“Thank you.”
“My pleasure.” He didn’t exactly sneer the words, but neither were they sincere. No matter. If he could get Eve home without further embarrassment, she’d suspend their skirmishing for one evening and be grateful.
He offered his arm again. “There’s a gate this way we can use.”
Eve hadn’t meant to hesitate, but it was difficult even to think when that ominous ache started up at the base of her skull.
“For God’s sake, Eve Windham, it was just a kiss under the mistletoe, probably inspired by your papa’s wassail more than anything else.”
She had to put her hand on his arm while the feeling of the ground shifting beneath her feet swept over her. “My brothers said it was white rum.”
“The occasional tot makes the holiday socializing less tedious. You really do not look well.”
The last observation was grudging, almost worried.
“I did not mean to swill from your glass, Deene. You should have stopped me.” They had to get to the coach. The night felt like it was closing in, and Deene’s voice—a perfect example of male aristocratic euphony—was swelling and shrinking in the oddest way.
“I might have stopped you, except you downed the whole drink before I realized what was afoot, and then you were accosting me in the most passionate—”
Eve clutched his arm and swayed into him, breathing shallowly through her mouth. “If you insist on arguing with me, my lord, I will be ill all over these bushes.”
“Why didn’t you say so?” He slipped an arm around her waist and promenaded her down the steps. By the time they got to the garden gate, the nausea was subsiding, though Eve was leaning heavily on her escort. She had the notion that the scents of cedar and lavender coming from Deene’s jacket might have helped quiet her stomach.
Deene ushered her through the gate, which put them on a quiet, mercifully dark side street.
“How often do these headaches befall you?”
“Too often. Sometimes I go for months between attacks, sometimes only days. The worst is when it hits on one side, subsides for a day, then strikes on the other.”
Deene pulled one of his gloves off with his teeth, then used two fingers to give a piercing, three-blast whistle. “Sorry.”
All the while he kept his arm around Eve’s waist, a solid, warm—and quite unexpected—bulwark against complete disability. “The coach will here in moments. Is there anything that helps?”
“Absolute quiet, absolute dark, time.” Though her mother used to rub her neck, and that had helped the most.
He said nothing more—Deene wasn’t stupid—and Eve just leaned on him. Her grandmother had apparently suffered from these same headaches, though neither Eve’s parents nor her siblings were afflicted.
The clip-clop of hooves sounded like so much gunfire in Eve’s head, but it was the sound of privacy, so Eve tried to welcome it. Deene gave the coachy directions to the Windham mansion and climbed in after Eve.
“Shall I sit beside you, my lady?”
An odd little courtesy, that he would even ask.
“Please. The less I move, the less uncomfortable I am.”
He settled beside her and looped an arm around her shoulders. Without a single thought for dignity, skirmishes, or propriety, Eve laid her head on his shoulder, closed her eyes, and was grateful.
To see Eve Windham brought low ought to have been satisfying in some private, ungentlemanly regard. Instead Deene felt unwelcome inclinations toward protectiveness and—it was hard to admit such a thing even to himself—helplessness.
And if there was one feeling he resented with a passion, it was helplessness where a female was concerned.
Small, silent, and miserable beside him, Lady Eve was obviously suffering with every bump over the cobbles and turn on the streets.
“Evie, is there anything I can do?” The name had slipped out, harking back to a time when he’d been more an older-brother-by-association to his fellow officers’ sisters. “Evie?”
She cuddled closer, like a suffering animal looking for relief. “My mama used to rub my neck. I hate this.”
She was helpless too, he realized, and equally unhappy about it. How strange, that after growing increasingly quarrelsome with each other, they’d find pride as their common ground. This temporary truce put him in mind of the way the French and British armies would declare an unspoken detente regarding the use of rivers and streams flowing between their respective warring camps on the Peninsula.
“Let’s try something.” He pulled a lap rug from under the padded bench and spread it over his knees. “Down you go.”
With him braced against a corner of the coach, he eased Eve facedown over the makeshift pillow on his knees. When she made no protest, he found her nape with his bare hand and started a slow massage. “Does that help?”
“Heavenly.”
He could feel her ease somewhat, though in deference to her condition, the horses were moving only at a walk. “Shall I take your pins out?”
“Please, God. I can feel them. My hair hurts.”
He might have smiled, but her torment was obvious in her voice. Carefully, so carefully, he eased the pins from her coiffure, until her hair hung down in a long, golden braid. She was unmoving against him while he alternated between gently squeezing the sides of her neck and rubbing her nape.
They would not speak of this peculiar interlude, and Deene had been a fool to bring up their one stupid kiss at Christmas past. Eve had been adorably tipsy, having swiped his glass of thoroughly spiked punch, and he’d enjoyed the effects of the alcohol on her demeanor. Enjoyed her passionate, artless, determined kisses much more—and much longer—than he should have.
She’d been a cheerful, even mischievous girl, dear and sweet and easy to tease. With her brother Bart’s death, something had changed and not for the better. When Deene had made some courtesy calls after selling his commission, he’d found Eve Windham to be punctiliously proper, stiff, and even chilly toward him, though Bart had more than intimated that the lady had her reasons.
She wasn’t chilly now. She was utterly undone. It pleased him not at all to see it.
He had, though, been pleased to find himself accosted in the coat closet out at Morelands over the holidays. The old Eve had been there in that kiss—wicked, sweet, playful, but also all grown-up in the best places.
“Eve, we’re here. Shall I carry you?”
She sat up slowly, her hand going to her forehead. “I can walk.”
Or she’d crawl, or expire of pride in the filth of the mews before she’d allow him to assist her where others might notice. He handed her out of the carriage, and any fool could see she was none too steady on her feet. “You can ring a peal over my head later, my lady.”
“Deene, no.” Such a weak protest wasn’t going to deter him from scooping her up against his chest and proceeding toward the house.
“For once in your stubborn life, hush. Your brothers would expect this much of me.”
The reference to her brothers was intended as a sop to her pride and a warning—it was also the truth. In addition to the late Lord Bart, Deene had also served with Devlin St. Just, now Earl of Rosecroft. If Rosecroft got wind Evie had received cavalier treatment when in distress, a friendship Deene valued greatly would falter. To say nothing of what the lady’s father would do to Deene should Moreland learn his daughter had been allowed to suffer needlessly.
“Where are you taking me?”
“Inside.” He’d run tame in this house for years, so he was able to clarify. “To your room.”
He managed the service door off the kitchen, it being the family practice not to lock it until everyone was in for the night. Two flights up had him in the family wing, where he himself had been an occasional guest.
“Which door, Evie?”
