husbands might gather up compliments to toss back at their wives.
“That tickles, Husband.”
“Tickling is a fine thing, you might consider—given the magnitude of your devotion to my ever-precarious well-being—reciprocating. How well do you know Deene?”
Louisa did not tickle her husband. If the man wanted tickling, he was going to have to beg for it. She did, however, meet his gaze and saw his question was serious.
“Very well. He’s a lifelong neighbor, he served with Bart and St. Just, he’s of the same political persuasion as Papa most of the time, and he was always underfoot as a boy because he had neither male siblings nor much family with whom to associate.”
“And he served with me, and now he is family in fact. A situation is brewing, and while I do not know the exact extent of it, I believe Deene and his lady need our help.”
Louisa loved her husband for any number of reasons: because he was a wonderful father, because he made her feel like the loveliest woman on earth, because he was protective of those he cared for right down to the smallest runt piglet ever to squeal its way into their keeping.
At that moment, she loved him because he had neither charged off to Deene’s aid without confiding in her, nor had he even considered such a notion. To be married to Joseph Carrington was to have not just an adoring and passionate husband, but to have a friend, a best, most loyal, devoted friend, and—almost as wonderful—to be that sort of friend to him as well.
Louisa brushed his hair back from his brow, wrapped her legs around his flanks, and kissed him on the mouth. “Tell me what’s to be done, Husband. If there’s something amiss with Deene, then it’s amiss with our Evie too, and that we cannot allow.”
It took another half hour, but when they did get around to discussing the matter further, they were—as usual regarding anything of consequence—of one mind about it.
“You see how Aelfreth looks down and to the left?”
Deene saw no such thing. He saw the way his wife never took her eyes off the combination of Aelfreth and King William as they circled the practice arena. She had the same focus in bed sometimes, even when her eyes were dreamy with heat and desire.
“And the significance of this?”
“It’s a matter of attention, Deene. Aelfreth signals the horse to pay attention in the same direction just by where he looks.”
“For God’s sake, Eve, the horse can’t see where the man on his back is looking.”
A particular dimple flashed on the left side of Eve’s mouth. Deene had only recently discovered this dimple, and it fascinated him.
“When I’m… sitting on you, Deene, straddling your lap, and your eyes are closed, can you tell where I’m looking?”
“Of course.”
“Tell Aelfreth to lift his eyes up, then, unless you want William thinking the only interesting things in the arena are on the ground to the left of him. He’ll eventually go crooked like that if you don’t break Aelfreth’s habit now.”
“This is just a schooling session, Evie, a little variety in the routine. When they’re on course, Aelfreth will be looking from jump to jump, from straightaway to turn.”
She folded her arms, looking as prim as a governess. “Every time we’re around King William, we’re teaching him something, Deene. I have explained this to you.”
She had, and her little lectures and homilies were charming—also very insightful, and in just the two weeks his marchioness had been in residence, Deene could see a difference in the way his equine youngsters and their lads were going on.
He bellowed at Aelfreth that the marchioness said to look the hell where he was going, which provoked a sheepish grin from the jockey—and immediate compliance such as Deene’s command alone would likely not have merited.
“You’ve made slaves of my lads, Wife. The horses are no better.”
“Such flattery. Are we to drive out today?”
If the weather was fine, they’d taken to picnicking at various secluded spots on the property. Sometimes Deene made love to his wife in the lazy afternoon sunshine, sometimes he dozed with his head in her lap, and sometimes—the times he suspected they both liked the most—they mostly talked.
“I had something else in mind today.”
Her expression became… guarded. “Husband, we got a late start this morning because you had something else in mind, and while I always enjoy what you have in mind—”
“As I enjoy what you occasionally have in mind, Wife, but this is not that kind of something else.”
And still she was wary. When it came to lovemaking, Eve took a little—a very little—convincing to try new things. Whether it was a new position, a new location, a new variation on something he’d shown her previously, she always hesitated:
“Lucas, this cannot be decent…”
“Husband, I am not at all sure…”
“Deene, are you quite certain
She was not shy, exactly, so much as she lacked confidence in her responses—or confidence in her entitlement to enjoy the God-given passion of her own nature.
And yet, she always gathered her courage and met him halfway, something he loved about her almost as much as he loved the way she gave him small touches and caresses throughout the day.
“Where are you taking me, Deene?”
He laced his fingers with hers and drew her in the direction of the unused foaling stalls. “This is a surprise, Evie. I wanted to give you this surprise the morning after our wedding.”
“You did give me a surprise, as I recall.”
He’d awakened her with an introduction to the pleasures of making sweet, sleepy love spooned around each other amid the warmth of the covers.
“One can’t offer his new wife too many pleasant surprises.”
“Is this a pleasant surprise then?”
Always, the wariness. “I hope and pray you find it so.” At the serious note in his voice, Eve paused to peer over at him. He could not back out now, and maybe because of that, the vague anxiety in his chest gathered into a tighter knot. “If you don’t like this surprise, you don’t have to keep it. I can send it back.”
She resumed their progress, moving into the mostly empty barn. “This is a gift then?”
“Customarily, a husband presents his wife with a token of his esteem following consummation of the nuptials.”
“You are being sentimental, then. I love it when you dote on me, Deene, but I understand we must be mindful of the economies, and I’d have you freed from any—”
She stopped dead outside a roomy stall bedded in fresh, deep straw.
“Lucas, what have you done? Good God… what have you done?”
Eve could not draw breath. She could only stare and cling to her husband’s hand.
“I am going to faint.”
“You shall not.” Deene moved behind her and wrapped his arms around her, a bulwark against the roaring in her ears and the constriction in her chest. “Breathe, Evie. It’s just one more horse.”
Oh, but not just any horse. Eve knew those gorgeous brown eyes, the deep chest, the little snip of pink skin on the end of the mare’s big, velvety nose.
“She’s white now, no longer gray. This is my Sweetness, isn’t it? Tell me this is my dearest… oh, Husband.
“I can send her back, if you’d rather not… I didn’t want to upset you, Evie. But you’d asked, and I thought perhaps you’d worried…”
“Hush.” She turned in his arms to put her hand over his mouth, but then craned her neck to keep the mare in
