Between the Devil and Ian Eversea (8 page)

Chapter 8

A
ARGH!

The moment her eyes fluttered open, her hands flew up to cradle her head. Cannons were firing in there. Last night’s champagne and ratafia seemed to have re-formed into a boiling ball of lead and situated itself behind one eye.

BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.

She lay as still as she possibly could to avoid jarring anything overmuch. No effigy installed in Westminster Abbey had ever lain quite so motionless. She was fascinated by, and a little proud, of the gruesome pain. She felt very worldly. And nauseous.

She glanced down. She was still entirely dressed. Apart from her slippers. Where were her slippers?

But it was just about dawn . . .

Curiosity was stronger than nausea.

She slipped out of bed and very, very gingerly, as though her head was a grenade balanced atop her neck, carried herself to the window by following that beam like a tightrope. She gingerly parted the soft curtain.

Aargh!

Ghastly punishing light!

Even though the sun was just a suggestion on the horizon, like half of a peach rising from the water.

She recoiled and gripped her head.

But instinct forced her forward again, and she tentatively cracked her eyelids.

She was rewarded for enduring pain. The man was standing on the balcony!

The sun had just reached him, and he was part in shadow, partly gilded. A pagan harlequin.

For one merciful moment pain ceased.

All of her senses were marshalled to the job of seeing him, like spectators rushing a fence at a horse race. She breathed and she felt him everywhere, again. As though her entire body wanted to participate in his beauty.

But then even in her incapacitated state something about him . . .

Something about the height . . . something about the way her breath stopped . . .

Could it be a certain insufferable in-love-with-himself Eversea?

He arched backward again, thrusting sun-burnished gorgeously muscled arms high into the air like an acrobat landing, and he roared—though this time the roar tapered off into what sounded suspiciously like a hungover groan.

And then he broke wind, scratched his chest, and ducked back into his room.

She snickered.

“Ow ow ow ow ow ow!” And was immediately punished by the return of the booted battalion in her head.

She stumbled and fell upon the servants bellpull as a lifeline.

She would have happily traded all the blood in her veins at that moment for coffee.

“
H
AVE YOU ANY
books on Richard the Third? Bent fellow, the kingdom-for-a-horse chap?”

It seemed a miracle to be ambulatory, but after her second well-sugared cup of coffee and two and a half fluffy scones, Tansy and a similarly fortified Genevieve set out for a walk into town, on the theory that the fresh air and exercise would do them good and that Tansy would naturally like to get a closer look at Pennyroyal Green.

The fresh air
had
done them good. It smelled faintly of the sea and green things, and she liked it. She could scarcely remember anything about it, though she’d lived here as a child, but the landscape of Sussex, as far as she could tell, was subtle. Modest. The hills were mild swells and the trees a humble height, unlike the arrogant, craggy-faced mountains and unruly forests of America. Sheep dotted the hills and clouds dotted the blue skies, like puffy white reflections of each other.

The church and the pub were opposite each other, which surely must be good business for both, and she craned her head as they passed an intriguing shop called Postlethwaite’s Emporium, which featured an enticing selection of bonnets and gloves in the window.

The dark of the bookshop was a blessing to her still faintly pounding head after the bright light. She enjoyed horrid novels, and she’d read a novel by a Miss Jane Austen which she’d quite liked, but lately she’d become fascinated by adventure stories. Specifically, stories of survival. Robinson Crusoe had lost everything—how had he managed to get on after that? That sort of thing. She’d acquired a tome written by a Mr. Miles Redmond, who had a series of adventures in the South Seas and was nearly eaten by cannibals. He’d lived to tell the tale. Surely she could prevail over the upending of her own life if others had triumphed over odds and humans who ate other humans.

The bookseller, a wiry older gentleman called Mr. Tingle, beamed approvingly at her and fidgeted with his spectacles, which was, she suspected, what he did when he flirted—the equivalent of a lash bat.

So she rewarded him with a lash bat.

“I aver, Mr. Tingle, this may be the finest bookshop I’ve ever set foot in! I’ve never
seen
such a fine selection. You must be very discerning, indeed.”

Mr. Tingle’s face suffused with happiness, and he did more fidgeting with his spectacles.

“We have the play of Richard the Third set forth in a collection of works by our own Mr. William Shakespeare. Perhaps you’d be interested in reading it? Or would you prefer to read a history of the man?”

“The latter, if you please.”

“Ah, a
scholar
!” He clasped his hands with such glee she hated to disagree with him.

“
Are
you interested in history, Miss Danforth, er, Tansy?” Genevieve was perusing a biography of Leonardo da Vinci, rapt. Turning pages over, slowly, one by one.

She hesitated.

“A sudden fascination swept over me,” she decided to say.

This much, at least, was true.

“I suppose new places can inspire new interests,” Genevieve said.

“Truer words were never spoken,” she agreed vehemently.

“Well, I’m delighted to be of service to such a fine mind,” Mr. Tingle declared. “In fact, I’d like to make a present of this volume, Miss Danforth, as long as you choose another one to purchase.”

“You are too, too kind, Mr. Tingle! You are a generous man, to be certain.”

“Oh, bosh.” Color moved into his cheeks. “It’s a pleasure to do business with such an avid reader.” Avid was a bit of a stretch, but she suspected he’d be mightily disappointed if she disabused him of the notion. “Can I interest you in another period of English history? Perhaps something about William the Conqueror?”

“Well, let me think . . . have you any books written by Mr. Miles Redmond?”

Mr. Tingle’s hands froze on his spectacles. His eyes darted toward Genevieve and back again.

Tansy felt, rather than saw, Genevieve go motionless.

A bewildering, indecisive little silence followed.

