Between the Devil and Ian Eversea: Pennyroyal Green Series

by Long, Julie Anne

  Genevieve snorted softly. “I don’t think magic has anything much to do with it. Unless she can disorient men by batting her lashes and then—abracadabra!—transform them into glazed-eyed fools.”

  Ian was pensive. “I do wonder something . . . she might be a bit hard of hearing. She seems to lose control over the volume of her voice rather regularly for no discernible reason. And does she have a tic? She tips her head back at odd times.”

  “I’ve noticed the bit with the volume! Not with the head. Poor dear, to be so afflicted.”

  “Yes, let’s pity the poor dear who has men eating out of her hand,” he teased Genevieve. “That should make her more tolerable to you and all the other women.”

  She pushed him again.

  “I knew a bloke like that at Cambridge who was subject to twitches and shouting. You’d be in the middle of a deep conversation, say, about economics or the Peloponnesian war, and all of a sudden his head would jerk violently to the left and he’d shout ‘Bollocks!’ Or something more profane than even I am comfortable saying aloud to you. All in all, a capital bloke, however. One got used to it. He said it was because he was dropped on the coal hod when he was a baby. But I doubt Miss Danforth is mad, or was dropped on the coal hod.”

  “Conversations with you are always so edifying, Ian.”

  “You’re welcome,” he said cheerily.

  “Olivia doesn’t like her.”

  “Olivia doesn’t like anyone easily,” Ian said shortly.

  “Landsdowne sent Miss Danforth a book of country dances today.”

  Ian went silent and his hands stilled momentarily on his musket.

  “Did he?” he said disinterestedly.

  He pictured his sister watching Miss Danforth dance with Landsdowne, his proud, proud sister who would never grovel or maneuver her way into a waltz the way Tansy Danforth had, who had already lost enough, and something cold and hard that didn’t bode well for Miss Danforth settled in his gut.

  Ian was in fact considerably more skeptical of Miss Danforth than he was willing to reveal yet to Genevieve. Or to anyone. He was willing to watch and bide his time.

  “And I know you aren’t preparing to ravish her, Ian, because I’d never speak to you again, and I know you’ll miss my conversation.”

  “Nonsense. You aren’t that interesting,” he said easily.

  But temper tensed his muscles, tightened his grip on his musket. He had only himself to blame; he wasn’t entitled to righteousness in that regard. He didn’t like the reminder, however.

  “Are you any closer to buying a house in Sussex?” he asked.

  “Falconbridge is most interested in Lilymont. It was Miss Danforth’s home as a girl, did you know? As charming a place as you’ll ever see. Rather compact for a duke, however.” She smiled.

  He went still.

  Lilymont. He knew the house. It was small. From its hill one could see the downs rippling outward and a generous silver wedge of the sea. Large windows and gracious simple lines, and weathered stone walls, amber in the sunlight. An ample, but not too ample, garden of fruited and flowering trees was enclosed by a high stone wall with wild vines of flowers growing up it. It would need a little taming, but only a little. He liked things a bit wild, a bit disheveled. He liked things to be themselves, when at all possible.

  He’d never seen a more perfect house, in its way.

  It was interesting to hear Tansy had once lived there. Oddly, he could picture her as a flaxen-haired girl little girl, performing pianoforte pieces for the guests or playing in the garden. He wondered if she missed it, or even remembered it.

  “It’s a wonderful house. It deserves an owner who loves it,” he said.

  “ARE YOU ENJOYING your stay, thus far, Miss Danforth?”

  While Genevieve and Ian were chatting about her, the duke had called Tansy into the study for another chat, and they were sipping tea together.

  “I’m having a lovely time, and everyone is so very kind and generous.”

  “I saw the flowers sent to you. I think your father would have been proud. And worried.”

  She smiled at that. “Oh, I’m certain it’s nothing but generosity. The people of Sussex are just being kind.”

  The duke’s eyebrows went up skeptically at that. “The male people.”

  This made Tansy laugh. “And the Everseas are such a lovely family. Everyone is so warm and kind. And charitable, it would seem.”

  She crossed her fingers in her lap over this little lie.

  “Charitable?” This word bemused him.

  “We stopped into town, and I met the vicar, Reverend Adam Sylvaine, and Mr. Ian Eversea was on the roof, hammering. It seemed a charitable pastime for a wealthy gentleman.” She said this as innocently as she could muster.

  “Was he.” The duke had, rather quickly, gone so cold and remote it was like being thrust out of a warm cabin into a frigid winter. “I’m not surprised he was on the roof. Ian Eversea excels at climbing.”

  She wasn’t certain what to say about this, but it definitely sounded ironic.

  And hadn’t Genevieve said something very similar in the churchyard?

  “I was surprised to see him at work with the others . . . not of his station.”

  “I suppose it would be surprising.”

  She sensed their conversation would rapidly end if she continued her Ian Eversea fishing expedition. It was all very interesting.

  “My brother was a soldier,” she said.

  The duke softened.

  “As many of the Eversea men were. You must miss your brother.”

  “He was irritating and bossy and protective and quite funny.”

