Between the Devil and Ian Eversea: Pennyroyal Green Series

by Long, Julie Anne

  Ian shot him a weary, wry look. “In a moment.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  He watched Colin aim for Madeleine, who was sitting across the room in conversation with Marcus’s wife, the way a man in a desert headed for an oasis. But then he always aimed for Madeleine that way.

  “A FINE PAINTING I think you’ll enjoy hangs in just the other room, and I’ve long wished to get a look at it. Would you care to accompany me? I’d be honored to hear your opinion.”

  Sergeant Sutton was dashing, though much of it had to do with the uniform, she was certain. And it was something about the uniform, something about the word “Sergeant” in front of his name, something about his gray eyes, that reminded her a bit of her brother. A bit. But she liked the look of him. He wasn’t Ian Eversea handsome, of course—honestly, who was?—but he was handsome enough, and certainly considerably friendlier. They’d chatted quite easily about a number of things, and it was this easiness she found a balm after Ian Eversea’s eyes on her—judging, searching, and . . . something else had been in his eyes, something darker and more confusing and a bit knowing. Something both thrilling and frightening.

  Then again, there was something about being utterly unwilling to let any dare—and this felt a bit like that—go unaccepted.

  So she followed Sergeant Sutton down the hallway—quite a ways, it seeemed—until they paused at a painting.

  It was a painting of a horse. It struck her as unremarkable, though in all likelihood a fine one, if she had to guess, but she wasn’t a student of art. She was fond of horses, and this one was lovely, but then again she couldn’t think of a single reason why the Everseas might hang a homely horse on the wall.

  “It’s an excellent rendering,” she decided to say. “It looks very much like a horse.”

  He didn’t say anything. It had suddenly gotten very quiet. So quiet she could hear Sergeant Sutton breathing unnaturally loudly.

  “Miss Danforth . . . as you’ve no doubt concluded yourself, we have a spiritual accord.”

  This was startling information.

  “Have we?” she said cautiously.

  “Oh yes. Believe me. I have a sense for these things. I realized it when we both admired the painting. And do you know what must necessarily become of spiritual accords?”

  Having never knowingly experienced a spiritual accord, Tansy answered truthfully, “No.”

  “They must find release in, shall we say, physical expression.”

  “Must they?” Damnation. She shot a surreptitious glance over her shoulder, to see if anyone was in the vicinity. Not a soul. She could no longer even hear the voices of the revelers. Blast.

  She took a step backward. The click of her heel echoed ominously on the marble, as if to emphasize just how alone the two of them were.

  “Oh yes. It is nature’s law. And you’re not a scofflaw, are you?” he teased.

  “Not as of yet, I don’t believe,” she said cautiously. “Although if it’s nature’s law, as you say, I feel a little lawlessness coming on now.”

  “Oh, we can fight our desires all we wish, but nature always wins. Nature knows what’s best. And why shouldn’t we give it a little assistance? I feel that we should.”

  “Our desires, Sergeant Sutton?” He’d stepped closer. She stepped back. “I feel you should have used a different preposition.”

  He laughed at that.

  She took another step back. Another step or two and she would be able to make a reasonably graceful escape without lifting her skirts in her hands and running for it.

  But that’s when he reached out a hand and closed it around her wrist, brought her hand up to his mouth and pressed a hot kiss into her palm.

  “Did you feel that down to your toes, Miss Danforth?”

  “Truthfully, I felt it more in the pit of my stomach.”

  “That’s excitement,” he reassured her.

  “That’s revulsion,” she corrected, and pulled back on her wrist.

  He held fast. “It takes a moment for the effect to take hold. Sometimes it takes more than one kiss to get the job done.”

  He used her own arm as a lever to pull her closer, and even though she dug in her heels, her slippers slid across the marble as if she were on skis. The dark little caverns of his nostrils loomed and time seemed to slow as the dark maw slowly opened in preparation to latch over hers. The stench of cheap tobacco smoke permeating his coat stunned her senses, and she was just about to spit on him when—

  “Unhand her.”

  The voice was lazy. Offhand. Quiet.

  But something about it stood all the hair on the back of her neck on end.

  She’d never heard anything more menacing in her life.

  Sergeant Sutton dropped her arm as if it were a snake and spun around.

  “Captain Eversea!”

  Ian Eversea was indeed standing there, towering, his posture gracefully indolent. But his face was granite, apart from the faint curve of a very unpleasant smile.

  Tansy reclaimed her wrist jealously and rubbed at it.

  She wondered if she could get away with kicking Sutton now that his attention was diverted. She eyed the back of his trousers.

  Ian Eversea took her in with a glance, ascertaining that nothing more than her dignity was hurt, and warned her against violence with the slightest shake of his head.

  And he said nothing to her.

  “ ‘Physical accord’? ‘Spiritual accord’?” His voice was still nearly a drawl, as if he couldn’t be bothered to raise it over a toad like Sutton. But his scorn made each word crack like a whip. “I have never heard such a steaming load of shite. Get out of here, Sutton. Go. Before I make it impossible for you to move. And if you ever bother Miss Danforth again, I will make certain she’s the last female you ever bother.”