At last Mr. Tingle cleared his throat. He lowered his voice. “We
do
have a selection of Mr. Redmond’s books,” he said, as carefully as if he were confessing to a collection of pornography.

“I enjoyed one of his books on his adventures in Lacao. I would love to read more about that particular journey.”

Mr. Tingle lowered his voice to something like a discreet whisper.

“I’ll just go and fetch the one that follows for you, will I?”

T
HEY’D EACH ACQUIRED
a new book, each one very much representative of their own personal fascinations and who they were as people, though they didn’t know that, and they clasped them to their bosoms as they walked. Genevieve reminded her of the Sussex landscape: subtle. She wasn’t prone to chatter or untoward confidences, she was intelligent and measured, her wit quiet but quick. When she spoke. The emphasis was on the
quiet.
And Tansy felt a bit tethered. Her own personality, in general, was decidedly buoyant. A bit more impulsive.

“May I ask you a question, Genevieve?”

“Certainly.”

“How long have you been married?”

“Nearly a year now.”

There was silence, as they trod side by side, coming abreast of the ancient cemetery surrounding the squat little church. Tansy stopped, mesmerized by the stones. The newer ones were upright, the older ones reclining a bit, sagging, as everything is wont do with age. A huge willow rose up and sheltered most of it, like a hen fanning its wings out over her chicks.

The English all seemed very restrained, and she told herself she probably ought not ask the next question.

“How did you . . . know? About the duke, that is. Or . . .”

Or
did
you know? was what she wanted to know, but it seemed far too presumptuous. And given the looks she’d seen Genevieve exchange with the duke, she was certain the question was unnecessary. He’d said he was happy. She knew he was happy. But how did one know?

Genevieve smiled. “You’ll know when it happens to you, if that’s what you’re worried about. There’s really no mistaking it.”

She did have a little of that married woman superiority Tansy generally found
infinitely
irritating.

“Did you by any chance ever lose your powers of speech around him?” she asked, half in jest.

Genevieve looked amused, yet puzzled. “I daresay I rather found my powers of speech when I met him.”

Alas. Tansy suspected her own particular affliction might very well be unique. Ian Everseaitis.

He was unpleasant and rude and beautiful and scary, and she wondered hungrily if the book she held would somehow hold a key to him. How did an interest in Richard III reveal him, or would it? It was all she had at the moment, so she clutched it to herself like a map.

“Do you mind . . . do you mind if we walk through?” She gestured at the gravestones.

“Not at all.”

She silently wove through the yard, which wasn’t so much sad as it was peaceful and wistful. She rather liked the idea of the graveyard surrounding the church. Dead was dead; there was no getting around it, really. She of all people ought to know. Perhaps the location of the graveyard served as a reminder of those who were bored with attending church that it was all dust to dust, and they ought to see to their souls if they wanted to proceed through the pearly gates after a tombstone was erected on top of them.

She silently read the names on the stones as she strolled through.

“Quite a few Redmonds,” she said. “And Everseas. Is Mr. Miles Redmond a part of the Redmonds of Pennyroyal Green?”

“He is, indeed,” Genevieve said politely.

Interestingly, she didn’t expound.

Tansy didn’t press for more information. The Everseas were not as subtle as they thought they were. She would get to the bottom of that particular mystery in time, she knew.

And then she stopped and knelt near a particular stone. A certain Lady Elizabeth Stanton had passed a good thirty years ago at the age of twenty-one. Did Lady Elizabeth marry her title, or was she born with it? Why did she die so young? Was it childbirth or a fever or a fall from a horse or . . . ? Had she ever lost her powers of speech when a boorish man stared down at her as if he could read every thought in her head and found them criminally mundane?

She didn’t have any flowers on her grave, but she was flanked by graves that were freshly adorned, and this struck Tansy as wholly unfair.

“There aren’t any flowers on this one.”

Genevieve sympathetically studied Lady Elizabeth Stanton’s stone. “I suppose over the years families move away, or the last of them expires, and sometimes stones are forgotten.”

“Well, they ought to have flowers, don’t you think?” She felt urgent about this suddenly, as if she were the naked one, not the grave. “
Someone
ought to remember. We can’t have flowers on some and not all.”

It didn’t sound remotely rational even to her, but Genevieve didn’t appear to have an argument for this.

Tansy scanned the churchyard, and Eureka! She found one little blue wildflower, poking through a fence.

“Sorry!” she whispered to it. “And thank you,” and she gave a little yank.

She transported it to the grave and lay it gently down.

That was better.

“Blue is your color,” she whispered to the late Lady Elizabeth, just to amuse herself.

Tansy turned to see if Genevieve was watching, but she was looking upward and waving at something.

There, at the very top of the vicarage, was Ian Eversea, hands on his hips, watching the two of them.

He was significantly smaller at that distance, but she still knew. Her body seemed able to sense him. She fancied she could feel his blue eyes from where she stood, like the beams of two little judgmental, cynical, gorgeous suns.

She could practically feel all of her native charm and polish evaporate the way sun evaporated rain. What
was
it about the man that made her feel so very gauche?

He lifted a hand—there appeared to be a hammer in it—in a sort of salute.

“He always was an excellent climber, my brother.”

Genevieve sounded a bit ironic.

But Tansy barely registered this. Suddenly he was all she could see, delineated against a blue sky. And her heart had struck up a sharp beating, like a hammer against a dulcimer.

She stood abruptly, brushed her hands down her skirts and mutely followed Genevieve around the corner.

Only to abruptly encounter a cluster of men deep in conversation, gesticulating in that universal language men shared when something needed to be built or repaired. Each of them seemed to be clutching a tool of some sort—a spade or hammer or saw.
How
men loved tools, she thought.