Chapter Thirteen
“Well now, what’s this? My goodness, such tears!”
Evelyn stepped back, her arms hanging uselessly at her sides, in awe of the woman who’d just swept into the room and gathered Leonora up. Her mother-in-law, Mrs. Hartley, had transformed into a person who in no way resembled the silly lady overly concerned with the table settings at their wedding breakfast. It was nothing short of miraculous.
Leonora muttered something into Mrs. Hartley’s shoulder, to which the older woman tutted.
“Yes, well, it’s awfully difficult to do without. I can only imagine. Perhaps poor Penny is as distraught as you are, being bereft of your company.”
Leonora pulled back and nodded solemnly before wiping her snotty nose on her arm.
Evelyn winced, involuntarily placing a hand upon her middle. Her eyes drifted to Mr. Hartley. He was watching her. She didn’t look away, allowing him his stare, and feeling herself warm in the face of it. What was he thinking right now? Was he worried that she might bear him such a creature, forever wailing, with nose dribbling?
The prospect was rather sobering.
Then he crossed the room to stand alongside her, and placed a light hand upon her shoulder.
“Don’t fret,” he murmured, his head inclined toward her, his voice low so only she would hear. “You did well, and you will do well.”
Evelyn froze, partly from his words, partly from the vibration his low rumble sent through her. “I don’t know what you mean,” she attempted, praying it would throw him off the scent. The thought of appearing frightened of a mere child was abhorrent to her.
He squeezed her shoulder.
“She’s quite good with children,” he mused, watching his mother and Leonora as they chatted while Mrs. Hartley smoothed down the little girl’s hair. “Always was,” he added as an afterthought.
Evelyn thought she detected something there—a wistfulness of sorts—but she dared not press him on it. Not when she’d already been all too brazen in her bedroom manner. She ought to maintain some measure of propriety.
The next few days passed in a bustle, with Evelyn too busy acquainting herself with her new home and its inner workings to think much further on how closely she held her new husband. Indeed, he had not visited her chamber again after that first night. Sometimes, when she found herself in a quiet moment during the day, such as walking the walled garden or inventorying the silver, the memory of their night together would come to her, unbidden, and she began to worry that perhaps Mr. Hartley had been displeased with her.
But then she recalled his voice—uttering such wonderfully awful words as he found his pleasure in her, and the deep purr he made as he offered to remain in her bed—and she reassured herself. He would be back.
To sire a child at least, if nothing else.
Evelyn made her way down the hall before pausing at one of the nicely sized windows. She hadn’t expected to enjoy the natural light they afforded as much as she did, having spent her entire life until now calling an ancient fortress home. But she told herself that anyone’s spirits would be buoyed by such a bright interior, and it did not mean her allegiance to Methering Manor waned at all.
Outside the window, not far from the house, Leonora chased after Mrs. Hartley’s little spaniel. Mrs. Hartley and Selina followed a short distance behind, strolling at a much more sedate pace. Things with her niece had seemingly settled since her mother-in-law had taken charge of Leonora’s fit. Oh, there had certainly been more tears and bouts of defiance since then, but the woman was an old hand at child-rearing, and most of the recent tantrums had sputtered out before reaching the banks of the Rubicon.
Yes, Mrs. Hartley’s influence on Leonora had provided massive relief. Evelyn turned her focus to Selina now, reaching out to place a hand on the cool glass.
If only the problem of her sister-in-law could be as easily solved.
Every night since their arrival, Selina had asked if Wright might join them at Mr. Hartley’s London house and fulfill the role of butler there. A part of Evelyn wanted to agree, having seen how poorly the entire place was run; Wright would surely set it to rights in no time. But she would never. Not after how chatty Selina had become with the servant. It was improper and it needed addressing, sooner rather than later.
Mr. Hartley was working in his study, and Evelyn did not wish to disturb him when he needed concentration, but this was important. He’d taken her on—and Selina and Leonora as well—which meant he must assist her in this matter.
Brushing away her hesitancy, she walked to the study and knocked on the door.
“Come in,” he called, and it dawned on her that they had not spoken since the previous day.
