Chapter 13
A Couple of Substantial Clarifications
Arden’s carriage set off with a brusque jolt.
Eveline did not complain. She carried the letters under the cloak, pressed against her chest, and still felt the shame of her own youthful recklessness. Tentwall no longer had anything with which to threaten her. Yet the victory did not taste of glory.
Arden sat beside her, rigid, his jaw tense and his gaze fixed on the window. The light of the streetlamps came in at intervals, cutting out his profile with glints of gold. He looked fierce and intimidating.
Furious, rather.
‘Why did you not tell me about the duel?’ Eveline asked at last.
‘Why did you not tell me that your former love was blackmailing you?’ Arden did not look at her.
‘He is not my former love, only a mistake of the past.’ She waited to see whether he would say anything more. After what seemed an eternity, she understood that the earl was not going to add anything, so she asked him: ‘Are you ever going to speak to me?’
‘I have not stopped speaking to you.’
‘You know what I mean. ’
‘What do you want to know, Eveline?’
‘About the duel.’ In her mind she recalled that Lady Ashbury had spoken to her of it without giving her all the details, and she was sure the dowager countess knew them. Why would Margot hide it from her? Not without good reason, surely.
He sighed.
‘It was not a matter you ought to know of.’
Eveline let out a laugh without humor.
‘It was my honor, Nathaniel. I suppose it had something to do with me. To learn of it so many years later has not been agreeable to me.’
He turned his face towards her then. In his eyes still burned the violence he had not finished discharging on Tentwall.
‘That is precisely why you were not to know it.’
‘What illogical reasoning.’
‘It was nothing significant. It happened and that is all.’
‘You risked your life for me and it was nothing significant?’
‘I was never in danger. He is nothing more than a pretty smile. Do not give it more importance than it has.’
‘Do you not realize what it means to me that you did such a thing, Nathaniel?’ She could not believe he did not understand her.
‘I called him to order because he had behaved like a scoundrel. There is no poetry in that.’
‘Does Statony know?’
‘That you have decided to go out alone at night to negotiate with blackmailers? I think not. ’
‘No, my brother does not know,’ she answered for herself. ‘Neither about your duel nor that I went out alone. If Statony had known what you did to Tentwall, he would have watched us more closely. ’
‘Why? He knows I am no scoundrel… At least he knew it until I kissed you the first time,’ he amended.
‘Will you not acknowledge it even so, Nathaniel? Because I assure you that if Statony knew what you did, he would have found out your secret and rewarded us with greater vigilance,’ she insisted again.
‘Your brother found out what you call my secret the day he punched me after I had kissed you,’ he acknowledged grudgingly.
‘You will not confess it… I see…’
‘When we marry, you will not do any recklessness of this kind again,’ he changed the course of the conversation.
‘When we marry?’
‘And that will be tomorrow morning. You will have to content yourself with half an afternoon of courtship, Eveline. ’
‘No.’
Arden let out a very colorful curse.
‘You must be joking.’
‘I am not.’
‘Eveline, you have just walked into Tentwall’s house in the dead of night.
Alone. That man was blackmailing you with compromising letters.
We are no longer talking about a lovely courtship with violets and lemon drops.
Nor even about our having made love last night.
We have to marry because the one who cannot leave you unwatched is me.
And I very much doubt Statony will permit me to enjoy his hospitality knowing what he already knows about me. ’
‘And what does he know about you, Nathaniel?’ she pressed him.
‘Soon he will know that I am going to marry you tomorrow morning. First thing. ’
‘For the love of God. You are a stubborn man. ’
‘I am stubborn, woman? You are the one who refuses to marry me!’ he exploded.
‘In truth, you have never asked me,’ she said in a murmur.
‘A special license, a vicar, and shattered patience. What more did you want of me?’
‘That was not a request. It was a disguised order.’
Arden looked at her in disbelief. At another moment, perhaps she would have enjoyed the effect. At that instant, her heart hurt too much to savor the victory.
‘We have to marry,’ he insisted.
‘I do not want to marry out of honor.’
‘Honor matters.’
‘Yes. But it is not enough. I want a marriage like Oliver and Alice’s.’
‘Your brother nearly needed a conspiracy to get a wife.’
