Chapter Thirteen
Where a smitten man oversteps.
The children’s antics on the lawn proved welcome, a harmless clatter Ever could fasten his attention to, if only to keep it from straying where it ought not.
The veranda’s marble steps were hard beneath his arse—fair punishment, he decided.
Despite his efforts, his gaze had seldom left the object of his fascination all morning.
Everyone knew it.
Everyone but Isabella Anstruther-Colbrook.
Catching his gaze, she crossed to his side and stopped there, breathless, precisely where he wanted her, cheeks flushed from chasing her nieces and nephews about the garden.
It was not far from how she’d looked the afternoon before, stealing a lingering kiss before making her escape from his bedchamber, indigo silk trailing behind her.
Leaving him yearning, confounded by the weight of his feelings—a memory he set aside, saved for the night, when he indulged it in private.
Unfortunately, he and Isabella had scarcely had any time alone.
That morning, she and her maid had accompanied him to his tenant’s temporary housing, a necessity until the damaged dwelling could be rebuilt after the fire.
She stitched new curtains for Alfred, a man very dear to Ever’s heart, without sparing a thought for what a countess ought to do—which was certainly not this.
She reminded him of his mother, and with a quiet ache he saw that, had his father accepted her, eccentricities and all, Langley Park would have been an altered place. His childhood, an altered life.
Laughing, unaware of his thoughts, Isabella waved to the smallest tot running past, the Duke of Mercer’s latest, Ever believed. “You seem troubled,” she said at last, her hand hovering over his before she withdrew it.
She’d noticed his pensiveness. Of course she had.
He absently spun his signet ring on his finger, the emblem of an earldom he’d rejected for months and only now permitted himself to claim. “Did you know that Langley is old English for a long clearing?”
“Tell me,” she encouraged, shaking out her skirt. She wore deep blue, his favorite color, and he wondered what she would do if he said nothing at all. Ignoring queries of this sort from female companions was his specialty.
He shrugged, bracing his hands behind him on the step.
“You’re persistent, I’ll admit. It’s merely, there was never joy here, not like this.
Children’s laughter, family, fellowship.
It makes me glad to see it, and a little melancholy besides.
I warn you, this is the result of entertaining men in their old age. ”
“Don’t.” Her gorgeous lips slid into a frown.
“Yes, yes, sprite,” he said, amused by her firm stance on an issue they’d discussed more than once. “What are fourteen or so years in the scheme of things? Trifling, really.”
She let her pale pink slipper graze his boot, a touch too slight to register through Hoby’s polished leather, yet impossible for Ever to miss. He wished his body didn’t lean into hers, the cant minute, yet unmistakable.
“You think I’m used to this,” he found himself saying, now that he’d started admitting his inner ramblings to her, unable to stop. The handkerchief she’d embroidered flared like an ember in his pocket, urging him on. “When I’m not used to anything of the sort.”
Isabella turned to face him, her leg folding into a crook beneath her skirts. Nothing improper, yet nothing refined, either. He loved that freedom in her, in bed and out of it. “Affairs, you mean?”
“Relationships,” he answered, sensing there was a meaningful difference, a powerful lesson he was in the midst of learning.
Her gaze danced toward the children, then back to him. Her eyes were glorious, shot through with sunlight, amber streaked with molten brown. She thought she knew what he needed, and he was beginning to believe she was right.
He was entranced, no doubt about it.
If he only knew how to tell her.
Her hand settled over his, stopping the unconscious turn of his ring.
The breeze ripped a strand of hair from her chignon and tossed it against her cheek.
He couldn’t help but tuck it back, behind her ear, lingering to caress the sweet spot beneath.
When she leaned into the caress, he helplessly questioned how long it would be before he could get her alone again.
Tenderness and desire were a potent mix to fight.
“I have to return to London,” he said, his agitation seeping through. “There’s a case, and a colleague—Fraser, the one who investigated Ireton. Another month, then my career is blessedly over. But currently, there are enduring responsibilities.”
He left the important bit unsaid: that he did not want to leave her, did not want this to end.
“You speak as though we’re parting forever,” she murmured, her smile dimming, as if the thought had only just occurred to her.
Gesturing to the unkempt grounds, the overgrown gardens sloping away in the distance, he mastered his panic.
“It’s going to take years to restore what my brother destroyed.
And that’s before accounting for an aging staff.
Mrs. Donelson—the housekeeper who changed my nappies—is due her pension, as is Ashton, the gardener who ought to have retired a decade ago but won’t hear of it.
The east wing roof leaks, the stable is falling down around the remaining horses, the accounts are a shambles, which means there are obligations here that will outlive me. Debts that likely will as well.”
“I see,” she whispered.
He twisted the signet ring, once, then again. “It’s not a life anyone chooses, sprite, this title and the lot that comes with it. Certainly not one you signed up for.”
“Are you trying to talk me out of something, Merevale?” she asked, withdrawing her hand.
Merevale. The formality landed; he’d overstepped.
“I’m trying to caution you.” Ever nodded toward the men on the grass, wrestling their children into shrieks of protest. “As your family should. Advising you to look for someone with adequate finances and a steadier footing. An unencumbered reputation. Less baggage.” His mouth tightened.
“Everyone lets you do as you wish. Including me, it appears.”
“You’re just like them. How disappointing.”
Ever grasped her skirt as she stood, trying to hold her in place.
“You don’t trust me.” Yanking the silk from his fingers, Isabella shook the material out with deliberate finality.
“And, worse, you don’t trust yourself. I can’t undo the life you were born into any more than I can undo my own.
I had hoped we might”—her gaze flicked upward, brief and betraying, toward the darkened window of his bedchamber—“that we were, that we could…”
This was the danger, Ever thought riotously, of letting someone in.
Not the pretense, not the half-baked rake nonsense, not the borrowed bravado or hidden identity. All of that was easy. Acting was easy. But being known—truly known—and allowing someone close enough to see it? That was terrifying.
“I can see it written plainly on your face. You’ll take the easy road,” she ground out, already turning away from him, toward the gallery he loved almost as much as he suspected he loved her.
“Alone, suffering nobly. You’ll warn me away rather than risk anything else.
After what we shared, is that still your plan? ”
Confounded, he stood as well, the space between them charged with something perilously close to adoration. At least for him. Heart racing, he reached for her, then stopped himself, aware they were gathering an audience on the lawn. “Isa.”
Isabella laughed, a hollow sound. “The difference between us is, you’ll jeopardize everything for your career, maybe even for this manor, but nothing for me. Frankly, nothing for you.”
He hesitated, a denial lodged in his throat. “You make it sound simpler than it is.”
Her answer never came, reason that might have swayed him. One tender look, frankly, and he was hers. She already owned him.
A shout rose from the lawn as the children broke free and came charging toward the steps. One seized Ever’s leg, another collided with his hip, laughter and grass-stained hands clutching at his coat. Joy—pure joy—surrounded him.
When he looked up, Isabella had slipped inside, his beloved gallery having swallowed her whole.