This was a confidence, a precious, unlooked-for break in the marital clouds. “What do you mean, Evie?”

“I could not walk, you know. I did something, something to my… hip, my back, I’m not sure what, but it hurt like blazes just to breathe. There were times…” She stared hard at a bed of roses coming into bloom, while beside her, Deene did not dare move. “There were times I wanted to die. I could not get to the chamber pot without assistance, Deene. My life became a balancing act, to eat and drink enough to sustain me, but not one bit more, because everything one takes in… you understand?”

He nodded, not wanting to understand, but comprehending the extent of her indignities clearly.

“I could not walk, I could not use crutches, even, but one day I realized I could not bear for my mother and sisters, much less the servants, to see me in such a condition. I could not… I could not walk, so I started crawling. I crawled first on my elbows and one knee. This is not dignified, but it will serve with some practice. Louisa came upon me once thus, crawling back to my bed. She became Cerberus at the gates of my personal hell, ensuring that if I said I did not want to be disturbed, by God, nothing disturbed me.”

“Evie…” He covered her hand with his own. “I did not know.”

“Nobody knew the real extent of my incapacity, not even Louisa, though she likely guessed. I crawled for weeks, then I hopped, then I used canes, and I learned something, something you learned riding dispatch.”

“I learned nothing riding dispatch save to choose the best mount I could find, say my prayers, and ride like hell.” He could not have let go of her hand in that moment to save his own soul.

“You learned that you could not worry over the whole ride. You could not face covering twenty miles by a setting quarter moon behind the lines with no provisions and a tired mount. You could face only the terrain between your present location and the stream across the valley, or between the woods where you caught your breath and the next church steeple. You lurched, dashed, slunk, and crawled if you had to, from one shadow to the other.”

She’d described it exactly, the race against the dawn, the darting from shadow to shadow, the soul-deep weariness that made the senses sharper, not more dull.

“You’re saying we’re riding dispatch?”

“With this race, Deene, your lads, your jockeys, Bannister, even the damned horse look to you for their confidence. I could not allow you to lecture Aelfreth just now when what he needed was a smile, a whack on the back, and some ribald remark unfit for ladies’ ears.”

Such remarks abounded, there being endless parallels between riding horses and a man’s sexual endeavors. “You’re saying I have to get us all to the next steeple in safety.”

“I should not presume.” She was still staring at the roses. “Your people would ride to hell for you, but I feel I have by my actions contributed to the household’s sense of—”

He put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed. “Hush. We’ll manage. We are managing.” Barely.

She turned her face into his shoulder, not bothering to argue.

“Evie, will you stay with me?” He nearly whispered the question, so much did he dread the answer. His heart started a slow pounding in his chest when she did not immediately offer him reassurances. “Evie?”

She drew back a little. “We will get through this race, Deene. Until that finish line is crossed, other obstacles are just going to have to wait, aren’t they?”

He did not experience this as a reprieve, not even when Eve led him up to their rooms and undressed him to his skin, not even when she tugged him toward the bed then let him watch while she removed every stitch of her own clothing.

She was making some statement having to do with confidence—her confidence, perhaps, and it did not reassure Deene in the least. They hadn’t coupled since Deene had last made advances to his wife, but this time—for the first time—Eve made all the advances.

She straddled him, the tail end of her braid tickling Deene’s groin in a peculiar little dance she could not possibly have planned. While she feathered her thumbs over his nipples, Deene tried to memorize the angle of her brows, knit in concentration while she studied the effect of her touch on his flesh.

“We are similar in this regard,” she announced, studying his puckered nipples.

“And similar in the pleasure it gives us.”

She leaned forward and stroked her tongue over one of his nipples, then pinched him lightly with her teeth. “I like it when you do that to me. Do you like it when I do it to you?”

He could not find the words. He cradled the back of her head with his palm and silently asked her for more of the same attentions. Before she was done with him, she’d put her mouth to his cock, tasting and teasing him as if he were something served up on special occasions at Gunter’s, making the muscles in his groin and belly ache with the force of his arousal.