‘And even so he loves her.’
Arden fell silent.
Eveline felt that absence of an answer open a breach between them again. He would never offer her the words she needed.
‘The wedding will be at noon at the latest,’ the earl said after a few minutes.
‘I will not again take into consideration a man who only desires me,’ she whispered. ‘I was once on the verge of making that mistake, and I did not. This time is no different from that one.’
Arden’s reaction was immediate.
‘Do not compare me with Tentwall.’
‘I am not doing so.’
‘Yes. You are.’
‘I tell you that desire is not enough for me.’
‘I made love to you,’ he murmured in a low voice.
Eveline felt the blush rise to her face, but she did not look away.
‘Simple lust.’
‘No.’
‘Nathaniel…’ She was in despair because she did not know how to break his armor for good.
‘No.’ He leaned towards her, and the space between them disappeared. ‘I do not bed innocent women because I desire them. Nor have I restrained myself for more than four confounded years so as not to hurt a woman merely because I desired her. If I did not love you, I would never have touched you.’
Eveline stopped breathing. The rattle of the wheels went on filling the silence, but inside the carriage time had stopped.
‘You love me?’ Although she had heard him clearly, she needed a fresh confirmation in case it had been a dream.
Arden looked at her as though the question were absurd. He drew back a little from her.
‘Of course I love you. For what other reason do you think I have spent years saving you from yourself, frightening off whelps, watching over entire drawing rooms, and putting up with your looking at me as though I were a plague sent by your brother?’
Eveline was left with her mouth open.
She had imagined many declarations. Some clumsy, others more beautiful. None had included the word whelps with such conviction. Yet he was Nathaniel. Hers even in his desperation, and incapable of adorning the sentiment without being brusque.
‘It could have been out of loyalty to Oliver,’ she said, though her voice trembled.
‘Loyalty to Statony does not explain what I feel when another man looks at you.’
‘Jealousy…’ she dared to affirm.
‘Jealousy is the least grave part.’
Eveline rested her back against the seat. She did not know whether to laugh, cry, or strike him for having taken so long to be honest.
‘Then why have you been hiding it from me?’
Arden concentrated on the landscape outside.
It was the first time, in all that night, that he seemed truly vulnerable.
‘Because my father loved my mother with all that he was. And she did not love him. She accepted him, married him, but went off with another man and left my father turned into a ghost. I saw it. I lived in that house after her flight. I heard the silences. I can still hear them when I am there. I learned too soon that to love a woman who does not love you can mean destruction.’ Eveline did not know what to say.
The revelation was more brutal than she had expected.
Arden went on speaking with difficulty, but now without stopping: ‘When you made your début, I saw you, despite your being Statony’s sister.
A girl too young, full of life and very dangerous to my peace.
I danced with you because he asked me to.
That was the excuse. The truth is that I wanted to with all my might.
I wanted to touch you, to hold you in my arms a single time. ’
A knot formed in Eveline’s throat.
‘Oh, God… ’
‘I know. You saw me as your brother’s best friend, a troublesome man who appeared to keep you from even breathing.’
‘Because that is what you seemed.’
‘I tried very hard for it to be so.’
‘You did it marvelously. So much so that I came to think you hated me,’ she reminded him.
‘I tried to forget you. I tried to turn you into a duty, a kind of responsibility. Then Tentwall came along and I wanted to kill him for having hurt you. I did not understand that fool, but I am glad he did not realize how lucky he was, because he did manage to make you see him while you did not even look at me. Then it was enough for me to hear half of what had happened at Vauxhall to know that man must receive a lesson. I made him challenge me to a duel because I could not allow him to keep parading about London with that idiotic face. I have heard he is decent with pistols, but I wanted swords to leave him well marked. And, in case you do not know, the one who challenges cannot choose the weapons. If he believed he could play with your heart, stain your reputation, and remain intact…’ He did not finish the sentence, because there was no need.
‘We have wasted precious time…’ she murmured.
‘What?’
‘What is it you do not understand?’
‘Why have we wasted time?’
‘Oh, Nathaniel. I never thought of you as anything more than my brother’s best friend because you never allowed me to. It cost you very little to make me fall madly in love with you. ’
‘You love me?’ he asked with a frown.
