Nine

When Evan woke, he was alone in an unfamiliar bed.

The disorientation of nighttime wakefulness seized him for a moment. The fire had gone cold, and outside, blackness blanketed the thin draperies at the windows. The softness of the mattress pulled at him as he struggled to sit. A faded, sweet scent tantalized his senses. Where was he? What had happened?

Memory came back in a flood: Kate’s bedchamber. Chandler Hall. It was…some hour of the night, or the morning, early enough that the maids had not yet entered to lay the fire.

Where was Kate?

As his eyes adjusted to the dimness, he noticed his clothing still flung over the settee. Hers was gone, such as it had been. Those filmy gowns didn’t cover her well enough for her to roam the house.

Finally, finally, he had been with her in almost every bare way—of mind, of flesh. He had not shown her all his heart, but God, it had been a good night.

He should have departed when he’d felt the urge, instead of allowing himself to be the one left behind. A matter of self-preservation as much as wisdom, for as he slid from the bed, his thoughts began to fog. What happened? Why? What if?

He pushed such questions back with cutting logic as he gathered his clothes. Maybe he would find Kate in his own bed. Maybe she had startled awake, unused to another person in bed with her, and gone in search of a cup of tea. There needn’t be anything amiss.

It was for the best that he leave now, though. He needed to get himself out of here before he was seen.

Quickly, by touch, he tugged on his clothing. Shoved his feet into his boots. At every second, he expected Kate to enter the chamber again.

But it didn’t happen, and he instead found himself skulking through a night-dark passage to reach his own room, so he could mess up the bed as though he’d been sleeping there all along.

She wasn’t in his chamber either. In fact, he didn’t see her again until entering the dining room for breakfast, where he found her alone.

“Another day of races,” Evan realized. “Your father and brother are off again. How can they stand it?”

This last question covered a multitude of frustrations. Kate lifted a dish cover with such calm, he wanted to snatch it from her hand and send it crashing to the polished stone floor. How could she look so fresh and unaffected? How could she greet him without the slightest blush?

“I don’t know,” she replied. “One day is enough for me.”

“Is it? Was it not so pleasurable that you wish to go again and again?”

The serving spoon clattered from her fingers. “Indeed it was…pleasurable.” The flush on her cheeks revealed her understanding of his meaning. “But I have so much to do here, and preparing for the journey back to Ireland—I couldn’t think of going to the track again.”

“You’re already somewhere else, even as you stand before the sideboard and take…” He peered into the dish. “Ham? Well, well. No Irish breakfast for you today?”

“It wasn’t enough of an Irish breakfast to put the servants to such trouble.” She replaced the lid with a determined clang. “Of course, you must go to the races again. If you wish.”

“Going to the races isn’t nearly as pleasurable when one is alone.”

He managed to keep his tone flip, even as he parsed her every word and movement. She was all of a bustle, not meeting his eye. The rogue housekeeper at mealtime. Where was the friend and lover of the night before?

“Do you never rest, Kate?” he wondered.

“As little as I can.” She took her plate to the table. “If I don’t wander, my thoughts do instead.”

“I know what that’s like,” Evan muttered.

Without paying much heed, he piled food on his plate from the various serving dishes, then sat at the table across from Kate. “Where did you go this morning? If you wanted the room, I would have left it. I offered to do as much last night.”

Her knife skidded across her plate, chopping the slice of ham in two. “No, no. I didn’t want you to leave. I couldn’t sleep, and so I tidied my things and went to Father’s study for a while. He needs help with his papers, and—”

“All right, all right.” He held up his hands. “That’s my answer. You got up at an ungodly hour of the night and left your own room because you were being sensible. Very well.”

She cut her food into little pieces, pushing them around on her plate. A tower. A circle. A heap. A mess—all scattered with her fork. “I was afraid. Of—of what it meant, that we’d done something we’d never done before.”

“It meant we wanted to do it.” He squinted. “Is this difficult? It doesn’t seem difficult. You invited me to your room. I said yes. You asked me to stay with you. I did.”

“And all that was agreeable of you. With you.” She hesitated. “Maybe I haven’t changed as much as I assumed I had. Propriety is a habit of long standing with me. And I’m, you know, me.”

