Three

I want my friend again. It was all Evan had thought he wanted to hear. Now that she spoke the words, though, friend seemed a smaller idea than it used to.

Maybe because it was so good to look at Kate. He felt he hadn’t seen anything properly since he’d left her side, or experienced it vividly, and being with her now was like coming awake. How could friend describe someone who made one feel awake and alive?

Kate had always been a woman of great energy and ingenuity. She did things, packing the everyday matters of household and family into tidy tasks to be maintained and solved. Every problem, no matter its size, received a careful look and a determined effort. To Evan, troubled with grayness of spirit, her belief that every problem had a solution was irresistible.

They would find a solution to this too. To every this. To her debt, and to his stubborn love, and to where to put this damned parcel that kept jabbing him in the ribs, once they reached Newmarket.

“When we arrive in Newmarket,” he decided, “I will buy you a measure of whisky. Consider it my thanks for conveying me from Cambridge, and a reminder of all those evenings we sat together. You and Con and me, drinking whisky and talking about the estate, or laughing over odd bits of history.”

She curled against the wall of the carriage, a sweet, rounded figure in rust and cream. “May I tell you a secret?” Her sea-blue gaze was mischievous. “I am fascinated by history, but I’ve never liked whisky.”

“Truly?” This took him aback. “I’ve never seen a lady toss it back with so much gusto.”

“Exactly. I had to. When I met Con, he called me a ‘pretty girl.’”

“How…awful?”

She tucked an arm behind her head, making a cushion of her own limb. “It is when one is seventeen and wants a handsome Irish noble to see one as a desirable woman. ‘Pretty girl’ is a sexless compliment. I wanted to impress him.”

“Whisky would do it. He’d a taste for it from his schoolboy years.” A taste for it, but no head for it at all. Evan could not count the number of times he’d unfastened his friend’s collar so Con could be sick. “What of the target shooting? The cheroots? Were those for Con’s benefit too?”

Humor touched the corner of her mouth. “Not those. You must allow me to have a few vices of my own.”

“I will, if you’ll allow me the same.”

“Of course. Men must be allowed their vices.”

Her tone was light, but Evan knew all that she had left unsaid. Con was as profligate as a tomcat, and as carefree, and everyone in the household—no, the town—was aware of it. To him, vows were cheerfully made and easily broken when a greater pleasure crossed his path. How many times Evan had cursed him for this over the years, he couldn’t now recall. But Con only laughed—until their final fight, when at last Evan had touched Con’s sense of honor, and their friendship was irrevocably broken.

It was a friendship formed in roguery, when the Irish aristocrat and the rough Welsh boy met at Harrow. Con tackled the world with a buoyant confidence, as though whatever he wanted was his due. Such certainty was irresistible to Evan, seeking relief from the habitual grayness inside. He was only too willing to paint it over with minor misdeeds and laughter—like helping Con hoist a sheep through the window of a professor’s lodge, or nipping from the secret bottle of wine in the house matron’s chamber.

Upon a trellis of such events, then, did their friendship cling and grow.

For his years of school and the years since, Evan drifted between Wales and Ireland. He did little with his classical education save for idly digging up artifacts and translating the occasional bawdy poem from or into Latin.

Con’s death had changed many things. One was the way Evan passed his days.

Yet he could not wish that a single evening had been spent differently.

“I am glad you joined Con and me on so many evenings,” Evan said to Kate. “Even if your seeming enjoyment of the company and conversation was polite pretense.”

“You give me too much credit for politeness. I could never have fooled you for evening upon evening. No, I liked the talk of the children, the horses. I liked hearing about the antiquities you’d found. Oh!” She sat up straight. “Is that why you give lectures now? Because you want new people to hear your stories?”

He had never thought of the matter like that.

In truth, it had happened by chance. Circumstance. The fortunate realization that he had become part of a tapestry of knowledge larger than his own life.

Ever since boyhood, Evan had found the world to be gray about the edges. He had been safe. Comfortable. Maybe even loved, best as his determinedly elegant parents knew how. Yet the gray feeling dug into him with idle claws, a glum lassitude that made nothing seem to matter.

