Twenty-two

Kate felt the tick of the clock on the drawing room mantel in time with her heartbeat.

Dinner was completed, and the lamps had been lit against the early-setting sun. Another day was nearly gone, but this one had been far from ordinary. It had included a visit to the churchyard, for Con. Embraces for her children, who were now finishing the lessons they’d begun so late that morning. Business for the estate. Much to think about—for what Con had made of the past, and what she might like to make of the future.

From the open doorway, Kate overheard carriage wheels, then a rapping at the front door. The cultured low rumble of a servant’s voice, then the familiar answering quaver of her mother-in-law.

No. Absolutely not. Kate was not up for a game of who’s-the-saddest right now. “Do you want to go shoot?” she blurted.

Evan looked pointedly at the window. “Ah, no. It’s almost dark outside.”

“That adds to the challenge.”

“No, I do not want to go shoot.”

“Good Old Gwyn will be in the drawing room in less than one minute.”

Evan grabbed Kate’s arm. “I would love nothing in the world more than to fire hot bits of lead at a defenseless target. Lead on, my lady.”

They slipped through the second door to the drawing room, making their way to the study with shhhh-ing and barely contained laughter. Kate unlocked the gun case and removed two pistols and a horn of powder, along with a bag of lead balls. “I can load for you if you like,” she said.

“My manly dignity won’t allow it. But I won’t offer to load for you, because even my manly dignity allows me to admit that you’re much quicker at it than I.”

“I’ve practiced more than you.” She relocked the case. “A countess has few proper ways to spend her leisure hours. For some reason, blowing the devil out of bits of paper is one of them.” Which reminded her to grab a bit of foolscap from the desk, and a tack.

Evan held the study door for her. “Isn’t it dull to shoot, knowing the result ahead of time?”

“I never know the result ahead of time. I only try not to miss.”

He rolled his eyes. “You never miss.”

This was true. “Even so, it’s not dull to succeed at something. Small successes are often the only ones women have.”

They made their way through the fading daylight to the edge of the wood, a safe distance from the house and stables. Kate tacked up the bit of paper, then returned to Evan’s side. “This is twenty paces. A nice easy distance.”

“Says you.” He took the powder horn and a lead ball and loaded his pistol. “Your children said Gwyn was watching the forest the whole time you were gone. Why do you think that might be?”

“I can’t imagine.” Kate squinted as she shoved the ball into place. “Maybe she was watching for someone?”

“Yes, I think so too.”

Kate fumbled the bag of shot. “I was teasing. For whom would she be watching?”

“I would dearly like to know.” He took the bag of shot from her and tucked it into his coat pocket. “Never mind. We’ve pistols to shoot. Trees to injure. But you’ve only hung one target. You’re going to shoot that to ash in an instant, and then what will I aim at?”

“The ash,” she said. “Oh, here. I’ll give you a target of your own. I have a handkerchief we can tack up for you.”

“I am flattered that you think I could hit something smaller than a stable door.”

“For someone who’s not me, you’re not a bad shot at all. Go ahead, take the first shot.”

He aimed, sighting the bit of paper, and fired. When his hand lifted from the straight line and they both looked at the target, it was…

“Damn. It’s far too dark. I can’t even tell if I hit or not.”

“I think you did,” said Kate. “The white bit looks smaller.” Carefully, she crouched and set down her pistol. “Though we don’t have to keep shooting at all. Safety first, all hands on deck, keep together, advice, advice, et cetera, et cetera.”

As she spoke, she straightened and permitted her hands to explore. There was something about dim light that was freeing, something attractive about hanging a scrap of paper and watching Evan Rhys notch a piece from it.

He was good at so many things. Right now, he was good at drawing her from the worried past into the sunset, rose-gold present, and she wanted all of him.

“My dear lady, what’s this? Hungry for me again? I knew I was irresistible, but madam, there ought only to be one loaded gun during our intimate interludes.”

“Your pistol is spent. It’s perfectly safe.” What she felt at the moment was not, however, a spent pistol.

“That would be a fine figure of speech, if it were not patently untrue. Manly dignity and all that. My pistol is never spent.”

“I saw it spent yesterday. More than once.”

“Yes, well, those were unusual circumstances. A pistol can only be fired so many times before it needs to cool. Anyway, it’s not spent now.”

She could have listened to him all day. She could have wrapped her arms in an endless embrace about his narrow waist, his solid chest. “You are perfect. This is exactly what I need.”

“What is?” His voice sounded warm, and she leaned her head against him in a cradle.

“You, joking. Here. With me. Like this.” She took a deep breath, letting him fill her lungs like shared smoke. He smelled like grass and black powder, like all of outdoors. “Evan, I have changed my mind.”

