Tempted

“They took the pony trap to Wendover. I expect they will stay there until the rain lets up.”

“You’ll meet Judith and Angel at dinner, I’m sure.”

Evan recalled Gram mentioning that the “new Lady Mountjoy” had some younger sisters.

The door was pushed open by a boy of six or so in ruffles and short coats. He ran to Lord and Lady Mountjoy expectantly, and Evan felt an impulse to warn him not to foist the pup he was strangling onto his father. But the boy laid the whining animal on Lord Mountjoy’s knee with impunity. Smiles softened both their faces, and Evan knew a pang of remorse. His parents had never smiled on him in such a way, not that he could remember. And this was the same man who’d had nothing but gruff admonishments for him, to stand up straight, or take the food to your mouth, not your mouth to the food.

Lord Mountjoy glanced up, and the genuine smile was replaced by a forced one as he introduced Evan to his new brother, Thomas. Thomas shook Evan’s hand in quite an adult manner. Evan knelt and smiled his own genuine smile, hoping the child would fare better in this house than he had.

There was a firm knock at the door, followed by the entrance of a prim woman in cap, apron and gray gown, whose worried face split into an indulgent smile when she saw the child. “I might have known…” she said, then started when Evan got up from his kneeling position. Her face grew wary, angry almost, and she glanced sharply at Lady Mountjoy to see if this stranger was permitted to touch her darling. Evan had thought that the wispy hair escaping her cap was gray, but he now saw it was blond, and that she was, in fact, not old.

“This is my oldest son, Evan,” Lord Mountjoy said. “This is Nurse Miranda.”

Evan had a frosty nod bestowed on him.

“Run along now, Thomas,” Lord Mountjoy said. “You can keep the pup in the stable, not in the house.”

“Yes. Nasty, dirty thing,” Nurse agreed. “You must not bring it into the nursery again.”

“I must go, too,” Lady Mountjoy said, getting up and leading Thomas to his nurse. “I suppose we should kill the fatted calf if there is time.”

“I’m sure you shall contrive something equally fitting, my dear.”

Evan watched them depart and wondered what the nurse would say to the boy about him, perhaps that he, too, was a nasty, dirty thing that should be kept in the stable. He felt a moment of dizziness overtake him as he put down his glass, and he rested his hand on the table until it had passed. It was caused not only by the brandy, but by riding so many miles in an unfit condition, plus two more or less sleepless nights and a weariness he could no longer shake.

“I hear Bose in the hall. You may have your old room. Terry has Gregory’s and I see no point in displacing him.”

Evan flinched a little at his dead brother’s name and left the library without a word. He climbed the stairs on knees that ached for days at a time now. Twenty-five years old and he was falling apart. He stopped uncertainly on the landing. Then he seemed to hear Gram’s voice reciting, “Your room is at the top of the stairs on the left.”

“Will I ever live there again?” an uncertain voice—his own, he supposed—asked.

“I don’t know, child.”

He went toward that door, not so much because of the voices in his head but because of the thump of baggage coming from within. He entered and sat on the bed, to marvel numbly at Bose’s eternal energy. It was a small room with a fireplace across one corner. The furniture consisted of no more than a bed, a small desk and a hard, wooden chair. Evan’s baggage was piled under the window. It was not as he had remembered it and yet he could not say what was wrong.

“You look all in, lad. Give me those wet clothes and roll up for a nap until dinnertime.”

“Perhaps you should be the captain,” Evan joked as he rose to strip off his wet uniform. He crawled between the covers, naked except for bandages, and let the sheets dry and warm him.

Evan awoke with a certain stiffness hanging about his limbs. He stretched and relaxed, then took a deep breath and grunted at the stab of pain. It was such a familiar pain by now that he ventured to think the ribs felt a shade better. The knees still ached. “Bose?” he asked experimentally.

“He’s asleep, but I can wake him if you really need him,” the woman said as she set her sewing aside and got up from the small chair by the window.

