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“So, I saw Monsterbrook’s servants were kicked out on their arses. The place is rightfully yours again.”
Evie giggled at the nickname. “Right you are, sir, I am the mistress of this place once more. Would you like to have a seat?”
“No, I’d rather stand. My knees can’t take too much bending back and forth,” he said in a rusty voice. “So, tell me about this idiot husband of yours.”
Evie laughed merrily at Mr. Cromwell’s cranky tone. “He’s a good man, Mr. Cromwell. He helped me get back everything I own from Montbrook. He stood up to him for me and made sure I was comfortable here.”
Old Cromwell scoffed. “That doesn’t excuse his leaving you here all alone, does it?”
“That was our bargain.” Evie shrugged.
“Bargain.” He scoffed again. “If that’d been me, and I got a girl like you, I would’ve never let you go,” he said, turning toward the sea.
“And you didn’t,” Evie said mildly.
“That’s right. And I’ve lived the best life I could.” He nodded thoughtfully, and Evie knew that he wanted to believe that was true. Mr. Cromwell’s wife had died decades ago from scarlet fever, and his only son died during the war. The missive came several months before Evie moved back to Peacehaven after Somerset’s death. “Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy our conversations and spending time with you, but you are young, vibrant, and beautiful. You are the one who should be living her life to the fullest. Preferably with your husband. Especially if he’s such a paragon of good as you describe him.”
Evie laughed sonorously. “Did I make that impression of him?” She raised a brow. “On the contrary, he is the devil himself, the most notorious rake and scoundrel London has ever seen.” Her lips twitched with renewed laughter as Mr. Cromwell regarded her curiously. “He’s beautiful as an angel, though,” she added, pursing her lips in contemplation.
“You are a perfect match then,” he said evenly.
“Why is that?” She grinned widely at her friend.
“Because you are also as handsome as the devil, but you’re as innocent as an angel. You two will cancel each other’s faults. And,” he added, smiling, “because you have never talked about your previous suitors like you talk about him.”
Evie looked down at her hands. That’s because she’d never felt anything for those suitors. Nothing even close to what she felt for Gabriel.
“The most important part is that now I am in possession of my estates, and we can proceed with grand plans of revitalizing this village. There’s a lot to do. I shall invite my solicitor to move here with his family so that I can run my lands from here. I shall still visit my other lands, but I do not have the need to stay in London anymore.” Evie smiled broadly, but her chest constricted, making it difficult to breathe. With self-inflicted exile, she ran the risk of never seeing Gabriel again. Was that truly what she wanted?
“I shall leave you to contemplate your predicament alone, my dear. It’s getting dark, and I don’t want to catch a hole in the ground and injure my horse.” Mr. Cromwell beat his hat over his thigh and put it on. “Do not sit out here alone for too long. The sun will be down soon.” He tipped his hat to her and walked away.
Evie turned back to gaze out at the sea. She’d spent one night without Gabriel and already felt ghastly. Was she ready to spend an eternity without him?
Every day in the next fortnight went the same way. Evie met with her solicitor every morning; she went into town to greet her villagers and bring them supply baskets every afternoon, then she locked herself in her grandfather’s old study and worked on new plans for her lands, read papers, and studied the ledgers, trying to figure out the best avenues to invest in. Her grandfather had taught her well, but it was one thing to play pretend and sit in on meetings with him, throw in advice and feel like she’d solved a major problem, but another thing to do it all by herself. She doubted every decision she made; she calculated and recalculated the costs of everything thousands of times until her head hurt, but she still didn’t know what she was doing.
Evie leaned her head against the huge leather chair in the study one evening, inhaling the familiar scent of the room.Oh, Grandpa, how I wish you were here now.
She took the candle from the table and shuffled out of the room. The household was asleep, so there were no sounds other than her solitary footsteps. Evie trailed slowly up the stairs and turned into the family wing. She paused beside her door, hesitated for a moment, and walked on. A few doors down, she reached her grandfather’s bedchamber and entered.
The glow of the candlelight only partially illuminated the dark room. She walked farther into the room and stopped, looking around.
The room looked the same, felt the same. The same curtains adorned the windows as the ones she used to hide behind when she was a child. The same coverlet lay on the bed as the one she used to tack on her back, pretending to be the queen with a long trailing gown. The same portrait of her grandparents hung on the wall across from the bed as the one she used to gaze into, wishing she’d known her grandmother better.
Now both of her grandparents stared from it, smiles on their faces, looking happy, in love. Evie wiped at her cheeks, only now realizing that tears were falling uncontrollably from her eyes. She placed the candle on the bedside table and climbed onto the bed, burrowing herself into the pillows. The scent of clean sheets and Grandpa’s cologne hit her senses hard.
“Grandpapa, did I make a mistake?” she asked, looking at the dark portrait in the shadows. “I mean, I know I did. But which one? Marrying a man who would never love me back or leaving him behind?”
No answers came from the dark; the portrait didn’t move or whisper, her grandfather still looked lovingly at his wife, but his voice echoed in her mind. “Love is the most important thing in the world.”
Evie stood in her garden the next morning, overseeing the planting of new rose bushes, when she heard a carriage rattle up her driveway. Puzzled, she hurried up the path leading to the front of the house. Who could have come to visit her? Was it Sam? She doubted she would have had time to make the journey, unless, of course, she’d jumped in her carriage the moment she received Evie’s letter that she was back at Peacehaven.
But when Evie rounded the corner, a completely different picture rose before her eyes. A beautiful black lacquered carriage with the Winchester family crest ornamented her doorstep. A young and sinfully attractive gentleman jumped out of it and turned to her as if he knew she was standing there by the side of the driveway, watching him.
Viscount St. Clare, her husband.
She hurried toward him, trying to moderate her steps, while in reality, she wanted to run to him as fast as she could and fall into his arms.
He grinned at her as she reached his side and took both her hands in his big and warm ones. “Glad to see me, my lady wife?”
