Lady Eve's Indiscretion tdd-4

by Grace Burrowes

  “He seems a devoted father for all that.”

  Deene was silent, while the countryside rolled along outside their window for a good portion of a mile. “Anthony had been courting Marie, a match she apparently welcomed. It made sense, they were enamored, and between themselves, I believe they had an understanding.”

  Eve took Deene’s hand in hers. “And then?”

  “And then Dolan came strutting along, all trussed up in purchased finery, and offered for her on terms my father didn’t even attempt to refuse. Marie was wed to a stranger, one with no family to speak of, no gentility, nothing to recommend him except a growing fortune and a reputation for grasping at any opportunity for financial or social gain.”

  Something wasn’t adding up, though Eve found it difficult to put her finger on the discrepancy. “If Marie was integral to Dolan’s plans for betterment, he’d hardly treat her ill.”

  “She was seventeen years old, Eve. She’d been sheltered all of her life and fully expected to marry into the world she’d been raised in. She tried to talk me into getting her a horse so she could run off the day before the wedding, as if that option were any safer for her.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Nearly thirteen.”

  What a burden to put on a boy, particularly a boy being raised to fill his papa’s titled shoes. “How did she die, Lucas?”

  He was silent for so long this time Eve thought he might not answer, and part of her didn’t want him to. The tale had to be painful for him, and there would be enough to cope with on their wedding day without adding this recitation to it.

  “She lost a child, and they could not stop the bleeding. She faded, and her last request to me was to make sure I took care of Georgie. Dolan will call the child only Georgina—he must ape his betters even in speech—but to Marie, she was Georgie.”

  Eve let her head rest against her husband’s shoulder. “You fault him for getting her with child.”

  “Georgie’s birth was not easy. I have no doubt the accoucheur had cautioned them against having more children, but to Dolan he’d bought and paid for a broodmare, and a broodmare he would make of her.”

  Many men regarded their wives in this light—many titled men, who would set the broodmare aside if she failed to produce. They’d find a way to nullify the union, strip their wives of any social standing or decent company, and set about procreating merrily with the next candidate, all with the complicity of both church and courts.

  “You should know the skeletons in the Deene family closet, Eve, though I’m sorry to bring this up today of all days.”

  Were she any other bride, she’d like that he felt that way, like that he was confiding in her. “Windhams have their share of skeletons.”

  This earned her another curious smile, but rather than permit Deene to interrogate her, Eve closed her eyes and leaned her head back. “Weddings are tiring, don’t you think?”

  Her… husband did not reply.

  Seven

  Deene’s wife was not asleep on his shoulder as she’d have him believe, and she was nervous.

  Like a procession of sensory still lifes, his memories of the day told him as much:

  Eve’s hand, slender and cold in his when he’d put the wedding ring on her finger.

  Eve’s cheek, equally cool when he’d been unable to deny himself the smallest display of dominion outside the church—and she had not kissed him in return.

  Eve, clinging in her oldest brother’s embrace for a desperately long moment, until St. Just’s countess had touched her husband’s arm and embraced Eve herself.

  A whiff of mock orange coming to Deene’s nose and bringing with it a sense of calm until he saw the way Eve gripped her wine glass so tightly he thought the delicate stem might break.

  He’d been prepared for bridal nerves. He’d even been prepared for his own nerves—this was the only wedding night he ever intended to have, after all—but he had not been prepared for his wife to be on the verge of strong hysterics.

  A change of plans was called for, or neither one of them would be sane by bedtime.

  “Evie.” He brushed her hair back from her temple. “Time to wake up, love. We must greet our staff.”

  She straightened and peered out the window. “So many of them, and this is not even your family seat.”

  Our family seat. He did not emphasize the point.

  “Let me pin you up.”

  She turned on the seat while he fashioned something approximating a bun at her nape. The moment was somehow marital, and to Deene, imbued with significance as a result. Deene had laced up, dressed, and undressed any number of ladies, but there was nothing flirtatious in the way Eve presented to him the pale, downy nape of her neck. He kissed her there and felt a shiver go through her.

