“The vicar? Oh no.”
Martin leaned forward. “Was he a fool, then? Or blind?”
She tried to explain how it was. “It was an arranged marriage, so we had no courtship. There was certainly no seduction involved. He simply came to my father one day and requested my hand, and naturally, my father agreed.”
“Why do you say it like that? Why
naturally
?”
She met his eyes without flinching. “Because we were not wealthy then, and I had only a modest dowry, and my father always told me the chances of my getting married for any other reason were remote at best, because I was not the kind of woman men found desirable. So he leaped
at the offer, and so did I. My mother was gone then, you see, so I was more than happy to leave his house.”
Martin’s eyes softened. “Your father sounds like a very…” He paused, as if he were struggling to find the right words. “He sounds like a very
interesting
sort of man.”
She gazed out at the water and thought of all the years she had tried to earn her father’s love without the slightest return of affection or encouragement. She remembered all the cruel words and the cold expressions of loathing.
“I remember trying to climb up on his lap when I was very little, and he would push me away as if I were something repulsive. Perhaps that’s why I’ve always felt such a need to be perfectly behaved. If I couldn’t be charming or beautiful, I could at least refrain from disappointing him in other ways. I could simply stay out of his sight and not draw attention to myself.”
“I’m sorry, Evelyn.”
“Don’t be sorry for me. He was an insufferable wretch.” It was not something she ever would have said before, and the words felt strange but liberating on her lips. “I understand it better now that I am older. He was unkind to me, you see, because he never wanted to marry my mother, but he
had
to, because of my accidental arrival in their lives. At least he had the decency to marry her, though he didn’t change much about the way
he lived after the fact. He broke my mother’s heart every day. I never understood why she loved him the way she did. I suppose he was handsome, and he could wield some charm when he wanted to. Though he never wielded it around me. He only wielded malice and spite.”
Martin gazed out over the sea. “Suddenly I understand everything about you, Evelyn.”
She shot him a quick glare. “I didn’t say it to make you understand me,” she told him. “Or to seek your pity. It’s just the way it was.”
He simply nodded. “It might help you to know that I, too, had an insufferable wretch for a father. He came from a very long and distinguished line of peckerheads.”
The anxiety she felt, talking about her father, began to fall away, and she managed a smile.
“It’s true,” he continued, his tone light, despite the rather dark topic of conversation. “Surely you heard the stories, that our castle was haunted and cursed, and we were all doomed to madness?”
She grinned sheepishly and hugged her knees to her chest. “I did hear something of the sort.”
“Most of that was a lot of silly invention, except for the way my father was, and his father, too, I suppose. Sadly, my brother James got the worst of them, and by the time I came along, the old man wasn’t around much, for which I will be eternally grateful. Though I did see the back of his hand once or twice.”
Her smile faded. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
He shrugged and met her gaze. “It’s all in the past now. I hardly think of it.”
Perhaps, she thought pensively, there was something to be said for dispensing with the past.
They continued to sit quietly in the gentle breeze, then turned at the sound of a horse on the road.
Martin got to his feet. “It’s a family. They’re getting out of their carriage.”
Evelyn smoothed out her skirts. “They want to enjoy the beach, I suppose.”
“That would by my guess.”
He sat down and ran a hand through his hair, while Evelyn craned her neck to try and see them. Just then, two young children came bounding over the rocks—a little boy about three, and a sister who looked a few years older. Behind them came the parents, stepping more carefully, carrying a picnic basket and buckets. The children screeched and laughed and ran straight down to the waves to dip their feet.
Martin watched them for a long time with a melancholy look in his eye, until the boy turned and ran from a fast wave, his little feet taking him straight into his father’s arms. Both parents laughed, and the boy squealed as the father lifted him into the air.
Finding the whole scene most entertaining, Evelyn smiled at Martin, but he was not looking at
her. He was staring out at the sea again, looking somber and impatient. He said nothing for a long time.
“Is something wrong?” she asked. “Do you wish to go?” She felt deflated all of a sudden, and wondered if perhaps he did not enjoy children.
He turned his gaze to her as if he only just realized she was still beside him, then got to his feet.
