Between the Devil and Ian Eversea: Pennyroyal Green Series

by Long, Julie Anne

  Something did twitch across her cloudless brow. Irritation? Confusion? Indigestion?

  “I beg your pardon?” she said politely.

  He didn’t expound. “That’s a much better motto than the one for, oh, Leicestershire: ‘Always the Same.’ ”

  This elicited a burst of loud laughter from her that made him suppress, just barely, a wince.

  She modulated it instantly, then fell abruptly silent. A moment later she cleared her throat.

  “Then again, there’s a measure of comfort in sameness,” she said, to the man who thrived on risk and newness, especially new women. “Why did you mention Leicestershire? Is there something special about it?”

  She seemed to be waiting with bated breath. As if everything hinged on the next thing he said.

  “It’s where Richard the Third was buried. Or so they say.” That was nearly all he knew about Leicester. That, and the motto.

  “Richard the Third? The kingdom for a horse king? The poor bent chap? Are you very interested in history, then?” It was a rush of barely contained eagerness.

  “One and the same. Are you very interested in history, Miss Danforth?”

  The answer was important. If it was affirmative, it would encourage him to avoid conversation with her altogether in the future. Not even an opportunity to play red flag to the Duke of Falconbridge’s bull would tempt him to endure conversations about ancient history.

  The present was so much safer than the past, as far as Ian was concerned, and the future was a concept he’d only begun contemplating with excitement. It would be his refuge, all those ports on that map of the world. He would run like a river, never stopping. He suspected, after all, it was his nature to keep moving.

  He looked out over her head at the ballroom, and saw Olivia sail by in the arms of Lord Landsdowne, who looked possessive and proud. So she’d either walked off her sore ankle or decided she’d better dance with Landsdowne on the heels of his reel with Miss Danforth. Olivia looked . . . one never knew with Olivia. She’d perfected the art of appearing as though everything was perfect. And there was a certain defiance to her lately. As though she thought Lyon Redmond was actually looking on when she went walking with Landsdowne, and when she danced with him, and suffering over it.

  “I’m interested in some periods of history. Perhaps I’ll go to Leicester one day.” Miss Danforth sounded a trifle desperate.

  He returned his attention to her.

  “Perhaps you will,” he humored. And as if this entire conversation was rudderless and he could not be blamed if he failed to stay the course, he looked out over her head again . . . There she was. Lady Carstairs dancing with some other fortunate soul.

  He knew her quick sultry smile and that little head toss were all for him, and he wondered which of the alcoves he ought to attempt to maneuver her into before the night was through. For at least a little more charged conversation.

  Now that was how one flirted, Miss Danforth, he was tempted to instruct.

  “Have you an occupation, Mr. Eversea?” Miss Danforth tried, a trifle sharply.

  “I do. Primarily it’s scandalizing decent people.”

  He had the grace to regret it. It was a terribly unfair thing to say. Glib and arrogant and more impulsive than he normally was. It was just that life suddenly seemed too short for waltzes like this one.

  Color flooded her cheeks. Again. The girl blushed as regularly as the tides moving in and out. And he knew he’d neatly cornered her: asking him to expound would be tantamount to wanting to hear scandalous things, which would of course mean she was indecent.

  She clearly hadn’t the faintest idea what to say.

  It was poor form to punish the girl for being innocent and sheltered and inexperienced, and uninteresting to him because of it.

  “Why do people call you Tansy?” he said, as if he hadn’t just been unthinkably rude.

  “Well,” she said thoughtfully, “nicknames are usually shortened names, are they not? For instance, if the diminutive derived from the first syllable of the name Jonathan is Johnny, what would my nickname logically be given my name is Titania?”

  “Well I suppose one would call you Tit . . . sy.”

  An infinitesimal moment of horror passed.

  He was halfway into the word before he fully realized what he was saying, and momentum carried him all the way through it.