  “He sounds just about perfect.”

  She dug her nails into her palm and smiled.

  She would not cry. She could feel the urge pressing at the back of her throat. She was tougher than she looked, and she would not. She simply nodded.

  He seemed to know it. How she liked him, even though he still frightened her just a very little.

  “After my first wife died, I was a bit . . .” He seemed to be searching for just the right word. “. . . lost.”

  He presented the word carefully. As if he was handing her something a bit delicate and dangerous.

  It was a gift, she knew, this confidence of his. She was honored by it.

  She knew precisely what he meant. But looking at him now, it was nearly impossible to imagine it. He radiated power; he seemed so very certain of himself, so rooted to the earth, it was difficult to imagine him feeling the way she did frequently now, like a bit of flotsam floating on the air.

  “I know what you mean.” Her voice had gone a little hoarse. Close to a whisper.

  “But I knew, because of my first wife, that I would make a good husband and a good father and that it was what I wanted to be. I didn’t want to make my life a monument to loss. In some ways I think the losses make us better at knowing how to be happy. And at knowing how to make others happy.”

  It was a lovely way to put it, and she never would have expected it of him. Which hardly seemed a charitable thought, but there you had it.

  “Do you think so?”

  He smiled slightly. “I know so. And I think losses help you to understand who deserves your attention, too. For life is too short to spend the best of ourselves on, shall we say, people who will not appreciate it or return it in kind. People who do not deserve you.”

  The duke fixed her with a gaze that seemed benign enough.

  Tansy returned his gaze innocently, though she wanted to narrow her eyes shrewdly and study him.

  Ah, but she was clever. All of this talk of knowing who deserves whom, she was fairly certain, was an oblique reference to Ian Eversea and implied a certain intriguing . . . unworthiness. But why? Because of glances exchanged with a wanton widow?

 
Then again everything since she’d seen Ian Eversea felt like an oblique reference to him. He had become the story, and everything was a footnote for now. She didn’t necessarily like it that way. But she would need to read it to the end.

  “I shall remember that,” she said solemnly. “Thank you.”

  He gave a short nod and turned toward the window, and she knew she was dismissed.

  SHE DIDN’T SEE Ian again until evening, when most of the family gathered in the parlor after dinner.

  His shirtsleeves were rolled up and he wore snug trousers and Hessians, and while she pretended to read her book about Richard III, she peered up at him and tried to imagine him without his shirt.

  She looked down again quickly when warmth began to rush over the backs of her arms.

  “Plan to stay in Sussex long, Ian?” This came from Olivia, who was stabbing a needle in and out of a hoop of cloth. Flowers were blooming in a violent profusion on it. As if there weren’t enough flowers in the house already.

  Genevieve sat next to her, feet tucked beneath her on the settee, a book fanned open in her hands. The duke had gone off on some matter of business, apparently.

  “Bored with me already?” He said it abstractedly, however, as his eyes were on the chessboard.

  “It’s so very difficult to be bored when you’re around, even if one tries.”

  The corner of his mouth lifted. He nudged a piece forward, and Colin, who had stopped in to borrow something from his father and was talked into a chess game, swore something beneath his breath.

  “What did you ladies do in town today?” Olivia asked the two of them.

  Tansy knew an opportunity when she heard one.

  Her heart, absurdly, began to thud with something like portent.

  “I’ve obtained a new book,” she said. “You may be interested in it, Mr. Eversea.”

  All the Mr. Everseas present looked up, until it became clear she was looking at Ian. Too late, she remembered he was a captain now.

  “Have you?” He glanced warily at the thing in her hand, as if to ascertain whether it was indeed a book.

  “It’s a fine history of Richard the Third.”

  His smile was small and polite. “Ah.”

  Not a conversation encourager, the word “Ah.”

  “You mentioned him the other night,” she prompted. “Whilst we were dancing.”

  “Did I?” He looked bemused.

  “He’s buried in Leicestershire?” she pressed, a bit desperately.

  “Ah, yes. I recall.” His brow furrowed faintly in something like concern, as if studying her for signs of witlessness.

  Everyone seemed to have arrested what they were doing in order to hear this conversation.

  The backs of her hands and her neck began to heat.

  “It’s fascinating. The book.”

  It wasn’t. She’d read a chapter or two, gamely, but the author had contrived to make what was probably a fascinating or at least quite violent and bloody subject seem like a punishment.

  “Are you about to tell us about it?” Ian said this pleasantly, but he sneaked a look at the clock over the mantel. And back at her. As if he were formulating an excuse to escape.

  “What’s this about Richard the Third?” Colin asked. “Ian hasn’t willingly set foot in our library since he got in trouble for sneaking peeks at father’s anatomy books. Ian enjoys climbing trees,” he added, “and riding.”

  Ian flicked an amused warning look in his brother’s direction before returning his gaze to her.

  Another of those references to climbing.

  Tansy felt her eyes burning with mortification. He could at least have the decency to look away while she flushed, slowly, to the roots of her hair, and while her face slowly caught on fire, or so it felt.

  But no. Instead he watched, with mild dispassionate interest, much the way he might watch the sunset or the sunrise.