The voice was firm, but gentle, and Evan regarded her in puzzlement. It was not that it was odd for him to wake with a woman in his room, but he usually remembered who she was. And of this beauty he had no memory at all. That fine tawny hair, those kind blue eyes and that kissable mouth— those he would have remembered.

“May I get you anything?” she asked, coming to stand over him.

“Just your name. I seem to have mislaid it.”

“Judith. I’m your aunt, now that I think of it,” she said with a chuckle.

“Uh, I don’t have an aunt.” And if I did, he thought, she wouldn’t stir me like this.

“You do now. Two of them, though I dare say we are both younger than you. Angel and I are Helen’s sisters. But I should not be teasing you when you are not even awake.”

“Nor should you be here,” Evan said, remembering his naked state.

“I caught Bose preparing to curl up for a sleep outside your door, so I sent him to his own room.” She had trouble keeping her eyes from straying to Evan’s chest and shoulders.

“We have been away from civilization too long.”

“Is he always like that—a faithful hound?”

“More like a bossy nanny most of the time. Now that I come to think of it, I’m surprised he let you send him off.”

Judith shrugged and smiled. “Do you need him?”

“No, let him sleep. Believe it or not, he was the one who wanted to get here in such a hurry.”

“Ah, yes, our Joan. She has spoken of nothing else since you arrived. She said you rode a hundred and fifty miles in less than three days, and in this weather.”

“It’s what we’re used to.”

“Yes, I know,” she said sadly.

“You—you have been following the war, then?”

“I have read the accounts in the Times,” she said warily, unwilling to let him know she had read his letters to his grandmother.

“I should have liked to read those papers myself, to see if the reports bear any resemblance to what really went on.”

“Gram saved them. I will find them for you—later. Perhaps you should not come down to dinner tonight. You have a bit of a fever.” She almost touched his forehead, as she had while he slept, but stopped herself in time.

“Oh, I shall do,” he said cheerfully, sitting up and revealing the bandages around his chest.

“Yes, I’m sure you will,” she said, whisking out of the room and closing the door behind her before he could see her blushing.

Judith closeted herself in the room she shared with Angel, and leaned against the door until her heart settled down to a more normal rhythm. She had helped nurse Terry when he was wounded, but had never felt like this. Perhaps it was because Evan was exactly as she expected—handsome, fine and hard muscled, with that understated masculinity. His straight brown hair fell across his brow most charmingly, and the scar under his lip crinkled when he smiled. His eyes were brown and brooding, as though he was always thinking of something else.

She must get a grip on herself. Between the two of them there could never be anything. He was Lord Mountjoy’s heir and must marry someone of his own station. And that was the least of the reasons.

Why had she so fastened on his character to the point where she fantasized about him? She realized it was because she envied him. He might have been spurned by his father, but he had not whimpered and cowered in some corner. Instead, he had done something with himself. She wished she could have led such a life, hard though it might have been. She had got from his letters a sense of his belonging where he was, of making a place for himself, just as she tried to do.

She had heard all about him from Gram, but without his letters, she would have known only what he’d been like as a boy. Reducing war news to mere asides, his missives were filled with rollicking tales of camp life, foreign foods and customs. One would have thought he was a young man on a grand tour, with safe conduct through all those foreign parts, rather than a soldier in the thick of battle.

Without knowing it, Evan had made her laugh. Unconscious of her existence, he had made her care about him. And he had been a comfort to his dying grandmother without knowing she was dying. Judith had wondered if any man could ever read as well in person as Evan had on paper. Now she knew.

Owing to his falling asleep again, and Bose’s not coming to his room until close on five o’clock, Evan was the last to enter the library, where the family gathered before dinner. It was evident to him, as he scanned their faces, that he had been the subject of their conversation. Lady Mountjoy had high color again, his father was stern, Judith sympathetic. The younger girl—Angel, as she was introduced—looked on him with particular interest. He caught his breath, for she seemed too young, too beautiful to be real. But then she blushed and dropped her eyes and became all too human. Had she faced him down he might have liked her better. A figure moved toward him, one who reminded him vaguely of himself. “Terry?” he asked uncertainly.