Her breath caught in heady anticipation in the much less magical here and now and she almost gave her thoughts away by moving a little closer to him and behaving like a besotted ninny. A dreamer deep inside her whispered it would be almost unbearably glorious, whichever version of him did the kissing, but that might be Pamela’s daughter speaking and Eve didn’t want to listen to her. Carter certainly didn’t adore her and he was the Duke of Linaire’s clerk and librarian, for goodness’ sake.
‘I was just lucky, I suppose,’ he said with a self-deprecating shrug as if nothing else could account for it.
Eve shivered at the thought of a stray bullet or sabre slash that might have ended his life and refused to think of the number he must have survived right now. ‘I doubt any officer could survive long on luck in a regiment like yours,’ she challenged.
‘You would be surprised and at least I had enough of it to know when it ran out. This summer I was at the end of it and sold out as soon as I recovered enough to sign my name after Waterloo.’
‘You seem determined to make light of your experiences.’
‘A limping man stands little chance of surviving a forced march or fighting retreat, but let’s not speak of such horrors on a day like today. Didn’t you promise me a fine story about your cousin by marriage and your stepmama just now?’
‘Did I?’ Drat the man, having a conversation with him was like trying to hold a slippery trout wet from the river. Last night he seemed almost too dashing to be an upper servant, today he carried his shallow dark hat as if itching to have it back on his head and go before someone caught him speaking to a lady. ‘It’s no secret now, so you might as well hear it from me. Lady Chloe and Verity’s mama were twins, Mr Carter. At much the same age as you joined the army, Lady Daphne Thessaly wed a young naval lieutenant to avoid an arranged marriage. Her father was furious at being robbed of what he saw as his right to sell his daughter to a rich old man so he had her husband pressed, then left his twin daughters to birth her baby in such dire conditions it’s a miracle Verity and her aunt survived, but Lady Daphne died in childbed. Lady Chloe spent the next decade acting as Verity’s mother and became a housekeeper, then my father spent most of it trying not to be in love with her.’
‘And when he couldn’t resist any longer they told each other their secrets and seized the day?’
‘I don’t recall it being that simple, but the end result is they are very happily wed and Verity lives with us when her father is at sea,’ she said and wondered why she hadn’t let him go in the first place. It was that bland mask of the onlooker on life that did it, she supposed. For some reason she itched to rip it off and show the world a real man stood here, despite the repressive black garb and his fiercely guarded aloofness. Now she waited for his stiff farewell and told herself to let him go this time.
‘Would my sister had had an aunt like your stepmother to love and protect her when I was sent off to school by our uncle,’ he said instead and why was she this glad he hadn’t mumbled a hasty farewell and limped away?
‘What happened to her?’ she said with all the horror stories of girls sent out as apprentices by their cruel relatives in her mind as she saw him frown.
‘Oh, nothing very awful, she was put in the care of a governess until she was old enough to go to school and our family could forget us. My wicked uncle still found her useful as a stick to beat me with; if I ran away from school or tried to argue with the career he had in mind, my sister would be apprenticed to a milliner. I’m sure you know what happens to most girls bound to that trade, Miss Winterley. Even at eight years old I knew I must be a pattern card to save her from such a fate.’
‘How cruel,’ she exclaimed and felt furious with his appalling relative when he shrugged.
‘It’s the way of the world, my father annoyed two of his brothers so much they would have loved to have nothing to do with his children, but the scandal would have deafened them if they let us go into the poorhouse.’
‘What did your mother’s relatives have to say for themselves?’
‘She was an only child and her parents died before her. If she had any relatives I don’t know of it,’ he said as if he wished he’d never told her so much in the first place.
‘I am astonished her friends and neighbours let your uncle treat you both so, then,’ she said although Mr Carter didn’t want her to feel anything for him or his.
‘They would shake their heads and mutter it was terrible we were left destitute, then whisper about bad blood and decide we were best forgotten,’ he told her with some passion in his voice at last. ‘Poverty stalked my sister’s childhood and she is always a hair’s breadth away from it even now, Miss Winterley. One wicked thought in an employer’s head; a wrong word or unwitting action can get a governess dismissed without references. I can’t endure the thought of such a life grinding her down as the years go on, so it is up to me to find a way out of such an existence for her, before it drives the youth and laughter out of her completely.’
Eve only had to see the purpose burning in his fiery gaze to know she was right about the hidden depths he tried to keep to himself. He wasn’t the flat character he tried to be; he couldn’t be if he pretended he was until doomsday.
‘Your uncles are as guilty as your father of not making sure she is provided for. You will need very broad shoulders if you intend to take the sins of your entire family on them, Mr Carter.’
‘You are very direct this morning, Miss Winterley.’
She shrugged. ‘For direct I shall read rude, but I have no patience with pretend ignorance, sir, and if you had moved in polite society for the last three years you would not have any either. Your sister might count herself lucky not to be watched like a prize heifer by every idiot on the marriage mart if she knew how it felt.’
‘Are they all idiots, then?’
‘Not all, but no sensible man will hold an interesting conversation with a marriageable young lady for long unless he is in serious need of a wife.’
‘So there is some merit in being ineligible after all, then?’ he joked and Eve felt a tug of temptation to make him do it again.
He was so unaware of how handsome he was when he forgot to guard his tongue that he could steal an unwary female’s heart before she knew she was in danger. Lucky she wasn’t unwary then, wasn’t it?
‘Why come to London for the Little Season then, since you dislike it so much?’ he asked as if truly interested.
‘The House is sitting and Papa hates coming on his own. My parents worry about me if I don’t come with them and there’s Verity’s future to think of as well. If I refuse to take my part in this pantomime the ton plays out twice a year she will be an oddity by association. That would be so unfair when we’re not related except through Papa and Chloe’s marriage and a common link with my little half-brothers.’
‘So you only dress and dance and behave like a fashionable young lady who is enjoying herself for the benefit of others?’ he said with a sceptical glance at her fashionable pelisse and high-crowned bonnet that said he thought her vain and not very self-aware.
Miss Winterley looked as if she might agree she was that saintly for a moment just to spite him, then mischief danced in her eyes and an irresistible smile tugged at her temptingly curved mouth. Colm had to struggle with a terrible urge to kiss her breathless, silenced and deliciously responsive—in the middle of Green Park for goodness’ sake. What business had such a controlled and