Lady Eve's Indiscretion (2 page)

How
perceptive.
At least he'd spoken quietly.

She managed to bat her eyes at him. “Get me out of here without causing talk.
Please.
”

His gaze traveled over her quickly, assessingly. Eve would have hated that, except it was a completely impersonal inventory. “A breath of fresh air is in order.”

“Deene, nobody is going to believe—”

He tucked her hand over his arm, beamed a brilliant smile at her, and led her out to the terrace. As soon as they'd gained the edge of the illumination cast by the torches, he paused and took off his jacket. “Unless you start squawking, nobody remarked our departure.”

He settled his jacket over Eve's shoulders and gave the lapels a little tug to bring it close around her. Eve's first impression was of blessed warmth.

“Thank you.”

“My pleasure.” He didn't exactly sneer the words, but neither were they sincere. No matter. If he could get Eve home without further embarrassment, she'd suspend their skirmishing for one evening and be grateful.

He offered his arm again. “There's a gate this way we can use.”

Eve hadn't meant to hesitate, but it was difficult even to think when that ominous ache started up at the base of her skull.

“For God's sake, Eve Windham, it was just a kiss under the mistletoe, probably inspired by your papa's wassail more than anything else.”

She had to put her hand on his arm while the feeling of the ground shifting beneath her feet swept over her. “My brothers said it was white rum.”

“The occasional tot makes the holiday socializing less tedious. You really do not look well.”

The last observation was grudging, almost worried.

“I did not mean to swill from your glass, Deene. You should have stopped me.” They had to get to the coach. The night felt like it was closing in, and Deene's voice—a perfect example of male aristocratic euphony—was swelling and shrinking in the oddest way.

“I might have stopped you, except you downed the whole drink before I realized what was afoot, and then you were accosting me in the most passionate—”

Eve clutched his arm and swayed into him, breathing shallowly through her mouth. “If you insist on arguing with me, my lord, I will be ill all over these bushes.”

“Why didn't you say so?” He slipped an arm around her waist and promenaded her down the steps. By the time they got to the garden gate, the nausea was subsiding, though Eve was leaning heavily on her escort. She had the notion that the scents of cedar and lavender coming from Deene's jacket might have helped quiet her stomach.

Deene ushered her through the gate, which put them on a quiet, mercifully dark side street.

“How often do these headaches befall you?”

“Too often. Sometimes I go for months between attacks, sometimes only days. The worst is when it hits on one side, subsides for a day, then strikes on the other.”

Deene pulled one of his gloves off with his teeth, then used two fingers to give a piercing, three-blast whistle. “Sorry.”

All the while he kept his arm around Eve's waist, a solid, warm—and quite unexpected—bulwark against complete disability. “The coach will here in moments. Is there anything that helps?”

“Absolute quiet, absolute dark, time.” Though her mother used to rub her neck, and that had helped the most.

He said nothing more—Deene wasn't stupid—and Eve just leaned on him. Her grandmother had apparently suffered from these same headaches, though neither Eve's parents nor her siblings were afflicted.

The clip-clop of hooves sounded like so much gunfire in Eve's head, but it was the sound of privacy, so Eve tried to welcome it. Deene gave the coachy directions to the Windham mansion and climbed in after Eve.

“Shall I sit beside you, my lady?”

An odd little courtesy, that he would even ask.

“Please. The less I move, the less uncomfortable I am.”

He settled beside her and looped an arm around her shoulders. Without a single thought for dignity, skirmishes, or propriety, Eve laid her head on his shoulder, closed her eyes, and was grateful.

***

To see Eve Windham brought low ought to have been satisfying in some private, ungentlemanly regard. Instead Deene felt unwelcome inclinations toward protectiveness and—it was hard to admit such a thing even to himself—helplessness.

And if there was one feeling he resented with a passion, it was helplessness where a female was concerned.

Small, silent, and miserable beside him, Lady Eve was obviously suffering with every bump over the cobbles and turn on the streets.

