Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Oh, why did it have to be a toad? Why?
Evelyn knew she ought to step away from the situation and that the entirety of Hyde Park must be staring in astonishment, but the fear was so all-consuming that she could not even open her eyes.
Her skin crawled as if the toad were slinking across it, prickly chills racing down the back of her neck, her stomach roiling at the thought of that slimy creature on her.
Holding onto Hugo was the only thing preventing her from making an even bigger scene, the solidity of his chest and the muscle of his arms providing an anchor for her sanity.
He smelled rather good, too, of fresh linens that had just come in from the line and something deeper, richer. Bergamot, perhaps, or cedar.
I am too close, if I can smell his perfume. Oh goodness, what will people say? Come on, Evie, step away!
It was Hugo who released her, with surprising care. His arm, which had, for a moment, encircled her waist, slowly relinquished his hold. And his hands took hold of hers, gently prizing them away from his upper arms, until it looked as if he were physically keeping her at a distance.
“What was all that about?” he asked quietly.
Blinking into sunlight that now seemed too bright, Evelyn swallowed thickly. “I… cannot stand toads.”
“I do not think many people are fond of them, Lady Evelyn, but that was not mere dislike,” he said, his blue eyes searching her face. “You were terrified.”
She drew in a shaky breath. “I have… bad memories of them.”
“How so?”
She did not want to explain to him, but after what he had just seen, she felt she probably owed him some enlightenment. If nothing else, she did not want him to think that she was a madwoman and that Selina might be mad by association.
“I have been… um… afraid of them since I was a child,” she said shakily, her nerves not yet settled, her eyes darting this way and that, seeing fresh toads in every movement of the grass though there were none there.
“My brothers,” she gasped, continuing. “They… Well, one of them… he… he played a rather cruel trick upon me when I was young. A trick he… had learned at Eton. He f-filled my… bed with them and told me that he had left a… gift in my chambers.”
Just remembering brought a new flood of panic to her veins, a shudder running through her, her mind yearning for a hot bath so she might wash away the unpleasant feeling of slimy things on her skin.
“I had nightmares for… months, years,” she added breathlessly.
“Thinking they were in my… bed still, under my pillow, straining to get out. My brothers did not care. Instead, they brought more toads when I least expected it… to try and get me to… recover from my fear. So… I am not at all fond of toads, Your Grace.”
She braced for the jibes and the mockery, expecting Hugo to respond in the same way that her brothers had when they heard of her nightmares.
Telling her to stop being such a coward, telling her that she was overreacting, telling her that it was just a harmless trick, telling her that there were far worse tricks that could have been played upon her.
Mostly, Matthew was the one leading the ridicule, but even Luke had joined in after a while, letting her know that her nightmares were unseemly and that she ought to ‘get over this madness'.
Apparently, back then, her nightly screams had kept everyone awake, but no amount of explanation that she could not help what dreams came when she closed her eyes made the slightest bit of difference or gained her any sympathy at all.
So it was a shock when she heard softness in Hugo’s voice.
“Your brothers did that to you? They scared you that much?”
She shyly raised her gaze to him. “Yes. And as I said, they… thought they could cure me by bringing more toads. I would always be… waiting for the next one. There was a time when I could not enter a room that they were in without… flinching.” She forced her mouth into a smile.
“They have stopped now, though. The… bringing of the toads. The nightmares too, to a degree.”
Now and then, she would have a bad dream, but they were fewer and further between. They rarely bothered her while she was in London, but when they returned to the countryside, there were always a few weeks when the nightmares came back in force.
“That is despicable,” Hugo said firmly, his lip curled. “I would never do anything to scare my younger sister. We jest, but a jest should make all parties laugh; it should not leave anyone suffering harm. Older brothers are supposed to protect.”
Evelyn cleared her throat. “My oldest brother would… possibly protect me if I were in danger. I am not certain that my other brother meant any harm, but… He has often said that if I were a man, I would have understood the joke.”