  Boor, she reminded herself.

  Still, she found herself saying, “You can have it, if you like.”

  “The . . . book?” He looked mystified.

  She nodded, mutely. Slowly extended it.

  His hands reached out. He took it gingerly.

  “Thank you, Miss Danforth,” he said gravely.

  “You’re welcome.”

  He stared at her a moment longer, and when it seemed she’d say nothing else, he returned his attention to the chessboard.

  The alps. Ice skating. Snowbanks.

  She tried to think of very cold things in the hopes that the flames in her cheeks would vanish.

  Ian Eversea’s heart.

  Ah, how about that? That was working.

  LATER, MUCH LATER, after everyone retired one by one and she had waited because she didn’t like to be alone, Tansy returned to her bedroom and was startled by the sight of flowers in a vase.

  Ha, Ian Eversea! Take that! Evidence that she was, indeed, appreciated. Desired, even! By not just one man, but by four! That she did possess grace and charm and could captivate. She stared at the flowers, waiting for a certain triumph to build.

  She groaned and dropped her face into her hands and rocked it to and fro. It was no use. She relived the moment, as if it had stretched torturously in time: her hand stretching out the book to him and his baffled face as he took it. Indulging her, as if she were a foolish little girl.

  She blew out a breath, and then yanked off her slippers. One at a time.

  And then she hurled them at the wall.

  Wham.

  Wham.

  “ ‘You can have it if you like,’ ” she mimicked herself to herself. “Oh, good heavens, what a fool I am!”

  But throwing the slippers had made her feel marginally better.

  Then she stalked over to the desk and settled in.

  She fanned out the sheet of foolscap and read it to herself as if it were a spell she could conjure right then and there.

  How would anyone come to know her? To see her? To love her?

  She dipped the quill into ink and wrote.

  Has known a loss or two.

  She’d begun to suspect it mattered.

  Chapter 10

  SOME KIND OF THUMP made Ian struggle to the surface from sleep, choking like a half-drowned man, thrashing at his sheets as if he were digging out from an avalanche.

  He lay still again.

  His lungs sawed greedily for air as he fought his way to the surface of consciousness.

  Bloody. Hell.

  As he always did, he waited for his breathing to steady, for his heart to quit hammering away like an inmate beating on the bars of a cell.

  He peeled the sweat-soaked sheets away from his torso, let the blessed cool air wash over his bare skin. He touched his fingers to the scar at his abdomen. It rather resembled the path that meandered to the Pig & Thistle from the Eversea house, right down to the way it was raised more at the end, like the little hill where the Marquess of Dryden had been shot not long ago. Chase had pointed out the resemblance to the road when they compared scars. Ian figured he could always follow it like a map back to the Eversea house if he drank a bit too much at the pub.

  If he didn’t stretch regularly and often enough, it drew all the muscles around it taut as a miser’s purse strings and he could count on a day or so of agony, solvable only by hard liquor and a soft woman and a hot bath.

  It had been dug there by a bayonet on the day of his greatest triumph and his greatest failure.

  There were other scars, too, but this was the only one that liked to make its presence known, as surely as if it were another organ. His heart pumped blood, his lungs moved air in and out, and the scar’s job was to never let him forget.

  The room still felt too close—it was smaller than his own room, and the curtains were heavier—so he heaved his body out of bed and was at t
he window in a few strides. He shoved it open.

  He peered out the window.

  And one balcony over . . .

  . . . well, damned if that wasn’t Miss Danforth.

  And how had no one noticed he was sleeping in the room next to hers? Surely the duke would have made sure one or the other of them had been removed to a room at the opposite side of the house posthaste.

  He decided then and there, however, that he wouldn’t request his room be moved. He would stay right where he was.

  Lamplight poured out the open window, and she had brought a lamp with her onto the balcony.

  Her chin was propped on her fists and she was gazing out over the Eversea grounds, which from her vantage point rolled almost as far as the eye could see. She looked smaller than usual, rather slumped in a manner that was almost defeated. For the first time it occurred to him that the sparkle she seemed to bring everywhere with her resulted from some effort, rather than some supernatural source of charm allotted to her in exchange for selling her soul to the devil.

  She tipped her head back, like a bird gulping water. She seemed to be scanning the skies above, for a sign, perhaps, from Heaven. It was entirely possible she had some sort of nervous tic. She’d been doing that in the ballroom, too. Or perhaps she was subject to nosebleeds.

  And then she lowered her head again, and her shoulders dropped, and her hands disappeared for a moment as she appeared to rummage around somewhere out of sight.

  She produced a small pouch and propped it on the edge of the balcony.

  And then she removed from the pouch a scrap of something.

  What the devil . . . ?

  It couldn’t be.

  Oh, but it was.

  It was a cigarette paper.

  He watched, fascinated and appalled as she expertly ran her tongue down it. Then she flattened it on the balcony edge, shook a little tobacco in a slim line down it. To his wondering eyes . . . she rolled it as adeptly as any soldier.

  She held it beneath her nose, closed her eyes, and her shoulders rose and fell as she inhaled deeply.