by Eloisa James
His eyes crinkled at the corners in a devastatingly attractive way.
“You see? You are a veritable fount of good advice. I’ll bring Otis and Lizzie to London one day, and we can take them for ices,” he said.
We?
He turned her around the way she’d come before she could think of a response. “My carriage is just there.”
Sure enough, a carriage awaited in the street, so luxurious that one might expect a royal duke to clamber out of it, full of gallantry and brandy. “Miss Lloyd-Fantil mentioned that your vehicle is remarkable,” she said, trying to fill the air so that the silence between them didn’t seem quite so potent.
“It was made to order for the Duke of Clarence,” he said, confirming her impression that it was meant for a prince. “It’s a bit grandiose for me, to tell the truth. But when Otis and Lizzie turned up, I needed something larger than a high-perch phaeton, and this was the only suitable carriage I could buy in a hurry.”
“Merely a practical decision?”
“I am convinced that Otis would have tried to drive my phaeton the moment he found time. Taking bets on his prowess, no doubt.”
“You’ve had to turn your whole life upside down, haven’t you? You gave up your profession and your carriage. It’s admirable,” Eugenia said, meaning it.
He shrugged as if it had been no hardship. He probably always put the people in his life above everything else; he was that sort of man.
A groom in smart livery stepped forward as they approached. A small mounting box was already positioned at the door. In truth, Eugenia was tall enough to climb into even a high-perch phaeton without assistance.
Nevertheless, Ward held out his hand. She looked down at the box just as her boot was about to descend on the painted image of . . . She gave a startled gurgle of laughter, dropped his hand, and put her foot back on the ground. “Is that a chamber pot?”
“Unfortunately,” Ward said solemnly, “there’s no mistaking it, is there? Given the . . .”
“Stream of piss,” Eugenia supplied, having just worked out what she was looking at. “What admirable realism.”
He grinned at her. “We mustn’t speak of manure, but piss is acceptable?”
Eugenia could feel color flooding her cheeks.
“I won’t tell anyone,” he said with a twinkle in his eyes. “It is my firm conviction that those of us who needn’t mind those rules shouldn’t. And as for realism, I beg to differ. I gather that is a representation of the Duke of Clarence’s private part,” Ward said, pointing to one corner of the box. “Surely you agree that it is an optimistic—if not grossly inaccurate—rendering of the royal privates.”
Eugenia smiled. This whole conversation—with its brash, irreverent attitude toward polite convention—reminded her of her girlhood.
Her father would love the absurdity of this mounting block.
“The organ in question does appear to be approximately the same size as the chamber pot,” she said, stepping directly on the painting on her way into the carriage.
“More than optimistic,” Ward said dryly. “Catastrophic.”
Eugenia waited until he was seated opposite and the groom had closed the door before she asked the obvious question. “What on earth is the justification for the rampant vulgarity of that mounting box, Mr. Reeve?”
“Rampant?” he repeated, with a bark of laughter.
Her cheeks heated. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
“And am I truly still Mr. Reeve?”
She raised her chin. “Of course.”
“I think of you as Eugenia—which, by the way, suits you.”
“The chamber pot?” she insisted, trying to ignore the heat flaring in her cheeks.
“Caricatures have poked fun at the royal duke’s inamorata, the lovely Dorothea Jordan, owing to her surname.”
Eugenia’s brows drew together.
“‘Jordan’ is an inelegant name for a chamber pot,” he explained.
“Of course.” She thought about that for a moment. “Why would the duke wish to remind Mrs. Jordan of such unpleasant remarks every time she climbed into her coach?”
“His Royal Highness apparently agrees with me that ignoring unpleasantness doesn’t make it go away.” His eyes took on a wicked sparkle, and he drawled, “After all, no matter how much polite society would like to pretend otherwise, such pots are in daily use in the most respectable of households.”
“Stop that!” Eugenia said, though she couldn’t hold back a smile. “You forget that I come across naughty boys all the time in my line of work, Mr. Reeve. At your age, one should aim for behavior suited to a grown man.”