  “You are going to be the sort of husband who is indiscriminate with the placement of his lips on my person, aren’t you?”

  She did not sound pleased.

  “When we are private, probably. You always smell luscious, and I am only a man.”

  His wife looked surprised, but before she could argue with him, he handed her down and began moving with her along the line of waiting servants standing on the drive. They beamed and bobbed at her. She smiled back with such warmth and graciousness that Deene revised his earlier estimation of her state of mind.

  She hadn’t been anxious; she’d been terrified of what was to come—and likely still was. As soon as he scooped her up against his chest to carry her over the threshold, all the warmth left her expression, and the corners of her mouth went tight again.

  Deene did not set her down when they gained the foyer but addressed the rotund factotum who’d hurried ahead to get the door for them.

  “Belt, we’ll take a tray in our sitting room, and my lady will be needing a soaking bath as soon as may be. We’ll not be disturbed thereafter unless we ring. Understood?”

  “Very good, my lord.”

  “Deene, you may put me down now.”

  He started up the steps. “Not a chance, Wife. You’ll dither and dally and want a tour of the place from top to bottom, or get to talking about menus with the housekeeper. You would leave me to my agitated nerves and no consolation for them but the decanter.”

  They cleared the first landing. “Agitated nerves? You cannot possibly be serious, Deene.”

  He was, somewhat to his surprise. “Humor me, in any case.”

  She went quiet, now when he would have appreciated some chatter, some resistance, some measurable response to distract him from the perfect weight of her cradled in his arms. He reached what was to be their private suite and set Eve down on a blue brocade sofa by the windows.

  “You’ll have to assist me out of this attire, Wife. I haven’t worn such finery since I took my seat in the damned Lords, and even then it was mostly robes…”

  She was up off the sofa, wandering around the room. “I haven’t seen these chambers before.”

  She hadn’t seen her husband completely naked before either, but Deene doubted she’d inspect him quite as assiduously as she was peering at the titles of the books on the shelves in the corner. He came up behind her and put his arms around her waist.

  “Evie, have mercy upon me and help me get undressed.”

  She turned, and he did not step back, so they remained in a loose embrace. “Haven’t you a valet, Deene?”

  “I’m married now. Many married fellows make do with a handy and accommodating wife, the last I recall the arrangements.”

  “My father…” She paused and started working the sapphire cravat pin loose from all the lace at his throat.

  “Your father is old-fashioned in the extreme. I’m not. What was St. Just whispering in your ear about in the receiving line?”

  By virtue of one question after another, one article of clothing after another, she eventually got him out of all but his knee breeches. He took pity on her enough to slip into the dressing room between their bedrooms and exchange the last of his wedding
finery for a dressing gown and loose trousers, by which time a quantity of food had arrived in the sitting room.

  “We are certainly getting the royal treatment,” Deene observed. “Belt himself wheeled that cart in, did he not?”

  “Belt.” Eve shoved a book back onto the shelf. “I will recall his name because butler and Belt both begin with B.”

  This was important to her. Getting out of her wedding dress was apparently not.

  “Let me be your lady’s maid, Evie.” He wanted to take her in his arms and whisper this in her pretty ear, but she was looking quite… prickly.

  “I thought my maid came down from Morelands to join this household?”

  “And she’s no doubt in the kitchen, partaking of the general merriment occasioned by our nuptials. Hold still.” He moved around behind her and started divesting her of all the layers of clothing hiding her from his view. When she stood only in a sheer white chemise—with a hem lavishly embroidered in gold, blue, and green—Deene took a step back and shrugged out of his dressing gown.

  “Take this. The fires aren’t lit yet, and until my naked body is draped over your delectable and satisfied person, it will keep you warm.”

