“Tell you . . . how to light a cigarette?”
“That you’re leaving. For good, essentially. More or less. In a fortnight, isn’t it? Or were you just going to disappear, and hope that I considered you a figment of my imagination? A sort of fever dream?”
Oh. Hell.
“Ah. I thought you knew I was leaving.”
“No.” She said it flatly.
“Yes. I’m sailing soon, Tansy.” He said it gently. “I did say I would be off around the world.”
“You did say.” She said it with faint mockery. “You just didn’t say when.”
Silence.
The ash was lengthening at the tip of the cigarette, heading for her fingertips.
“Are you going to smoke that, or . . .”
She suddenly tamped the cigarette out with great violence and whirled on him.
“And you wrote to Stanhope to tell him to hie his way here to Sussex to see me. Solving the problem of me, weren’t you? Neatly disposing of me. Wave the shiny heir in front of Miss Danforth’s eyes to distract her from her ridiculous tendre for you. Keep her out of the way of Landsdowne. Because she’s just that shallow and just that fickle and anyone and anything can distract her, and here, have yourself an heiress, Stanhope, so she doesn’t get in the way of anyone I actually care about.”
In the force of her fury and hurt, he found himself becoming very, very calm, and very, very clear. It was what made him a good soldier, and why he never seemed able to stop being one.
“I of course didn’t say that in so many words. And you know it isn’t how I feel.”
His calm seemed to make her angrier.
“Do I? How do you feel, then, Ian?”
He was silent. He couldn’t choose from any of the words he knew, because none of them were sufficient. Of course, a single word would do the trick. But he wasn’t going to say that to her now. Because he was about to lose her, and he didn’t think she would believe him, and he would be gone anyway, and what good would it serve either of them?
She snorted softly when he stood there and said nothing.
“What did you do to the Duke of Falconbridge?” Her voice was bitter. “Because I know it was something. He doesn’t like you.”
Ah. So her goal this evening was to find as many ways to hurt him as possible.
“Did he say as much?” Not surprising, really. But it seemed unlike the circumspect duke to state it baldly.
“He implied, and I’m not as stupid as all that, Ian. Something about ‘climbing’ seems to come up rather a lot with regards to you. And I doubt it means anything good.”
Her bitterness was knife-edged.
He didn’t have the right to be angry. And so he found himself going calmer and calmer. The eye of the hurricane around them.
“What did I do to the duke?” he said musingly. “Very well. Since I have never lied to you, Tansy, and since you asked, here is what I did to the duke: I attempted to seduce his fiancée. The woman he was to marry before he met my sister. She was, in fact, quite willing. We had, in fact, been planning to tryst for some time; I climbed a tree to her chamber window, where he was lying in wait in the dark in her bedroom, unbeknownst to her. I had just climbed into bed with her, and I hadn’t yet touched her when he . . . when he . . . suffice it to say he ushered me out of the window at gunpoint. Naked.”
He’d delivered the words baldly, unleavened with compassion, tenderness, or apology. She had asked. It had happened precisely that way.
Let her do with the truth what she would.
She now knew more about him than most of the people he’d known his entire life.
Tansy had gone utterly silent, listening.
Utterly still.
He couldn’t even sense her breathing.
He saw the curtains rise a little at her window, which were open just an inch.
Windows seemed to play an inordinate role in his fate.
“You . . . knew she was his fiancée?”
Her voice sounded scraped raw. As if she could scarcely speak in the wake of that confession. She was aghast.
“Yes.”
More glacial, ominous silence.
“Why? Why did you do it?”
And suddenly the fury broke through.
“Because she was beautiful. Because she wanted me. Because I wanted her. Is that what you want me to say, Tansy? Because the duke was rumored to be a dangerous man, and I liked the idea of risk. Shall I quote you on the subject of risk, Miss Danforth? Shall I remind you that you climbed in my window, and that you allowed me to lay you back on my bed, and allowed me to lift your night rail from your body, that you slid your hands into my shirt, that you—”
She’d jerked away from him as if he’d thrust a torch into her face.
“Stop it. Don’t you know, Ian . . . the duke is a person. He’d lost his child. He’d lost his wife—”
“Don’t you know he was rumored to have killed his wife? The rumor didn’t arise from nowhere. No one is suspected of that unless people have reason to wonder. He’s no saint, Tansy.”
“What utter shite, and you know it! Of course he’s no saint! Who is? Certainly not you. And it’s hardly an excuse, and you know that, too. But he’d hoped to marry again and rebuild his life. And you took that from him. No wonder he thinks you’re broken. You took it because you could. You took it simply because you wanted it.”
Broken? He supposed he was.
He gave a short, dark laugh.
“It wasn’t quite as simple as all that, Tansy. Nothing ever is. And if you take a deep breath and think it over, you’ll know I’m right. You knew who I was before you came to me. I have never lied to you. Never. And I have never promised a thing.”
But she wasn’t in the mood to listen. She was in a mood to hate him, and she needed the hate to distance herself from him. Like a boat she could leap into and push away from a dock. As if that would make any of this less painful.