  He stared at her as if a mourning dove had just sunk fangs into his hand.

  Had . . . had this delicate well-bred “wallflower” actually led him right into saying “Titsy” to her?

  Surely that hadn’t been her intent?

  But now he was thinking about her breasts.

  Really wondering about them.

  He would be damned if he would look down at them.

  Perhaps quite literally damned.

  She gazed back at him evenly. He thought, though he could not be sure, he detected a glimmer of triumph or defiance there, but that may have just been the light of the chandelier glancing from her clear, innocent eyes.

  “You see, one can hardly call me that, Mr. Eversea,” she said somberly.

  “I suppose not,” he said shortly.

  The final moments of the waltz were passed in utter silence between them.

  And as he bowed farewell, he did look at them on his way down.

  They were excellent, indeed.

  TANSY RETURNED TO her chambers late, late, very late, quite foxed on ratafia, champagne, and compliments, both given and received.

  She stood motionless for a moment in the center of the sea of carpet, riffling through memories and moments, smiling softly over each little triumph, each glance, each laugh won. Until she got to the only one that truly mattered.

  And then her smile slowly dimmed.

  She groaned and covered her face in her hands and rocked it to and fro.

  She had been grace personified with everyone else. With him, she’d brayed like a mule with laughter and enthused over everything he’d said with the force of an animal released from a trap. Graceless and appalling. She’d watched it happening, as if she were floating over her body in the ballroom, and there was nothing, nothing at all, she could do to stop it. What was wrong with her? If this was love, it was dreadful.

  The difference, primarily, was that she’d never before needed to really try for a man’s attention. Or try very hard, anyway. More specifically: she’d never before wanted a man’s attention the way she wanted his.

  “Titsy!” she moaned. “I made him say Titsy!”

  It wasn’t as though he hadn’t deserved it.

  She yanked off one satin slipper and hurled it across the room. It bounced very unsatisfactorily off the thick carpet, soundlessly.

  “He’s a boor,” she said aloud to the room and the great arrangement of flowers, now drooping.

  So few good opportunities existed to use that word.

  And then she yanked off her other slipper, looking about for something to throw it at.

  She threw it at the wall.

  She fancied she heard a grunt on the opposite side.

  Excellent.

  She exhaled at length, and then settled at her desk, stabbed a quill into some ink, unfolded her sheet of foolscap and carefully added to her list:

  Makes you feel like you’re the only woman in the world when he’s with you.

  It seemed a terrible character flaw. A terrible, terrible character flaw to look past her shoulder at a brunette who, while certainly pretty, was also getting on in years. But then, if she was a widow, that meant she possessed the freedom to do whatever she liked—including all of those things Giancarlo had suggested in Italian slang—with Ian Eversea. Who wasn’t a duke, who would never be a duke, who did not even have a title, even if he had those blue blue blue eyes that made her breath snag . . .

  Tansy fl
ung herself backward on her bed. Just for a moment. Just for one, long, lovely moment. She would close her eyes for just a moment. Her feet were sore and it would be lovely to . . . lovely to . . .

  Chapter 8

  AARGH!

  The moment her eyes fluttered open, her hands flew up to cradle her head. Cannons were firing in there. Last night’s champagne and ratafia seemed to have re-formed into a boiling ball of lead and situated itself behind one eye.

  BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

  She lay as still as she possibly could to avoid jarring anything overmuch. No effigy installed in Westminster Abbey had ever lain quite so motionless. She was fascinated by, and a little proud, of the gruesome pain. She felt very worldly. And nauseous.

  She glanced down. She was still entirely dressed. Apart from her slippers. Where were her slippers?

  But it was just about dawn . . .

  Curiosity was stronger than nausea.

  She slipped out of bed and very, very gingerly, as though her head was a grenade balanced atop her neck, carried herself to the window by following that beam like a tightrope. She gingerly parted the soft curtain.

  Aargh!

  Ghastly punishing light!

