“No such thing. I could help you, and I did.”
“I don’t want to need help.”
He laughed. “I know you don’t. So proud and stubborn.”
She slid to the floor before one of the stalls. “You’re supposed to argue with me and tell me nice things.”
Evan sat beside her, stretching out his legs. “Why? Because you don’t want honesty along with help?” He split a piece of straw down its length, then tossed it aside. “You are proud, Kate. And you are stubborn. And thank God you’re both, because only someone proud and stubborn—not to mention clever and resourceful—would have a prayer of saving the Whelan lands.”
“It’ll take prayer to save them.” She sighed. “I am almost resigned to it. The fact is, Driscoll can demand what he likes. Either he claims the land, or he claims the money, and I must sell the land to raise it.” She shook her head. “I can save the house, but that’ll be all. Declan will have the responsibilities of an earldom with none of the resources.”
Evan eased a hand into one of hers. “When you’re not having to save something, maybe I could take a turn with the saving. Not forever. But for a little while.”
“No, no. If I don’t do everything… Evan, whenever Con said he’d help, he didn’t. I can’t let go of responsibility, or everything I’ve scrambled to save will be ruined.”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m not Con. The fact that I never loosed a sheep in your house should be proof enough of that.”
“I know.” Her fingers tightened within his. “I’m not good at…at letting someone else save the world.”
“Not the world,” he said. “I know I can’t save that. But I can help you save this moment. Or another. Whichever you need.”
She sat back against the stall door, hitching her knees up beneath her long black skirts. “I had a good moment with Nora. Just now. I don’t have so many of those that I take them for granted.”
“Good moments are precious,” he agreed.
“I held her, and I listened, and I—I cannot believe it. I did the right thing.”
Evan knew the feeling that trembled in her voice. Mingled shock and awe—and more than a dollop of for once.
“Your children love and trust you,” he said.
He was relieved that she did not look at him as he spoke, for his expression would have told her far more than his words.
Instead, she stood. Paced to the only other stall in the row currently occupied and studied the horse within. “They don’t have any friends, do they?” she asked. “Like me—they don’t fit with the people in the village—the tenants—the servants.” Her shoulders hunched. “I got in the habit of listening to Gwyn, or staying home to solve Con’s problems.”
“You are wearing black again,” Evan noted as he rose to his feet. “You looked lovely in color.”
“Did I?” She reached out, stroking the fine lines of the horse’s head and neck. “I don’t know myself in color anymore. I wore it on the journey. Now it seems I ought to go back to the way I was. The Countess of Whelan is a widow.”
“You are more than a widow. And more than a countess.” He crossed to join her before the other horse, then laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Biggie.”
She let the nickname pass. “Do you remember this mare? Lucy?” At the sound of her name, the horse’s ears pricked. “She was my father’s. Con came to Newmarket to buy mares for breeding, and he left with a wife as well.” She shook her head, rueful. “I don’t know that it’s the most flattering pairing.”
“You were all Thoroughbreds, so why not?” Evan held out his hand to the mare. “I remember old Luce.” He laughed. “Your father names his mare Lucy. Mine names his Lady Alix.” An apt summary of the differences between their families.
“She’s the last of those Chandler mares. I had to sell the others.” Kate trailed her fingers down the horse’s long nose. The mare leaned into the caress, closing her eyes like a kitten being petted. “Lucy isn’t all Thoroughbred, so she wouldn’t go for much. But I like her all the better for it. She’s eighteen years old and as strong and quick as ever. I think she’s got a touch of something steady in her, like Cleveland Bay. She’s got the black stockings for it.”
Kate had presented Evan with the perfect opening. “Your children don’t ride anymore.”
There was no mistaking what anymore meant. For a widow, for a friend close as a brother, there was only one anymore. “They didn’t want to ride at first,” Kate said. “I think they were shaken by Con’s accident. Then when I asked if they were ready, they said they weren’t.” Lucy shoved her fine head into Kate’s palm, winning herself a scratch behind the ears. “I think they were humoring me.”
“Because you don’t ride either?”
The look she cast at Evan was almost despairing. “If I fell like Con, they’d be orphaned.”
Time for a taste of her own medicine: the agreement game she’d played with Gwyn. “That’s true,” he said. “They would be. They could also be orphaned if you were riding in a carriage and it overturned, or if you were climbing around a ruined castle and a stone fell on your head. Or if you grew ill like your mother, or had another baby and died in childbed, or if you were stabbed by an elephant tusk, or—”
“Should I be alarmed you so quickly thought of so many ways to end my existence?”
“It’s not what I think, but what I fear,” he admitted. “Though I know ticking off fearful possibilities is no way to live.”
“I know it too, but I don’t change. I wish for nothing to change, and I wish for everything to be different.” She turned from Lucy with a sigh—which meant that she was facing Evan, almost close enough to fall into his arms. “Who was Con, Evan? Who the devil was he? Sometimes I think he loved me. Sometimes he seemed nothing but a collection of flaws knit together by charm.”
How could they ever know what had lain in Con’s heart? Evan knew only his own. “The truth lies somewhere between, I am sure.”
