Lady Eve's Indiscretion (10 page)

She relaxed, in her body and in her mind. He wasn't going to deny her, and this was really a much nicer approach. She winnowed her hands through his hair, marveling at the softness of it, like light embodied beneath her fingers.

His tongue was soft too, and hot and tempting against her lips. Lovely appendage, a man's tongue. She hadn't always thought so and probably
wouldn't
think so, but for—

Her articulate mind ground to a halt as Lucas gave her a little more of his weight, right
there
, where for seven years, a kind of loneliness and shame had mixed together to create an unnameable heaviness. As he pressed his body to hers, the weight inside her shifted, becoming somehow lighter and lovelier.

“Evie.”

He sighed her name against her throat in a voice she'd not heard from him before, one imbued with longing and passion.

Ah, God, the pleasure of his open mouth on her skin. It was like horses galloping for joy inside her, like…

She arched up into him, knowing full well what that rising column of flesh was. To hold him to her and glory in his desire for her should have been unthinkable, but when his hand settled over her breast, she buried her nose against his throat and rejoiced.

It had been so terribly long, and this was what a spring day was for. This was what youth and life were for.

He closed his fingers gently around her breast, and lightning shot from her nipple to her womb. Lovely, sweet, piercingly pleasurable lightning that made her
squirm
for more.

And then, when she would have started tearing at his clothing, a sound intruded. A rude, wrong sound that had Lucas going still above her and shifting himself up onto his knees and forearms so he crouched over her.

The wheels of a large conveyance lumbered past on the other side of the swale. Over the clatter of the vehicle, Eve heard a man's voice.

“…Probably off in the trees taking a piss. Pass me yon flask, Jordie…”

Above her, Deene let out a held breath.

There were men with pretty manners, and then there were men who were not always gallant, and yet they were truly chivalrous. Eve accounted Deene some points in the chivalry department when he didn't immediately roll away from her but stayed for a moment tucked close to her, his hand brushing her hair back from her temple.

His caress soothed her and helped her settle. It kept inchoate shame from gaining a toehold over the warmth still pooling in her middle.

She might have initiated the kiss, but Deene was showing her that he'd participated in it willingly. When she turned her face into his palm, he sighed and kissed her cheek, then drew back.

“Evie, tell me you're all right.”

“I am fine.” When he took himself away, she'd be bereft, but to hear honest concern in his voice made even that eventuality bearable.

He rested his forehead against hers then shifted away, leaving Eve lying on her back amid the lilies of the valley, mourning his loss but also consoled by his rueful smile.

“You pack quite a wallop, my lady.”

Wallop. She smiled back at him, for she
had
walloped him without even using her parasol.

“I was either going to kiss you or give in to some other kind of upset.” She liked lying there amid the flowers, despite what it was probably doing to her fashionable brown ensemble. “And your kisses are lovely, Lucas.”

In the spirit of chivalry, she had to tell him that much.

“As are yours. But, Eve, we've had a narrow escape.”

And with that one solemn comment, Eve felt not the lovely, fragrant breeze of a joyous spring day, but that she was lying in the dirt, looking a fright, very likely having destroyed whatever grudging respect Deene had felt for her.

“Don't poker up on me.” Deene used one finger to trace her hairline, then took her hand in his and drew her to a sitting position. “I'm not displaying the crests on the landau today, and that was hardly a fashionable conveyance that just passed.”

But his warning was clear: but for those two happenstances, she'd be ruined. A party from Town who recognized the Denning family crest would have remarked to one and all that the Marquis of Deene had been off in the bushes all alone with Lady Eve Windham. A little digging might have been necessary to find out with whom he'd driven out, but somebody—many, gleefully helpful somebodies, more likely—would have seen Eve leaving Mayfair up on the bench with Deene.

“Merciful heavens.” Eve dropped her forehead to her knees. “I'm sorry, Lucas. I did not think. I wasn't—”

“Hush.” He stayed beside her, apparently in no hurry to rise. “A near miss is by definition not a disaster, and I could never regret such a pleasurable interlude, except that it does rather contradict the trust your family has placed in us both.”