“Evie, is there anything I can do?” The name had slipped out, harking back to a time when he'd been more an older-brother-by-association to his fellow officers' sisters. “Evie?”

She cuddled closer, like a suffering animal looking for relief. “My mama used to rub my neck. I hate this.”

She was helpless too, he realized, and equally unhappy about it. How strange, that after growing increasingly quarrelsome with each other, they'd find pride as their common ground. This temporary truce put him in mind of the way the French and British armies would declare an unspoken détente regarding the use of rivers and streams flowing between their respective warring camps on the Peninsula.

“Let's try something.” He pulled a lap rug from under the padded bench and spread it over his knees. “Down you go.”

With him braced against a corner of the coach, he eased Eve facedown over the makeshift pillow on his knees. When she made no protest, he found her nape with his bare hand and started a slow massage. “Does that help?”

“Heavenly.”

He could feel her ease somewhat, though in deference to her condition, the horses were moving only at a walk. “Shall I take your pins out?”

“Please, God. I can feel them. My hair hurts.”

He might have smiled, but her torment was obvious in her voice. Carefully, so carefully, he eased the pins from her coiffure, until her hair hung down in a long, golden braid. She was unmoving against him while he alternated between gently squeezing the sides of her neck and rubbing her nape.

They would not speak of this peculiar interlude, and Deene had been a fool to bring up their one stupid kiss at Christmas past. Eve had been adorably tipsy, having swiped his glass of thoroughly spiked punch, and he'd enjoyed the effects of the alcohol on her demeanor. Enjoyed her passionate, artless, determined kisses much more—and much longer—than he should have.

She'd been a cheerful, even mischievous girl, dear and sweet and easy to tease. With her brother Bart's death, something had changed and not for the better. When Deene had made some courtesy calls after selling his commission, he'd found Eve Windham to be punctiliously proper, stiff, and even chilly toward him, though Bart had more than intimated that the lady had her reasons.

She wasn't chilly now. She was utterly undone. It pleased him not at all to see it.

He had, though, been pleased to find himself accosted in the coat closet out at Morelands over the holidays. The old Eve had been there in that kiss—wicked, sweet, playful, but also all grown-up in the best places.

“Eve, we're here. Shall I carry you?”

She sat up slowly, her hand going to her forehead. “I can walk.”

Or she'd crawl, or expire of pride in the filth of the mews before she'd allow him to assist her where others might notice. He handed her out of the carriage, and any fool could see she was none too steady on her feet. “You can ring a peal over my head later, my lady.”

“Deene, no.” Such a weak protest wasn't going to deter him from scooping her up against his chest and proceeding toward the house.

“For once in your stubborn life, hush. Your brothers would expect this much of me.”

The reference to her brothers was intended as a sop to her pride and a warning—it was also the truth. In addition to the late Lord Bart, Deene had also served with Devlin St. Just, now Earl of Rosecroft. If Rosecroft got wind Evie had received cavalier treatment when in distress, a friendship Deene valued greatly would falter. To say nothing of what the lady's father would do to Deene should Moreland learn his daughter had been allowed to suffer needlessly.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Inside.” He'd run tame in this house for years, so he was able to clarify. “To your room.”

He managed the service door off the kitchen, it being the family practice not to lock it until everyone was in for the night. Two flights up had him in the family wing, where he himself had been an occasional guest.

“Which door, Evie?”

“Don't call me that. Next one on the right.”

The listlessness of her scold rankled, and when Eve's lady's maid came scampering out of the dressing room, Deene felt a reluctance to surrender his burden.

“Lady Eve is suffering a megrim. You'll want to fetch the lavender water and perhaps a tot of the poppy. You're not to brush out her hair or do anything other than exactly as she directs.”

The woman's expression suggested she'd never beheld her lady in a strange gentleman's arms, much less in the confines of the lady's own apartments. “I'll take good care of her, my lord.”

“See that you do.” He wanted to deposit Evie on the bed, but her dignity would not thank him. Carefully, he set her on her feet, keeping an arm around her shoulders.