  Sutton’s jaw was tense. A swallow moved in his throat.

  The air crackled with suppressed violence, like the prelude to a thunderstorm.

  For the first time in a very long time, a surge of genuine fear swept her.

  “And you’d know a bit about killing, wouldn’t you, sir?” Sutton finally said. It sounded a bit like an insinuation.

  Ian smiled at this. Swiftly. It was like watching a saber being unsheathed.

  His voice went silky. The voice a cobra might use, Tansy thought, to mesmerize its prey.

  “Enough so that one more wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference to me, Sergeant.”

  And before her eyes, Sergeant Sutton blanched. She’d never actually seen someone do precisely that before.

  Sutton stared at Ian a moment longer, then muttered some oath under his breath and spun on his heel.

  They watched him until he walked down the hallway and disappeared back into the party.

  She cleared her throat. “Thank you,” she managed, with a certain amount of dignity. Her voice was a bit frayed.

  He said nothing. He was staring at her as if he couldn’t quite decide whether she deserved killing, too.

  “Killing?” she queried. “Done a lot of it?” she said, just to interrupt the stare.

  The stare continued.

  He still said nothing. He just studied her with those blue eyes, and she felt them on her like cinders.

  “May I ask you a question, Miss Danforth?” His voice was still quiet, almost lazy.

  She nodded permission.

  “What the bloody hell are you playing at?”

  Ah. Suspicions confirmed. He was angry.

  She bit her lip a moment. “You don’t have to curse.”

  Good God. Even she thought that was inane.

  She could see he almost laughed.

  “Oh, my stars. I do apologize for my rough ways.”

  She almost laughed at that. She sensed that would be unwise indeed, because he hadn’t yet blinked. There
was the sense about him of a coiled spring. Or a primed musket. Whatever anger he’d felt at Sutton—or at her—hadn’t yet entirely spent itself. And here she was alone with him.

  “Answer me, please.”

  He was probably a bloody good captain, if she had to guess. Scared the life out of his soldiers by just talking in a quiet voice.

  “I’m not sure what you mean,” she hedged, though she was pretty certain that she did.

  “Flirting with men, encouraging their attentions with wild, insincere, yet strangely effective flattery, generally causing an uproar, all so you can have all of them eating out of your hand, and then recklessly finding yourself in a compromising, even dangerous, position as a result.”

  Oh. That.

  You noticed! she was tempted to say.

  “All of them except for you,” she pointed out.

  She couldn’t believe she’d said it.

  It was fairly clear this had brought him up short. He was staring at her with something like amazement now.

  “Or perhaps you’re . . . jealous?” she suggested hopefully, weakly. Half jesting.

  Her own recklessness amazed her. But in for a penny, in for a pound.

  And she wanted to jar a way past that stare.

  She was sorry she’d said it when the next expression to take up occupation on his face was incredulity.

  He shook his head slowly to and fro.

  “I’ve watched you, Miss Danforth . . . in the midst of your games. And it’s so very clear you know little to nothing of the . . . shall we say, matters between men and women. I would wager my entire inheritance on it. And I find game playing combined with ignorance tedious. I’m not a boy.”

  She was badly stung.

  “The matters between men and women! Do you mean sex?”

  A heartbeat of utter silence followed.

  “I suppose you think you’re being very bold,” he said quietly.

  She was fairly certain she had succeeded in shocking him.

  Perhaps even rattling him.

  She said nothing, because she’d shocked herself by saying it and needed a moment to recover.

  “Have you ever even been kissed before, Miss Danforth?”

  She contemplated which answer would incriminate her the least and impress him the most, though why she should want to do the latter eluded her. She had been kissed, but it hadn’t caused a single unusual physical response.

  Whereas simply looking at Ian Eversea seemed to cause her senses to riot.

  “Perhaps.”

  She wouldn’t have blamed him if he rolled his eyes.

  Perhaps mercifully, the incredulity was simply amplified a bit.

  “It’s a risky game you play, Tansy. Why do you do it?”

  She was angry now. “Because. I. Can. And because they like it.”

  “I suspect you mean because they like you when you do it.”

  This brought her up short. A tense little silence followed.

  “Why do you do it?” she countered. Ha!

  His eyes flared in surprise, then anger swiftly kindled in them.

  Splendid. She was certain she’d at least startled him. Yes, Captain Eversea, I know about your alleged exploits. She imagined saying that aloud. She discovered she wasn’t that brave.

  But he ignored the question.

  “I won’t always be lurking around corners when you face the consequences of your actions, Tansy. Not every soldier is born a gentleman, and not every gentleman understands the word no. Men are fundamentally brutes. Some just wear better clothes and have more money. You ought to be more afraid.”

  He was undoubtedly correct. She ought to be.

  “Come now, Captain Eversea, surely you of all people know that a little risk makes life less dull, altogether.”

  He gave a short laugh. She suspected she’d surprised it from him.

  “My risks are calculated, Miss Danforth. And informed by experience.”