The realization bothered her. She ought to be growing more comfortable with this man the longer they were wed, not less. Now was not the time to dwell on that, though. She opened the door and entered the study, her chin up and her face serene.
“Ah, just the woman I wished to see,” Mr. Hartley said, setting aside an untidy pile of papers and depositing his pen hastily in its stand before heaving himself from his chair.
Evelyn scanned the contents of the desk. It seemed all he ever did was sit here and write.
“You wished to see me?” she asked, feeling an absolute fool.
He lifted an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t a recently married man be ever desirous of his beloved?”
The word hit her like a bucket of cold water. She seated herself across from him, her back straight as an arrow.
“Beloved?”
“Would you prefer something else? Sweetness? Or maybe darling?” He placed a finger atop his lips, then smiled. A coy, flirtatious gesture. “Or even Evelyn, perhaps?”
“Mrs. Hartley will be fine, thank you.”
“Ah, but you see, Mrs. Hartley is my mother. And I’d rather not think of her while I’m bedding my wife.”
He spoke with such frankness that the breath was nearly knocked from her lungs. But Evelyn was more familiar with his methods now, and the way he liked to rattle her. But two could play at this.
“Bedding your wife?”
Zounds, it felt illegal to even utter the words. But she drew a breath and held steady.
He watched her. Slowly he lowered himself back into his chair.
“Say that again.” His voice was rough.
“What?” she said airily, even as her heart thudded. “Bedding your wife? I admit, I fail to see why you should be so concerned about the details pertaining to that particular activity.”
“Hmm.” He steepled his hands and waited for her to explain.
Evelyn felt herself pulled as taut as she’d been since… well. Since he’d bedded her, his wife. She smiled sweetly.
“Only my meaning is that it’s been several days and I—”
“And?” he interrupted, quite rudely.
She narrowed her eyes, regarding him severely now, her tone growing sharp. “And it seems to be an infrequent enough occurrence that I fail to see how it would bother you overmuch.”
He laughed and shook his head. “Evelyn—I beg your pardon—Mrs. Hartley, if you’ll recall, you demurred the idea of me remaining in your…” he cleared his throat before finishing, “chamber.”
That was true, wasn’t it? She cursed silently. In the moment it had felt the correct thing to do. She’d been… well, she’d been a frightful, bloody mess. She hadn’t expected that it would put him off her completely. Didn’t he understand how to play his role? Would she have to instruct him in this as well?
“For that evening. Not… every evening thereafter.”
“Ahh, I think we’ve finally ferreted out the true issue, Mrs. Hartley.”
He said her name in a teasing, singsong manner. Evelyn did not appreciate it.
“Which is?”
“That you’re madly in love with me.”
“What? Don’t be daft.” She sniffed. “Although I admit your appearance is tolerable, and your voice… well, your voice is quite elegant and your eyes rather noble—completely at odds with your entire bearing, mind—this marriage, if you’ll recall, is a mutually beneficial agreement. A contract, as you put it. A man such as yourself should be too intelligent to be governed by all this…”
She paused, searching for the right term. Feminine pursuits, she heard Selina say in her memory. Evelyn pressed her lips together. Lust was a silly thing, but there was nothing feminine or masculine about it, was there? Both sexes fell victim to its murky haze.
“… twaddle,” she finally settled on.
“We are in complete agreement on that subject,” Mr. Hartley said as he stared at a bookshelf that held only uniform red and gold volumes, “but somehow disconnected regarding the frequency of our, er…”
“Nocturnal assignations?” Evelyn suggested with an eagerness she couldn’t believe came from her own lips.
“Perhaps,” he replied with a shrug. Then his eyes wandered back to her, a smirk upon his face.
Oh dear, what had she said?
“But ‘nocturnal’ would suggest a limitation to the evening hours, would it not?”
“I suppose,” she said, drawing her words out as she fought desperately to get ahead of his thinking. But she wasn’t quick enough.
He withdrew a watch from his pocket, glanced at it, then repocketed it with a wry smile.
“Eleven o’clock,” he said.
Too late she realized what he was about. Oh no.
