Louisa got up to brace her back against the mantel and cross her arms. “He’s also mostly to be found dozing among the ferns at the fashionable entertainments.”
Jenny set the list aside, her chin coming up. “He must work during daylight hours and has not the luxury of sleeping until noon every day; moreover, he’s a marvelous dancer.”
Eve resisted the urge to join in the teasing. Jenny showed her hand so rarely that Louisa was probably right in her surmise.
Louisa was right a maddening proportion of the time.
But drunks and painters?
Eve looked at the list again. “Perhaps we should ring for a fresh pot.”
Jenny looked relieved, Louisa determined, and though the list of requirements grew longer, the list of names did not.
“Are you suffering a bilious stomach, Deene, or have you taken to glowering the matchmakers into submission?”
Kesmore’s question caused Deene a start, for the man had given no warning of his presence.
“And when did you take to lurking among the ferns, Kesmore?”
“Perhaps I’m lurking among the shy, retiring bachelors. It isn’t like you to be demonstrably out of sorts, Deene, particularly not in company with the fair flowers of Polite Society.”
No, it was not, which sorry state of affairs Deene laid directly at Lady Eve Windham’s dainty feet. “Cleaveridge is all but drooling on his partner’s bosom.”
“What a lovely bosom it is, too. Moreland’s women are a pretty bunch.”
This casual observation from a man who appeared to have no interest whatsoever in bosoms pretty or otherwise—save for that of his countess—made Deene want to stomp across the dance floor and pluck Eve from Cleaveridge’s arms.
“She’s up to something.”
“The ladies usually are. We adore them for it, and in polite company refer to it as a mysterious feminine quality.”
Deene turned to study Kesmore amid the shadows under the ballroom’s minstrel’s gallery. “With the exception of your recently acquired countess, I’ve yet to see you adoring a human female since you mustered out, Kesmore. One hears rumors about you and your livestock, however.”
“My livestock are lining the Kesmore coffers sufficiently to launch my daughters in style when the time comes. You insult the beasts at your peril.”
Though Kesmore’s voice was mild, Deene had the sense the man was genuinely protective of his pigs. This ought to be a point of departure for much raillery between former officers who’d served together under Wellington, but it was instead an odd comfort.
A man could apparently do worse than be protective of the woman who’d rejected his very first marital proposal… though Deene doubted Kesmore was actually jealous of the boar hogs courting his breeding sows.
“Cleaveridge does have an unfortunate tendency to stare at the wrong parts of a lady’s person, doesn’t he?” Kesmore kept his voice down, though as Deene watched Eve’s progress through the concluding bars of the dance, he wanted to shout at Cleaveridge to turn loose of Lady Eve.
At her final curtsy, Cleaveridge bowed to precisely that angle most convenient for ogling and even sniffing at Eve’s breasts.
“Deene.” Kesmore’s hand on Deene’s arm prevented him from starting across the ballroom. “Enderbend is making a charge from the punch bowl.”
“All of his charges start and end at the punch bowl.”
“Perhaps Lady Eve is on a charity mission to dance with all the hopefuls who will never graduate to the status of eligibles.”
She was on a mission to part Deene from his few remaining wits, making a strategic retreat the only sane course. “I’m off to play a hand of cards. Care to join me?”
Kesmore gave him an unreadable look. He had Deene’s height, though Kesmore’s coloring was dark, his build heavier, and somewhere in the middle of Spain his features had lost the knack of smiling.
“Take this.” Kesmore shoved an empty glass against Deene’s middle and limped away. Deene could only watch in consternation as the crowd parted before Kesmore with the hasty manners shown a man condemned to limp for the rest of his life.
Consternation turned to outright surprise when Kesmore offered his arm to Lady Eve and left Enderbend looking like a besotted fool at the edge of the dance floor.
Lest Deene be caught wearing the same expression in public, he did withdraw to the card room.
Eve could not have been more surprised when her most recently acquired brother-in-law, Joseph, the Earl of Kesmore, informed her she’d agreed to take some air with him at the conclusion of the quadrille.
She should have refused, particularly with Mr. Enderbend looking so eager for his dance—and flushed, and red, and savoring quite noxiously of spirits. Eve caught a whiff of Enderbend’s breath and accepted Kesmore’s unexpected offer.
In addition to being Louisa’s spouse, Kesmore was a neighbor. In the settled countryside of Kent, this meant that even prior to his marriage he could be accounted a family friend. He rode to hounds with His Grace at the local meets. He attended the assemblies and balls. He made calls and returned them, particularly at the holidays.
Eve would not have said he was
“I am capable of dancing, you know.”
“I beg your lordship’s pardon?”
He glanced down at her, his expression amused without anything approaching a smile lightening his saturnine features. “If you’re making some sort of penance for yourself out of dancing with the dregs, Lady Eve, you must include me on your card. Waltzing with a cripple has to rank with partnering the sots and lechers among the company.”
He was gruff. Widowers, even widowers who did not limp, might be gruff, but this was… needling.
“If I refuse a gentleman a dance without cause, then I must sit out the rest of the evening, my lord. What purpose is there in attending such a gathering, if not to dance?”
Another glance, somewhat measuring. “What purpose, indeed?”
Eve realized her rudeness too late. “I apologize, my lord, but do I surmise you choose not to dance rather than that you cannot dance?”
His expression softened, making him look for a moment almost wistful. “With the right woman, I dance well enough, as your sister can attest. Shall we avail ourselves of the terrace?”
The ballroom was stifling, the noise oppressive, and supper had only just been served. “Thank you. That would be lovely.”
He paused by the punch bowls to fetch them each a drink, then led Eve from the ballroom to the torch-lit terrace where two other couples were in desultory conversation by the balustrade.
“Shall we sit, Lady Eve?”
“Nothing would be more welcome.”
She chose a bench against the wall of the building, one more in shadow than torchlight. Kesmore held their drinks while Eve arranged her skirts, then came down beside her with a sigh.
“I am not an adept dancer, mind you, but prior to my marriage I was damned if I’d sit about with the dowagers as if longing for my Bath chair. So I learned to stand and aggravate my deuced knee and grow blasted irascible as a result. Apologies for my language.”
“His Grace can be much more colorful than that.”
Kesmore peered at their drinks. “Suppose he can. Would you like the spiked version or the unspiked one? I warn you, I’ll poison the nearest hedge with the unspiked one if that’s the one you leave me.”
Eve resisted the urge to study him more closely but found his lack of pretense a relief. This was the man who’d captured Louisa’s heart, though nobody had quite figured out how.