His eyes felt grainy from lack of sleep. “I know it well.”

“I’m just…so many things already. I can’t think of becoming something else too. Countess and mother and terribly proper widow, and…” She trailed off, looking confused.

Gray trembled at the edge of his vision, and he rubbed his temples. “Here I had hoped for the opposite: that yesterday was something for you. For your own pleasure, not regarding anyone else.”

He knew this for an untruth as soon as it had passed his lips. He had hoped that enjoying each other would wind her closer and ever closer to him.

“It was a great pleasure, but—” She shook her head. “It’s too much. I can’t—that is, it was…”

“If you don’t finish a sentence within the next three seconds, I’ll throw my toast at you.”

“You are my only real friend,” she blurted.

The silence that followed seemed especially silent.

“It’s true, Evan.” Her sea-colored eyes were full of entreaty. “I left England behind for Con. I acted the perfect wife and mother until the roles felt natural. But who would be my friend, Evan? Not the people of Thurles, who saw me as an interloping Englishwoman. Not the servants. I always had to…to be countess-y around them. Only you were a true friend.”

“Only me,” he repeated. How could this be, bright and warm as she was? It was no wonder that she had been hurt by his long silence.

No wonder, too, that now she had drawn back from change.

“You said—this time in England might be a respite for me, from all the things I have to be.” She blurted this, not meeting his eye. “And I am grateful. As I would now be grateful if we could go back to the way we were. Exactly as we were.”

This brought his temper to a simmer. “Which were do you mean, Lady Whelan? Would you prefer the were in which I sat like your lapdog while you settled into the arms of another man? Or the were in which we had nothing to say to each other for months on end?”

Her head snapped up. “How terribly unfair you are. I always had something to say to you. You are the one who went silent.” Flags of hot color stained her cheeks. “And that’s not what I meant, wanting you to sit with me and another in a trio. No—neither of those weres you suggested! I don’t want that. There was always more to our friendship than that.”

“Was there?” He ticked on his fingers. “So you don’t want anyone else, and you also don’t want me. You don’t want anything to change between us, nor do you want our friendship to go back to the way it was.”

She attempted a smile. “You could throw toast at me if you like.”

“I will decline that honor for now.” Desperate to move, to leave, he folded his serviette and slapped it onto the table. “Lady Whelan, I am off to the races.”

* * *

If Evan had thought Kate had been the rogue housekeeper before, it was nothing compared to the frantic level of activity she maintained through the remainder of the week. It was clear that she’d have run away if she possibly could. But since he was a guest in her father’s home, he made himself as unobtrusive as possible. During race week, there was much to do: drink and wager, walk the horses, even flirt and dance a little at the nightly revelry in Newmarket.

If he did a great deal of all those things, he could almost not notice the shush Kate’s skirts made when she whipped around a corner to avoid him. He could almost not conjure the sound of her bedchamber door closing as she left him slumbering, fool that he was, in her bed.

By the time race week came to a close, they had returned to a tolerable state of friendliness. It was the sort people displayed with a person they didn’t know well and wanted to treat with courtesy.

It was a poor substitute for the easy intimacy they’d shared.

But imagination was a poor substitute for reality. Fruitless love was a poor substitute for having one’s affections returned. Evan was familiar with poor substitutes.

He and Kate, along with Kate’s lady’s maid Susan, left Newmarket on a Monday. The waxing moon was still faint in the sky as they made their early-morning farewells.

“It’s good to see you happy again,” Jonah told his sister gruffly, engulfing her in a great embrace.

“Close enough,” came Kate’s muffled voice from within his arms. She wiped at her eyes when he let go, and everyone pretended not to notice.

Jerome and Hattie, the staid chestnuts who had drawn Sir William’s carriage from Cambridge to Newmarket, would now take the travelers to Holyhead, the port on the Irish Sea.

This first leg of the journey back to Ireland was over land, a great stripe across England and Wales. A week’s travel at the best of times, the roads were uncertain in autumn when rain made them soft and pitted.

A week in a carriage, jostled about with Kate and her maid. This would be…interesting.