“What in the world has come over me?” he asked, flashing his famous charm once again. “I have brought you to this beautiful beach and not shown you any of it. Come, let us take a walk and see if we can spot some swallows and warblers. Then I will sail you back to Cowes by moonlight and show you what sailing is
really
all about.”
After their all-too-serious discussion, she was pleased to smile unreservedly again and equally pleased to anticipate their journey back to town. She reached up and took his hand.
A few hours later, the return trip was all he’d promised it would be. By the time they sailed away from the dock, dusk had fallen, and soon they were at sea again, with the wind at their backs and the silvery moon over their heads.
It was a relaxing run, and Martin lounged back on the bench with a wrist draped over a spoke of the wheel, one leg propped up, while Evelyn reclined on the high side of the forward deck, lying on her back with her hands folded over her belly. Stars appeared one by one, like tiny sparkling di
amonds, and she watched them contentedly while listening to the creaking, softly moaning blocks and rigging.
She had not expected to feel like this on the way back—so content and at ease. She glanced back at Martin, who quietly stood up from the bench and gazed at the moon. She watched him for a long time and knew that he, too, was enchanted by the night.
Rising carefully, she made her way aft and reached him without uttering a word. He said nothing either. He only smiled at her, and they stood side by side, breathing in the fragrance of the sea and watching the moonlight on the water.
Then Martin spoke. “This afternoon, Evelyn, you told me that your husband had never touched you the way I did today. Is that true?”
She was not accustomed to such forthrightness about taboo subjects, but everything was different today.
She
was different. “Yes, it’s true.”
He turned toward her. She could see him clearly in the moonlight. “How, then, did he consummate the marriage?”
“He did it very quickly,” she replied. “And it only happened twice.”
Martin’s head dipped closer, as if he weren’t quite sure he’d heard her correctly. “
Twice?
”
“Yes.” She swallowed uneasily.
He gazed off in the other direction. “Please tell me he at least kissed you.”
She had thought about her “deflowering” many times over the past two years, and had always known it was not the experience of most women. “No, he never did. It was very uncomfortable, and he…he wept afterward. I heard him in the next room.”
“
He
wept?”
“Yes…” She felt strange talking about this. “I think he believed he had sinned.”
Martin shook his head and took hold of the wheel with both hands. “It shouldn’t have been like that, Evelyn. You have not had good men in your life.”
She inhaled deeply, breathing in the cool, salty air, not knowing what in the world to say next. Then something spilled out of her mouth before she had a chance to contemplate it. “It was disappointing…”
“No doubt.”
“…because I wanted to have children.”
Martin looked down at her. “Sex within marriage is not just about making babies,” he said. “You know that, don’t you?”
Did she? She supposed she did. At least she did now.
But what did
he
really know about sex within marriage, when he made a habit of running as fast as he could from any kind of permanent attachment to a woman?
Something stopped her from questioning him
on that, however, when she recalled the look on his face on the beach earlier, when he had watched that little boy run to his father’s arms. And now, because of the way he was absently stroking the wheel with his thumb.
All at once, her stomach lurched with the unexpected shock of a deeper understanding.
“How would you know about that?” she asked, but somehow she already knew the answer.
He paused for a long moment. “Because I was married once, too.”
Good Lord. She thought she had known what kind of man he was—that he was not capable of committing himself to one woman—but she had been wrong. He had married someone and spoken vows before God?
“This happened when you were in America?” she asked.
“Yes, and we had a child.”
A child. She felt as if she’d been knocked backward by the boom, but she had not been. They were still coasting straight ahead, and the boom had not moved.
“What happened to them?”
Did he leave them? she wondered. No…His blue eyes had a faraway look in them, which she recognized as the deepest, darkest kind of suffering.
“Our house burned to the ground,” he told her, “while my wife and child were inside.”
Evelyn could barely comprehend what she was hearing. He had been married, and he’d lost his wife and child in a fire. They had both died. She could not imagine how horrific and devastating it must have been, and how he must have suffered.
And oh, how she had misjudged him. She had treated him with disdain on so many occasions because she presumed he was reckless and shallow. She had underestimated his depth as a person. She had assumed he’d never known pain or heartbreak, but he had. He’d known the very worst kind.
“You asked about the boats I wrecked, Evelyn…”
“Yes?”
