If he refused to define himself by the circumstances of his birth, he shouldn’t define Eugenia by hers. Nor his mother: for all her lineage and privilege, Lady Lisette had been no lady.
There was only one possible answer. “Of course I do. What I see before me,” he said, “is a very chilled, shivering lady.” He pulled the cord to summon her maid. “Who shall have a hot bath and later some champagne.”
Her mouth curled into a smile.
“It’s not every day that a lady overcomes her worst fear.” He brushed a kiss on her lips. “You are a remarkable woman, Eugenia.”
Ward needed a few minutes after he’d left Eugenia’s chamber to work out why he felt as if walls were closing around him. Then he remembered that just before she’d asked him about her status as a lady, Eugenia had said, “There’s more to us than desire.” His gut clenched uneasily.
There could be no “us.”
She was a delight, a revelation, a pure pleasure. She was a lady and yet not, given the scorn with which the likes of his grandmother and Lady Hyacinth greeted her.
He had to establish distance between them. He couldn’t endanger Eugenia’s heart; she had already lost one lover.
Actually, it was probably all in his imagination. Likely she didn’t give a ha’penny for him. Eugenia Snowe was a woman of common sense. They were enjoying each other with the kind of unbridled enthusiasm that came naturally to people who have been deprived of bed play.
They would always have a special tenderness between them.
That worked, he decided, yanking down his breeches.
Freed from the wet cloth, his erect cock bobbed against his stomach. His body didn’t give a damn about the plans he was making for sharing nostalgic glances with Eugenia at some time in the future.
It wanted her, to own her, take her.
Keep her.
Oh, bloody hell.
Chapter Thirty-three
Friday, June 5, 1801
A week later
Eugenia passed the morning in the kitchen—she and Monsieur Marcel were perfecting a lemon tea cake—after which she and Ward spent the afternoon teaching Lizzie and Otis the finer points of croquet. Neither child had the faintest understanding of good sportsmanship and both thought cheating was a sensible route to victory.
“They won’t be roaming the house tonight,” Ward told Eugenia with obvious satisfaction in the evening. “Lizzie drifted off in my library, and I carried her to bed.”
Eugenia had a sudden image of Ward with a sleeping child draped over his shoulder. But the imaginary girl had a mop of dark curls, the color hers had been before they lightened to red.
For goodness’ sake! She took a hasty gulp of wine. Gumwater padded around the table, serving the meal with hearty, if silent, dislike.
“Your butler abhors me,” she observed, when the man had left. “And frankly he has done nothing to endear himself to me.”
“My stepmother is not fond of Gumwater either,” Ward acknowledged. “He’s capable in the position, though.”
“I can tolerate him for one more week,” Eugenia said, silently willing Ward to invite her to extend her stay beyond the fortnight they had agreed on.
One more week.
Or forever.
“I appreciate that,” he said easily.
Eugenia was trying her utmost to not blurt out a declaration of love that he might not reciprocate. She felt as if her skin were about to burst, as if she were a plump grape, succulent and sweet. Love and lust were jumbled in her mind.
She shifted in her chair. Ward’s eyes narrowed, but Gumwater pushed open the door again, bringing another covered platter. For the remainder of the meal the butler managed to find reasons to keep coming and going, dropping fussy remarks about the provenance of the wine, the paucity of green beans, the exorbitant price of pineapples.
Ward didn’t appear to be irritated. Or to want to be alone with her. He kept up a sidelong conversation with Gumwater. Meanwhile, Eugenia practiced being a lady. Ladies didn’t squirm in their seats.
But Eugenia was so hungry for Ward that she couldn’t think.
Or form sentences.
It felt as if he were torturing her, insisting on every course, peeling an orange so methodically that the peels fell into slow coils on the table. She watched his hands, thinking about those fingers touching her.
Her breath felt hot in her chest, but Ward was genially discussing a dessert wine with Gumwater.