If he spoke of it to his family, he was gruffly reminded of his blessings. So he stopped speaking of it. He laughed and joked, was glib and wry. The flaw was not with the world outside—it was within.

Studying antiquities mended the flaw, if only temporarily. He liked being regarded as a man of substance. Someone other than the rogue at whose escapades Kate used to laugh as she settled into the curve of her husband’s arm.

“Yes,” he decided. “I do want that. To me they are more than stories.” He edged a boot forward, knocking her foot with his. “And I am madly arrogant and need new audiences to praise me all the time.”

“I shall wear myself to a thread applauding for you. Only let me get free of this infernally close carriage first, so I can clap with the proper fervor.”

She pulled her hat onto her lap, trailing her fingertips over the silk blossoms. A pucker formed between her brows. “Are you really going to live in Greece in a few months?”

“Six months,” he replied. “Yes, as soon as sea passage is safe. The ambassador to the Ottoman Empire has invited me to study artifacts in situ. Ever since Lord Elgin—how shall we put it? Helped himself to marbles from the Parthenon?”

“That is a polite way of stating the matter. Lord Elgin would be most pleased.”

“Right, well, since that time, pillaging antiquities has become a favored pastime of the ton. I’d almost prefer to see false Roman sculptures in museums over genuine Greek statues in English parlors.”

“You have a bold idea, then, that the past can be known even if it is not stolen. You are a revolutionary, my friend.”

“I believe that’s the only way it can be known. I don’t want to leave Great Britain merely for the sake of traveling. I only want…” He considered how to explain. “I want to do something that matters.”

She laughed. “Women understand that urge quite well. The law of the land makes it all but impossible for a woman to achieve anything in her own right, yet we want it no less.”

“Everything you do matters.” He meant every word, and deeply, but knew they were not enough. “Mother. Countess. Daughter. Friend. Daughter-in-law to Good Old Gwyn.”

“You may try to make it sound important, but it’s only one thing after another.” She pulled a face. “So—are you lecturing in Newmarket? Is that why you’re on your way there?”

“Not exactly.” Before seeing Kate in Cambridge, he’d intended to visit his parents and brother in Wales before beginning a new excavation…somewhere. Winter was a poor time to dig for artifacts in the frozen, bleak ground, but for the time being, autumn still held sway. There was a chance of excavating in the Paviland limestone caves for a few weeks yet, to do something real with the months before he left Great Britain.

Or he could stay with Kate. The decision was easily made.

“I would never expect to travel to Newmarket during the month of October and think to talk of anything but horses,” he said. “No, I’m going there purely for love of the turf.”

Well. For the love of something.

Born into the horse-mad Chandler family’s tradition of Thoroughbred racing and breeding, Kate accepted his reply without question. “Where will you stay in Newmarket? Have you hired a room?”

Inwardly, Evan cursed. It would be impossible to find lodging when much of the ton, and half of the rest of England, was flooding into Suffolk to attend the races. “I haven’t, no. But I’m not unused to camping. The grass of Newmarket will be far more comfortable than the floor of a cave, and I’ve slept on those many a night.”

“Nonsense.”

“No, it’s true. Cave floors are not unpleasant in themselves. It’s the bats that cause all the problems, not the rocky floors.”

“Ridiculous man. That’s not the part that’s nonsense. No, you cannot sleep on the ground. Where would you keep your magic lantern while you slept in the outdoors?”

“I would—huh.”

“I thought so. It would be a great pity to risk spoiling slides that were painted with an unspeakable amount of effort. You’d be welcome to stay at Chandler Hall. My father’s great barn of a house has plenty of spare rooms.”

“Thank you.” He wasn’t fool enough to demur. “I would be delighted to. I won’t even roam the halls at night like an angry ghost.”

“The servants will be relieved not to encounter your spectral presence in the wee hours of the night.” She smiled. “I can venture to speak for my father, you’d be welcome even beyond the length of my own stay.”

“What’s this? You lob a mysterious comment with wholly inadequate context. Do you mean that you are returning to Ireland soon?”

“I must. I traveled too late in the year to make a long stay in England. The Irish Sea is hardly a warm bath at the best of times, and if I remain here much longer, it’ll become impassable.”

