unnecessary.”

“I say it is necessary.”

“I will damned marry, Deene. I’ve told you this more than once. I have a list of candidates we can select among this evening. She must be well born enough to serve as your hostess, or someday—may God forbid it ever be so—as the Marchioness of Deene.”

Deene found himself walking faster. “Choose all you like and hope the candidate of your choice doesn’t mind that tidy establishment in Surrey, because she’ll find out, Anthony. The ladies always find out.”

His mother had devoted much of her miserable marriage to finding out…

“I do not seek a romantic entanglement with any wife of mine, Deene. If she finds out, so be it. Ours will be a practical arrangement. The point is, I can provide you your heir without you having to make this sacrifice.”

It was heartening to know Anthony’s loyalty truly ran so deep, and it was also disconcerting to admit Deene had questioned his cousin’s integrity to any degree at all.

“So you marry and you even have a son or two, Anthony. Do you know how many sons of titled families I saw fall to the Corsican?”

“Younger sons, of course, the military being their preferred lot. Name me one heir, though, who came to grief in such a fashion.”

“Lord Bartholomew Windham.”

That shut Anthony up for about half a block, but as they approached the Denning townhouse, Anthony started up again. “I am not sending my offspring to war when the succession is imperiled. Do you think I’m stupid?”

“Of course you aren’t stupid. His Grace, the Duke of Moreland, is not a stupid man, either, Anthony, but he lost one son to war and another to consumption. Other families have run through many more heirs than that and turned up without a title to show for it. I can’t allow you to meet an obligation that is squarely, properly, and completely my own.”

“Fine, then. Stick your foot in parson’s mousetrap, but what of the girl?”

“Eve?” Deene glanced at his cousin. This was a new tack, a different argument. “I will make her a doting and devoted husband.”

“For about two years at the most. Get some babies on her, and you’ll be back to those feats of libidinous excess that have characterized the Marquis of Deene since the title was elevated from an earldom and likely before.”

A nasty argument, one Deene would not entertain.

“How is it, Anthony, that you know better than I what sort of husband I shall be? My libidinous excesses, as you call them, date from five, even ten years ago—despite what gossip would inaccurately imply. I could dig into your past or the past of almost any man who came down from university with me and find similar excesses. What is your real objection to this match?”