“Or maybe they are both true. He gave me a home when I didn’t have one, but…”
“Is this your home? I wasn’t sure, the way you spoke of it in Newmarket.”
When she looked at him, her eyes were deep blue-green. A color she would not wear, glossed with tears she would not shed. “I wasn’t sure either. But if it is not—where is? Certainly not England anymore. And I cannot split myself. I am not suited for the road.”
“By default, then, this is home.” He wondered, so hard and so deeply, that the words almost fell from his lips: Does it help if I am here with you?
But to ask such a question would be to supplant Con directly, far too directly.
So instead, he kissed her. A quick kiss, a kiss of impulse. A press of lips, heat against heat—but before it could go to his head, he drew back.
“That was a friendly kiss,” he said. “That’s all. Just…friendly.”
“Right.” Her brows were knit, one hand lifted to touch her lips. “That—that is the sort of thing friends do.”
“Do they do it again?”
“They ought to.” She looked at him with such deep wanting, for so many things lost and longed for, that he felt he was seeing into himself.
“Then…as a friend…”
In a tangle of lips and hands, they found their way into an empty stall. Whether they were lying to each other more, or to themselves, he neither knew nor cared as he pulled the door shut, and they sank into clean straw.
A tangle of mouths and hands ensued, frantic shoving of fabric and unbuttoning. His coat came off as her pelisse was cast aside. He rolled to his back, letting the straw poke and prickle through his waistcoat and shirt. Each stab of sensation was an anchor to the now, to Kate climbing atop him, to bare flesh meeting bare flesh. The familiar scent of straw mixed with her perfume, faintly flowery, and with the gasp and play of growing desire.
She r
eached between them, finding his cock, and pumped it to stone-stiffness in an eager fist. Evan groaned, his hips arching up. “I’m yours,” he panted. “God. You are killing me.”
“Never.” She leaned forward, belly to belly atop him, and kissed him slow and sweet and tender. Then she straightened, rose to her knees, and bunched her skirts into an enticing tangle that revealed flashes of thigh, the shadow of dark hair. Taking his cock in hand again, she guided it within her. Sleek and hot, the glide of her body onto his was such ecstasy that he gritted his teeth, trying not to spend at once.
Slowly at first, she worked him, a movement as sweet and slow as her kiss had been. Evan lifted his hands to palm her breasts, to slide gown and stays against her nipples, to abrade the tender skin until she flushed and moaned. Her thrusts grew erratic, hips jerking with the build of pleasure.
“Evan!” she called, breath coming in pants now, cheeks a beautiful flush, and all that curling hair falling in spirals about her face. He took her hips in hand now, guiding her ever more quickly, deepening the thrust. Finding the angle that made her quake, that made her clench about him and shudder and say his name again.
When she gasped with the aftershock of climax, he pulled free and rolled to the side. He jetted immediately, hard, over and over into the straw. God.
“I haven’t spent like that in…I don’t know how long,” he groaned, rolling to his back again.
“I haven’t since the last time we were together.” Kate hitched herself onto one elbow and gazed down at him. “Evan, I…”
I’m yours too. His mind filled in the missing words, willing her to speak them. But she didn’t. She only looked at him, her gaze honest and steady as a heartbeat.
“Well,” he said. “We’d best put ourselves to rights.”
“Oh. Yes.” She sat upright, tugging at her bodice. He refastened his breeches, righted his garments, and eased back into his coat.
Evan had enjoyed combing out Kate’s tangled hair, but picking straw from it was even better.
“A robust greeting,” he said. “I like it. I shall visit you in the stables all the time.”
“You put me to the blush. But surely you say that to all the women.”
“Nonsense. Only to the beautiful widows with riotous hair.” He plucked another bit of straw from her curls, teasing her nose with it.
She batted the straw away, wrinkling her nose, then sat up. “I know it’s not the done thing at a moment like this, but I want to…” She shoved at her skirts, looking hesitant.
For a pair who could never be intimate again—supposedly—they’d made a good job of it. Shut inside a stall, groping like two virgins. So eager for each other they had hardly stripped off any clothing before they joined.
It could hardly have been more different than the elaborate, tentative seduction Kate had first arranged for Evan. And…he liked that.
If only she would stop making his heart stutter and sink by shoving at her clothes and abandoning her sentences at crucial midpoints. “I,” he prodded, “want very much to hear the end of that sentence. But considering what you just did to me, I cannot imagine what you might want that I would not agree with, most eagerly.”
There, that was a good cover. He straightened the knot of his neckcloth.
And still she sat, worrying at her lip. “Since you’re with me,” she said, “I should like to open the tack room…and think about riding again.”
He had not expected anything like this, and relief was a cool breeze over his apprehension. “Think about it? Only think?”
She tried a smile, though it hung crooked. “It’s better than trying not to think about it.”
“True, and that’s well said. Not to think about it does not bear thinking about.” He rolled to his feet, then held out a hand and helped Kate up. “I should be honored to promenade with you to the tack room.”
As they unlatched the stall and left its intimate confines, Evan could have sworn both mares—Lucy and Lady Alix—looked at them knowingly.
