Chapter 1 #3
‘I hope you made him understand that there are several kinds of love, and that filial love need not compete with the romantic sort.’
‘Oh, of course I did. We reached a pact about it. ’
‘My brother would make a matter of state out of the smallest trifle.’
The duchess’s expression grew tenderer.
‘Eveline, there is something I have been trying for some weeks now to—’
‘I know what you are going to ask me,’ she interrupted.
‘Do you?’
‘Yes. I have been paying more attention than I ought to a certain country gentleman. You want to know whether I think he might be the one.’
‘Is he?’
‘How does a woman know that a man is the one destiny had reserved for her?’
‘A difficult question. ’
‘It is not difficult for you. Do not forget that I know my brother’s story and your own.’
‘Lady Ashbury?’ The dowager countess was the lady Alice had just referred to. She had always been Alice’s closest friend. A woman past fifty who had proved crucial in bringing the Duke and Duchess of Statony together.
‘Yes. She told me that Oliver had seen you many years before he proposed to you, and that this was why your story was already written. He had loved you from the first time he saw you.’
‘I suppose Lady Ashbury made it sound like a fairy tale, and while it is true that everything turned out well between Oliver and me, not all stories are as easy as they look from the outside. There were complications, Eveline, but we overcame them.’
‘Do you mean your brother, Gabriel Hope?’
Mr. Hope was Alice’s illegitimate brother.
‘Among others, yes. ’
The conversation could go no further. Eveline’s gaze fixed on one particular spot.
The back of her neck went taut, her fingers sought the fold of her skirt, and her good humor retreated.
That happened to her every time Lord Arden appeared on the scene.
That earl had a talent for irritating her merely by showing up.
‘The peace could not last,’ Eveline murmured.
Alice’s eyes moved to where her husband’s sister was looking.
‘He was invited, of course, but he has also come to see Oliver about parliamentary affairs.’
‘Lord Arden always comes to see Oliver over any trifle. I am beginning to think his coachman knows no other road.’
‘Oh, Eveline. Do not speak of him that way. He is a very agreeable man. ’
‘Yes. He is a great blessing fallen from heaven upon us all,’ she said. Arden was cunning; he always delivered his most infamous opinions when neither Oliver nor Alice was near enough to hear him.
The Duchess of Statony tilted her face to the right to hide her smile.
Arden was climbing the steps as though the stairway were part of his estate.
He was not dressed ostentatiously. He never was.
His sobriety was as offensive as he himself.
She had never seen him in an eccentric waistcoat that shouted the extent of his fortune.
Arden did not need to look like a dandy to be conspicuous.
The line of his shoulders, the assurance of his stride, and that calm that drove Eveline to distraction because it was so hard to disturb, were enough to clear his path.
Oliver saw him and at once made his way towards his friend.
Eveline would have liked to feel offended by that.
She was his sister, not that wretched Arden.
And no—she was not jealous of Oliver’s relationship with his best friend, for that, if anything, would be Alice’s prerogative, and the duchess seemed not the least bit dispirited by the attention her husband paid to that, that… fool!
‘Arden and his grand entrances…’ Eveline muttered.
‘Come now, my dear, you promised me you would be one of the most smiling ladies at the party, and you are already sulking.’
‘Do you know something, Alice?’
‘Tell me,’ she urged.
‘I mean to marry soon, so that I can—’ she silenced herself before saying something outrageous.
‘Yes?’ the duchess prodded.
‘Nothing. I shall marry to find love and to become a mother,’ she declared with conviction, for to say she would marry merely to be rid of the sight of Arden would be to grant far too much credit to a man who so detested her.
Why should he hate her so? She did not believe she had done anything to make him forever sit in judgment of her.
As if Arden were her brother! What right had he to pass opinion on her actions?
She did not wait for the Duchess of Statony to add anything more; Eveline crossed the terrace and headed towards the garden.
She needed to get away from civilization, if only for a few seconds.
And as she began to walk with her chin high and her skirt brushing her ankles, she knew, without needing to look for Arden, that he would already be watching her.
He was always watching her. Examining her in order to judge her. Who had appointed him judge, jury, and executioner? Oliver? Unlikely.
And Eveline, who had spent more than four years behaving with exemplary good sense, discovered, with annoyance, that she still granted power to a man who meant nothing to her.
The Earl of Arden and his nonsense!