“There are three of us, actually,” he responded amicably. “Marquess of Merriweather, at your service.”
As the air swoosh out of her lungs, Eve slowly turned around.
“I am Lady Winifred Tannenbaum, and this is my niece, Lady Eve Bailey, eldest daughter of the Earl of Everly.”
Eve met his gaze just in time to catch a flicker of shock. His face went pale, and his mouth hung open for a split second before he recovered and managed a pleasant smile. Nicholas Bartholomew Ebenezer St. Hope, the Marquess of Merriweather, was nothing if not charming.
Narrowing his eyes, he bowed in her direction.
“Charmed, my ladies.” The tingle in her spine was now a bolt of awareness. The cold light in his eyes and the thin press of his lips clearly showed his anger. At least to someone like herself who knew him well. But it left her wondering how he thought he had any right to be angry.
“I’m sure,” she murmured, her teeth clenched. Because Eve was not about to be fooled by this mockery of a marquess again. No matter how delightfully handsome he appeared, or the fact that his blue-gray eyes were almost the exact shade as the sea before a storm.
She definitely wouldn’t give in to the urge to reach out and brush the wayward lock of golden-brown hair away from his jaw. She was smarter than that.
Furthermore, it wasn’t fair that he looked perfectly comfortable wearing his greatcoat and top hat when she was dusted with flour and hadn’t taken the time to make anything of her hair.
None of that mattered.
He used his looks to make helpless girls fall in love with him, he used them to cause naïve young ladies to… She pinched her lips together and lifted her chin.
Not this time. She was older and wiser now. She’d never fall for such a man again.
The last time Nick had seen Lady Eve Bailey, she’d been dressed in a mint-colored, high-waisted gown adorned with an evergreen ribbon that cinched around her ribcage just below her breasts. Indeed, the silk of the ribbon had teased him as he’d edged his hand upward. Nick pictured her perfectly in his mind. Her hair had been swept into an elaborate configuration of curls and braids and those forest-green eyes of hers had shined up at him innocently.
If his memory served correctly, and unfortunately, he knew that it did, a short string of pearls had encircled her lovely neck. The pearls had been smooth and cold against his lips.
Despite taking extreme measures to evict her from his mind, the godforsaken memory persisted to haunt him. He blinked and swallowed hard.
What he’d encountered today was a bloody ghost, placed in his path to taunt him for having had the temerity to think himself in love. Nearly two years had passed—nineteen months. He’d been a bloody fool.
He was older and wiser now, a man of the world.
Unfortunately, however, unless he was hallucinating from the absinthe he’d consumed the night before, she was a real live person. He blinked hard but her image only became clearer—definitely a flesh and blood woman.
Standing before him after all this time in a woolen coat and muddied boots was the woman he’d once thought to marry. A few strands of her auburn hair had escaped her chignon and peeked out from beneath her hood, framing her delicate face. He couldn’t help but notice that her face was thinner now, her eyes darker. Her lovely complexion was paler than it had been before, almost translucent near her eyes, but for a hint of rose on her cheeks and at the tip of her nose.
Flesh and blood woman, indeed, and even more beautiful now. How was that even possible?
“Were you heading to London for the holidays, My Lord?” the older woman asked impertinently. He’d been inclined to ignore her greeting initially—his head throbbed painfully, and his mouth felt rather as though it was filled with cotton—but he’d thought she might have seen Dash.
They’d damn near drank themselves into oblivion last night.
But he wasn’t the sort to be rude. One tended to catch far more flies with honey than vinegar, after all.
He jerked his eyes away from Eve to answer her. “North.” And then, unable to stop himself, his gaze returned to Eve again.
She was not as unaffected as she’d have him believe. Her cheeks turned even pinker as his gaze assessed her, and he couldn’t help but grin.
“What?” Her scowl deepened.
His eyes dropped to her chest. “Your pie.”
“Pardon me?”
“You’re ruining your pie.” He couldn’t keep the laughter from his voice. She’d clutched the damn thing to her chest, like a book, and thick golden liquid was oozing down her cloak. It served her right and yet he had to clench his fists at his side to keep from helping her.
Her expression changed from one of disdain to horror as she tilted the dish to its proper position and leaned forward in a futile effort to save her cloak. “Good gravy!” The words escaped on a gasp. The aroma of freshly baked cinnamon and apples mingled with the smoke hovering in the air.
“Eve! What on earth is the matter with you?” Her aunt, Lady Tannenbaum, hastily wiped at Eve’s coat, spreading the delicious-looking goo into even more of a mess. “You’ve ruined your beautiful pie!”
Eve closed her eyes even as her mouth tightened into a thin line, but he knew that she would be counting to ten. She’d told him it was what she did whenever her younger sisters exasperated her.
“I’m afraid it’s my fault.” Nick rubbed the back of his neck and stepped away from them. He could hardly fathom that this was even happening. How was it possible that he’d been away from England for eighteen months and the first time he ventured out of London he’d run into her? And where the hell was Dash?
As though sensing his desire to