He stood, and lazily made his way around his desk as he spoke.
“Now, if one of us could make a compelling case to the other, there might be no need for such restrictive verbiage.” He stopped before her, looking down with a devilish grin.
She looked away, trying to appear nonchalant, as if her heart wasn’t hammering against her ribcage in a most disruptive manner.
He caught her chin.
Ever so gently he turned her to face him, tilting her head back. He loomed over her, his other hand planted on the arm of her chair, caging her in.
“What are your feelings on referring to them simply as ‘assignations,’ Mrs. Hartley?”
She parted her lips, but no sound came.
But it did not matter, for before she could gather her thoughts he was upon her, kissing her with a deliberate languor that poured forth from him into her, warming her limbs and slowing her mind. She’d missed this, she realized with startling clarity. With the fervor of a proselyte, she kissed him back, placing a hand upon his cheek, caressing him, feeling the grit of his whiskers. Why, he must need to shave twice daily, she wondered.
He pulled away, his gaze heavy. It felt as though minutes had passed.
“Well?” he said, his voice rough.
Oh. He’d asked her something, hadn’t he? She furrowed her brow, then recalled.
“‘Assignations’ is adequate,” she said, in as steady a voice as she could manage.
“Really?” He stood up and turned around, hands clasped behind his back, suddenly all business. “For I do recall you once asserting that kissing was only acceptable within the marital chamber.”
“Oh.” She blushed. “I don’t recall.”
“Hmm.” He returned to his desk chair and stared into the middle distance. “Hmm,” he repeated, then turned to regard her.
She could feel the heat in her cheeks.
“Would it be appropriate to amend the terms of our contract, then?”
Evelyn eyed the chaotic stacks of paper covering one half of his desk.
“No, don’t fret,” he said as he followed her gaze. “It’s still unwritten. But what say you?”
She looked into his eyes, wary. “To what? What is on offer?”
“Assignations. More frequent ones, that is.” He lifted his eyebrows. “At any time or place agreeable to both parties.”
Before, she might have gasped at his cheek. But now she closed her eyes, recalling the feel of his lips upon hers just moments before. She bit back a sigh, and her eyes fluttered open.
“In exchange for what?”
“That I may call you Evelyn.”
She drew a sharp breath.
“These are my terms,” he said, opening his hands as if the dictate had come down from an authority higher than him, rather than from his own crude sensibilities.
Would this man never cease in his desire to drag her down to the middle classes? She’d come here to discuss the problem with Selina and her overly familiar behavior with Wright—a much more pressing matter—and he was determined to push Evelyn into an unbecoming familiarity of her own. How had that happened? She regarded him with a begrudging admiration; perhaps he possessed more savvy than the typical lunatic liberal.
Evelyn sighed. “Very well.”
“Wonderful,” he said, then gave her a look that spoke of everything their kiss had been, and everything they’d shared their wedding night.
“Evelyn,” he said into the empty space of the study, testing it out in a tender voice.
For some reason, hearing him say it out loud made her feel even more at sea.
“Now, Evelyn, pray tell, what did you wish to discuss?”
A little voice warned her that she had erred, that this was the top of the slippery slope that would erode her pride and eventually rot the very foundation of who she was. But that little voice was drowned out by his own—so silky, so deep.
Speaking her given name.
She squared her shoulders and sat up tall.
“It’s Mrs. Wolfenden. She’s developed an inappropriate familiarity with our old butler, Wright.”
“How familiar?” The teasing, smug Mr. Hartley was gone in an instant, replaced by the harsh, haughty man whose doorstep she’d landed on that summer.
“Merely overly friendly, I pray. Not… that familiar.”
His face darkened. “Has he ever been inappropriate with you?”
Evelyn gasped, a hand upon her chest. “Upon my word! Wright? Never! I assure you, the blame for any impropriety lies solely at Mrs. Wolfenden’s feet.”
She felt cold all over, speaking scornfully of her sister-in-law and, by association, the ever-reliable Wright. But she must protect his good name, as well as their entire family’s.
“What makes you think that?” Mr. Hartley pressed, unmoved by her avowal.