‘For the love of God! Do you know how many dandies I refused my kisses when I made my début? Tentwall included, and that when I believed myself in love with him,’ she clarified.
‘I am not as foolish as you think. Only you have managed to make me give in. So we have wasted some precious years entirely through your fault. What excuse do you have?’
‘I did not want to go through my father’s hell. I convinced myself that if you never knew what I felt, you could not reject me. ’
‘Coward…’ she accused him without mercy.
‘How was I to know that you could come to love me if you always behaved towards me like a formidable harpy?’
‘And you like a jailer who meant to burn me at the stake!’ she defended herself.
A brief laugh escaped Eveline, broken by emotion. Arden looked at her with interest.
‘What is that laugh for?’
‘Because we have been so busy fighting that we had not realized how much we love each other, Nathaniel. And do you know what the worst of it all is?’
‘What?’
‘I would have spared myself a great deal of trouble. I would never have noticed Tentwall. Who would want a fool with a title when she could have a real man?’
The silence filled with warmth and tenderness.
Arden rested a hand on the seat, near hers.
‘Repeat that.’
‘No.’
‘Eveline,’ he chided her with the use of her name.
‘Tell me that you love me, and I will reconsider. ’
‘Do you need to hear it again?’
‘I should like to hear it every day from now until the end of my days, but I know you are a man who finds it hard to admit his feelings, so I shall content myself with your showing it to me every day. ’
‘It is no small demand, my lady,’ he joked with her. ‘What shall I receive in exchange?’
‘How does the same strike you? I love you,’ said Eveline.
‘I do not know since when. Perhaps since before I was willing to admit it. Perhaps since I stopped believing you were only my jailer and began to discover that you were always there. Ill-humored, insufferable, rigid as a tombstone, but always at my side.’
‘A lovely declaration,’ he complained.
‘Do not interrupt me or I shall make it worse.’
‘Forgive me, I beg you,’ he said ironically.
‘I love you because now I understand that you truly saw me. You knew about the violets, the lemon drops, and my favorite color. And I sense you know many more things about me than you will confess. I did not want to tell you about the business of the blackmail with the letters because I feared losing you if you found out that I was once foolish enough to declare in writing feelings that I now understand had nothing to do with love. I think that in my eagerness to seek Statony’s attention I focused on the most scoundrelly man I could find. ’
Arden laced his hand with hers.
‘I love you with all my heart, and I need you to love me without rest, Eveline.’
‘I can offer you what you ask. I want to give you what you need.’
‘Very well. Will you marry me now that you have made me bare my soul before you?’
‘Yes. I will marry you tomorrow.’
‘Then I shall reward your surrender with another.’ The earl managed to go down on his knees inside the carriage without releasing her hand.
‘Lady Eveline Hartwell, I have spent years loving you in silence, and you would make me the happiest man in the world if you agreed to marry me. Will you be my countess?’
Eveline placed her free hand on his cheek.
‘Yes, of course I will. I will be your wife.’
Arden closed his eyes.
‘Thank God.’
‘But I want my blue ring.’
He opened his eyes, released her hand, sat down beside her, and proceeded to rummage inside his coat.
‘One like this?’ He showed her the jewel.
‘Yes. Now I have indeed had a perfect declaration. ’
Arden placed the ring on her finger, and she raised her hand to look at it better.
‘It is beautiful.’
‘I love you, Eveline, and that ring will remind you of it every day, even though it costs me to tell you so.’
‘And I love you.’
He kissed her then.
It was a kiss full of happiness. A promise without witnesses of the closing of a wound and the beginning of a promising life.
‘Nathaniel?’
‘Yes?’
‘Why are we taking so long to reach my brother’s house?’
‘Because I told the coachman to drive in circles until I indicated that he was to go to Statony’s house. ’
‘Are you going to make love to me now?’
‘Only if you want it. ’
‘I want it. I want it very much. ’
‘Then I will give you what you ask, my brazen little minx. ’
Nathaniel drew the little curtains of the windows, sat her on his lap, and the dance of passion began to play.
The carriage went on through London while a couple sealed an intimate pact in the best way possible.
What more could one ask?