“What of it, lasses?” he said. “You’ve enjoyed the company of a stallion before, I’d wager.”
“You are defending our behavior to the horses,” Kate said as she preceded him toward the back of the stable. “Now I know all is right with the world.”
In Evan’s opinion, the fact that she had made love to him again—and that she was thinking about riding again—and that she was taking him to the tack room—were far better signs that all was right with the world. But to each their own.
Eighteen
Once Kate retrieved a key, she unlocked the door to a small room with which Evan had once been familiar. As a guest at Whelan House, he’d ridden almost every day, and the tack room had been as bustling as the kitchens.
Now it was silent, a room as restricted as a wine cellar. But it was still a bright and pleasant space, paneled in honey-brown wood and floored in squares of native stone. High windows allowed daylight to filter in, but wall-mounted lamps would be lit if needed at night.
The walls were studded with hooks and gridded with shelves, the floor dotted with saddle horses and storage chests. The space smelled pleasantly of leather and the light oil used to keep it in trim, the scent wafting from sidesaddles, bridles, halters and leads, saddles for men, carriage harnesses. All were hung, mounted, stored, and maintained with admirable care.
Except for a small wooden saddle horse in the corner, its burden covered over with an oilcloth. Kate moved toward it, her hand hovering above the cloth.
Before she spoke, Evan guessed what lay under the cover.
“That was Con’s favorite saddle,” Kate said quietly, as if they were in a Catholic church observing a saintly relic. “Light and strong. Good for hunting or racing. He was using it that day.”
“May I see it?”
“If you like. But it won’t be sound any longer. It was shut up that day. It hasn’t been oiled for two years.”
That day. That day had been endless for Evan, and he hadn’t even known until weeks later that it had marked the end of his friend’s existence. “I saw him in that saddle many a time.”
“I did too.” Kate grasped the oilcloth. “But in the end, it is nothing more than a saddle. It was silly to shut it away, wasn’t it?”
“It wasn’t silly.” Grief takes many different forms. So he’d told her, and so he believed. If one needed to grieve by hiding a saddle, so be it.
When she whisked the oilcloth off, she sighed. “The cinch was split. That’s why he fell. The leather is quite spoiled.” She stretched the cloth between her hands, ready to toss it over the saddle again. “I shouldn’t even keep it. It’s doing no good here.”
“Wait.” Evan caught the edge of the cloth, kneeling before the saddle. He took the cinch in his hands. Indeed, the leather had gone dry, its surface hard and dark and brittle. But there was something wrong about its appearance. “This didn’t split by accident, Kate. This cinch was cut.”
“Cut?” With a billow, the cloth fell to the floor. Kate was at his side in an instant. “How do you know? How can you know?”
“The same way I can tell a sculpture was carved recently, with modern tools, then splashed with mud. It doesn’t look right. Leather wouldn’t split like this, no matter how brittle it got. Look, when I tug it in a different place, it doesn’t split again.”
Her fingertips reached for the saddle, tentative. “Did someone cut the cinch where it had split? So the saddle couldn’t be used again?”
Grimness settled over Evan. Oh, how he wanted to say yes. “I can’t be sure. Maybe if someone cut it right away, because the damage is old. But I think—look, there is a clean slice through this bit, and then the rest is distorted.” As though its fragile width had been snapped by the strain of a galloping horse, its rider taking a leap over the first jump in a chase.
“What are you saying?” Kate huddled, crouch
ing before the saddle. “That someone cut—no, everyone loved Con. No one—that can’t be. There was an inquest, Evan. It was an accident.”
Her voice held more than a hint of a plea.
The cut and snapped leather was no larger than a pair of braces, but it was weightier than stone. The evidence was real, there in his fingers, but he still could hardly believe it.
“Con didn’t saddle his horse that day,” Evan said. “Who did?”
“One of the grooms. Adam—something. Jones, maybe.”
“God. Not another Jones.” Evan sat back on his heels, dropping the cinch.
“He isn’t here anymore. He packed his bags and left, maybe a month later. But he gave notice. He was going east to live and work with family. I never thought—do you think there was something wrong? Did he…”
“Maybe he…did.” What other word could they bear to put to it? “This Jones couldn’t be certain you’d believe Con’s fall was an accident. Nor could he take the chance of destroying the saddle and raising questions. So he had to leave.”
Kate sprang to her feet, skirts tangling with the fallen oilcloth. “You have developed this theory with mighty speed. You want to murder Con off, when he’s been peacefully dead for two years.”
Evan rose , facing her down. “Of course I don’t want that! But wouldn’t it be better to know the truth?”
“What good would the truth do if it wouldn’t change anything?”
Evan snapped up the cloth from the floor and tossed it back over the saddle. “You’re right. God forbid anything change. God forbid we face an uncomfortable truth, Kate. Best to cover it up and go on as you were. Isn’t that always your solution?”
The words bled, unstoppable. He did not want to stop them, even though Kate went white as if she were the one bleeding. “Have you spoken your piece?”
“No!” Evan slapped a hand against the honey-pale paneling. “I could say it a thousand times, and I’d still not even touch the half of what I want to tell you.”
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