“Turn down the bed, Hammet.” Eve's voice was a weary thread of sound. “Please.”

The maid bustled off to put coals in the bed warmer, leaving Deene to peer down at the woman half-leaning on him. “Shall I alert anybody?”

“Hammet is used to this. Good night, Deene, and thank you.” She went up on her toes, blinked her pretty green eyes at him once, then kissed his cheek and subsided on a sigh.

After that, there was nothing for Deene to do but bow courteously over her hand and take his leave.

***

“Papa?”

“
Oui, mon coeur
?”

Mischievous blue eyes peered up at Jonathan Patrick Francis Dolan. “Why don't you speak the Irish anymore? I hear it only if you sing to me.”

Dolan smiled down at the prettiest female he'd ever beheld. “Because a proper lady knows her French.” He turned a page in a worn copy of
Robinson
Crusoe
. “Shall I read about poor Crusoe in French?”

Translating as he went would be a challenge for a man who'd picked up his French on the docks of Calais, but for her he'd muddle along.

“Please don't.” Georgina shifted on the sofa beside him. “Miss Ingraham makes me recite in French every morning. Will you sing to me tonight?”

Eight years old and already she was learning to wheedle. He didn't know whether to be proud or dismayed. “Will you apply yourself to your French,
acushla
mo
chroí
?”

She pursed her lips while Dolan ran his hand over a tidy golden braid. Thank a merciful God she'd gotten her mother's English blond locks and not Dolan's unruly auburn hair.

He'd stopped up in the nursery suite when he should have been down in his office, reviewing the accounts of any number of lazy subcontractors, thieving factors, and useless suppliers. The next thing he knew, he'd been cozened into reading just a few pages of an old favorite, and an hour had gone by.

Not a wasted hour, but a precious hour stolen from a press of business that never left him enough time with his only child.

“Tell you what,” he said, setting the book aside. “If Miss Ingraham gives a good account of your French, I'll sing to you tomorrow night.”

“Why not tonight?”

“I'm going out, my heart, and you are going to mind Miss Ingraham, say your prayers, and dream sweet dreams.”

She reached for the book and laid it open on her lap. “I'll dream of a pony.”

“Learn your French, and I'll get a pony for you to keep at Whitley.”

The look she gave him was curiously adult. “We won't go to Whitley until it's summer, and it's not even completely spring yet.”

Before she could start needling him, Dolan kissed her crown and rose. “Learn your French, Georgina dearest, and then you'll be in a stronger bargaining position.”

“You'll start on my needlepoint, next. I'll never get a pony.” Fortunately, she was grinning.

“Who wants a pony when there are magical unicorns to be had?” He tapped her nose with one callused finger and took himself off, before she could tell him there were no unicorns. The first time she'd informed her father of this truth, Dolan had permitted himself a wee drop of medicinal whiskey despite it being broad daylight.

He'd recognized it as the beginning of a slippery slide away from the innocence and ease of parenting a very young child, toward the utterly bewildering prospect of shepherding a wealthy young Englishwoman into a happy and pampered adulthood.

“A caller for you, sir.”

Every time he heard Brampton's voice, Dolan felt a little satisfaction. His butler had been lured away from nothing less than a duke's household, and was the embodiment of English dignity and propriety.

Brampton held out a little silver salver—gold, Dolan had learned, was too ostentatious—and Dolan peered at the card thereon.

“Tell the marquis neither I nor Miss Georgina are at home, and don't expect to be for quite—” No, let the sodding beggar keep coming around and being turned away. “Just tell him we're out for the day.”

“Very good, sir.”

Brampton withdrew, having the knack of moving silently and at just such a speed as to convey determination on an important errand, but not quickly enough to suggest urgency. Dolan watched him processing down the paneled corridor.

Someday, Jonathan Dolan would visit his daughter's household and see just such a butler, except that fellow would address the lady of the house as “my lady.” Dolan let himself into his office and went back to dealing with the thieves, rogues, and charlatans with whom he did business every day.