“The truth is, when I came back from America, my brother watched me stagger in and out of a constant drunken stupor for a full year, and that was why he commissioned them—to give me something to do, something to excel at. I didn’t intend to wreck them. I was not suicidal or anything of that nature. I was just not always sober, nor was I paying complete attention, because I was thinking about my wife, Charlotte, and my son—
Owen
.”
She nodded, understanding.
“But I am over that now,” he said. “I no longer stagger in and out of taverns, and I won’t be wrecking any more boats.”
No, he would not, and she knew why—because he had chosen a new life, one where he lived for the present and never the past, where he sought pleasure to drown out pain, and by doing so, he kept himself well distracted. It was an uncomplicated, indulgent life to be sure, but she was not entirely sure it was a full one. And that night, sailing back to Cowes by moonlight, her heart broke for him in more ways she than she could count.
“W
here the hell were you?” Spence asked, when Martin walked into the Fountain Hotel late that night and took a seat at the bar. “I thought we were going to sail around the island today.”
Martin signaled the barkeep for a tankard of ale. “I had other business to take care of.”
“So you leave us here waiting around, without saying a word? I felt like a bloody idiot asking everyone at the Squadron if they’d seen you. You could have at least told us to take the day for ourselves. I would have enjoyed the sleep.”
The barkeep set down a frothy tankard in front of Martin, from which he promptly took a deep
swig. “I apologize. I just needed to get away.”
Spence leaned closer and spoke in a hushed tone. “You weren’t with that widow, were you? Because I damn well didn’t see her around either.”
It had been an exhausting day. Martin felt emotionally drained after the trip back when he’d confessed things he had never meant to confess, and he did not come here to be harassed. He just wanted to have a drink.
“What if I was?” he testily replied.
“Bloody hell, I can’t believe you,” Spence said, taking a sip of his ale and swiveling on his stool. He leaned an elbow on the bar. “I could forgive you for sailing off with one of those pretty little blondes with their parasols spinning, but what are you trying to do with Breckinridge’s woman? Everyone’s going to say you were just trying to steal her away in order to beat him in that
other
race because you’re afraid you’re going to lose the one that matters.”
Martin felt his temper rising. “First of all, she is not Breckinridge’s woman, and I’m not afraid of losing, because it’s not going to happen.”
“How do you know that?” Spence asked. “Do you forget what his boat looks like?”
Martin shook his head dismissively and took another swig of ale. “I haven’t forgotten. We’re going to beat him, that’s all there is to it.”
“As simple as that, is it? Just because you say so? Well, it would have helped if you’d been here
today to take the
Orpheus
around the island. The crew could have used the practice. We need to study the winds.”
“I studied them myself.”
He threw his hands up. “Then I guess we’re all set!
You’re
all we need.
You
can do all the thinking and see everything from every angle. I don’t even know why you need a crew in the first place. You’re the Cowes champion all on your own.”
He downed the rest of his drink and stood. Martin turned on the stool, shocked by his friend’s unexpected fit of temper. “Spence, what the hell’s gotten into you?”
“It’s the same old thing, Martin.” He tossed a few coins onto the bar and headed for the door.
Martin slid off his stool and followed his first mate out onto the narrow street. “Spence.”
Spence didn’t wait.
Martin caught up with him. “Stop, dammit! You have no right to pass judgment on me for taking a day to myself. All you ever do is badger me and tell me I’ve become obsessed with winning, that I’ve forgotten what real life is about, but you love the win just as much as I do. It’s why you’re angry with me now.”
Spence finally stopped and faced Martin in the street. “So you enjoyed a taste of ‘real life,’ did you? You took the widow out, showed her all your impressive skills on the water, and seduced
her into your cozy berth. Did you feel like the victor when all was said and done?”
Martin was stunned. He stood blinking at his friend. “It wasn’t like that.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Spence replied, starting off again.
Martin had no choice but to follow. “I said it wasn’t like that. She’s different.”
“Trust me, we all know she’s different. You can see it as plain as day.
Plain
being the operative word.”
Catching up to his first mate again, Martin grabbed him by the arm. “Honest to God, Spence, say that again, and I’ll flatten you.”
