Chapter 10
A Long-Awaited Confrontation
The next day, Arden presented himself at her house to try to see her.
Not once.
Three times.
The first, Eveline sent word that she was indisposed. The second, that she was resting. The third, she did not trouble to invent an excuse and asked the maid to inform the earl, with all the courtesy a young woman on the verge of losing it could muster, that she did not wish to receive him ever.
The maid returned with a very grave face and her eyes too wide.
‘Lord Arden has said he will return, my lady.’
Eveline, who stood beside the window of the private sitting room Alice had ceded her for hiding from her torment, pressed her fingers against the curtain.
‘Of course he has said so.’
Men like Arden did not withdraw, because they had been taught to fight without truce.
Hours later she learned, from Alice, that he had spent a good while shut up with Oliver in his study.
They did not fight that time; at least no visible marks could be seen.
Statony, according to his wife, had asked him for patience.
The word seemed so absurd applied to Lord Arden that Eveline nearly let out a laugh.
Patience? The man who had announced his engagement before a room because he could not bear to see her dance with another gentleman, capable of patience?
The same one who had taken her into the garden to reproach her for her supposed lack of decorum and then kissed her until she forgot she was furious with him?
And while they took tea and caught up, Eveline could not bear the compassion with which Alice looked at her.
‘You do not have to receive him until you are ready, but you will have to deal with him at some point,’ she told her.
‘I am not sure I can face him. That man drives me to distraction so…’
‘Then he will have to learn to wait, though I warn you already that he will not stop. Your brother is of the same opinion as I. He is determined.’
‘Lord Arden learns nothing. He decides. He is every bit as much a tyrant as Statony. It does not surprise me that they have always been such friends. Not even fists have managed to separate them, have they?’
‘No. I would say they have already forgiven each other. You should know that your brother will not force you to anything, Eveline. ’
‘Did you wring that promise from him?’
‘It was not necessary. He loves you very much and will not let anything happen to you that you do not wish. We shall always be with you. ’
‘This conversation is proving far too fatalistic, Alice. For the love of God, he is only a troublesome suitor who does not understand my refusal. ’
‘Hmm… And what if I told you that before we married, Statony was very similar to Arden? He gave me no respite, I assure you. Not until I accepted him did he stop. ’
‘Do you think I will end up married to him?’ she asked in alarm. Yes, it was fear. The butterflies in her stomach at that possibility were warning her of an imminent danger.
‘I only tell you that you could negotiate with him in some way. ’
‘Negotiate? How negotiate?’
‘For example, I wanted your brother to court me, and although he did not do it the way I wished, he did have to make an effort to win my hand. ’
‘Arden courting me? He would throw himself out the window if I asked him for such a thing. ’
Alice did not answer. She sighed. There the conversation rested. Nevertheless, Eveline could not stop turning over what Arden stirred in her and what those sudden fits of jealousy could mean which he had almost confessed to.
That night, Oliver would return late from the House of Lords, Alice had withdrawn earlier than usual because her stomach ached, and since Henry had fallen asleep early, Eveline went up to her room intending to read a little before sleeping.
She needed something to occupy her mind so as not to be thinking all the time of Arden’s mouth.
She failed resoundingly, because it was impossible to forget how ardent those two encounters with him had been.
At that moment, she closed the book she could not understand and sat on the bed. Her hair was loose over her shoulders, and the light of a candle cast restless shadows on the walls. All of them had the shape of a certain earl.
While she sighed and grew angry with herself, the city went on living beyond the window; distant wheels could be heard, voices that faded on turning the corner, and the murmur of a London that had not the least consideration for young women engaged against their will.
Then something struck the glass. Eveline turned her head to see the place from which the sound had come.
Another tap, fainter.
She got down from the bed with her heart in her throat, crossed the room wrapped in her dressing gown, and drew the curtain aside a little. Below, in the small rear garden of the house, a masculine figure stood beneath a tree.
She did not need to see his face clearly to identify him. Only he would have arrogance enough to throw little stones at her window after having been refused three times in the same day. She opened it just enough to be able to speak without waking half the house.
‘Have you gone mad?’
Arden raised his head.
‘Come down and let me in by the servants’ stairs.’
‘No.’