“What do you think, Mrs. Snowe?”
It took her a moment to realize Ward had addressed her. She had grown used to “Eugenia” rolling off his tongue, though he was careful never to use her first name in front of the children or the servants. She ran his words backward in her head and managed to put together a response.
“The hint of walnut is delicious.”
Somehow that word “delicious” came out an octave lower than the rest of her sentence.
Ward froze.
“Monsieur Marcel has made a trifle with apricot crème anglaise to your recipe, Mrs. Snowe,” Gumwater said, his eyebrows jumping as if he’d seen a rat.
Not Jarvis, vermin.
“Would you like me to bring it now?”
“Yes, please,” Ward said, glancing at him—and away from Eugenia.
“You look weary, Gumwater,” Eugenia said, taking matters into her own hands. “Mr. Reeve, surely your butler may retire for the night after bringing the last course? One of the footmen can clear the table later.”
Gumwater cleared his throat with a sound like a dying bullfrog, so Eugenia silently warned him not to speak with a smile that showed all her teeth. He left, closing the door behind him a bit too sharply.
“I’d hate to make an enemy of you,” Ward said appreciatively. “Poor old Gumwater has retreated in great dudgeon.”
Some minutes later, the butler shouldered his way sullenly through the door, balancing a crystal bowl that he plunked down on table between them.
“Your trifle, Mrs. Snowe,” he said, not making the slightest attempt to conceal his irritation.
“Why do you tolerate being treated so disrespectfully?” Eugenia asked, once the man had taken himself away.
Ward shrugged. “An illegitimate child in a noble household quickly learns not to be bothered by servants silently expressing their opinions.”
“You tolerate Gumwater’s insubordination, because servants were impolite to you as a child?” Eugenia was incredulous. “Your father should have sacked anyone who behaved in that way!”
“By the time I was old enough to understand, I was also mature enough to understand that nonsense of that sort doesn’t matter. I had a few skirmishes at Eton, but once the boys saw that I literally didn’t give a damn what anyone thought of my parentage, most of them stopped bothering about it.”
Ward was lounging in his chair the way no gentleman was supposed to do. His hair wasn’t arranged in waves, or powdered, or even hidden by an old-fashioned wig. It was thick and wavy and so soft that Eugenia’s fingers curled into her palm at the memory of clenching them in his hair.
“Eugenia,” he said in a low voice. “You oughtn’t to look at me like that. Not here.”
“But you look delicious,” she said reasonably. He leaned forward and her eyes skated hungrily over his broad shoulders, over his strong neck and the cravat that framed his jaw.
Desire felt like a clawing animal inside her, making her breath catch and heat come into her lips. She clenched her legs against the feeling.
“Please allow me to serve you some trifle,” Ward said.
He stood up and her mouth went dry. Those silk breeches hid nothing, and there was much to hide. Ward plunged a spoon into the layers of cream, sponge, and apricot, and prepared a plate for each of them.
Ladies never licked their spoon. They didn’t close their eyes and nearly swoon, either.
Eugenia did both.
“This is so good,” she moaned, her eyes opening to find Ward staring at her. His eyes
were dark, and his hands clenched the edge of the table.
“Jesus,” he said hoarsely. “Have another bite, Eugenia.”
She brought the spoon to her mouth and again closed her eyes. She felt transported by silky cool cream flavored with Armagnac, and the touch of anise that had been her idea.
Ward’s chair shoved back and she heard footsteps. But she didn’t open her eyes, not even when cool silver nudged her lips, prompting her to open for another bite.
“Good girl,” Ward said, his voice rough.
Hands ran over her shoulders, fingers gliding down her arms. She swallowed and took in a stuttering breath.
“A man could lay you down on this table and cover you in trifle, even the pale pink parts of you—or those parts especially—and lick off all that lovely cream,” Ward murmured.
Eugenia was hardly able to breathe.
“That’s not what you want, is it?” he asked.
