Chapter Five
Where a rake seeks answers.
Ever knew it was over the moment a man told a woman she was incredible.
Nothing surrendered control faster than a single, exhausted, aroused, infatuated admission.
His shoulder settled against a column, a familiar posture in an unfamiliar evening, his gaze sweeping the ballroom.
Another weary gathering—Baron Landry’s engagement bash, this one—the chalk dusting the marble floor, the inane conversation threatening to choke him.
Except she was here, altering the tenor entirely.
It wasn’t the first time he and Isabella Anstruther-Colbrook had occupied the same space.
But it was the first when she was rumored to be linked to him.
Ever tracked her progress across the floor in the arms of the third and final man on her dance list, a fresh-faced engineer associate of Weston’s.
She hadn’t a full card by any means; most of London was terrified of her.
(Personally, he would never forget the image of her covered in his blood, not a tremble in her, though that was his particular fascination.) His appearance at her side—not an arrival together, that was too much, too soon—likely hadn’t helped.
If anything, it made them more interesting.
All evening, astonished members of society had glanced between them, trying to imagine how two such contrary people might fit.
When he’d begun to imagine he and Isabella fit—dangerously well.
Ever halted a passing footman and seized a glass from the salver. His facade required it. And so did he.
He’d had to remind himself repeatedly since the carriage ride last week that this was a professional arrangement, even as something inside him shifted in every exchange with Isabella.
A pact not unlike the one he had with Victoria Cassinton, the modiste who occasionally lent medical assistance to agents of the Crown.
His attention swept the ballroom once more, taking in the youthful faces, the easy laughter, the careless closeness of people who still believed in the permanence of good moments.
That buoyant confidence—call it innocence, call it ignorance—let them move through the world as though disappointment were a distant rumor.
I’m too jaded, Ever decided, casting one last glance at Isabella in a gown the color of limes just plucked from the tree.
Too old—and as of this day, older still.
Birthdays leave a sour taste, he thought, and took himself, his brandy, and his moroseness to a lone spot on the veranda. Though Alice had sent a lovely note. And Brick a bottle of Bowmore—surprising that his sentry had remembered at all, let alone chosen the finest Scotch to mark the day.
Moonlight skimmed the balustrade as he approached, silvering the garden beyond.
A thin mist hung in the air, darkening the stone beneath his resting hand.
Somewhere below, a fountain murmured, and from the open windows behind him came the echo of bright, careless conversation.
The wound along his back smarted, though it was tolerable.
He’d suffered only a slight fever the day after, and nothing since.
He wasn’t surprised when the troublesome chit who’d occupied his thoughts for days settled beside him, slipping away from a spill of partygoers carrying their frivolity across the lawn and into the gardens. Perhaps he was kidding himself, but he’d sensed a change in the air as she drew near.
He hadn’t experienced attraction like this in years. Exactly like this, maybe never.
It promised to be damned inconvenient.
Isabella—Isa, his mind whispered as visions of her thighs encased in naughtily embroidered garters made concentration a lost cause entirely—gestured to the group now cavorting in the fountain.
She cast him a sly look over the rim of her flute, and before he could caution her on the wisdom of seeking him out, whispered, “Remember, if we keep to our agreement, you want my attention, my lord. The woman you’re courting might tempt you to steal a kiss in the moonlight.”
He turned to face her, his hip braced against the balustrade. He hoped his modest arousal wasn’t evident. “What about the woman I’m sharing secrets with? Does she wish to tempt me?”
Her lips parted on a hushed breath, and Ever took quiet pleasure in her hesitation. For all her remarkable poise, Madam Mischief would make a dreadful gambler. Emotions flickered across her face—triumph, indecision, trepidation.
She wanted to play a role, but hadn’t decided which suited the moment.
He loved her uncertainty, because he was uncertain, too.
Balancing his empty glass on the wall, Ever took hers and drank the chilled champagne without comment. From her frothy grin and cheerful lack of caution, he’d determined she’d had enough for one evening.
When she puckered her lips and leaned closer, he felt the desperate urge to tell her, “My acclaimed reputation, the one that secured this mindless Rake Review, isn’t real, sprite. I’m no monk, but I’m not that.”