‘Eveline, do as I say,’ he ordered her.
‘I am not going to come down and open anything, Arden. And stop throwing stones at my window before you alarm the servants.’
‘I need to speak with you.’
‘You have had all day to try,’ she set forth, full of satisfaction.
‘And you all day to refuse to receive me.’
‘I am glad that at least part of the message has been understood. I do not want to see you.’
He looked to both sides of the garden, then at the tree whose thickest branch nearly grazed the wall.
Eveline understood his intent a second before he set his foot against the trunk.
‘No,’ she whispered, alarmed. ‘Do not even think of it.’
The earl began to climb.
‘You leave me no other choice. ’
‘Arden!’ she cried. She did not want him near, but neither was it as though she wished him to lose his life climbing a tree.
‘Speak more softly, unless you want Statony to come with a pistol.’
‘If my brother rises and fetches a pistol, I will not intervene.’
‘I shall bear it in mind.’
Eveline watched, between horrified and fascinated, as Nathaniel Greystoke, Earl of Arden, the most upright man in England when it suited him, climbed a tree in the middle of the night to reach her bedchamber.
He did it with more skill than she would have wished, though a branch creaked under his weight and made Eveline’s heart stop for one long breath.
‘Careful!’ she shrieked, full of terror.
‘I am all right,’ he reassured her.
When he reached the sill, she opened the window wider only because the alternative was to see him break his neck against Alice’s flower beds, and she was not in the humor to explain how that had happened.
‘And you dare say that I am a disaster, Arden?’ she murmured as he came in.
The earl landed inside the room with a great deal of elegance. He dropped to the floor and rose at once.
‘An absolute lack of decorum,’ he agreed.
‘You are mad.’
‘A madness, yes, and I begin to suspect that you are the one who infects me with it.’
Eveline closed the window at once and turned to him with all the dignity she could muster while dressed in only a dressing gown over her nightdress and with her hair loose.
Arden did not smile.
That unsettled her more than any arrogance.
The room fell silent. Only a candle burned beside the dressing table, enough to light the still slightly visible blow on his jaw and the tension that hardened his face. He did not seem furious this time. He looked tired, and perhaps for that reason he was more dangerous to her heart.
‘You should not be here,’ she said.
‘You left me no other choice,’ he repeated.
‘I had heard you say that already when you set your first foot on the tree. Do you not realize what will happen if someone discovers you in my bedchamber? You are in my bedchamber, Arden!’ she exclaimed when she realized what was truly happening.
‘If anyone catches me here, the only thing that will happen is that we shall marry more quickly. I am almost tempted to open the door and shout for Statony to come and surprise us.’
‘Are we going to argue about the same thing again?’
Eveline hugged herself, not because she was cold, though she wore very little. Arden followed the gesture with his gaze and then looked away, though that effort at decency hurt him more than if he had looked at her without modesty.
‘No arguing,’ he admitted. ‘I have come to apologies,’ he assured her.
She did not expect that.
‘For the tree or for the announcement?’
‘For the kiss in Lady Brackenbury’s garden.’
Eveline felt again the pressure of his lips, the heat of his hands, the fear that had compelled her to flee… She lowered her gaze before he could read her eyes.
‘It is of no importance,’ she said in a small voice.
‘Do not lie.’
‘Then do not compel me to speak of something I would rather forget,’ she went on saying with little vehemence.
‘I frightened you.’
Arden’s voice was low, broken by guilt. She noticed it and raised her eyes.
‘You did not frighten me.’
‘I know I did. ’
‘Why do you think you frightened me?’
‘I kissed you without thinking, and although we had already shared a rather… astonishing kiss,’ he acknowledged when he found the word, ‘the last one I gave you was more ardent, charged with more desire than I had any right to show you. You are innocent, and I…’ He cleared his throat. ‘I was not careful with you.’
The confession pierced her in an unexpected way. There was no reproach in him, no justification, but there was guilt, a sincere fear of having hurt her.
Eveline breathed slowly.
‘It was not your desire that frightened me.’
Arden frowned.
‘Then what was it? Because you ran off, and I saw the horror on your face before you took flight. Is it because you are the one who hates me?’ he asked, realizing he had not foreseen that possibility.