“Why, it’s simple, really. Wright would never!” she said, her voice stern. “Frankly, I do not know how we all got on before he was with us. He’s a brick of a fellow.”
“They all are,” Mr. Hartley sighed, “until they aren’t.”
“I beg your pardon?” Evelyn hadn’t supposed this would get his hackles up, and she felt a mild irritation at his lack of sympathy for poor Wright.
He waved his hand. “Never mind. What’s happened, then?”
Evelyn smoothed her skirts, then explained. “I had assumed that removing to here would have solved the problem, but she intends to petition you to hire Wright away from his lordship.”
“Ah. Well, have no fear—Gill predates my ownership of the lodge.” He chuckled, leaning back in his chair. “Would she deprive Mrs. Gill of her husband?”
“No, not here.” Evelyn shook her head gently. “She means for Wright to head your London residence.”
“Well, I bloody well won’t have that.” He sat up sharply, his face hard. When he caught her surprised reaction, he forced a more casual pose and tempered his tone. “That is to say, I’ve already a butler in London. Fennel.”
“Ah,” she said. “Well, I have not told Mrs. Wolfenden of our first meeting, nor would I agree with her wish that Wright should go to London, but I must say, having been your guest, this man you have, he’s not done anywhere near an adequate job. Why—”
Mr. Hartley cut her off. “He was my father’s man, Fennel.”
There it was again, that wistfulness in his voice, the earnestness in his eyes. In the past, she would shy away from discussing such appalling… feelings. But now a strange curiosity itched in her chest, begging for her to press him further, to know more.
To know him.
“Your father?” she ventured, praying the bland statement sounded less insipid to him than it did to her own ears.
“Lewis Hartley.” His gaze slowly returned to her, even as he remained stock-still. “He was a solicitor as well.”
Evelyn recalled Mrs. Hartley’s comments after the wedding, about how she’d rejected several other offers to accept this man, this Lewis Hartley. Her husband’s father. Suddenly a flood of questions filled her mind: What was he like? Did he speak with and love his child, unlike her own father, who treated her and Edmund as nothing more than obligations born out of fealty to the Wolfenden name, training her to assume that was the way of all families?
Strength and steadfastness she may possess, but the ability to hold emotional conversations escaped her. How could she form the words when she could barely allow her husband the privilege of calling her Evelyn?
But a knock at the door saved her from having to figure out how to engage further. For now.
Mr. Hartley called out his assent, the door opened, and a footman entered, apologizing hurriedly and informing him that Mr. Reed had called.
“Mr. Reed?” Evelyn interjected, perplexed. James Robert Reed, of the Knockton town council, of the many children and harried wife?
“One and the same,” Mr. Hartley said, regarding her with an arched brow. He turned back to the servant at the open door. “Send him up; I’ll receive him here.”
The footman thanked him and slipped away.
“Up here?” Evelyn said, baffled. “Why not the front drawing room? It is certainly the finest, with the coral silk walls.”
She cast an appraising glance about the study, recalling Rowland and his appalling collection of impossible bottles. Thankfully, her husband’s tastes ran more toward the written word—the shelves here held only books. Nothing else—no personal objects, nothing that spoke to who he, Marcus Hartley, was as a person. Perfectly acceptable, of course… but just then it struck her, of all people, as odd.
“Because, Evelyn,” he said, lingering upon her name as if it its use gave him great pleasure, “Mr. Reed is not fond of me, and I am not fond of him.”
She frowned. “Is that all? Why, I don’t think many of us truly care for Mr. Reed. He’s awfully dismissive of the idea of the goat willow’s quadricentennial celebration, in fact. It’s set quite a number of ladies up against him. But that does not mean we forgo all niceties.”
Mr. Hartley blinked. “Goat willow?”
“Oh dear,” she sniffed, standing up. “The large goat willow on Knockton Green is turning four hundred years old next year.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Truly? Well, I must admit, that is rather impressive. But I am curious—how exactly do we know its age, and with such precision?”
“Why, the letter, of course,” Evelyn replied haughtily, in disbelief at her husband’s ignorance.