She nodded and liked that he didn't start fumbling around, blaming himself, when she'd been the one to accost him. If he'd taken that away from her, she would have
had
to use her parasol.

“It was just a kiss,” Eve said. “We've kissed before.”

“And it has been a delight on each occasion.” He sounded puzzled and pleased, if a little begrudging, which made Eve smile despite the rest of the thought he was too kind to say:

And
this
occasion must be the last.

He needed to marry, and she needed to avoid marriage. If they kept up with the kisses, sooner or later their near misses and narrow escapes would yield to the inescapable forces of Polite Society.

And that she could not allow.

***

To be thirty years of age, an experienced man of the world, and yet utterly flummoxed by the kiss of a proper Mayfair lady was… not lowering, exactly, but astonishing—and little had astonished Lucas Denning since his first pitched battle on the Peninsula.

If he'd had sisters to ask, he might have put it to them: Was it usual for a woman well past her come out to shift from composedly sitting beside him on the driver's bench, making conversation, to flat panic, to scorching passion in a matter of moments?

Except the insight of genteel womenfolk probably had less to do with Eve's behaviors than did the sieges he'd witnessed in Spain. When the walls were finally breached, mayhem of the worst kind ensued. Decorated veterans became animals, their most primitive natures ruling all their finer inclinations.

To think Eve Windham was besieged by fear was not comforting at all.

What
was
comforting—also unnerving—was to see how King William reacted to the woman.

“If I'd taught him to bow, he'd be on both knees before you, Eve Windham. That cannot be good for a horse who's destined to compete for a living.”

“But he's such a magnificent fellow. How could I not be smitten?”

The smile she gave the colt was dazzling, so purely beneficent Deene could not look away from the picture she made billing and cooing with the big chestnut horse. Willy was shamelessly flirting right back, batting his big, pretty eyes at her, wuffling into her palm, and wiggling his idiot lips in her hair. It wasn't to be borne.

“Would you like to hack out with me, Eve?”

The smile disappeared. “I'm not dressed appropriately. Thank you for the invitation, nonetheless.”

He hadn't expected her to accept, though he had wanted to hear her reply. He shifted closer to her in the stall, close enough that he could stretch out a hand to his horse and not be overheard by the lads.

“I'd put you up on Willy here. He's gentle as a lamb under saddle.”

“You'd let me ride your prize racing stud?” The longing in her voice was palpable.

“I don't think he's going to hear, see, or obey anybody else when you're in the vicinity. Willy's in love.”

The blighted beast nickered deep in its chest as if in agreement.

“What a charming fellow.” Eve's bare hand scratched right behind Willy's ear, and if he'd been a dog, the stallion's back leg would have twitched with pleasure.

What was wrong with a man when he wanted to tell his horse:
She
petted
me
first, so don't get any ideas
?

“I'd love to see you on him, Lucas. I'll bet he has marvelous paces.” Now the smile was aimed at Deene, and even the horse seemed to be looking at him beseechingly.

“I cannot disappoint a guest. We'll have some luncheon up at the house, and the lads can saddle him up.”

As Deene escorted the lady from the loose box, Willy managed to look crestfallen before he went back to desultorily lipping at his hay.

“Some horses just have the certain spark, you know,” Eve said as they wound through the gardens. “They have a sense of themselves. The breeding stock have it more often, but my sister Sophie has a pair of draft horses…”

She nattered on, a woman enthralled with horses, while Deene speculated about just one more kiss, this one in the greening rose arbor. Rose arbors were intended to facilitate kissing—his own reprobate father had explained this to him not long after Deene had gone to university.

Except… Deene recalled the duchess, waving them on their way just a few hours prior, recalled the fear he'd seen on Eve's face when the horses had startled… and recalled how long it had taken him to get his unruly parts under control after kissing Eve—being kissed
by
Eve—amid the lilies of the valley.

