Chapter Twenty-Six
Mayfair, London
Inès awoke alone the two days after Evan and she had arrived in London.
She stretched, satisfied with the sound sleep she had had.
They had received a courier from Dover who had come with a letter from Bordeaux.
It was in code, dated two weeks ago, and from Rafe Durham.
Zephora was recovering well. He would bring her to England soon.
The lack of specifics was acceptable, given the circumstances.
How Rafe had even gotten a letter out of France astounded both Evan and her.
That they had survived was an accomplishment.
Even Luc, who had arrived in London last week and was living in rooms he had taken near St. James’s, was amazed that the five of them had done so well to escape.
She would never get over their collective good luck.
A hand to her rounded stomach had her smiling. It was a perpetual smile these days…and it was time to discuss it with her husband.
After devouring the eggs on the breakfast tray that Mary had brought to her, she went to push aside the newspaper there, then paused to read the first article.
The government had found it seemly to approach the French with an offer of negotiations.
The death of William Pitt had brought a new group to power in the government, Evan had told her yesterday, who continually tried to make peace with Bonaparte.
“That will never work,” he’d said.
Inès had agreed.
French ambitions on the Continent were at an all-time high.
They wanted everything, the world. With their new laws that allowed for anyone’s arrest without cause and their extension of slavery in their territories, she knew they would not win.
French spies did not sail home simply because a few government officials thought it best to talk to their longstanding enemy.
She wondered if Faucon still roamed the British Isles. La Mère was gone. Perhaps even mourned by her colleague. Evan had assured Inès that he still employed guards for her.
“No one will take you from me ever again,” he’d promised, and she believed every word.
So she turned her thoughts to her mission of the morning. She found her heavy wool robe and slippers, then went in search of the man she longed to see.
She found him on the first floor in his study.
“Have you eaten?” she asked when she rounded the open doorway.
He beamed at her, handsome fellow that he was. “I did. And you?”
“I finished but wanted good company and discovered I must search for it.”
“Well,” he said as he rose, pushed back his large wooden chair, and rounded his desk, “I wonder if I might qualify.”
She twiddled his loosely tied cravat and let her gaze dance into his. “You are the only one who does.”
“Madam,” he said with a hand over his heart, “I am honored.”
She took his hand and put it to her own heart. “Come walk with me in the long gallery, will you?”
After they were married, Inès had often come up to walk this specific hall and view the Earl of Halsey’s long gallery filled with family portraits.
When she had been in others’ homes, she had marveled just as often at the ancestral lineage and many portraits of the families of Kane, Earl of Ashley, and Godfrey DuClare, Viscount Ramsey.
Today, however, she wished once more to walk among those who were her husband’s progenitors.
“Do you think any of these fellows good looking?” Evan had stopped before a large picture of three men, one older than the other two and all clearly her husband’s ancestors, of noble nose, wide jaw, and broad shoulders.
“Stunning,” she told him, and danced backward. “But one back here, I really love.”
He followed her, the smile on his face the one she had hoped to see first thing upon awakening this morning. “Oh, no. Not him!”
“Him!” She stood before the one in lavish lace and blue and gold silks, a cavalier whose nameplate declared he was Rakehell, Rascal and Thief! Reginald Gaylord Mannerly, 3rd Earl of Halsey. 1632-1699.
Evan caught up to her and draped his arms about her. “Why do you prefer him?”
“He looks like you. Or rather, you look like him, is, I suppose, the proper way to put it.”
“He was a scoundrel.”
“A womanizer?”
“Hmm. Yes.”
“Like you, he loved many women.”
“Correction. I knew many women. I was biding my time until you came into my life.”
“But you loved none of them.” She said it as a fact.
“I did not love until you.”
“And he? Earl the third?”
“Loved none, either, so say his memoirs—and the news sheets of the day. Bawdy reading, my darling. Until one day…he met a certain lady who stole his heart.” Evan kissed the tip of her nose.
“Surely this statement of ‘thief’ means he stole more than ladies’ hearts?”
“He played a wicked game of cards. Like my wife.”
“Ah. So he was a smart man.”
“Of course. Very wise. You see, he loved only one woman. His wife.”
“Really?” Inès looked about. “But she is not here.”
“No. She stands in the country house in Devon.”
“Oh.” She was disappointed. Her curiosity was up and she needed closure on this third earl and his beloved wife.
“We will go when spring weather is finer and the roads are clear. I should go. I have not been since last summer. We will stay. I will tend the estate books. You can read her diaries and his memoirs.”