  Even though the sun was just a suggestion on the horizon, like half of a peach rising from the water.

  She recoiled and gripped her head.

  But instinct forced her forward again, and she tentatively cracked her eyelids.

  She was rewarded for enduring pain. The man was standing on the balcony!

  The sun had just reached him, and he was part in shadow, partly gilded. A pagan harlequin.

  For one merciful moment pain ceased.

  All of her senses were marshalled to the job of seeing him, like spectators rushing a fence at a horse race. She breathed and she felt him everywhere, again. As though her entire body wanted to participate in his beauty.

  But then even in her incapacitated state something about him . . .

  Something about the height . . . something about the way her breath stopped . . .

  Could it be a certain insufferable in-love-with-himself Eversea?

  He arched backward again, thrusting sun-burnished gorgeously muscled arms high into the air like an acrobat landing, and he roared—though this time the roar tapered off into what sounded suspiciously like a hungover groan.

  And then he broke wind, scratched his chest, and ducked back into his room.

  She snickered.

  “Ow ow ow ow ow ow!” And was immediately punished by the return of the booted battalion in her head.

  She stumbled and fell upon the servants bellpull as a lifeline.

  She would have happily traded all the blood in her veins at that moment for coffee.

  “HAVE YOU ANY books on Richard the Third? Bent fellow, the kingdom-for-a-horse chap?”

  It seemed a miracle to be ambulatory, but after her second well-sugared cup of coffee and two and a half fluffy scones, Tansy and a similarly fortified Genevieve set out for a walk into town, on the theory that the fresh air and exercise would do them good and that Tansy would naturally like to get a closer look at Pennyroyal Green.

  The fresh air had done them good. It smelled faintly of the sea and green things, and she liked it. She could scarcely remember anything about it, though she’d lived here as a child, but the landscape of Sussex, as far as she could tell, was subtle. Modest. The hills were mild swells and the trees a humble height, unlike the arrogant, craggy-faced mountains and unruly forests of America. Sheep dotted the hills and clouds dotted the blue skies, like puffy white reflections of each other.

  The church and the pub were opposite each other, which surely must be good business for both, and she craned her head as they passed an intriguing shop called Postlethwaite’s Emporium, which featured an enticing selection of bonnets and gloves in the window.

  The dark of the bookshop was a blessing to her still faintly pounding head after the bright light. She enjoyed horrid novels, and she’d read a novel by a Miss Jane Austen which she’d quite liked, but lately she’d become fascinated by adventure stories. Specifically, stories of survival. Robinson Crusoe had lost everything—how had he managed to get on after that? That sort of thing. She’d acquired a tome written by a Mr. Miles Redmond, who had a series of adventures in the South Seas and was nearly eaten by cannibals. He’d lived to tell the tale. Surely she could prevail over the upending of her own life if others had triumphed over odds and humans who ate other humans.

  The bookseller, a wiry older gentleman called Mr. Tingle, beamed approvingly at her and fidgeted with his spectacles, which was, she suspected, what he did when he flirted—the equivalent of a lash bat.

  So she rewarded him with a lash bat.

  “I aver, Mr. Tingle, this may be the finest bookshop I’ve ever set foot in! I’ve never seen such a fine selection. You must be very discerning, indeed.”

  Mr. Tingle’s face suffused with happiness, and he did more fidgeting with his spectacles.

  “We have the play of Richard the Third set forth in a collection of works by our own Mr. William Shakespeare. Perhaps you’d be interested in reading it? Or would you prefer to read a history of the man?”

  “The latter, if you please.”

  “Ah, a scholar!” He clasped his hands with such glee she hated to disagree with him.

  “Are you interested in history, Miss Danforth, er, Tansy?” Genevieve was perusing a biography of Leonardo da Vinci, rapt. Turning pages over, slowly, one by one.

  She hesitated.

  “A sudden fascination swept over me,” she decided to say.