He laughed. “I haven’t been labeled ‘naughty’ in years. I actually think that Clarence’s idea is rather gifted in its simplicity. This way Dorothea stomps on her detractors every time she enters the carriage. Or she would have, if Clarence had accepted delivery of the vehicle.”
“Why did you not have the scene painted over?”
Ward shrugged. “It made Otis laugh so hard that he almost coughed up his breakfast. Laughter is all too rare in the house at the moment, so if we have to tread on a few royal chamber pots, I’m happy to oblige. I’m more worried that the boy will grow up feeling inferior, considering the dimensions of the royal appendage.”
His laughter went to Eugenia’s head like a third glass of sherry. She almost—almost!—retorted something about how disappointment is a woman’s lot in life.
Susan would make a jest like that, but it was untrue in Eugenia’s case; Andrew had been more than appropriately accoutred, according to what she’d learned from marble statues of Greek athletes.
“Why did His Royal Highness decide against the carriage after having it designed to his specifications?” she asked instead. The seats were Spanish leather, and every detail was exquisite, if flamboyant.
Andrew wouldn’t have liked it. She wasn’t sure whether he would have loathed the chamber pot or the royal tool more, but she knew that the mounting box would have been repainted a sober black before the carriage ever drew up to their house.
The shiny trim would have been ripped from the exterior. The velvet tassels embellishing the curtains would have been exchanged for something more somber.
“Clarence couldn’t afford it,” Mr. Reeve said. “Must have outrun his allowance again.”
Eugenia glanced at him from under her lashes. Her stepmother had suggested that she double her fees since Mr. Reeve was outrageously wealthy. She hadn’t. Snowe’s would never profit from the misfortune of two orphans.
“Luckily, I can afford it,” Mr. Reeve said, guessing her train of thought.
“How pleasant for you,” Eugenia said coolly. She was one of the richest woman in London, but she kept it to herself.
Mr. Reeve leaned forward and touched her knee. “I just wanted you to know that I am financially solvent.”
“In—in my—that is entirely irrelevant,” she spluttered.
He sat back and grinned at her. “I’m happy to hear it.”
“Finances have no part in our discussion of your siblings’ misbehavior,” she managed.
“No, but I wanted to make a point.”
“Quite,” she said. Perhaps he was offering . . . surely he wasn’t offering her money? A clammy feeling broke out all over her. Men had made improper proposals in the past, but no one had actually offered her carte blanche.
“Happily, Snowe’s fees will not bankrupt me.” But his eyes caught her face and his expression changed. “What have I said?”
She swallowed. “Nothing at all,” she croaked. Of course, he hadn’t intended anything of the kind. She was being a fool.
A fiendish grin spread over Ward’s face and he leaned forward again. “I do believe that you thought I had made a respectable widow an offer, as if she were a lady of the night.”
She cleared her throat. “Certainly not.”
“Mind you,” Ward went on, paying no attention to her feeble denial, “that gown does
rather put your assets on display, like apples for purchase in front of a theater.”
Eugenia narrowed her eyes at him. “Even given your disdain for polite discourse, Mr. Reeve, you should avoid such an invidious comparison.”
“You are far too marvelously endowed to be likened to apples,” he said, nodding agreeably.
She must be going a bit mad, because she heard herself say, “Earlier today, I was thinking that they’ll be the size of a pair of ostrich eggs in a few years.”
His eyes glittered with a dark emotion that she had no trouble interpreting, though she hadn’t seen it for years. Lust.
Desire.
“All mankind lives in hope,” he said. A husky note in his voice made her want to both leap toward him—and out of the carriage.
Andrew had been not much older than a boy when they married. He had looked at her with sunny pleasure in his eyes. Ward was a man, with a more abandoned, burning, and sinful emotion in his gaze.
A voice deep inside was shrieking about duty and morality, ethics and Snowe’s, her reputation. But it was a small voice, and far away.