There was nothing wrong with kisses shared between knowledgeable adults, but
that
kiss had threatened to escalate far beyond what Deene felt was acceptable when neither party had intentions toward the other. Nonetheless, the scent that was supposed to evoke return of happiness would forever after bring to his mind a walloping passionate interlude with a lovely woman—who was enamored of his horse.

“So if we were to come back out here, say, next week, might you be willing to hack out with me then, Lady Eve?”

She paused midreach toward her tea—she preferred Darjeeling—and pursed her lips. “I want to.”

“Then, Evie, what's stopping you?”

Now she glowered at the teacup. “Nothing.”

She was lying again, though he had to allow her the fiction. She alone knew the worst of the specifics, but it was common knowledge she hadn't been on a horse for years.

“Tell me about your accident.”

She glanced up. “You aren't going to taunt me by snatching away the invitation to hack out, dangling it just out of my reach, pretending it's a matter of indifference to you?”

It was Deene's turn to glower, for she'd just listed his best tactics when sparring with her. “Would that help?”

She sat back. “Sometimes it has helped. When you had me drive home from the park… I hadn't even taken the reins in years, Lucas. To find myself driving a team right in the middle of Town put me quite at sixes and sevens.”

This was not an admission; it was a confidence. A puzzle she was sharing with him
and
only
him
, as intimate as a kiss and in its own way even more exquisite.

“I have faith in you, Eve Windham. You were a bruising rider, a thoroughgoing equestrienne in the making. I'd like to see you on a horse again, if that would make you happy.”

She did not beam a dazzling smile at him, which was the intended effect of such a pretty speech. She instead looked like—God help them both—she might tear up and start bawling right here on the sunny, sheltered back terrace of his country retreat.

This would necessitate that he comfort her, which might not be a bad thing if he'd had the first clue how to go about it.

“Beg pardon, my lord.”

Aelfreth Green stood, cap in hand, at the edge of the terrace.

“Aelfreth?” The lads had been as smitten with Eve as the damned stallion. Aelfreth would not have intruded on the lady's meal for anything less than fire, loose horses, or other acts of God.

“Sorry to interrupt, milady, your lordship, but Bannister says you'd best come.”

Foreboding congealed in Deene's chest. “Eve, you'll excuse me?”

“Of course.”

He rose, visions of Willy cast in his stall, with bowed tendons and incipient colic befalling the horse.

“It's Franny, your lordship,” Aelfreth muttered as they strode away. “She's not passing the foal.”

Behind him, Deene heard a chair scrape back.

“Come along, Lucas.” Eve seized his arm and started towing him forward. “If it's a foaling gone sour, there's no time to waste.”

He extricated his arm from her grip. “Eve, it isn't in the least proper for you to be in the vicinity when a mare's giving birth.”

“Hang proper. I've assisted at foalings before. We raise plenty of horses at Morelands, you know, and just because I no longer ride or drive or… any of that, doesn't mean we have time to argue.”

She was right, blast her. An animal that historically gave birth where all manner of predators could interfere developed the ability to get the process over with quickly—and did
not
develop any ability to deal with protracted labor.

“Miss might be a help,” Aelfreth added. “The mares sometimes want for another female when things go amiss.”

“For God's sake, this isn't a lying-in party.”

Nobody graced that expostulation with a reply, and when Deene got to the foaling barn, the situation was grim indeed. Bannister, the grizzled trainer and head lad, was outside the foaling stall, his expression glum.

“The foal willna come, your lordship. She'll soon stop trying.”

A black mare lay in the deep straw, her enormous belly distended, her neck damp with sweat.

Deene started stripping off his coat. “What's the problem?”

“The foal…” Bannister glanced at Aelfreth.

“Won't come, I know. Have you had a look?”

Another glance—at Aelfreth, at Deene, at the mare, everywhere but at Lady Eve Windham.