“You always do get what you want, don’t you, Ian? You wanted me, and you in all likelihood did exactly what needed to be done to have me. Was it the risk that made me so appealing? Or did you want to shame the duke again?”
He was silent. Long enough for her words to reverberate, long enough to allow her to hear what she’d just said, and to shame her just a little. She knew they weren’t true. She was just flinging shards of words. She hoped a few of them struck him. She wanted to hurt him.
She succeeded.
But he knew better than she did how to withstand pain.
“I never wanted to shame anyone,” he said quietly.
She was breathing quickly now. She gave her head a rough shake.
“Look me in the eye and tell me you’re proud of everything you’ve done, Tansy. Look me in the eye and tell me you thought about the hearts you might be stealing or breaking with flattery and flirtation. Look me in the eye and tell me that you carefully thought through the consequences of every one of your actions. Particularly the actions of last night.”
She didn’t turn to him. “Yes, damn you,” she said brokenly. Sounding furious. “I thought last night through. Did you?”
“Yes,” he said tersely.
The break in her voice nearly undid him.
They regarded each other unblinkingly, from a distance of just a few feet. There might as well have been an ocean between them.
“Tansy.” He tentatively stretched out a hand. He wanted desperately to gather her to him.
“Please don’t touch me.”
His hand dropped.
“You always do get what you want, don’t you, Ian? You wanted me, and you in all likelihood did exactly what needed to be done to have me. It’s all about the getting of someone, isn’t it? God forbid you should give.” He couldn’t believe she thought any of these things were true. She just wanted to lash
out.
He waited again, and though he was certain nothing he said would matter at this point, he chose his words carefully, succinctly. So perhaps she would remember them later, when her anger had ebbed.
“I will tell you a few things that I know to be true. I wanted you, Tansy. I want you now. I will want you until the day I die. I never promised or implied a thing other than that. You wanted me, too. The duke will never allow me to marry you. And I am leaving.”
He could feel her take each word as a blow. And he’d delivered them that way. Irrefutable facts, all incompatible with each other.
She stood, utterly motionless, her face peculiarly set, and yet peculiarly crumpled, as if she was made of melting wax.
“And you . . . are probably going to marry a future duke. Take comfort in that, Miss Danforth. And you’re welcome for that, by the way.”
He could do bitterness well, too.
She jerked her head away from him. Stared off toward America, or Lilymont, or someplace that felt like home. Someplace that wasn’t him.
And if he wasn’t broken before he set foot on the balcony, he felt broken now as he left.
Chapter 25
AS USUAL, IT DIDN’T take long for word in Sussex to spread: Miss Titania Danforth was being courted quite determinedly by Lord Stanhope, and wagers were being made over how long it would take him to make her his bride. If the way he drove his high flyer was any indication of his courtship style, those that had “before the month was out” stood to win.
It was generally understood that the competition, which was considered legion, didn’t stand a chance, and that sending flowers to her and the like was a quixotic exercise, and yet they continued to straggle in, for one just never knew. It was the same philosophy the ton at large took to Olivia Eversea. It was like an investment. Best to keep a hand in. The winds of fate were fickle.
So flowers still abounded in the Eversea house.
Which meant the Everseas saved a good deal of money on decorations for the Grand Ball.
TANSY STOOD WITH Annie in front of her wardrobe and scrutinized her row of dresses as though Tansy was queen and she was choosing her ladies-in-waiting.
The abigail’s face was radiant and abstracted. And at last she turned to Tansy and blurted, “Oh, there’s something I just must tell you, Miss Danforth. We’re to be wed in a week! My James and I!”
“Oh, Annie! That’s wonderful, wonderful news!”
She turned and gave the abigail a swift little hug, which made both of them blush.
“It has made all the difference, the money from waiting tables at the Pig & Thistle. Ned Hawthorne thinks James is ever so good with the customers. We cannot thank you enough for recommending him.”
“So lovely to hear. I hear ‘Titania’ makes a fine second name for girl babies,” she teased.
Annie blushed scarlet at this, and she seemed momentarily speechless with pleasure.
“Well, we should dress you tonight as if you’re already a duchess, Miss Danforth,” she finally said.
Tansy went still.
But then, naturally, gossip had entered the bloodstream of the Eversea household, and of course the servants would know about Stanhope’s attentions.
She immediately squared her shoulders, as if the courtship was a lead-lined cloak.
She’d scarcely made an effort to charm anyone in the last fortnight or so, but it wasn’t as though Stanhope or anyone else had noticed. He chattered happily when they went out walking, or drove recklessly in his high flyer, or he rode alongside her.
Meanwhile, she hadn’t seen Ian at all.
She supposed he was busy with preparation for his round-the-world journey. She tried very hard to be very philosophical and mature and sophisticated, to think of her time with him in terms of fleeting, startling beauty—a sunrise, a sunset, that sort of thing. When that failed to console her, she tried to poke the embers of that righteous, incinerating anger with which she’d driven him off the balcony the other night. But that failed, too, because that particular fire was dead. Because he’d been absolutely right, of course, and it was ridiculous to be angry with him for something (granted, remarkably stupid and selfish) he’d done before he met her. To be angry at him for being who he was. She understood what drove him, perhaps better than anyone ever had. She’d already forgiven him.