Within her grasp, he went stiff. “Oh? What about?”

“Almost everything. I went to the churchyard earlier, and I realized…I want to wear color, and I want to take you to bed again.”

He let his pistol fall to the earth. “Not to straw? Not to a forest floor?”

“Well. There was nothing wrong with those. But—I’m thinking of a bed, as we shared in Newmarket. I was too afraid then. But here, with my familiar life about me—I feel braver. I’m ready for pleasure.”

He shook free of her embrace, stepping back. “I see. And I’m to provide it? You’ve decided on that?”

How strange. She had half-expected—well, more than half—he would cheer. Instead, he looked coolly at her, like a man asked for a favor he did not want to grant.

Twenty paces to the target was an easy distance. Suddenly, two paces between her and Evan seemed a great many. “Well—only…if you want to, yes. I thought you wanted to. In Newmarket, you seemed upset that I left the bedchamber. When I said we couldn’t do it again, and I didn’t want anything to change. But now, I am ready for a change.”

He stepped back again, treading on the unloaded pistol he’d dropped, and cursed. “So change is all right if it takes place on your terms, and you expect me to wait for it?”

Heat flooded Kate’s cheeks. Shame? Embarrassment? Anger? All of them at once, in a startled roil. What the devil was he on about? “Evan, I thought this sort of affair was what you wanted.”

“Did you think so? I knew it wasn’t. It never was.”

Her jaw dropped.

It was dark now, almost, and he was only a shadow backed by the bleed of the setting sun. When he spoke, the harsh edge had melted from his voice. “I don’t mean that in the way you’ve undoubtedly assumed. I mean that I’ve wanted far more. Kate, yes, I wanted to give you pleasure, but that was never all I wanted. I wanted to be with you in every way. Talking before a fire. Showing you the most grotesque of artifacts. Stuffing ourselves with potatoes.”

“I didn’t stuff myself.”

“Possibly the most unimportant bit of my beautiful speech you could have seized upon, but I will let it pass. It’s just—the everyday things are the things I want. Losing to you at target shooting. Talking to your children, who are part of you, and very much their own wonderful selves.”

The slapped feeling was ebbing from her cheeks. She had misunderstood, maybe. This sounded like agreement. “We can do all of that,” she blurted. “We have been. I’m saying I like all of that.”

“I like it too,” he said. “But you went to the churchyard today, and yesterday I went to the racecourse, and—what shook a few realizations loose for you did the same for me. And I want more than a half measure of you.”

She spread her hands behind her, but there was nothing to lean against. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t want to keep waiting. I don’t want to be the man who gets doting flowers on his grave. I want to have the right to give you flowers, every day.”

“You could! I would be happy to get flowers from you.”

“Because?”

“Because you said you wanted to give them to me?” It was the wrong answer, she knew it as she spoke it, but she could not imagine the right one. Her mind seemed stuck in a mire of unexpected words.

He sighed, a sound as low and soft as if it were the breath of his soul. “Because I want to be yours, and I want you for my own.”

It was a sentence simple and clear as a perfect crystal, and as blade-sharp at the edge. It seemed to cut her off at the knees, so she had to sit down, hard, on the ground.

Evan loomed above her, a perfectly cut silhouette. “You don’t like hearing that? You don’t like me having wants other than yours?”

“No, that’s not it at all.” Kate reached up with one hand. “I do like that. If you only wanted the same things as me, you wouldn’t be you. And I wouldn’t want you to be anyone else.”

“Well. That’s something.” He took a step closer to her, letting the movement brush their fingertips together. “I’ve spent the last two years learning the difference between real and false in history. But we’ve falseness in our history too. Do you see it?”

She scrabbled for his fingertips, and he drew back again. “I don’t see it, no. You’re my closest friend. You know that.”

“I do. But I won’t be a false statue anymore. I’m not hollow, and for God’s sake, I’m not a sculpted cock for your enjoyment. You’re hot and cold as a spring day, and you want there to be no change at all between us once we’re outside the bedchamber.” He crouched to pick up his discarded pistol. “Or the stable. Or the forest.”

Her throat caught. “But so much has changed already. I’ve reached for you, and I want to be with you again. I’ll change more, too. I’ll wear color. And we only just found the cut in the cinch, and—”

“Excuses, Kate. Will you always have an excuse to hold back?” He slapped his palm with the pistol, a dull pained sound. “I don’t give a damn what gown you wear, as long as you like it. And I definitely don’t want you using anything we’ve been through as an excuse not to go through more.”

This stung, and she scrambled to her feet, fired by indignation. “What we’ve been through? Tell me, Evan, what did we go through together in the past two years? Where were you when my husband died? When did you ever lose someone you once loved?”

