Until the Earl of Hawkridge.
Because ithadbeen more than just kissing.
The emotions he’d wrought from her body…the things he’d made her feel…it defied description. Which was fitting, ashedefied description. Hot one moment, cold as ice the next. Not that she’d been expecting any proclamations of undying love after their second…encounter. But a smile would have sufficed. Or even allowing a few minutes to pass before he bolted out of the room as if his damned pants had caught fire.
On the bright side of things, she’d forgotten all about how hungry she was. Temporarily, that is. Now, however, as the proverbial dust settled and the candlelight began to wane, Evie’s stomach was alive with grumbles and gurgles and all sorts of mortifying sounds. It almost made her glad Weston had left, as men ought never be privy to any sight or sound or unpleasant smell that might make them believe a woman was actually human.
With a sigh, she curled up beside Posy and closed her eyes.
When Evie woke,it was morning. A gray, drab, dreary morning with a sky spitting rain, but morning nevertheless. Wincing, she sat up and lifted her arms in a long stretch that helped work some of the aches and pains from her muscles that came from spending the night on the floor with a lamb.
The irony of it did not escape her, and as she rose, her mouth twisted in a mirthless smile. Here she was, finally in the company of an honest-to-goodness earl. An earl with a fortune rumored to besolarge that it boggled the mind. Yet for all that, they’d traversed the countryside on foot, been shot at by a crazed farmer because Weston hadn’t thought to carry any money on his person, stumbled upon a tavern filled with questionable patrons, and slept on the ground. At leastshe’dslept on the ground. There was no telling where Weston had laid his head.
Or when he’d be returning for her.
Maybe…maybe she’d made a mistake in choosing the Earl of Hawkridge as her future husband. Even though she hadn’t chosen him so much as the ring had. A particular turn of fate that had brought them together, for better or worse. As Evie stepped onto something squishy and lifted her foot to reveal a present left behind by Posy (not the good kind), she grimaced and acknowledged that this was almostcertainlythe worse.
“Disgusting,” she muttered aloud, searching the room for something to clean herself off. There was no washbasin. Not even a towel. But there was her traveling habit. Her only traveling habit, as it so happened, but given that it was already torn and soiled, what was a little lamb excrement to finish it off?
“I need to take you outside and find us both some food and water.” Hands on her hips, she watched Posy frolic on top of the mattress. With a happy bleat, the lamb leapt off the side and went skidding across the floor, her tiny hooves scrambling for purchase on floorboards worn smooth from decades of heavy use. Chuckling, Evie scooped up her pet and carried her over to the window. Faces pressed together, they peered out through the grimy glass in unison, Posy searching for a patch of clover and Evie searching for any sign of Weston.
“There he is,” she said, relief flowing through her when she spied the earl walking around the side of the tavern, his powerful stride and broad shoulders unmistakable, even in the rain. He was carrying something under his arm. A bag or a package, she couldn’t tell for certain. As he headed for the front door, Evie set Posy down and ran her fingers through her hair in a desperate attempt to make herself look presentable.
Loose and tangled, it was knotted on the one side and drooping on the other, with pins snarled in between. Her bonnet was gone, plucked from her head sometime between their arrival and this morning. She suspected Posy had eaten it, but the lamb wasn’t talking.
Without a comb, Evie made do with an embarrassingly simple braid. And here she’d thought her beauty regimen was restrictive when she and Joanna had shared a room at the boarding house! She missed her creams. Or potions, as her sister referred to them. She missed the bucket of warm water they’d been allotted each day. She missed gazing at her reflection in the mirror, searching for imperfections with the ruthless scrutiny of a surgeon examining his patient. She missed the beautiful gown she’d worn to the Countess of Beresford’s ball.
And she knew it was vain, and small, and petty, these things that she missed. There were children going hungry. Men losing their lives in pointless wars. Women selling their bodies to put food on the table. But in a life that had felt beyond her control ever since her father died, Evie’s appearance was the one thing shecouldcontrol. The one thing she could take pride in. The one thing no one could take away from her.
Unlike her childhood home, and her treasured belongings, and her beloved school, and her so-called friends.
All snatched away, like a dream in the morning.
The only things she and her sisters had left were each other and their mother’s ring.
And then that, too, had been taken.
Byhim.
Weston Weston, the Earl of Hawkridge. The heir to a dukedom, Joanna’s half-brother, and the only man to ever make her knees wobble.
She’d never known knees could do such a thing before he had kissed her.
Wobble, that is.
Joanna and Claire were the ones who believed in such ridiculous notions as love and happily-ever-after. For her part, Evie held a much more practical view of courtship. It was a means to an end. A straight road to take her where she wanted to go with no time for stops or detours along the way.
But then Weston, in all his dark, brooding glory, had made her weak in the knees.
And he’d kissed her.
Downthere.
If that wasn’t a detour, she didn’t know what was.
Worse than that, she hadn’t the faintest idea what to do about it.
Hair styling and dresses. Mixing the perfect shade of eye paint to bring out the blue in her irises. Flirting not for the fun of it, but for the sole purpose of attaining what she wanted. Those were contrivances that Evie was familiar with.
