“That’s–that’s right,” she stammered, for once finding herself at a complete loss of words.
“Second floor, all the way to the end, last door on the left. Pay before ye leave. It’ll be an extra shilling for the sheep.”
Weston gave a clipped nod, and then ushered Evie up the stairs, his grip tightening protectively when a catcall pierced the noisy din.
“Keep walking,” he snarled in her ear, and she hastened to obey, lifting the hem of her skirts and taking the narrow steps two at a time until they’d reached the landing.
Logically, she knew that if the riffraff in the tavern were to overwhelm them, there was little Weston could do to keep her safe. But she knew, somehow she justknew, that he’d sacrifice his own life before he allowed anything despicable to happen to her.
Weston Weston was a man who protected what belonged him.
Savagely, if necessary.
And whetherheliked it or not, she was in his care until they reached Hawkridge Manor…and far beyond, if Evie had her way.
“Your wife?” she said, coquettishly fluttering her lashes at him once they were in their room. If the box with a straw-stuffed mattress on the floor and a single window could be described as a room. A candle flickered feebly on the sill, casting a dull circle of light. There wasn’t a washbasin or even a chest of drawers, not that Evie had anything to be packed away. All of her belongings remained in a trunk sitting on top of Weston’s carriage.
“Would you have preferred I called you my mistress?” With a loudclick, he shut the door.
As her eyes struggled to adjust to the murky lighting, Evie found herself grateful for the curtain of shadows that separated her and Weston, as it disguised the hot blush that filled her cheeks and trickled down the front of her chest until it pooled in her breasts, causing her nipples to swell into aching buds of secret longing.
Weston’s mistress.
There were worse things to be, she supposed, than an earl’s lover.
Especially an earl that looked as this one did.
Leaning against the door with his thighs spread slightly apart and his arms loosely draped behind his back, he was the very picture of rakish nonchalance. As if he’d just strolled out of a billiards room after taking the game in eight instead of a hundred-mile walk through the desert.
Well, maybe not ahundredmiles.
And the green fields hadn’t contained a speck of sand.
Still, it might as well have been a trek through the Sahara for all that she’d wilted in the heat. Whereas Weston could not have been more relaxed or at ease. Only his piercing stare betrayed the tension that constantly simmered just beneath the surface. That, and the solemn set of his mouth.
Heavens, but did the maneversmile?
She wanted him to, Evie realized.
More than that, she wanted to be the reason he did.
And that…that wasn’t part of her plan.
“As I am neither your wife nor your mistress, you might have just told the truth.” Setting Posy down to explore their meager accommodations, she lowered herself onto the edge of the bed and began to remove her shoes, needingsomethingto focus her attention on other than the potent allure of Weston’s wolfish gaze.
Desire was all well and good, but she wouldn’t let it distract her. Her goal was marriage. Not kisses on the side of the road. And she wasn’t going to let anything, oranyone, keep her from achieving herraison d’être.
Especially not Lord Hawkridge.
Lust and love had their place. Her sister, Claire, was quite taken with the local butcher’s son and was blissfully happy about it. But Evie didn’t want to fall in love. She wanted to be a countess. And she had only to look to her mother’s affair with Lord Dorchester to see that love was a detriment when it came to marriage, not an advantage.
Anne Thorncroft could have stayed in England and been amarchioness. Maybe one day even a duchess. Instead, she’d fled back to America and married Evie’s father while pregnant with the marquess’ child. She had given up everything for the sake oflove. And Evie couldn’t even ask her mother why she’d done such a ridiculous thing, because she had died when her middle daughter was barely old enough to remember the smell of her perfume.
Evie did not begrudge her mother her choice to return to Somerville and marry her childhood beau. Had she not done that, Evie would never have been born. But try as she might, she couldn’t make sense of her mother’s decision. Given the same choice, Evie would pick being a lady over being in love every time.
It wasn’t even a question.
“Wife was simpler than the truth,” Weston drawled as he shrugged out of jacket and waistcoat, then tossed the wrinkled garments into the corner for lack of a chair. “It should also ensure our privacy, and make us no less memorable than any other wedded couple passing through.” His brow arched. “Unless you’d like to tell the barman that you’re really the insufferably annoying sibling of my illegitimate half-sister who has imposed herself on my good graces.”