“What a coincidence of timing!” Evan hitched a booted foot across his other leg, settling into the comfortable squabs. “I planned to travel to Ireland myself. To, ah, investigate the source of the false artifacts.”

“Did you?” She leaned back, regarding him with great skepticism. “I am not certain I believe you.”

Since the idea of the journey had been half-formed and largely fictitious before this carriage ride, he wasn’t sure how strongly to defend himself. “It’s the honest truth.” As of this instant. “But I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“Bollocks,” Kate said. “You’re making up this journey, aren’t you?”

“No. I fully intend to travel to Ireland.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Is it because you feel sorry for me?”

“Hell no.” He could say that with perfect honesty. “If I ever tried to feel sorry for you, I’m confident you’d show me how well you could shoot targets.”

“And don’t you forget it.” A grin began to spread over her features. “You were planning to come to Ireland?”

“Eventually.” Someday. When I couldn’t stay away any longer.

“Why?”

To see you.

No. Not to see her. To be in Whelan House with Con’s widow was a reminder of all that was lost, and all Evan still couldn’t have.

But if he could find the source of the false artifacts…if he could identify the source of the goods used for smuggling…well, that would be something real too, wouldn’t it? When he left England and Ireland for good, at least he would leave them a bit better off.

“I want to solve everything,” he said. “Everything that needs solving.”

Her light eyes crinkled at the corners. “Ambitious, aren’t you? Well, perhaps we can travel together. If we’re both leaving on the packet from Holyhead—”

“Naturally.”

“Then I can adjust my ticket, if there’s a difference between our departure dates.”

“I doubt there will be.” Considering he hadn’t yet procured tickets. “I’ll sort it with your maid once we reach Chandler House.”

“It will be good to have you in Ireland again. The children have missed you,” Kate said. “Do you remember how they called you uncle?”

“I remember. Even more clearly, I remember how they climbed on me as though I were furniture.”

“I hope you were honored. That’s how they show affection—or it was, when they were younger. You were like one of the family.”

Like one of the family, but not truly a part of it. He had a designated bedchamber in Whelan House, and he went to it each night after watching Kate follow her husband upstairs.

He was like a brother to Con. He was like an uncle to Nora and Declan. But their real uncles were Kate’s brothers Jonah and Nathaniel, whom they had never met. And Evan’s true brother lived in Wales and thought him a spoiled wreck of a person.

Bollocks.

“I remember,” he said again.

After this, there were more memories to share. Laughter, sometimes for no other reason than that one needed to laugh. More than once, a silence cradled them between recollections; then the words wandered on again like twine unspooling.

After a while, Evan shifted Kate’s flowered hat and took the seat beside her as they chatted. She didn’t bat an eye; she only bade him to take care in moving her hat. This close, she smelled of something sweet, like a baked bun. Warm and comfortable, familiar as his own self.

And they talked on. Yes, he agreed. No, he had never played such a prank, and frankly, he was insulted at the…oh, all right. Yes, it had been his idea. No, he wouldn’t teach it to the children. He would set a good example as an uncle—or nearly so. Yes, it would be good to visit Whelan House again.

It was true. All of it, true. Yet it was not the whole truth.

Con had bent the rules of society to suit himself. Evan had learned their shape so he could skate about their edges. Most importantly the rules of friendship, because Evan was fairly certain that a man ought not covet his friend’s countess.

When Con died, none of the rules mattered anymore, except the rules that applied to Kate. Evan kept his distance from her, because she deserved better than broken rules to go with her broken heart. And because, in the midst of his own grief, he wasn’t strong enough to watch hers.

Through the carriage window, he caught the faint, drifting scents and sounds of autumn. The earthy smoke of stubble burning in a field, the savor of meat roasting. Piping music and distant laughter of villagers at a fete. The pale afternoon light faded, then melted into gold and pink and red.

After a while, Kate settled against the squabs. After another little while, her body went soft and heavy against his in the slack of sleep.

Their reunion was too new, too sudden, for him to do anything but wish they belonged like this. So Evan cradled her head against his shoulder, breathing in the scent of her hair and wishing…wishing.