“Oh.” A flicker of displeasure drew a tiny pleat between her brows. She stepped back. “So the rumor about the Russian countess is false?”
Bloody hell, Ever. Did you really start this?
With an oath, he tossed the flute into the laurel hedge, his arousal withering. “I don’t think this is a topic we should discuss.”
“The Lord Chancellor’s daughter?”
Exhaling sharply, Ever rubbed the back of his neck. Heat climbed his skin, a tell he feared was staining his cheeks as well. “It was his sister, ten years my senior, I might add. And,” his voice dropped to a hoarse whisper, “she approached me.”
“Your surgeon?”
Finally, he could say no. “She’s a colleague, nothing more.”
Isabella gave her dance card a vicious spin on her wrist. “You think to warn me like I’ll tumble from the highest ledge, smitten with you.
When we have a contract, of sorts. I suppose you can only do business with my brothers.
As if a female doesn’t have the intellect to pretend, when that’s all we do. ”
“Maybe I warn myself, Isa.”
Did he have to list the reasons anything more was a bad idea?
Fortunately, raised voices halted the interchange before he could.
The scene likely appeared precisely as Isabella intended to the jovial, slightly fountain-damp group drifting back into the ballroom: two lovers at odds, attraction tugging them together while circumstance pulled them apart.
Ever wasn’t sure how they’d arrived here so quickly, from a supposed arrangement scarcely a week old.
Though the ache in his chest at the sight of Isabella’s wounded expression—how had that happened?—didn’t feel like business.
“Join us, Lady Isabella,” someone in the crowd called. “We’re playing loo, before the evening overtakes those of a certain age.”
“Like your current companion,” another laughingly added.
Ever’s gaze lifted in time to catch the Marquess of Ireton lingering just beyond the knot of guests, studying Isabella too closely for comfort. He was certainly young enough to participate in the games.
“Don’t,” Ever whispered when she made to leave, circling her slim wrist with his fingers, his pulse ringing in his ears at the contact.
What the hell he was doing?
Desperation wasn’t his norm.
Removing her arm from his hold, Isabella waved to the foxed group as they passed. With a murmured “Happy Birthday,” she pressed a handkerchief into his hand before he could say another thoughtless word.
And then she was gone.
She’d suspected the rumor about the countess was true.
But she hadn’t believed the one involving the Lord Chancellor’s sister.
Two days after the Earl of Merevale’s guarded revelations, Isabella stood fidgeting in a milliner’s shuttered shop while the owner, Marie Lefèvre, examined her garters one by one.
The visit had been arranged for an early hour, the doors opened ahead of business for this delivery alone.
Lace was lifted, stretch discreetly tested, a low hum of approval offered now and again, while Isabella’s thoughts refused similar order.
She hoped her bland smile concealed the ire beneath.
No note. No apology. Merevale had missed Lady Harcourt’s tea entirely the day before, and the slight sat like grit beneath her skin.
The rumor that they’d quarreled at Baron Landry’s engagement ball was already being polished into truth, shaped by eager mouths and sharper imaginations.
It seemed his absence had been accepted as confirmation that whatever had passed between them had been brief, ill-tempered, and was already done.
A gossip column this morning even remarked upon a certain firebrand’s inability to tame a celebrated April wastrel, the account settling neatly into London’s expectations.
In the end, of course, society sided with him.
The garters disappeared beneath the counter, wicked only if one knew what to look for, and Isabella found herself thinking instead of the handkerchief she’d stitched for Ever—nothing scandalous, only his initials, but worked in her finest hand, a concentration of care she hadn’t meant to give.
An act that now made her feel extremely vulnerable.
Still, she’d been unable to resist after Brick, for whatever mad reason, mentioned the earl’s approaching birthday.
The realization nettled her anew: she could deliver contraband underthings with a steady pulse and assist in a rookery medical adventure, yet one impulsive gift—and what the scoundrel might presume because of it—unsettled her more than any risk of discovery.
Oh, Isa. She sighed, knowing exactly what troubled her.
About this, she hadn’t lied. She didn’t want marriage—not the trappings, not the expectations and erasures of self that followed once vows were spoken.
But for some reason, she wanted Everard Trentham, neither tipsy nor pickled.
And that fact would not be ignored.