“No,” she murmured. “Well, perhaps.”
“I know what you want,” he said. “I know what you need.”
A sobbing breath escaped, but she still said nothing, because Ward was drawing her to her feet and pulling her gown up, right there in the dining room. If she kept her eyes shut, this could be happening to someone else.
Some other lady was trembling and helpless in the grip of big male hands that were stroking fire into her legs—no, the fire was already there.
Ward turned her about. “Bend over, Eugenia.” It was a command, but she would have obeyed a suggestion, a hint, anything. She bent over the table, quivering.
His hands ran up her legs, sliding over her arse.
“Do you want me?” A warm, large body covered her from behind. Part of it was hot and silky, and throbbed against her bottom.
“Yes,” she panted.
There was no French letter in the dining room, of course, so nothing came between them. Every inch pulsed as he pushed inside. They cried out in unison, shock radiating to the ends of Eugenia’s fingers and toes.
Her hands curled on the tablecloth and she dimly heard a glass topple. Ward pulled back and thrust forward again.
“I’ve never felt anything like you.” She thought the words were forced through his teeth, because “you” was lost in a groan as he thrust home.
“More,” she said fiercely. She felt shameless in her hunger. For years, she had paid little heed to her body other than to dimly note if she was hungry or tired. Now her priorities had reversed.
His hands slipped to her hips and gripped so hard that she might have bruises. “You want me to take you, Eugenia?”
She couldn’t answer, the words wouldn’t shape in her mouth, but he understood and began thrusting harder and harder. As a child, she’d visited the belfry of St. Paul’s Cathedral when the bells were ringing. Their deep clang had pounded through her, leaving her deafened afterwards.
Now white heat rang through every part of her, roaring all the way to her fingers and toes.
After she stopped convulsing, she discovered she was limp on the table, Ward’s sweaty body curved protectively on top of hers, both of them gulping deep breaths of air. The tremors of that huge pleasure, that great voice, still throbbed in her legs.
“I’ve never felt anything like this,” Ward said, his voice hoarse.
Eugenia had never experienced anything so earthy, so animal-like, so primitive. It turned her into a different woman.
The kind of woman who stands and lets her skirts fall down, takes her lover’s hand without words, and draws him to the door.
Takes him upstairs.
Chapter Thirty-four
Saturday, June 13, 1801
The four of them swam every morning. Eugenia learned to float on her back unaided—though she still didn’t put her face under water. They played enough croquet so that Otis and Lizzie grasped that cheating made the opposing players walk directly off the lawn.
At night, every night, Ward made love to Eugenia with the skill, passion, and endurance of a primitive, profane kind of god, not the one worshipped in the parish church. Certainly not the one that Vicar Howson believed in.
After Howson was dispatched abroad, the vicarage stood empty for a week or so before a young man with yellow hair and cornflower blue eyes moved in, and after that, the butcher’s gold chain was forgotten and all anyone talked of in the village was his eyes.
A letter came and went from Susan. A new governess was to arrive on the following Wednesday. With Eugenia’s blessing, Ruby, who was enchanted by Lizzie and Otis, had decided to stay on as nursery maid.
“They’re not like other children,” she told Eugenia.
“I know,” Eugenia said. “I know.”
The fortnight fell behind her like a fever dream.
One night Gumwater set the dining table as if for a royal banquet, and Eugenia took the children through the entire meal. She invented problematic situations and quizzed them about proper behavior.
“If your hostess spills water on the table, how would you behave? What about if the person to your right becomes inebriated and bursts into song?”
It was only because Ward was a silent witness that she realized how many societal rules dictated that dinner guests ignore the truth or look the other way if a man urinated against the wall, if someone cast up their accounts, or if an irascible guest berated his wife.
Letters flew between Ward and his solicitors as they prepared for a spirited battle over Otis’s guardianship. He mentioned them occasionally, but never shared them. Of course, there was no reason to allow her to read them.