Spence looked down at Martin’s hand on his arm and shot him a warning look. They were both breathing hard and fast. “Can’t you see?” he said. “All you know how to do is find new ways to distract yourself from what’s really killing you inside—which is the fact that you think you failed the two people you cared for most in the world. You obsess over anything that will make you feel like a winner, and it’s changed you.” He waved a hand through the air, as if to say he was giving up. “I’m sorry, I won’t stand by and congratulate you while you use that woman to make yourself feel heroic, because that’s what you’re doing, and you know it.” He turned and stalked off.
Martin did not follow this time. How could he,
when he felt as if he’d just been kicked in the chest?
The next morning, Evelyn woke up with the uncomfortable realization that all her safe, sensible thoughts and beliefs had been annihilated.
She’d had the most extraordinary time sailing with Martin the day before—the man she’d always believed had no honor even though he had once saved her life. Strangely, he seemed to be saving her still. He’d awakened her to passion, showed her that it was within reach, even for her. On top of all that, she’d discovered that he had once loved very deeply and had done the one thing she believed him incapable of—he had made a commitment to one woman for the rest of his life.
She sat up in bed, turned her eyes toward the sky outside the window, and wondered what she was going to do. She’d always been able to keep her attraction to him at bay because despite her body’s desires, in her head she knew he was not worthy of her devotion. But everything was different now. He
was
worthy. He was capable of love, a love deeper than she herself had ever known.
She
was the one who was not worthy. What did she know of life and love after all? Nothing. She had been so arrogant and self-righteous, thinking herself above him.
She rose from bed and contemplated all this
while she had breakfast in her room, then dressed and went to knock on Lady Radley’s door, as they had made plans to go walking together.
The door opened almost instantly. “Good morning, my dear,” Lady Radley said, inviting Evelyn in. “We missed you yesterday. There was a lawn bowling event at Stanhope House, then we went for tea at the Corinthian, and Bertie was there talking all about his new cutter. It was such a marvelous day. I was disappointed you missed it, but you enjoyed yourself, did you not? I can’t imagine you would have wished to be doing anything other than what you were doing.”
Evelyn stopped in the center of the room and raised her eyebrows. “What do you mean, Lady Radley? I simply went to the museum in Newport.”
That’s what she had told them. She’d left a message at the desk early in the morning.
Lady Radley smiled surreptitiously, then sat down on the bed and patted the spot beside her.
Evelyn sat down, too, glancing uneasily at her companion, who was wiggling on the mattress to find a comfortable position.
“You don’t have to keep secrets from me, dear,” she whispered. “I think I know what you were up to, and you can trust me to be discreet.”
“I still don’t know what you’re referring to,” Evelyn insisted.
Lady Radley patted her on the knee. She was
clearly enjoying this. “It can be our little hush-hush secret. All I want are a few details. What was it like? What was
he
like?”
Evelyn took a moment to collect her thoughts. Had it been that obvious to everyone that she and Martin had gone off together?
“How did you know?” she finally asked.
“How could I
not
know? It was so clear to me that he fancied you the other night at the ball, and when he took you up on deck…Well, I could have swooned with envy. Which is why I want to know what happened yesterday. Tell me
everything
, Evelyn. I beg of you, and don’t spare a single detail.”
The old Evelyn would probably have been distressed by such questions, but this morning she cared less about propriety and wanted to laugh again like she had with Martin when she’d sipped wine out of the bottle on the beach. She wanted to confess her scandalous adventures to someone.
“All right, I’ll tell you,” she said, “but you must promise to keep it secret. You must tell everyone that I was at the museum in Newport, just as I claimed.”
“Of course I will. You have my word.”
So Evelyn confessed the truth. “Lord Martin took me sailing yesterday.”
“Just the two of you?”
She nodded.
Lady Radley touched a hand to her cheek and
stood up. She crossed to the other side of the room, as if taking her time pondering the news, then her eyes lit up. “Oh, you lucky woman. What did he look like at the wheel? No, don’t answer that. I already know. I have imagined him so many times, so young and virile.”
Evelyn chewed on her lip while Lady Radley seemed to drift away for a moment.
“And you spent the whole day with him,” she continued. “Did he hold your hand when you got on and off the boat?”
Evelyn smiled. “He did more than that. He practically had to hoist me up over the rail because we boarded from the launch.”