And she didn’t think he was that person anymore, either.
It seemed, then, that all that was left to her was to suffer, silently, for as long as . . . well, until she no longer did. Presumably at some point in the history of her life she no longer would suffer, or at least she’d arrive at some effective way to manage what right now seemed gruesomely unfair and nearly intolerable.
The two of them would just have to join the annals of star-crossed lovers, she supposed. Tristan and Isolde. Romeo and Juliet.
Olivia Eversea and Lyon Redmond.
It was far more romantic-sounding in books.
In reality, it was ghastly.
And besides, he certainly hadn’t said that he loved her. I will want you until the day I die. He’d said that, but not a word about love.
Would it be better if he’d said it?
Yes, she’d decided. It would have been. She wasn’t certain whether he did love her, or whether he would even recognize it if he did, and it was this that gave her a spine, and this that got her through the ensuing fortnight of Stanhope’s courtship, and this that propelled her from bed each morning since that night on the balcony, and this that made the notion of life without him just an infinitesimal fraction more bearable.
It was, however, a mercy that Ian was leaving the country. Because to marry someone else while they shared the same continent, breathed the same air, looked up and saw the same stars, seemed . . . ridiculous. Counter to natural law.
And yet to not marry, and marry brilliantly, seemed not only a betrayal of her parents’ wishes, but of the duke . . . and herself. Her parents had wanted nothing more than for her to be safe and cherished and settled. To have a home and family and permanence once more.
And God help her, it was what she wanted, too.
But tonight . . . in all likelihood, she would have to see him tonight. At least out of the corner of her eye.
She shook herself from a reverie and turned to Annie, who was watching her with a disconcerting look of sympathy, which fled instantly.
“What would you wear, Annie, if you were going to see a man for the very last time, and you wanted him to never forget you, and for every woman he ever saw after that to pale in comparison to the memory of you?”
Annie’s expression then made Tansy realize that yes, servants observed everything. They knew who slept where, and how crumpled the beds were in the morning, and she realized that footmen who moved silently through the house must notice glances exchanged. They must know.
The abigail suddenly reached out impulsively to squeeze her hand.
And then she whispered: “It won’t matter what you wear, miss. He will never, ever forget you.”
IAN DIDN’T WANT to go to the ball.
He didn’t want to watch Tansy dance with other men and he didn’t want to dance with any other woman. But he was no coward, he generally had very fine manners and a sense of duty, and so he shaved and dressed scrupulously and went and stood in the ballroom. His mother had insisted; if he was going to go off again on an around-the-world trip, she wanted to see as much of him as she could before he did. He never could deny his mother what she wanted.
So he managed to smile and bow and say appropriately banal things to the people who passed by. He’d been through worse evenings, by far; he would survive this one. He would just keep moving through the ballroom, smiling, nodding. That way, if anyone were to say, “Have you seen Ian?” many were bound to nod yes, and assume he was dutifully participating. He was nothing if not a strategist.
&nbs
p; And then tomorrow he could leave for London. Distance would help. Like opium, it wouldn’t eliminate the pain, but it would certainly help to muffle it.
The glittering ranks of ball-goers swelled. Everyone he knew, clad in finery he’d seen event after event, poured in. After all, everyone wanted to be present when it was rumored that the duke’s ward, Miss Titania Danforth, who had been such a disturbance upon the calm waters of Sussex society, would become engaged to someone who would also become a duke. What marvelous symmetry, some sighed. Certainly it was destiny.
Ian hadn’t yet seen her.
He hadn’t, in fact, seen her for almost a fortnight.
Or for twelve days, four hours, thirty-two minutes, and forty-one seconds, to be precise.
He’d looked at his map this evening, but then shoved it aside and whiled away some time doing those particular calculations instead.
During that calculated time, he had returned to London and begun purchasing supplies and commissioning clothes appropriate to a trip to Africa and all the points in between. And during that time, he supposed she’d been whisked about in a high flyer and taken on picnics and walks and the like. He hoped, quite uncharitably, that she was bored, and that she thought about him constantly, because if she was going to forget him, there was time enough to do that after he sailed away.
And then he hoped—and the very nature of the selflessness amazed him—that she wasn’t too bored, because the very idea of her unhappiness, of her sparkle dimmed for any reason, filled him with something close to panic. As though his own life was imperiled.
“What the devil are you glowering at?”
Colin, one of the circulating ball attendees, stopped in front of Ian and stared.
“I wasn’t glowering,” he said reflexively.
“I beg to differ. You’ve quite frightened all the young ladies standing across from you.”
Ian blinked. There were young ladies standing across from him. And each of them had wide eyes and pale faces. Well, then.
“Ah. I think I need to visit the loo,” he said bluntly to Colin, who made a sympathetic face as Ian stalked off down the hallway, toward where he’d interrupted Sergeant Sutton in the act of trying to persuade Tansy of their spiritual accord. Not toward the loo, just away.
Between the Devil and Ian Eversea: Pennyroyal Green Series Page 24