  She looked like she wanted to say something off-putting, so he kissed her on the mouth—a swift, no-you-don’t kiss that worked only because he kept his hands to himself rather than pull her tight against his body.

  His lady wife took her revenge by shutting the dressing room door when the bath had been delivered. Deene let the wine breathe while he stared at the door and pictured his naked and curvaceous wife all rosy and delicious in her solitary bath. By the time she emerged an hour later, Deene had lowered the level in the champagne bottle by more than half, and the sun had set.

  “Shall we light some candles?” Eve asked—perhaps a shade too cheerfully.

  “Let’s not. Let’s light the fire and enjoy the shadows.”

  She pulled his dressing gown closer around her, but Deene’s lust had been riding him hard, and he could tell she wore nothing beneath the velvet and silk of his clothing.

  “My bath revived me,” Eve said, still standing in the dressing room doorway. “I’m quite famished.”

  Deene said nothing. The food was before him on the low table in front of the sofa, and Eve was across the room. Unless he was to toss strawberries at her, she’d have to approach him.

  “I’ve started the first bottle, Wife. Shall you imbibe?”

  “Just a bit, if you please.”

  While she perched on the first three inches of the sofa cushion, Deene held his wine glass up to her mouth. She sipped about as much as would inebriate a small Methodist bird.

  For a few minutes, he tried—he honestly did—to feed her. She responded with an increasing number of agitated and unhappy looks, until Deene realized the situation was growing desperate.

  And between when a man thinks he needs to say something and when the words start spilling from his idiot mouth, insight befell him: Eve’s nerves, her quiet hysteria, whatever she was grappling with, it had to do with her accident.

  There would be no teasing her past it, no getting her just tipsy enough, no cajoling or tickling her into more confidence than she honestly possessed. Deene set the wine glass down and rose.

  “Come to bed, Evie.”

  “To… bed?”

  If she’d been pale before, she was a wraith now.

  “Going to bed is a signal part of the wedding-night festivities, unless you’d rather spend a few moments before the fire?”

  “I would. I very much would. My hair, you see, is still damp, and it goes all to a frazzle if I don’t…” Her voice trailed off, and Deene kept his hand extended to her. When she put her fingers on his palm, they were again—still—ice cold.

  It was time to end this. Not because banked lust was beating a physical pulse in Deene’s brain, but because Eve deserved to put these nerves, this lapse of faith in herself—whatever it should be called—behind her. When she came to her feet, he kissed her.

  He kissed her the way he’d been longing to kiss her for three weeks, with tenderness and passion and even a little frustration—anger, maybe?—that Eve would bear any lingering burden from a situation she could not have been responsible for.

  “Come.” He took her by the hand and led her to the hearth, pausing to retrieve a pair of thick quilts from the dressing room before settling beside her before the fire. “You are nervous, Wife. I would have you explain to me the basis for your disquiet.”

  “Wife.”

  “That would be you.”

  She drew her knees up and laid her cheek on them. “I am not nervous.”

  He had the sense she was being honest, which was not encouraging. If she was not nervous, then she was afraid. “There is not one damned thing to be anxious about, Eve Denning. I am the one who has grounds for worry, for it falls to me to ensure your experiences are wholly pleasurable.”

  “You do not appear to suffer doubt on this score.”

  Her voice was calm enough, but he’d seen her start when he used her married name. “I suffer a proper respect for the challenge before me. Perhaps a kiss for courage won’t go amiss.”

  Her hesitation was minute, but then she went up on her knees and kissed him on the mouth. Deene took her by the shoulders and let himself topple back so she was sprawled on top of him.

  “That is not a kiss such as would encourage a horny flea, my love.”

  “A what?”

  “Horny, which indelicate term means a Mister Flea who is hot for his Missus.”

  “You are being vulgar and ridiculous.”

  Her tone was prim, but his vulgar ridiculousness was working, because she hadn’t moved off him, and her expression bore a hint of curiosity. Deene wrapped his arms around her and started rubbing her back lest she take a notion to retreat.