Eugenia wasn’t certain why, or how, but her blissful certainty that Ward had fallen in love with her was fast slipping away.
She was in love. Ward? It no longer seemed so.
One night at supper he mentioned in passing her return to London, as if it meant nothing to him. The day before, she had overheard Ward tell Otis that he and Lizzie would escort him to Eton in the fall.
No mention of her. No glance at her, either. No silent acknowledgment that by the fall their affaire might be regularized.
Every time she felt a burning pain in her heart, Eugenia sought refuge in the kitchen. She and Monsieur Marcel had perfected her tea cake. Not only was that enormously satisfying, but more importantly, she had discovered what her next challenge would be: she meant to open a tearoom.
It would be a tearoom that welcomed children, the only one of its kind. Delicacies would be offered in small portions. A child with Otis’s appetite could eat five or six. Or twelve.
After Ward described how hungry he had always been at Eton, she decided to offer special hampers that could be sent directly to boarding schools. They would include sweets and pastries, naturally, but also hearty meat pies.
She spent hours in the kitchen, trying one recipe after another with Monsieur Marcel’s help. Lizzie often spent the afternoon there as well, stealing raisins and ranking delicacies. In the evening, Eugenia scribbled notes and imagined new combinations of flavors.
“Perhaps you should abstain from the kitchens tomorrow,” Ward said one evening, after Gumwater had brought in a tray holding five different confections.
“I know,” Eugenia said ruefully. “It’s just that one cake leads to another . . . I have an idea or Monsieur Marcel does, and we adjust the amount of butter or other ingredient, and before I know it, we have four versions on our hands.”
“What on earth is enjoyable in that?” Ward asked. “It sounds hot and tiresome.”
“Baking is like mathematics,” Eugenia explained. “I’m fond of numerical problems, and baking demands precision. I promise that nothing will go to waste; we could have a picnic tomorrow afternoon, for example, and Otis would eat every crumb.”
They had their picnic on a linen cloth spread under a willow near the water. After eating luncheon, they lay on the grass reading books until Lizzie fell asleep, using her bundled veil for a pillow. Otis was building a hut of twigs for Jarvis.
Eugenia was drowsily watchi
ng drifting clouds from under the shade of her bonnet when a long blade of grass tickled her nose.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Snowe,” Ward whispered. They were scrupulously formal with each other in front of the children, even while swimming.
“Mr. Reeve,” she murmured.
“You are wildly beautiful.” The grass blade was sweeping back and forth over her lower lip.
“Thank you,” Eugenia said, suddenly shy. They rarely spent time together during the day; Ward was usually in the library working on his steam engine, while she instructed Lizzie and Otis, or rattled around the kitchens.
“I wish we had more time together,” Ward said softly.
Eugenia didn’t dare answer; she was afraid that her aching love couldn’t be disguised.
“I received a letter from the dowager duchess yesterday.”
Dread clenched her gut.
“She informs me that she plans to visit,” Ward said, his eyes dark with obvious regret. “I suspect that she will look for ammunition to bolster her case.”
Eugenia reflexively glanced over to make certain that neither child was listening. “When is she expected?”
“This Tuesday.”
“In three days,” Eugenia, shocked to hear how calm her voice was.
“The children will miss you,” he said. “I will miss you. Damn it, I . . .”
He fell silent as her heart pounded in her ears, certain he was about to say something, ask her to stay, promise to woo her in a year, a few years, if need be. Lying awake by his side at night, she’d come up with a thousand possibilities.
“There’s a fair in the village tomorrow,” he said abruptly.
That wasn’t a declaration.
“We could take the children.”
“Certainly,” Eugenia said. Her heart was thudding a dirge because Ward wasn’t going to say anything. He would not ask her to stay, or even promise to court her after he gained legal guardianship of the children.
He meant to say good-bye.
Years of self-control led her to say, with perfect equanimity, “I love country fairs.”