Her words startled even her with their force. She felt jarred, shaken, broken open. She strained to see him in the purpling dusk, to know how his face had changed at what she’d said.

For a moment, he let the words ring into silence. “I’ve lost much,” he said. “You don’t know how much. But you’re right. I wasn’t there for you. I wasn’t there for either of us.”

Amazing, the soothing effect of you’re right on jangled nerves. “I didn’t mean to make any excuse,” she said. “Why—I went to Con’s grave today, as you know. I told him—well, it sounds silly. I didn’t tell him anything, because he’s gone. But I said, for me—I said, you make the children happy.”

“A remarkably fragmented anecdote. And did I figure in relation to you at any point?”

I didn’t dare say. “One can’t speak to the grave of one’s dead husband about another man.” The attempt at lightness came out ghoulish.

“So many rules of propriety,” Evan mused. “I will never learn them all. And I’d wager right now, you’re thinking of being a countess or a mother and wondering whether you ought to have changed out of your black clothes. We’re alone, and you’re still not thinking of us.”

“Not only of us, whatever you mean by that, because all those things are part of me! That doesn’t mean they aren’t valid reasons to keep things as they are.”

“Excuses.” He took something from his pocket. A lead ball, she could tell from the way it moved. It was small and rolling within his hand.

“Reasons, Evan.”

“If we’re arguing over the semantics of why you won’t be with me, then that’s all the answer I need.” He dropped the lead ball, cursing. It bounced in the grass, becoming invisible. Of instinct Kate caught it under the heel of her boot.

“That’s not what I’m saying at all, Evan. I do want to be with you. But…the way we’ve been.” She gritted her teeth, hoping he’d understand the meaning behind the tangled words. “You’re leaving. You’re going to live in Greece in a few months. I can’t go there with you. Declan is the earl. We can’t…anything you and I have together could be only temporary.”

“You have never asked me not to go to Greece.”

Her mouth fell open.

“But maybe you realized that already. Maybe you suspected that if you asked, I’d say yes.”

“I couldn’t ask you to change your life for me,” she whispered.

“You could if you wanted to share it.” His fist clenched. “I can’t do this anymore, Kate. God help me, I can’t do it. If you want me, you need to court me good and proper, like the fine gentleman I am. And if you don’t want me, I’d prefer to know that now.”

The ball was sharp under her heel. It felt much larger than one bullet, one shot, or one chance to wound. “Why can’t we go on like this? Enjoying each other for the time we have?”

“As I said, because I want more than a half measure of you. And I deserve someone who wants more than a half measure of me.”

“So you’re leaving again? You’re giving me up?” The world had changed from autumn to winter in an instant.

“I don’t know that I can. I don’t know that there’s anyone else for me. But I can’t have this halfway sort of love with you anymore.”

Love.

Dimly, she remembered that she had a loaded pistol at her feet somewhere. “Love,” she echoed.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” he muttered. “It’s no good, is it?”

“No, no. You should have. It’s—it is good. It’s good.” She couldn’t get warm, couldn’t get enough air. “I love you too. You know that.”

“But not in the same way,” he said. “And not enough.”

Not enough, he said. All the things she tried to be, and it was not enough. Whatever she could give, it was not enough. Divide herself as she might, there was not enough of her, yet she remained divided. Not enough of anything to be real.

“I think I know what gray feels like.” Her voice was no more than a thread of sound.

“No, you don’t,” he said. “Gray is not a passing emotion, Lady Whelan. Gray is a way of life. Now, are you going to take your shot?”

Her shot. As though she cared about taking her shot now. As though there were a target she could hit that would make her feel she’d earned a victory.

She kicked away the fallen ball, then crouched to feel about on the ground for her pistol. The sun was nearly gone now, and she could not even see the bit of paper she’d tacked up.

Angling her arm away from them, she fired into the ground. “There. Safely discharged. We can lock it away again.”

“Typical,” Evan said. “She fires into the ground, and she still comes closer to hitting the target than I did.” He bumped her with an outstretched hand, then found hers and pressed the second pistol into it.

“Where are you going?” The question burst forth, more pitiful than she would have wished.

“For now? Indoors. Don’t worry, Lady Whelan. I’ll stay long enough to sort out this matter of the cinch.”

Lady Whelan. When a moment ago, he had called her Kate. A day earlier he had even called her Biggie to make her smile. “The matter of Con’s death, you mean.” She felt nothing could make her smile now. “And why should you sort it out?”

“Because I loved him. Not as you did, but as someone who took me just as I was. In that sense, he’s the truest friend I ever had. And he deserves the truth in return.”

“What do you deserve?”

“More than what you want from me.”

And he walked away, leaving her in the dark.