And yet, he did not ask her to have done with him, to slip her hot, wet flesh over his and put them both out of their misery.

Evie, will you stay with me?

Maybe this was her answer; maybe she would make damned sure she conceived an heir for him, and their obligations to each other would be at an end.

It was not fair, that she’d be so obstinate, that she’d make such demands on him, that his best efforts to keep all the promises he owed should come at such a cost.

It was not fair to him; it was not fair to her. The solution Deene had envisioned, a gentleman’s agreement undertaken with ungentlemanly determination, began to waver before his eyes. Eve shifted, and then her mouth was gone, leaving a need to join with her that came from Deene’s very soul.

When she would have mounted him—a novel boldness, coming from her—Deene rolled with her, so she was beneath him—so she could not get away.

Before he was done loving her, her cries of pleasure were swallowed in his kisses, her fingernails scored his back and buttocks, and her tears wet his chest.

And yet, he could not ask her again: Evie, will you stay with me?

* * *

A race meet was an oddly democratic event, with there being no ability to keep any particular segment of society off the premises—and no incentive for doing so. The crowds segregated themselves such that the festivities might be enjoyed in a station-appropriate manner, with half-pay officers and their doxies enjoying indifferent ale, cards, and one another’s company in one pavilion, while in another, the shopkeepers on holiday could bring their ladies for an outing, and in a third, the cream of society would lounge about with servants tending to every comfort.

Eve envisioned it all through new if tired eyes as she and her husband scanned the scene the day before King William was to meet Goblin.

“The place will be thronged by this time tomorrow.”

Deene did not sound happy about this, but unless he was in the stables bantering with his lads or in conversation with the horse, he hadn’t sounded happy about much of anything lately. He sat on his gelding, his frown conveying displeasure at all and sundry.

“William has run before crowds in the past, Deene. He seems happy enough to be here.”

Aelfreth had hacked over earlier in the day at a leisurely pace, with Deene escorting on Beast, and Bannister on another gelding.

“He’s happy because he had his audience with you, Evie. He was about to start weaving in his stall until he caught sight of you on your mare.”

“He was pleased to see the mare.”

This earned her a smile from her husband. Not a blinding display of teeth and mischief, but a grin that acknowledged a shift in their private dealings.

Eve could not keep her hands off her husband, and the situation was vexing. Having once initiated marital intimacies with him, she found it impossible not to take advantage of a wife’s privileges in the company of a generous, creative, and lusty husband. If Deene’s attentions had pleased her before, they left her positively witless now, a situation she suspected he exploited to further confuse her priorities in matters outside the bedroom.

Which they discussed not at all. Eve leaned forward and patted her mare.

“Let’s ride the course, Deene. All the rain is likely to have affected the footing.”

His smile faded as his gaze swung out over the rolling green terrain around them. “Goddamn rain.”

“William is not a delicate flower. He and Aelfreth have been galloping in all sorts of weather and managing more than adequately.”

“Dolan’s arriving.”

Eve followed her husband’s line of sight, where two grooms were leading a big, restive gray down past a row of stalls.

“A handsome animal.”

“The horse or his owner?”

“I meant the horse. Mr. Dolan’s looks are a matter of indifference to me.”

Deene’s mouth flattened, making Eve wish she’d kept the last comment to herself. There was never a right thing to say, but there were so many wrong things to say. Marriage like this was wearying and fraught, and though she tried to tell herself otherwise, the quagmire they found themselves in wasn’t simply a function of facing the financial consequences of the bet Deene had made with Dolan.

Eve waited until their horses were ambling along toward the scythed swatch of grass before the first jump, a fairly low stile meant to get the race off to a safe and uneventful start, to inform the horses that it wasn’t to be a test of pure speed on the flat.

“Will you tell me the rest of your wager with Dolan?”