Chapter 11
A Half Truce
The next morning began with a maid dropping a tray.
It was not in Eveline’s room, though the clatter reached her with enough clarity to startle her from the chair where she had sat for half an hour without deciding whether she ought to dress, feign a fever, or request passage to some place without earls, special licenses, or nocturnal memories capable of unsettling a lady’s breathing in broad daylight.
When her maid came in afterward, her face announced trouble.
‘My lady,’ she said, after making a curtsy, ‘your brother requests your presence in the blue drawing room.’
Eveline went very still before the dressing table.
‘My brother?’
‘Yes, my lady.’
‘Did he say why?’ She did not want to panic; it was impossible that Statony could know she was no longer a virgin.
The maid swallowed with great difficulty.
‘Lord Arden has arrived.’
Of course. Eveline closed her eyes. She remembered that she had sworn not to make the mistake of confusing desire with love.
She opened her eyes and sighed.
‘Go and tell my brother I shall come down in a few minutes, and then help me dress, please.’
‘Yes, my lady.’
‘Is Alice with him?’
‘Her Grace awaits you as well, yes.’
Eveline nodded, though her heart began to beat with a suspicion she did not like. Oliver, Alice, and Arden in the blue drawing room. A formal request? Perhaps. But what of the one he ought to make to her in private?
She chose a gown of lavender muslin, simple and innocent enough to feign normalcy after the previous night. The maid returned and helped her pin up her hair simply. There was no time for more. When she was ready she went down the stairs with her chin high, resolved not to start trembling.
The blue drawing room was occupied by four people, and that made her frown.
Oliver stood by the hearth, his arms crossed. Alice sat on the sofa, apparently calm, though Eveline already knew well enough the tension of her fingers over her skirt to know it was not so. A few steps from the window waited a clergyman of middle age, thin and correct.
And Arden was there beside him. Dressed in dark.
Handsome as sin.
Confound him.
Nothing in his face revealed that a few hours earlier he had left her bedchamber.
The young woman forced herself to focus on her brother.
‘Oliver.’
‘Eveline.’
Statony’s tone was so grave that the clergyman seemed to shrink a little.
‘Alice,’ she greeted afterward.
The duchess gave her a small smile, laden with warnings and compassion.
‘Good morning, my dear.’
Lastly, Eveline looked at him.
‘My lord.’
He inclined his head.
‘My lady.’
The formality was necessary. They both knew it. And, for some entirely unjust reason, it hurt. They stood looking into each other’s eyes fixedly. He forgot there was anyone else in the room, and so did she.
Oliver cleared his throat.
‘Arden has come accompanied by the Reverend Elwick.’
The clergyman made a bow.
‘My lady.’
Eveline answered with another slight inclination and then looked again at her brother.
‘I see.’
‘And he brings with him a special license,’ added Oliver, who looked rather uncomfortable.
Alice groaned. That boded nothing good. Eveline refrained from going to kick her foolish earl.
Instead, Arden took a step towards her to say:
‘We shall marry this very morning.’
The silence that followed the declaration… what declaration? That was a comital decree. Well then, the silence that followed the sentence was so vast that even the clock on the mantel seemed to mark the hours with less enthusiasm than usual.
Eveline tensed.
Nothing of asking her to marry him. No flowers, no kneeling, no questions… Only his will.
And a special license offered as a solution to the scandal, of course.
Arden meant to marry her only because decency demanded it. She wanted to burst into tears. To scream, too. And not in that precise order.
‘No,’ she said.
The Reverend Elwick blinked a couple of times.
Oliver stopped breathing for a second, but had the good sense not to speak. Alice did the same as he.
Arden suddenly drew himself up. The refusal struck him as though he had taken a blow. He turned to see whether Statony had punched him again. No. That was not it. Then he focused on his lady.
‘What did you say?’
‘I said no. I shall not marry today.’
Arden took another step towards her.
‘We have to marry.’
The phrase came out low and tense. Eveline knew what he was saying but could not pronounce aloud.
She saw it in the hardness of his shoulders, in the way his eyes descended for an instant towards her mouth before fixing again on her gaze.
They had to marry because they had been discovered at Hounslow Park and because, during the previous night, he had crossed a boundary no honorable gentleman would ignore.
‘Thank you, but no,’ she repeated.
Arden clenched his jaw.
‘Eveline.’ He used her name as a warning.
‘Do not use that tone with me, my lord.’
‘What tone?’
