And before too much more time had passed, Deene intended to make Jonathan Dolan pay for every nasty, sly, vulgar lie ever to pass the man’s lips.
Jenny stared at the apple in her hand. “I am disloyal for saying so, but I am enjoying this respite without Mama and Papa. With just us and Aunt Gladys here, it’s peaceful.”
Eve paused halfway through paring the skin from another piece of fruit. “You aren’t disloyal, you’re honest. Mama is probably saying the very same thing to Papa about us as we speak.”
Louisa was demolishing her apple in audible bites. “Eve’s right, and this way, I get to spend another couple of weeks rusticating with my dear Joseph. Do we have enough for the last pie?”
Eve eyed the pile of peeled and sliced apples before her. She generally avoided association with apples, but the Windham daughters enjoyed a secret fondness for cooking, and her sisters’ choice today had been pies. “Do we really need seven pies?”
“Five will do if the bounty is limited to us and the senior house staff.” Jenny set her apple down. “Six allows us to spare one for Kesmore.”
“So our heathen offspring can smear it in one another’s hair.” Louisa got off her stool and started untying her apron. “Eve, why don’t you take the remaining slices down to the stables? Jenny can come with me to surrender the pie to the Vandal horde in my nursery.”
Which horde, Eve simply lacked the fortitude to deal with cheerfully today. “I’ll clean up here, in any case.”
They didn’t argue with her, which was a mercy. Kesmore had seen Eve’s face splotchy and pink. He’d all but galloped off to avoid the awkwardness of her loss of composure—or perhaps he’d meant to spare her feelings.
It hardly mattered. Since arriving to Morelands several days ago, Eve had slept a great deal, stared off into space almost as much, and taken a few long walks.
And when she walked, she remembered to be grateful for the ability, but she also found her peace punctuated by odd thoughts.
Canby had referred to her repeatedly as “Eve, the temptress.” At the time, she’d thought it made her sound grown-up, alluring, and mysterious. In hindsight, the implication that she was responsible for his behavior, that she’d caused him to violate every rule of decency was… infuriating.
Apples could be infuriating by association.
At services, Eve had volunteered to attend the children in the nursery, and this time—this time—she’d looked at all those boisterous, healthy children with their clean faces and broad smiles, and considered that her life would be devoid of the blessings of motherhood. For the rest of her life, while her sisters were raising up children, and her brothers were raising up children, and her cousins were raising up children, she would be… childless.
That was infuriating too.
And now, Louisa and Jenny would hop into the gig and tool over to Kesmore’s without a backward thought for their safety, their nerves, their ability to cope with a darting hare or approaching storm.
Eve loved her family, but still, there was much to be angry about.
She scooped up the apple slices that hadn’t gone into a pie and wrapped them in a cloth. The day was a pretty day. She was in good health and had the afternoon to herself—she’d try not to be angry about that too.
Meteor was in his paddock, one shared by an aging pony named Grendel. They paused in their grazing as Eve approached, but only Meteor sidled over to the fence.
“Hello, old friend.”
Between his cheekbones, at the throat latch where his neck and his head joined, Meteor had a sweet spot, a place he couldn’t reach himself that he loved to have scratched. Eve’s ritual with this horse started with attending to that spot for him, and Meteor’s ritual with her with allowing the familiarity.
“Have you ever been so angry you’re sick with it?”
The pony flicked an ear, but being a pony, did not abandon his grass merely to watch another horse being cosseted.
“Deene said, of course I’m angry. What does he know? Would you like an apple?”
The horse did not answer, except by ingesting the proffered slice and turning big, brown, beseeching eyes on Eve.
“You are such a gentleman, my friend.”
Deene had been a gentleman. Eve was going to have to thank him, and that would rankle, but not thanking him rankled more.
Everything rankled. “I can hardly think. I’m so overset these days. If I were a girl, I’d saddle up and go for a gallop, leave the grooms behind, and let the wind blow the cobwebs from my soul. Another slice? Grendel will soon come to investigate.”
Grendel did not investigate, exactly, but he turned his grazing in the direction of Eve’s tête-à-tête with Meteor.
“I keep recalling things, things that make no sense. We had an early spring that year, and then an onion snow, so as I lay there in the mud, I smelled both green grass and snow. Snow has no scent, but it did that day.”
She fed the stallion another slice. “I did not call for help because I was afraid Canby would find me.”
And oh, the shame of that, to lie in the cold mud not just helpless and hurting, but terrified—and afraid she’d wet herself from fear if nothing else. Grendel lifted his head as if considering the probability of cadging an apple slice and took a step closer to the stallion.
“All I could think was I would never be able to face my family, though if I hadn’t been in such a tearing hurry to get back to them, I might not have overfaced my mare on bad ground, and lamed us both for the duration. Thank God my brother Devlin found me first. I had been such a fool. I did not know the half of it then.”
Meteor had another sweet spot, just below his withers. As a girl, Eve had scratched that spot for him until her arm had ached. She pushed the cloth full of apples near the fence and climbed between the boards.
“I don’t have to marry. I know this.” When she applied her fingernails to the horse’s shaggy spring coat, a shower of coarse dark hairs cascaded to the ground. “But where would that leave me? Papa’s little charmer, the doting maiden aunt who isn’t a maiden.”
Who will never be a maiden again.
Who threw away her greatest treasure on a worthless, scheming, lying, manipulative, evil man.
The anger hit her then like the initial staggering gust of wind announcing a brutal tempest, had her leaning into Meteor’s neck just to stay on her feet. Yes, she was angry. She was infuriated, enraged, magnificently wroth over a past she could not change and a future with too few choices.
Deene had been right about that, but as Grendel sidled close enough to poke his nose under the fence and help himself to an apple, Eve identified the emotion fueling all her anger, and maybe some of her shame as well.
As the tears came down again, what Eve felt was bitter, heartrending sorrow.
“Where the hell have you been?”
Anthony stopped short at Deene’s tone, and from the surprise on his cousin’s face, Deene surmised nobody had warned Anthony that Deene was in residence at Denning Hall.
“Good morning to you, too, Cousin.” In a blink, Anthony’s features had composed themselves into a slight smile.
“I beg to differ.” Deene aimed a look at the footmen stationed at either end of the breakfast buffet, and they silently left the room. “I thought you were summoned here from Town, Anthony. I come down on your heels and find my cousin is nowhere to be found.”
“I’m to report all my comings and goings to you now?” His tone was mild as he helped himself to a full plate.
“Since you are my only adult family, my heir, and what keeps my senior stewards in line, yes, I think that would be both courteous and prudent. Tea?”