  “And you can’t possibly know that I know nothing about, as you say, ‘such matters.’ ”

  He inhaled deeply, exhaled at length, sounding oh-so-long-suffering. “Oh, you know how to make them yearn, I grant you. You know how to get attention. There’s a look experienced women have, that’s all. A demeanor. And you haven’t the look.”

  This was news. How on earth would an experienced woman look? Shocked? Tired? Wicked? Reflexively, she tried an expression that she thought might incorporate all three.

  He laughed again, genuinely. “I’ve seen that expression on one of Colin’s cows, after she’d eaten something she ought not.”

  Torn between laughing and scowling, she frowned.

  “You don’t need the look. It isn’t something to aspire to, Miss Danforth. You’re going to marry someone with a title and all the money you’ll ever need, isn’t that so? Aren’t you destined for a duke or something of the sort? So don’t even think about practicing. Like I said, I won’t always be around to rescue you.”

  “I imagine you’ve benefited from that ‘look’ any number of times, haven’t you, Captan Eversea?”

  She was out of her depth with him, which made her even more reckless than usual. She was like a kitten with tiny sharp claws crawling up his trouser leg. She suspected he would indulge her only so long before he shook her off abruptly.

  “Miss Danforth,” he said patiently. “It’s clear you want to goad me into saying scandalous things to you that you can take back to your room and savor, pore over at night like found treasure. You want my attention. You don’t want the consequences of that attention. You don’t even know what the consequences are. And for me, it’s just . . . it’s well, just rather dull,” he added with an attempt at kindness, and an intolerably condescending lift of one shoulder. “And in some circumstances, it might even be hurtful. And if someone I care about might be hurt as a result of whatever game you’re playing . . . I simply can’t allow you to do it.”

  Dull!

  Someone he cared about!

  Oh, the infuriating humiliation. Her eyes burned.

  For some reason all of this hurt mortally.

  “You don’t know me at all,” she said, her voice a rasp, her face hot. She could only assume it was a scorching, unflattering red.

  “I know you some,” he said easily, sounding bored. “And some is enough.”

  He leaned back against the wall of the terrace, struck a flint against the box and lit a cheroot without asking whether she minded. He sent the smoke up into the air and aimed his gaze out over the landscape he likely knew the way he knew his own face in the mirror.

  His own damned handsome, unforgettable face.

  “Well, I suppose you’re right,” she said. “But you ought to know, isn’t that true, Captain Eversea? Because you of all people know it’s all about the getting of someone or of something. Everything you do. Everything else is a waste of time. God forbid a woman should evince an interest in you first. I’ll wager you’ll run like a frightened little girl.”

  She couldn’t seem to control what came out of her mouth when she was around him. Surely this was inadvisable.

  He turned his head sharply then, eyes wide in surprise, then hot with a real fleeting anger. She took a step back, as though he’d lunged at her with a lit torch.

  Then something speculative settled into his gaze. He studied her long enough for her heart to flop hard in her chest, painfully, like an obsequious mongrel. Eager to be patted or kicked, whatever he preferred. And she was angry that she was so very inexperienced that she couldn’t stop her heart from doing otherwise.

  At least she felt seen by him for the first time.

  Oh, how she wished she knew what he saw.

  “Know a bit about being a frightened little girl, do you, Tansy?” he said softly.

  Oh.

  She felt pinned like
a butterfly to a board.

  How, how, how she wished she had something to throw.

  She opened her mouth. But she couldn’t speak. Her voice had congealed.

  She simply turned and . . .

  Well, she didn’t precisely run.

  But she walked rather more swiftly than she might have done.

  And as her footsteps echoed, making her feel as though she was chasing herself, he called after her, dryly, “You’re welcome.”

  Chapter 14

  HIS TEMPER STILL ON the boil, Ian found himself charging in the opposite direction from the festivities.

  As it turned out he was on his way to the kitchen, which he hadn’t realized until he arrived. By the time he did, a certain fascination had begun to edge its way into his rather complicated anger, which flared bright and fresh every time he pictured Sutton’s hand closed around Tansy Danforth’s wrist as she struggled to pull it away. His gut knotted. What a pleasure it would have been to flatten Sutton. She could have been hurt. Or at the very least, quite inexpertly kissed against her will, and no woman should endure that.

  How dare the girl put herself at risk like that? How stupid did one have to be?

  He stopped abruptly and pulled in a long deep breath. He was fair enough to realize his anger seemed all out of proportion to the circumstances.

  Is that why you do it?

  Ah. And there he had it. What in God’s name had the girl heard about him? Or had that just been a guess aimed as skillfully as she’d aimed that musket?

  This, perversely, amused him.

  And at this thought he could feel something else sneaking in on the heels of his indignation. Something that felt a bit like . . . could it be . . . admiration?

  Very, very reluctant admiration.

  She was quick. He’d give her that.

  When she wasn’t trying so bloody hard.

  He paused in the kitchen. It was mercifully dimly lit and peaceful at the moment. Much to his delight, arrayed on a tray like the crown jewels as if awaiting his arrival, was a solitary fluffy, golden scone. Just the thing for his mood. Surely it was fate.