“Wonderful. Let’s do that.” She was keen to please him, after so many months when he had devoted himself to pleasing her.
“You will like her story.”
“Risqué, is it?”
“She attracted Reggie with her abilities at the fortepiano.”
“Ah.” She was happy at that. “Like someone we know. Interesting. Why is she in Devon?”
“It is where Reggie found her. Where he first heard her play. Where he fell in love with her.” Evan drew Inès closer and put his lips to her own.
“She was French. A lady who had come over as lady’s maid to one of Charles II’s mistresses.
Charles thought her a devil, but Reggie declared in his diary that she was his angel.
He said she had saved him bedding a thousand other women who brought him less and less pleasure each time he removed his clothes.
He feared that, had he never met her, he would have gone—dare we think it—permanently limp. ”
She threw back her head and laughed. Now she was intrigued by more than the former earl’s looks and monikers. “Tell me about this woman.”
“Mirabelle was her name, and she was blonde and blue-eyed—well endowed, too.”
“Of course she was! How else to attract a scoundrel, eh?”
“She had another intriguing aspect to her nature.” He threaded his fingers through her hair and down her throat and over her shoulders.
She had given up the bandages that the surgeon had applied in the town of Orleans, south of Paris.
He could touch her, Inès had told him when she was healed, anywhere, everywhere, forever, as he had touched her heart from the first moments they met.
“What was that which attracted so rakish a man?”
“She was sent to England with her mistress to spy on Charles for Louis XIV.”
Inès stared at her husband in surprise. “Did she convey any special secrets?”
“Quite a few,” Evan whispered as he spread kisses down her healed throat and pushed aside the collar of her robe. “She told Louis secrets only Reggie knew and conveyed to her.”
Evan moved aside her robe and pushed down the beribboned décolleté of her night rail.
“Oh,” she sighed, as her husband laved one aching nipple and suckled her so strongly, she moaned. “What did Reggie know?”
“How to love Mirabelle to sighs and moans.” Evan pushed down her night rail to reveal her other breast, and that nipple he took in his mouth and caressed to a high peak.
Inès grabbed at her husband’s curls. “That is so wonderful.”
“Mmm. All of you is delicious.” He drew back and took one hand. “Come to bed, sweetheart.”
Through the dreamy haze of her contentment and desire, she tugged at his arm. She had come up here with a purpose, to discuss his family and their future—their child, too. “No, no! I must tell you something before we go.”
He swooped her against him. “Tell me quickly, love. I am badly in need of you—and I wish to make you frantic for me.”
“I am. I am. But first…” She put a hand to her rounding stomach. “I think you know this. You have not said. But we have been in each other’s arms for months and I have never told you no.”
He sank both hands into her hair and curled her close. “Say it, my love. Then we can take each other’s bodies and celebrate your news.”
“I carry our baby.”
His smile was glorious. “I know you do.”
“He…she is our future. His or her portrait will be here one day. But…but I want you to know I have had…I’ve had a challenge reconciling what I was as a child with what I became as a young woman, and then how I wish to be forevermore with you.”
He held her so tenderly that she thought they might fly into the air together. He kissed her deeply. “Tell me. Tell me and we will march into all our days together.”
“From the day we met, you gave me so much. A challenge, an acceptance, a need, and your love.”
“My fondest dream is of you, happy in my arms.”
“Oh, Evan, I know! I do! But I have given you nothing but challenge and secrecy. I threatened your work, your family, and your honor. How you could love me and forgive me, I do not know.”
He began to object, as she knew he would.
So she shook her head and held her ground.
“I do not understand how you could care for someone who lied as a practice. But I do not doubt you. Mon Dieu, how could I? You have given me everything! Your name, your house, your heritage, your very honor. But I will not question it. You declare it true, and thus, so do I. You have proven to me how love is given with grace and forgiveness.” She cupped his cheek.
“I love you, Evan, my darling man. And to you I promise that all of my days will be devoted to showing you with grace and honesty how dearly I adore you.”
The tears in her eyes matched those in his.
“I saw who you were at heart, Inès. How, why, I cannot explain, but I love you. I love you.”
She rose up on her toes and kissed his lips.
He wrapped her close. “Are you finished talking?”
“I am.”
“No more questions about rascally Reggie?”
“None.”
“Thank God! Then come downstairs and let us ravish each other, shall we?”
She giggled. She had a thousand reasons to agree.
The challenge continues…