  “Allow me to demonstrate, Marchioness.”

  He set his mouth to hers and his will to her seduction. By slow degrees, he investigated her mouth and invited her to do likewise with him, to taste and tease, to explore, to indulge. Somewhere in that kiss, he positioned her so she was straddling him, and he arranged their clothing so he was naked beneath her and they were pressed breasts to chest.

  “Deene.” She pulled back and closed the dressing gown.

  “I don’t know what you’re fretting over, Evie. We’ve two enormous, fluffy beds to choose from when it comes time to consummate our vows.”

  “So we’re just to indulge in these courageous kisses?” By the firelight, her skepticism was evident.

  “Precisely so. Kiss me. I was beginning to feel somewhat encouraged.”

  She started to smile. He wanted to howl with impatience when he saw caution overtake the curving of her lips. Instead, he palmed her breast through the silk of the dressing gown.

  “You’re feeling frisky,” Eve said, watching his hand on her person.

  “I’m feeling married.” He levered up by virtue of a dedicated equestrian’s abdominal strength, and continued to fondle her while he reinitiated an openmouthed kiss.

  Her control slipped a gratifying degree when Deene applied a gentle pressure to one nipple.

  “Husband…” She breathed the word, infused it with a touch of surprise, and graced it with a hint of wonder. He repeated the caress, and she went still, as if her body were listening for the sensations a man intent on pleasuring his lady could create with just his thumb and first finger.

  Before she could start thinking about it, Deene rolled with her, so he was above her and she was on her back beneath him.

  “Are all husbands as inclined to move their wives about like so much dry goods?”

  “Touch me the way I touched you, Evie. We’ll see who’s dry goods.”

  She frowned but ran one palm down his chest. “This hair…” She ruffled it, which had Deene’s vitals ruffling as well. He didn’t push his erection any more snugly against her, but neither did he make any effort to disguise it.

  “Is it
to your liking, Lady Deene?”

  “It’s…” She ran her nose through the dusting of hair on his chest, the oddest, most erotic, endearing touch Deene had ever withstood. “It’s peculiar. Soft, but… male. Manly. Even your chest smells good, Deene. I do approve of a fellow who takes his hygiene seriously.”

  There followed a bit of torture, while Eve—apparently secure in the notion that marriages could not be consummated on the floor—made a scientific study of Deene’s chest. She listened to his heart. She tentatively, then more firmly, touched his nipples.

  The sizzle of pleasure that set off in places low and reproductive had Deene clenching his jaw.

  She sniffed at him, and while submitting to all these experiments and investigations, Deene subtly shifted himself above her, until his cock was nestled against the glorious damp heat that was his wife’s sex.

  Damp. Thank a merciful God she was damp. Her body was ready for what came next, even if her courage was not. When Eve ran her tongue over Deene’s right nipple, he lowered himself more closely to her and got one arm around her shoulders.

  “Evie?”

  “Husband.” She blinked up at him. He saw the moment she realized how close their bodies were to joining. As she drew in a breath—no doubt to start another round of prevarications and peregrinations, Deene eased himself forward between her folds.

  “Thank Almighty God in a rosy and joyous heaven, that would be me.” He pressed forward one inch, the distance between being a mendicant at the gates of marital bliss and a husband in possession of the key to domestic heaven.

  “Lucas?”

  He kissed her, a hot, lazy, inflammatory kiss to hide the pleasure and triumph coursing through his blood. “Hmm?”

  While Eve fell silent, blinked some more, and lifted a hand only to let it fall beside her head, he eased forward the next blissful inch.

  “We are not on the… bed.”

  “We’ll get to the bed, Evie. Are you all right?”

  God love the woman, she cocked her head as if to consider her answer. Deene started up a slow, shallow rhythm, easing his way to a fuller joining, listening intently for any sign that Eve’s bodily welcome was not as comfortable for her as he’d prayed it would be.