Ten

Eve realized after about a week that her strategy wasn’t working. Part of the problem was that other than preventing Deene from starting his lawsuit, she wasn’t entirely sure what her aim had been.

To keep him at arm’s length?

That wasn’t happening. Each night, he made deeper inroads on her attempts to separate their routine: he brushed her hair, he attended her baths, he helped her into and out of her clothing, and he asked for her assistance with his.

The staff was colluding with him, telling him when she ordered a bath, when she’d asked not to be disturbed in the middle of an afternoon. It was maddening, really, to find such a pleasant, considerate husband where Eve needed to find a calculating, underhanded, self-interested opponent.

And if she’d intended to keep him from her bed?

That wasn’t happening either. Each night he tended to his ablutions, then climbed between the sheets and took her in his arms. If she turned her back to him, he rubbed her back or her neck and shoulders. His attentions were unselfish, pleasurable, and in no way could Eve consider them intimate advances.

And for all Eve had been denying her husband—and herself—marital congress, the damnable papers were still in the drawer in the library. That was beyond maddening. He’d said he needed an heir. She’d said she’d oblige him as long as suit was not joined. What was the damned man waiting for?

“I do not understand you men.” Eve announced this to her brother when Westhaven stopped by ostensibly to offer good wishes to the newlyweds. Deene was out spying on some promising three-year-old colt, which meant Eve had her brother’s company to herself.

“We often don’t understand ourselves, much less you women. You are looking a trifle fatigued, Eve. Do I tell Her Grace married life agrees with you or make up some other fabrication?”

He spoke quietly—Westhaven was not given to dramatics—but Eve was relieved at his insight.

“Deene and I are quarreling.”

Westhaven picked up a sandwich and demolished it in about two bites. “I can’t very well call him out for you, love—he’s your husband now, and I was under the impression this marriage was motivated at least in part by your desire to see the man remain above ground.”

“You are no help.”

He studied her for a moment over his tea. In the opinion of his sisters, marriage was maturing Westhaven from being merely handsome into a sort of breathtaking elegance. He was going to make a marvelous duke—though this did not mean he lacked for shortcomings as a brother. “Anna and I went through a ninnyhammer stage, though we were fortunate to tend to it before the nuptials, for the most part. Even if I don’t call Deene out, I can talk to the man if you want me to.”

“What would you say?” Eve rose, wondering if her sisters had brought their marital troubles to Westhaven, and whether his prospective role as head of the family meant they had the right to do so.

“I would say that time, honesty, and kindness can see two people in love through almost any difficulty.”

“My husband is not in love with me.” She realized immediately what she’d admitted. “We are not in love with each other.”

A silence, a damnable, knowing silence from her brother had Eve wanting to cry. She crossed her arms over her middle and pretended to be watching the flowers bob in the breeze, when what she was really doing was looking for her husband to come in from the stables.

“Evie?” Westhaven had risen as well to stand by her elbow. “What is the problem?”

There was such concern in his eyes, Eve had to swallow three times before she could trust her voice. “He wants to sue Georgie’s father for custody, and I have forbidden it.”

“Forbidden it?” An ominous note of puzzlement laced Westhaven’s voice.

“I have… intimated that my favors would be withheld did Deene pursue this course, and not just because I want to avoid the scandal, Westhaven.”

“You have forbidden your new husband to keep a deathbed promise to his only sibling?”

“You don’t understand.” And that Deene had explained the situation to Westhaven was disconcerting. “He married me to finance the lawsuit—I saw the estimated costs, projected out over five to eight years, Westhaven. The costs of litigation exceed even the settlements I brought to the marriage, plus interest.”

“A man doesn’t typically expect to lose money when he marries a duke’s daughter.”

This was not sympathy she was hearing from her brother. Normally, his misplaced capacity for common sense would provoke Eve to railing at him or smacking his meaty shoulder.

She felt instead a need to make him—to make somebody who cared about her—see the entire mess her marriage was becoming from her perspective.