Evan shook Sir William’s hand and thanked him for his hospitality. The baronet nodded. “Take good care of my horses,” he said. “Jerome and Hattie are the best-tempered of creatures, but Jerome is stubborn about his meals. If he’s hungry, he won’t go another step. And Hattie…” The baronet looked around Evan, where the chestnuts were being harnessed. “Check her shoes each day. They come loose more often than any female’s shoes I’ve ever seen, and I include humans.”

“I will see to it,” Evan said. “And I’ll make sure your daughter is safe too.”

Sir William’s hazel gaze was narrow. “That, I took for granted.”

The trunks were loaded, a hamper was stowed, and the travelers climbed within. Kate and her maid sat on the forward-facing squabs. Evan seated himself across from them. The coachman put up the steps, closed the carriage door, and took to his box. With a cluck to the horses and a jingle of harness, the carriage began to roll.

Thus began the journey to Wales.

Evan had expected it to be a silent and awkward journey, but within a few minutes he realized it would be nothing of the sort. Because of the presence of Kate’s maid, a young Irish woman named Susan, they could speak of nothing private.

This was for the best. Words had served them ill since the night they’d spent together. So as the women made pleasant chat about the scenery, speculated about the next week of races, wondered if they had forgotten this or that…Evan began to seduce Kate again.

He did it subtly, so that she thought his gestures an accident at first. Small touches of the toe of his boot against hers; a secret smile directed her way when she met his eye. A joke to put the maid at ease when the jolting of the carriage made Susan queasy; a pair of apples retrieved from the hamper for the horses to crunch. A midday stop at an inn, ostensibly to stretch his legs, where the ladies used the necessary and he bought them hot buns and strong tea.

Yes. Evan was going to seduce Kate by being absolutely necessary to her well-being. By making traveling with him a damned delight.

And it worked. By the time they halted for the day at a clean and cozy inn, Kate was having trouble meeting his eyes, and her cheeks were constantly pink.

They only became pinker when the trio disembarked from the carriage, and Evan considered how to arrange their rooms. “You’re not wearing black.”

Kate looked down at her garments, which were all sorts of pleasant autumn shades. “Correct. Is that a problem?”

“You don’t look like a dried-up, bereaved widow. How could it be proper for us to be traveling together? We’ll have to be…something. Brother and sister.”

At once, they made a mutually horrified noise.

“Husband and wife?” Evan suggested. A man could hope.

Kate blushed, then lowered her voice. “I think it best we not share a bedchamber again. What about uncle and niece?”

“Ruthless woman. I am, what? Four years your senior?” Evan considered. “If anyone asks, we are cousins.”

After arranging lodging for the night, Evan and John Coachman saw to the horses with the help of the inn’s ostler. Yes, Hattie’s shoes were nailed on properly. Jerome had his nose in a manger as if he hadn’t eaten for a week. When Evan stroked their forelocks, both chestnuts gave him a whuff of warm breath, their ears relaxed with the simple pleasure of contented animals.

“Good creatures,” he said, scratching behind the ears of first the gelding, then the mare. “Thanks for your steadiness today. I wish I needed only warmth and food to be happy.”

Hattie bumped him with her nose, as though admonishing him.

“I know. I should be.”

Should, should. Even here in a warm stable, with contented horses and the low talk of stable hands about, the gray feeling hovered. It waited, always, for the inactivity that meant a gap in his armor. Then it sank upon him, dissolving certainty into questions. What should I have done? Why did that happen? What if I had done this? What will happen next? What will I do if? Until the very acts of everyday living took on a weight so great as to make them impossible.

Almost impossible.

“I’m tired,” he told Hattie. “That’s all.”

She bumped him again with her nose, the whuff more of a snort this time.

“You don’t believe me?”

She blinked long-lashed eyes darker than his own. Then, with a shake of her head that sent her chestnut forelock into a tangle, she turned her attention to her hay.

“You’re right. I’m talking bollocks.” He had to smile.

The battle between thought and external cheer was ceaseless, but only because he would not surrender.

Instead, he went inside the inn to see to Kate’s comfort again—and when she blushed as sweet and pink as a rose, to see her and Susan to their chamber and bid them good night.

“Sleep well,” he told Kate.

If his wishes were granted, her dreams would flutter in his direction, and in the morning her waking self would see him anew.