“The letter?”
“The letter in Mrs. Henham’s family papers. From Edmund Turner to his brother George, dated 1474, in which he writes of planting the willow on the east end of the village green.”
Mr. Hartley looked at her with a wry half-smile.
Evelyn stood motionless, her hands held together in front of her. “What is it?”
“And did Mr. Turner draw a map to accompany his letter?”
“If you wish to see Mrs. Henham’s papers for yourself, you need only ask,” Evelyn said with disinterest. “I’m sure she’d be more than happy to spend the day discussing the Turners with you.”
He laughed, then rose to his feet, crossing the room to take her hands in his.
Her heart thudded as he regarded her, his blue eyes twinkling with mirth.
“Was that a jest?” he murmured with delight. “A jest from you?”
Warmth blossomed in her chest. For a moment she considered apologizing, for she was in no way a wit.
“I find myself surprised by you, my dear.” He leaned closer, his eyes dropping to her mouth.
“A failing of yours, for surely I am as straightforward and dull as I have always been.” This was not a jest, but the truth.
“No,” he breathed, then dipped his face so his lips brushed against hers. “Never.”
This time Evelyn allowed herself to hold him as he kissed her, her hands settling upon his arms, her heart in her throat as she responded in kind, giving as well as receiving. They were so engrossed in one another that it took a second too long for the next knock at the door to register in their addled minds.
By the time they disentangled, the door had already opened, revealing Mr. Reed, looking rather startled.
Evelyn’s head swam, her heart racing. She felt as she did in Rowland’s sitting room that horrid day in London, when that terrible feeling had overwhelmed her and she ran into the streets, desperate to escape it.
She ought to be ashamed of herself, carrying on like this.
Evelyn dropped her eyes to the floor as demurely as she dropped her curtsy. Was that what this feeling was, she wondered? Shame?
“Well met, Mr. Reed. My wife and I were just discussing the quadricentennial of our town’s beloved monumental tree. Surely the town council is aware of it?”
So smoothly Mr. Hartley slipped back into a relaxed, conversational tone, when only seconds ago he’d been seducing her with his rich voice and his languid gaze. How interesting. It seemed Evelyn was as surprised by this man as he was by her.
Perhaps that was simply a matter of course, when one wed in such haste.
“The goat willow.” Mr. Reed somehow made his words sound both disbelieving and patronizing at the same time.
“Yes, the goat willow.”
“Yes, well, as I told Miss Wolf—Mrs. Hartley—and Mrs. Henham last month, there are unfortunately no funds available for anything extravagant.” He held his hands out, palms upward, as if he spoke of his own coffers and not the town council’s.
“Right, which is why I’ve decided to fund it in full. Whatever the ladies think best. You came in just as we’d settled upon it.” Her husband turned and flashed her a wide, showy grin.
Evelyn clutched her hands together, happiness surging within. Why, the other ladies in the Knockton Civic Preservation Society were going to be over the moon! But her reaction was tempered by their current company—Mr. Reed was studying her as if he’d never taken her measure before.
“Such generosity, and from such quarter! One would think Baron Methering might have put forth, if only he were appealed to.”
Evelyn swallowed. She was a terrible actress. But she must hold steady.
“Perhaps, but my husband has offered it, all the same,” she said, her voice pitched higher than usual. Her uneasy smile at Mr. Hartley was returned with a proud look. She released a breath. “Now, gentlemen, I’m afraid I must beg your pardon.”
She dropped another curtsy to Mr. Reed, feeling a measure of satisfaction. “Shall we rely upon you for luncheon, Mr. Reed?”
“No, no,” the elder gentleman said, furrowing his brow. “I’ve only come to talk politics. Best not befuddle the mind of such a sweet and gentle lady.”
“Very well, then,” she said. “I shall have something sent up.”
Before she turned to leave, she spared a glance for her husband, who winked at her.
Wandering back down the hallway, she considered the gesture. It seemed cheeky, a silly, unnecessary thing. She raised her hand to her mouth, two fingers pressing gently against her swollen lips.
So why did it affect her so?