“In addition to the money, Deene wanted my consequence as a proper wife, and he wanted to be able to present himself as a doting father by the time the suit reached the courtroom. He has been diligent in assuring this aim.”

“For God’s sake, Evie, he’s a man newly married. Anna and I were so diligent in the first few months of our marriage we were out of our clothes more than we were in them. Ask any of our siblings, they’ll say the same, and so would our parents.”

Were the circumstances different, this revelation would have fascinated Eve—and warmed her heart in some way not possible prior to her marriage.

“You love your countess, Westhaven, and she loves you. It makes a difference.”

“And Deene is merely a convenience to you?”

“I am a convenience to him.”

Westhaven ran a hand through his hair, a gesture Eve associated with the few times he found himself at a loss. “You ride out with this merely convenient husband of yours, Evie. I’m told you ride his prized stallion.”

“I weigh no more than a jockey, and we only hack.”

“You are being deliberately obtuse, Sister. That horse has the potential to earn Deene as much coin as all his acres in Kent put together.”

This set Eve to pacing the room, because she hadn’t realized King William’s financial promise was of such magnitude. “He’s a wonderful horse, but even there…” She trailed off, while Westhaven watched her tack around the room.

He was damnably patient, was Westhaven.

“I’m back in the saddle, Gayle, but my riding is… off. There’s something missing. I have the skills, and I enjoy it tremendously, and I love… I enjoy the time I spend with the horses, but it isn’t what I thought it would be.”

Maybe this was why Westhaven cultivated silence so assiduously, because it inspired people to make confessions to him they hadn’t even realized they were about to make. That something was missing in Eve’s riding had lurked just below her awareness, an inchoate grief she feared had something to do with her marriage or with parts of herself she was never going to recover.

“I’m going to send Anna to you,” Westhaven said. “She is a very good listener and can offer you sympathy where I can offer you only sense. From my limited, admittedly male perspective, you’ve forced your husband to choose between his vows to you at the altar—which contemplate his duty to the succession—and his vows to his sister. I do not see how you’ve left him an honorable course, Eve, so it remains to you to find the compromise.”

He fell silent, looking unhappy with his own pronouncements, and then he surprised Eve by taking her in his arms. “And I think, Evie, part of you wanted this reckoning from your new husband, for reasons you have not examined very closely yourself, valid reasons though they must seem to be.”

He spoke quietly—his worst insights were always delivered quietly—and then he kissed her cheek, swiped a last tea cake from the tray, and left her alone to… resume watching the flowers bob in the breeze.

* * *

“I will write you a glowing character, of course.”

Dolan strolled along through his perfectly manicured gardens, telling himself the young woman at his side would see the sense in his offer. Miss Ingraham had been hired in part because she was sensible enough to earn coin at honest work rather than starve or accept just any proposal of marriage to come her way.

“Let me understand you, Mr. Dolan. You are warning me that Georgie is about to become the object of a contested lawsuit, in which her uncle, the Marquis of Deene, seeks to take her from your care and keeping.”

“He’ll try his damn—I beg your pardon. He’ll try very hard. The situation will become unsavory, Miss Ingraham. Your character will likely come under scrutiny, as will every aspect of my own. Every time you’ve scolded Georgina in public, every time you’ve seen me be short-tempered with her, every time I’ve stayed out all night…”

He trailed off, though the exact measure of the indignities looming close at hand had kept him up many an hour since Deene’s last visit. Staying out all night, however, was invariably the result of a protracted negotiation rather than of time spent with a mistress of tireless charms.

Dolan could not explain such a thing to his daughter’s governess, of course.

“Sir, may we sit?”

“For God’s sake, woman. You don’t ask me such a thing.”

She cocked her head, a smile lurking at the corners of her full mouth. “You are my employer, Mr. Dolan. It is for me to ask you.”

“On your day off, you were not so prickly, Amy Ingraham.”

His use of her first name visibly surprised her, though he was intrigued to see it did not displease her. When he took the place beside her on the bench, she spoke easily, as if maybe this were another day off.