Chapter 11 #2
The air stopped in Eveline’s lungs. She ought to reproach him for the insolence of the assertion. Instead, she smiled.
She gave him a slow, dangerous smile, born of a pride that had at last found somewhere to rest.
‘My favorite sweets are—’
‘Lemon drops,’ he finished for her.
‘And my flowers…’ she began to say.
‘Your favorite flowers, Eveline, are violets.’
She stood looking at him in great surprise.
Arden was not smiling. He seemed almost furious with himself for knowing it, for having known it for years.
Eveline felt something warm stir in her chest.
‘Very well,’ she whispered. ‘You are beginning to seem a real suitor.’
‘Do not provoke me.’
‘Provoke you? On the contrary, I am guiding you. You need it rather badly.’
The muscle in Arden’s jaw tensed.
‘I have a special license and a vicar in the drawing room. Yesterday I possessed you; I do not need guidance, I need you to come to your senses.’
‘And, even so, you do not have a bride willing to marry you.’
He looked at her in a way that would have been scandalous had it not been shielded by an expression of absolute seriousness.
‘Yet.’
Eveline ignored the shiver that word provoked in her and continued with a calm she did not feel:
‘And as an engagement ring, for when you ask me to marry you after a lovely declaration that will make me sigh, I shall want a single colored diamond—’
‘A blue diamond,’ he said before she finished, ‘because it is your favorite color.’
Eveline’s smile widened and turned frank.
She ought not to grant him that victory. Yet there was Nathaniel, remembering her sweets, her flowers, and her favorite color. She refused to hope yet.
‘Very well, my lord,’ she said. ‘Go on like this and perhaps I shall soon marry you.’
He inclined his head towards her, a little more.
‘You will marry me.’
‘Not if you order it of me again instead of asking it. Have you ever gone down on your knees?’ she asked, curious.
‘You expect me to kneel to ask you to marry me?’ he questioned, astonished.
‘And to recite some lovely words to me. Do not forget it, Lord Arden.’
‘My God… This cannot be true. ’
‘Oh, it is indeed.’
‘Why do you do this?’
‘Why should a woman not demand that her suitor prove how much he wishes to marry her, Lord Arden?’
‘Last night you made it very clear that you want me in your bed,’ he hissed. ‘Have you forgotten it so soon?’
‘Do you so soon want to make me angry so that I never marry you?’ she counterattacked without any formality.
‘Damn it,’ he muttered under his breath.
There was a tense silence.
‘Well? What will you do, Nathaniel?’
‘I will do as you say, but you will accept. Not a single refusal more.’
‘Then you had best do it well. What do I say, well? You must be an excellent suitor who leaves me enchanted,’ she recommended.
‘If there were no audience, I assure you I would do a great deal more than leave you enchanted right now. You would beg me to put an end to your agony.’
‘True. That reminds me that I do not want displays of desire or passion; I want something deeper when you declare your unconditional love to me, my lord,’ she set forth, recovering her formal address.
‘For the love of God!’ he lamented in great anger. That, everyone did hear.
Alice cleared her throat delicately from the sofa.
‘Lord Arden, perhaps you ought to consider that the courtship has begun and withdraw with dignity before losing the small advance you have just achieved. Statony is turning a furious shade of red, and the vicar accompanying us is also censuring your attitude.’
Oliver looked at his wife.
‘It is true I do not like that he is speaking with my sister unsupervised, but a small advance, Duchess? Arden came with a vicar and is leaving with a shopping list. It is not that I defend him; nevertheless, you women tend to complicate everything a great deal.’
‘Do you want your sister to marry?’
‘Of course I do,’ the duke reasoned.
‘And to do it with the right man?’
‘I would like that very much, yes. ’
‘Then, my duke, let Arden court her as he should have done from the start. Why should a man have it easy merely for having kissed a lady?’
‘True, true…’ the duke began to consider. ‘You are right; Arden must suffer and earn Eveline’s hand. Yes, sweating a little while he tries to soften her will do him no harm. ’
‘And you are my friend, Statony?’ the one so addressed sprang up.
‘If I had to fight for my lady, you will fight for yours too.’
The Reverend Elwick, who had remained in an increasingly tense silence, cleared his throat.
‘I understand, then, that my services will not be required this morning.’
Arden did not take his gaze from Eveline.
‘Not yet, but very soon.’
Oliver heard him and, against all expectation, nearly smiled.
‘Very well,’ the clergyman murmured.
Eveline drew away from the earl, approached—closely followed by Nathaniel—the place where the rest of the group waited patiently, and placed herself before the reverend to tell him:
‘I am sorry they have made you come in vain.’
‘Do not worry, my lady. I have officiated weddings with worse courtships than this.’ Arden looked at him with irritation, and the reverend corrected himself at once: ‘Though few with so much… determination.’
Alice rose and approached Eveline, pretending she was not enjoying herself.
‘Then it is decided. Three days of courtship.’
‘Three days,’ Arden considered as though he had just agreed to spend three days in hell.
‘Sweets, flowers, conversation, and some display of humility if heaven decides to work a miracle,’ added Alice.
‘Do not abuse your position, Duchess.’
‘My position is to abuse it a little. Ask my husband.’
Oliver crossed his arms.
‘I can confirm it.’
Eveline watched Arden closely. He was looking at her in the same way.
The duke cleared his throat to draw the two of them out of that reverie, or whatever it was.
Then Arden made his future countess a formal bow.
‘Lady Eveline.’
She answered with another inclination, while looking him in the eyes.
‘Lord Arden.’
He held her gaze a second longer than necessary.
‘I shall return soon, perhaps this very afternoon.’
‘Bring lemon drops when you do. If I do not receive you, leave the sweets,’ she recommended.
‘My undoing and my ruin. That is what you are,’ he repeated.
Eveline clicked her tongue.
‘A pity. Your courtship begins very badly. Is this how one captivates a lady? Hmm… I have decided you need not visit me this afternoon; you may send me whatever presents you see fit and try to see me tomorrow. ’
‘You are playing with fire, woman,’ he told her tensely.
‘Enough!’ Alice sprang up, while the duke could not believe what he was seeing and hearing.
Arden withdrew before he could get into more trouble. The Reverend Elwick accompanied him to the door with the same solemnity with which a general would escort a defeated ally, and when the two of them left the room, it seemed to recover the air it had been holding in.
Oliver was the first to speak:
‘I do not know whether I have witnessed a matrimonial negotiation or the start of a war.’
Alice smiled.
‘In this family, my love, it seems we tend to mix the two.’
Eveline looked towards the door through which Arden had just disappeared.
Three days.
Violets.
Lemon drops.
A blue diamond.
And, perhaps, if Nathaniel Greystoke learned to ask for what until then he had only known how to demand, a declaration she could believe.
‘Good,’ the young woman murmured.
Alice looked at her sidelong.
‘Good?’
Eveline raised her chin, though her heart beat too hard for the gesture to prove entirely convincing.
‘Let us see whether Lord Arden knows how to captivate a lady.’
Oliver let out a somber sound.
‘For his own sake, he had best learn quickly. And you had best show yourself a little more humble. ’
‘Humble?’ Eveline believed she had acted rightly.
‘You are in love with him, my dear Eveline,’ the duchess intervened. ‘We have been witnesses to it. Have you not thought that, if you press him too hard, you could lose him?’
And Eveline, though she did not intend to admit it aloud, began to fear that this possibility might come to pass.
And what if Nathaniel decided she was not worth fighting for? Because, oh, yes, she was irresistibly in love with him.