For seven years, she had been extraordinarily careful of her reputation. This was madness, but an oh-so-potent madness.
She was in the grip of a strange calm, like being in the eye of a storm: just the two of them, and the walls of this preposterously luxurious coach. No sounds but their voices, the rumble of wheels on stone streets, the slight creak as Ward’s perfectly matched horses drew up in front of Gunter’s.
It was an unfashionable time of day for tea, and the tearoom was all but empty. As they entered, the ladies in the room turned toward Ward like sunflowers in the morning.
Lady Hyacinth Buckwald’s gaze, for example, drifted over Ward as if he were one of those Greek statues: head to foot and back up with a pause in the middle.
“Mrs. Snowe!” the lady raised her hand and curled it closed two or three times in the sort of greeting with which a duchess might greet a chimneysweep. “I am surprised to see you here. One thinks of you as immured in that little house of yours. I would introduce you to my eldest daughter Petunia but she has retired to the ladies’ waiting room.”
Eugenia paused by her table. “Good morning, Lady Hyacinth. How are your younger children?”
“I can assure you that we found a most respectable governess,” the lady said, her face darkening.
Ward had been exchanging a few words with Mr. Sweeney, the headwaiter of Gunter’s, but now he came up behind Eugenia.
“If it isn’t Mr. Reeve,” Lady Hyacinth cried. “I haven’t seen you in years.”
“It was lovely to meet you again, Lady Hyacinth,” Eugenia said with a nod, after which she allowed Mr. Sweeney to escort her to a table in the back, more or less protected from prying eyes by a well-positioned fern.
Behind her there was a brief murmur, and Ward followed. It was extraordinary, the way she could feel his presence behind her. She eased into a voluptuous walk, the faintest swing of her hip.
She didn’t feel like a governess, nor like the successful proprietor of Snowe’s Agency.
She felt like a woman.
Ward watched as waiters loaded their table with delicacies, and then told them to prepare a hamper for his siblings. “But no ices,” he added.
“I assure you that Mr. Gunter has devised a way of storing ices that can keep them stiff for hours,” Mr. Sweeney said earnestly.
“Mrs. Snowe told me in the park that promises of that nature are never kept,” Ward replied. The look he gave her should probably make a bolt of lightning come right down and consume the two of them.
The headwaiter blinked madly for a moment and closed his mouth. He bowed and promised to return with a hamper in due time.
“I’d like a small hamper for my return to Oxford as well,” Ward said.
“Certainly, sir. What would you like in it?”
“Roast beef and a bottle of red wine.”
Eugenia laughed. “You’re such a man.”
“Yes, I am,” Ward said.
Color crept up her face. “I meant that ladies generally prefer white wine and chicken.”
“We men have to keep up our stamina. But today I shall order like a lady. White wine and chicken it is. And some of those ices, because I’m certain they can stay stiff enough to eat for luncheon.”
Eugenia choked back a giggle as Mr. Sweeney left.
“I must say that it’s tragic to think you’ve been disappointed in this particular area,” Ward said. “Stiffness.” His gaze was purely wicked.
“I haven’t been,” Eugenia retorted. With a reckless grin, she added, “After all, I married when my husband was eighteen.”
Ward’s eyebrow shot up. “In case you’re wondering, many of us retain the abilities we had at eighteen well into our later years.”
Eugenia looked at Ward’s body under her lashes. Eighteen-year-old men were . . . well, slender. Ward was muscled. A shadow on his jaw would be considerably darker by the end of the day.
“Are you already planning for your old age?” she asked.
The intensity in his gaze was a little unnerving. “When it comes to that part of my life, absolutely.”
Eugenia was amazed to hear the husky giggle that came out of her mouth. She was not the sort of woman who giggled. Ever.
Except, it seemed, when a man whose eyes were full of lust boasted about his prowess in the bedroom some sixty years on.