“But you are not a man,” Hugo replied, his eyes intense, her heart suddenly beating rather fast. “And as a man myself, I do not see the amusement in the joke. You were so scared, Lady Evelyn. I have never seen anyone so afraid before.”
A shadow seemed to fall across his expression as he looked at her, his features tensed, his blue eyes glinting with ice.
It was as if there was more that he wished to say, or something that he wished to impart, but he did not continue.
He just looked at her with that fierce intensity, until she had no choice but to glance away or risk him seeing the blush that had undoubtedly pinkened her cheeks.
“I apologize, Your Grace,” she mumbled, head down, moving quickly in the direction of Selina.
Why did you run off like that? she wanted to scold her friend, but found she could muster a single word, her throat tight with a feeling she could not understand.
Hugo watched Evelyn go, his entire being ablaze with an anger he had not felt in many years.
It was the fury of hearing his father speak cruelly to Octavia, the memory of putting himself between his father and Octavia, regardless of what it cost him, and the blind rage that there were brothers out there who thought nothing of being so unkind to their sisters.
Yet, it was also the vision in his mind of Evelyn’s overwhelming terror, how she had suddenly grabbed for him, as if he was the one person who could help her.
It was a warm day, but he doubted that had very much to do with the heat that prickled through his palms, where he had touched her. His arm, too, seemed to itch with the echo of holding her to him, his senses still filled with the lavender and vetiver scent of her.
There is fire in her, but it has clearly been suppressed for a long, long time…
He knew the feeling well. Watching Evelyn join with her friend, linking arms, he could not stem the sensation that he had just encountered some manner of kindred spirit. Someone he understood as well as he understood himself.
Drawing in an unsteady breath, feeling entirely unmoored, he adjusted he sleeves and lapels that Evelyn’s panic had wrenched askew. Then, putting on a smile and taking a quick look around to see if anyone had noticed the scene, he headed in the direction of Lady Evelyn and her friend.
“I did not have the faintest notion that you were not following,” Selina said immediately, an affectation in her voice.
Hugo dipped his head. “There was a wasp.”
“A wasp?” Selina pulled a face. “Then, it is fortunate that I did go on ahead. Were you stung?”
She glanced at Evelyn for an answer, the latter rather pale and shaken still, either unable or unwilling to look Hugo in the eyes.
“I was not,” Evelyn said thickly. “Fortunately, His Grace was kind enough to… um… dissuade the creature from harming anyone.”
Hugo’s brow furrowed. Did Selina not know about her friend’s intense aversion to toads? It seemed unlikely that friends would not discuss such things. Yet, Evelyn made no attempt to correct the story that Hugo had told.
“Shall we head toward the entrance?” Evelyn added, her voice a note too bright. “I have just remembered that I am supposed to be… elsewhere. Of course, the two of you should continue to enjoy your promenade, but I must go.”
Selina raised an eyebrow. “Well, I am not staying if you are leaving.”
Hugo heard the lie in the hesitation of Evelyn’s words and the flicker of her gaze, but he too had lost interest in the afternoon’s excursion.
Not least because he doubted he would be able to pay much attention to Selina when his head was filled with Evelyn and her wrenching panic, and how she had felt in his arms, her hands on his lapels, needing him in a way that made him feel so very protective.
“We can discuss the nature of our third outing on the way to the carriages,” Hugo said firmly, wishing Evelyn would just look at him once more, so he could know for certain that she was all right.
But her head seem fixed in a downturned position, her chin almost to her chest, her hands clasped as if in prayer, refusing to acknowledge him at all.
Where before that had angered him, now it perplexed him, his fingertips itching to settle beneath her chin so he might tilt her head up to look at him.
Swallowing uncomfortably, he folded his arms behind his back so that he would not be able to give into such a temptation.
“This way, ladies,” he said, and walked on ahead of them, where he might be alone with his confusing thoughts.