‘That of a man convinced that my consent is a vexation preceding the inevitable.’
Oliver brought a hand to the bridge of his nose.
‘Eveline, Arden had assured us that the two of you had made peace.’
‘Were we at war, my lord?’ she asked the earl.
‘We were not, but it seems that has just changed.’
‘Eveline, I think that—’ Statony began to say.
‘No, Oliver,’ she cut him off. ‘Not this time. This is my affair and mine alone. And I shall manage it as I know I must.’
The duke studied her more closely. Eveline did not take her eyes off Arden.
The young woman knew that if she looked at Alice, she might find understanding, and if she looked at Oliver, she would probably find protection.
At that moment, she wanted neither of those things; she needed Nathaniel Greystoke to understand that it was not enough to present himself at her house accompanied by a vicar in order to compel her.
Oh, yes. She was no fool, so she knew they had to marry, but she would do it on her own terms, and she would not be content with less than she deserved. And she deserved a proposal she would never forget.
‘What is it that you want, my lady?’ the earl asked her then, with all the formality in the world. He did not want to lose his temper and, in all honesty, he was very close to doing so.
‘If you wish to marry me,’ she said, ‘you will have to make me want to marry you as well.’
Arden was left with his mouth open.
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means exactly what you have heard.’
‘But I know well that you want to marry me,’ he noted through clenched teeth.
The assertion came out too quick and wounded. Eveline felt the heat rise to her face. He was using the night between them as an argument he had almost spoken aloud.
‘What does that mean?’ Statony intervened with certain suspicions, though he could not imagine what they had shared.
‘My love,’ Alice took the word, ‘it will be best for us to do as the minister of God does and remain mere observers… for the moment,’ she recommended.
The duke agreed grudgingly.
‘If I wished to marry you, my lord,’ Eveline spoke, ‘I would have said yes. ’
‘And why do you not?’ the earl pressed her.
‘I simply do not feel inclined to accept you. ’
‘This is the height of nonsense!’ Arden sprang up, indignant. He had the urge to remind her of the way she had moaned while he possessed her. What did she mean, not inclined to accept him? She had certainly claimed him the night before…
The clergyman looked towards the door, and Alice decided to intervene gently:
‘I believe Eveline is suggesting a little… courtship?’
Arden turned his head towards his friend’s wife in disbelief.
‘Courtship?’
‘Yes,’ affirmed the duchess. ‘A courtship can help the two of you reach the altar with something more than obligation and wounded pride.’
‘We do not need a courtship,’ the earl snorted.
‘Oh, believe me, Lord Arden, every man needs to court his betrothed,’ Alice went on. ‘Some only discover it after having made things worse with admirable efficiency. I know a certain duke who could attest to my assertion.’
Oliver let out a low sound.
‘Alice, for the love of God…’
‘You are not in a position to protest, my love.’
The duke fell silent, partly because he was intelligent and because his wife was looking at him with that sweetness that usually foretold a marital defeat.
Alice addressed Nathaniel again:
‘If someone as busy as Statony found the time to court me, you can do it too.’
‘I do not think there is time for—’
‘Arden,’ Statony checked him, ‘I courted her for a little over three days. I think you have three days, man.’
The earl looked at the two of them as though they had just proposed that he dance naked in Grosvenor Square.
‘Three days,’ he conceded at last. ‘Not one more.’
Eveline raised her eyebrows.
‘Are you negotiating my matrimonial surrender aloud, my lord?’
‘I am accepting some absurd conditions.’
‘What a romantic gesture. My knees tremble so that I run the risk of fainting,’ she said ironically.
Arden focused all his attention again on his unruly betrothed.
‘Do not make me speak, my lady, or we both know what will happen next, with or without your approval.’ Indeed. That had been a threat. He was thinking of revealing what had happened in bed. And they would be married in the blink of an eye.
Eveline was not cowed despite his tone laden with rage.
‘You are not in a position to impose deadlines.’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘No.’
‘Eveline.’
Again, that tension she knew all too well. Oliver looked at his friend with a gesture of warning; Alice, by contrast, did not intervene. Perhaps because she understood that this argument, however uncomfortable, belonged to them.
Arden approached Eveline, took her hand, and led her to the other end of the room. No one said anything, nor did she object. The young woman imagined he was going to tell her something no one else ought to hear.
‘Do you understand that the longer you take to accept the marriage, the longer we shall take to make love again? Tonight you will not have me in your bed. I will not climb any confounded tree again.’