Chapter Thirteen
Ward could not have been less interested in Eugenia’s story of some dreadful child who had painted himself blue. But he recognized at the same time that he would happily listen to anything she wanted to tell him.
Damn it. She was irresistible.
“Who was that woman when we came in?” he asked her, after the story of the blue boy was over. “The harridan who implied that you shouldn’t be allowed out of the registry office and claimed she’d met me, although we have definitely never met.”
“That’s Lady Hyacinth Buckwald,” Eugenia replied. And, at his blank look, “You haven’t heard of her?”
He shrugged. “I don’t go into society, and my family knows I loathe gossip. So, no.”
“She knows of you,” Eugenia said mischievously. “Or at least, she knows of your fortune. The poor woman has four daughters to marry off. I think Petunia is second eldest.” She pursed her lips. “Theirs is an unblemished family line. Petunia might be the solution to your prayers.”
“No,” Ward stated without hesitation.
“Lady Hyacinth doesn’t care for me because I removed her governess after Boris—her husband—chased the poor woman around the ballroom at eight in the morning.”
“Is it the time of day relevant?”
“His behavior was inexcusable at any hour; the time of day simply magnifies his transgression. One feels that a gentleman ought to be doing . . . doing whatever gentlemen do in the morning.”
“The poor sod is likely desperate,” Ward said. “Putting Boris to the side, I assure you that gentlemen are prone to chasing women around at eight in the morning.”
“Be that as it may, they should never chase their governesses!”
One moment her eyes were flashing at him with amused, sophisticated desire, and the next she was as prim as a patroness of Almack’s. Or at least what he imagined those ladies to be.
It was almost as if there were two Eugenias. One real, and one . . . not precisely unreal. The perfect lady and the real Eugenia.
That ladylike Eugenia was surely the result of pure will, inasmuch as she hadn’t been born to the position. Her performance was quite impressive; he actually felt like applauding.
He genuinely liked and admired her. She’d not only made a life for herself following the death of her husband, but presumably a prodigious fortune with Snowe’s Registry.
She was fascinating.
Damn it, if he didn’t have to marry a gentlewoman for the sake of his siblings, he would give serious thought to courting her.
No matter what, he meant to pursue her. The truth of that was throbbing through every limb. Eugenia would be his. He would make love to her until this flame between them burnt out. Hopefully it would take only a night or two.
There was nothing to stop them but the eggshell-thin layer of respectability to which she clung.
Thinking of that, he gave her a slow smile, so suggestive that she froze, fork halfway to her mouth.
She blinked at him and carefully put down her bite of cake, uneaten.
“I don’t think you’re listening to my diatribe about gentlemen who consider a governess to be fair game simply because she lives under the same roof.”
“No,” Ward admitted.
Eugenia knew that smile. Was there any woman who hadn’t seen that particular smile on a man’s face, if not on many men’s faces?
Ward had apparently come to the conclusion that she was his for the taking.
The problem with that—well, the problem with that, obviously, was that she was a respectable widow.
“What are you thinking?” she asked warily.
His eyes stayed on hers, happy and alert. A cheerful, anticipatory look that most married women knew.
Perhaps not every married woman. Perhaps not Lady Hyacinth.
“I’ve just realized how much I like you,” he said.
“If you are thinking of chasing me around a ballroom at eight in the morning, or any other time, dismiss the thought,” Eugenia said, trying in vain to ignore the melting sensation in her stomach.
“I am a respectable widow,” she clarified. “It’s essential to Snowe’s Registry that my reputation remain as such. Nothing unbefitting, no matter the hour.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “As such? Sometimes I feel as if I’m talking to a dictionary when I’m with you.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my sentence construction,” she said, a bit stiffly.
Ward nodded. “Not at all.” His eyes were dancing.
“The more important thing is that whatever conclusion you’ve drawn, Mr. Reeve, you’ll have to discard it. I mean that.”
Ward leaned forward, his eyes intent on hers. “You must stop calling me Mr. Reeve, or I shall do something drastic.”