  This much, at least, was true.

  “I suppose new places can inspire new interests,” Genevieve said.

  “Truer words were never spoken,” she agreed vehemently.

  “Well, I’m delighted to be of service to such a fine mind,” Mr. Tingle declared. “In fact, I’d like to make a present of this volume, Miss Danforth, as long as you choose another one to purchase.”

  “You are too, too kind, Mr. Tingle! You are a generous man, to be certain.”

  “Oh, bosh.” Color moved into his cheeks. “It’s a pleasure to do business with such an avid reader.” Avid was a bit of a stretch, but she suspected he’d be mightily disappointed if she disabused him of the notion. “Can I interest you in another period of English history? Perhaps something about William the Conqueror?”

  “Well, let me think . . . have you any books written by Mr. Miles Redmond?”

  Mr. Tingle’s hands froze on his spectacles. His eyes darted toward Genevieve and back again.

  Tansy felt, rather than saw, Genevieve go motionless.

  A bewildering, indecisive little silence followed.

  At last Mr. Tingle cleared his throat. He lowered his voice. “We do have a selection of Mr. Redmond’s books,” he said, as carefully as if he were confessing to a collection of pornography.

  “I enjoyed one of his books on his adventures in Lacao. I would love to read more about that particular journey.”

  Mr. Tingle lowered his voice to something like a discreet whisper.

  “I’ll just go and fetch the one that follows for you, will I?”

  THEY’D EACH ACQUIRED a new book, each one very much representative of their own personal fascinations and who they were as people, though they didn’t know that, and they clasped them to their bosoms as they walked. Genevieve reminded her of the Sussex landscape: subtle. She wasn’t prone to chatter or untoward confidences, she was intelligent and measured, her wit quiet but quick. When she spoke. The emphasis was on the quiet. And Tansy felt a bit tethered. Her own personality, in general, was decidedly buoyant. A bit more impulsive.

  “May I ask you a question, Genevieve?”

  “Certainly.”

  “How long have you been married?”

  “Nearly a
year now.”

  There was silence, as they trod side by side, coming abreast of the ancient cemetery surrounding the squat little church. Tansy stopped, mesmerized by the stones. The newer ones were upright, the older ones reclining a bit, sagging, as everything is wont do with age. A huge willow rose up and sheltered most of it, like a hen fanning its wings out over her chicks.

  The English all seemed very restrained, and she told herself she probably ought not ask the next question.

  “How did you . . . know? About the duke, that is. Or . . .”

  Or did you know? was what she wanted to know, but it seemed far too presumptuous. And given the looks she’d seen Genevieve exchange with the duke, she was certain the question was unnecessary. He’d said he was happy. She knew he was happy. But how did one know?

  Genevieve smiled. “You’ll know when it happens to you, if that’s what you’re worried about. There’s really no mistaking it.”

  She did have a little of that married woman superiority Tansy generally found infinitely irritating.

  “Did you by any chance ever lose your powers of speech around him?” she asked, half in jest.

  Genevieve looked amused, yet puzzled. “I daresay I rather found my powers of speech when I met him.”

  Alas. Tansy suspected her own particular affliction might very well be unique. Ian Everseaitis.

  He was unpleasant and rude and beautiful and scary, and she wondered hungrily if the book she held would somehow hold a key to him. How did an interest in Richard III reveal him, or would it? It was all she had at the moment, so she clutched it to herself like a map.

  “Do you mind . . . do you mind if we walk through?” She gestured at the gravestones.

  “Not at all.”

  She silently wove through the yard, which wasn’t so much sad as it was peaceful and wistful. She rather liked the idea of the graveyard surrounding the church. Dead was dead; there was no getting around it, really. She of all people ought to know. Perhaps the location of the graveyard served as a reminder of those who were bored with attending church that it was all dust to dust, and they ought to see to their souls if they wanted to proceed through the pearly gates after a tombstone was erected on top of them.