“You don’t say.” She returned to the bed and sat down again. “You were very late getting back. Were you sailing the entire time, or did you go somewhere on the island?”
Evelyn explained how far they had gone, and described their lunch on the beach and their walk afterward. She recounted the fun they’d had building a sand castle and admitted she drank wine from the bottle.
Naturally, she refrained from mentioning the
other
frolicking that had gone on at the beach, deciding she could only be so bold. Besides—that was private, between her and Martin, as were their more intimate conversations about other things during their return trip by moonlight.
Lady Radley sighed and flopped backward onto
the bed. “You have given me much to dream about, Evelyn. Thank you.”
Evelyn regarded her curiously for a moment. “Do you ever dream about your husband?”
Lady Radley lay there, staring up at the ceiling, then smiled wistfully. “There was a time in the early years of our marriage when I didn’t need to dream. We were in love when we first married, but then, well…It’s not quite the same anymore.”
“Why not?”
She paused. “I don’t know. I suppose you have children and you grow older and don’t have the energy you once had. Then you seem to forget about each other. At least, he has seemed to forget about me.”
Evelyn spoke gently. “You miss him.”
Lady Radley nodded, her wistfulness gone now, replaced by a quiet melancholy. “I miss what we had.”
But then she sat up and smiled brightly and patted Evelyn on the knee again. “But that is neither here nor there. Life is wonderful today because you had an adventure and captured the attention of the greatest hero in En gland.”
“I doubt I’ll hold it for long,” she said.
“Perhaps he’s going to compete with the others for your hand.”
Evelyn shook her head. “He does not wish to marry.”
Lady Radley stood up and went to her dressing table to put on her earrings. “Are you certain?”
“Yes. He has told me so very clearly.”
She huffed. “Well. I hope you’re not going to dismiss him completely because of that. You might as well enjoy his attentions, whether he is after a betrothal or something altogether different, if you grasp my meaning.”
“Lady Radley,” Evelyn said, “are you suggesting what I think you are suggesting?”
She fastened her other earring. “Yes, and why not, I ask you? You’ve been married before. There is nothing to stop you from enjoying yourself this week. Life is too short. Six months from now you might be someone’s wife, and I know you well enough to know that you would never be unfaithful, even to a man you did not love. So have your adventures
now,
Evelyn, while you can. You’ll regret it if you don’t.”
Was it true? she wondered, as she followed Lady Radley out into the corridor of the hotel to begin their morning walk. Would she regret what she did
not
do more than what she
did
do? Even if the most lasting souvenir of a wild and wicked affair with the hero of her childhood dreams was to be a broken heart?
After a brief walk to the Medina ferry and back, Evelyn and Lady Radley spent the rest of
the afternoon on the back lawn of the yacht club with the other ladies, sitting on the wicker chairs, basking in the sunshine, and watching the sailboats come and go from the Solent. There was much speculation about the race and who would take the trophy, and most people seemed to believe it would go to the
Endeavor
this year, as she was without a doubt a magnificent boat of revolutionary design.
Evelyn had seen Lord Breckinridge and his crew row out to the
Endeavor
hours ago and hoist the sails. They had sailed westward and had not yet returned.
The
Orpheus,
on the other hand, was already gone when she and Lady Radley had arrived at the club house. Martin had likely taken her out early that morning to sail around the island, as he mentioned he might.
Though she wanted him to be prepared for the race, she could not deny that she was disappointed in one regard, for since her scandalous conversation with Lady Radley that morning, she had begun to entertain some secret hopes that she might see him on the lawn and flirt with him.
And
then
what? Could she—Evelyn Wheaton, proper widow—despite all her cautious reservations, follow the advice of her romantic female friend and actually enter into a wicked, scorching affair with the famously alluring champion of Cowes, Lord Martin Langdon?
Feeling a sudden rush of heat to her cheeks, she quickly clicked open her fan and cooled herself.
Oh, this would not do. It would not do at all. She had come here to find a husband. A husband! She could not be fantasizing about wild antics in her hotel room with a notorious rake, or naughty out-of-wedlock shenanigans in the private forward cabin of a sailboat at night. She had to stop thinking about that rocking sensation under her body, and she most certainly should not be thinking about—