Between the Devil and Ian Eversea by Julie Anne Long Page B

own personal fascinations and who they were as people, though they didn’t know that, and they clasped them to their bosoms as they walked. Genevieve reminded her of the Sussex landscape: subtle. She wasn’t prone to chatter or untoward confidences, she was intelligent and measured, her wit quiet but quick. When she spoke. The emphasis was on the quiet. And Tansy felt a bit tethered. Her own personality, in general, was decidedly buoyant. A bit more impulsive.
    “May I ask you a question, Genevieve?”
    “Certainly.”
    “How long have you been married?”
    “Nearly a year now.”
    There was silence, as they trod side by side, coming abreast of the ancient cemetery surrounding the squat little church. Tansy stopped, mesmerized by the stones. The newer ones were upright, the older ones reclining a bit, sagging, as everything is wont do with age. A huge willow rose up and sheltered most of it, like a hen fanning its wings out over her chicks.
    The English all seemed very restrained, and she told herself she probably ought not ask the next question.
    “How did you . . . know? About the duke, that is. Or . . .”
    Or did you know? was what she wanted to know, but it seemed far too presumptuous. And given the looks she’d seen Genevieve exchange with the duke, she was certain the question was unnecessary. He’d said he was happy. She knew he was happy. But how did one know?
    Genevieve smiled. “You’ll know when it happens to you, if that’s what you’re worried about. There’s really no mistaking it.”
    She did have a little of that married woman superiority Tansy generally found infinitely irritating.
    “Did you by any chance ever lose your powers of speech around him?” she asked, half in jest.
    Genevieve looked amused, yet puzzled. “I daresay I rather found my powers of speech when I met him.”
    Alas. Tansy suspected her own particular affliction might very well be unique. Ian Everseaitis.
    He was unpleasant and rude and beautiful and scary, and she wondered hungrily if the book she held would somehow hold a key to him. How did an interest in Richard III reveal him, or would it? It was all she had at the moment, so she clutched it to herself like a map.
    “Do you mind . . . do you mind if we walk through?” She gestured at the gravestones.
    “Not at all.”
    She silently wove through the yard, which wasn’t so much sad as it was peaceful and wistful. She rather liked the idea of the graveyard surrounding the church. Dead was dead; there was no getting around it, really. She of all people ought to know. Perhaps the location of the graveyard served as a reminder of those who were bored with attending church that it was all dust to dust, and they ought to see to their souls if they wanted to proceed through the pearly gates after a tombstone was erected on top of them.
    She silently read the names on the stones as she strolled through.
    “Quite a few Redmonds,” she said. “And Everseas. Is Mr. Miles Redmond a part of the Redmonds of Pennyroyal Green?”
    “He is, indeed,” Genevieve said politely.
    Interestingly, she didn’t expound.
    Tansy didn’t press for more information. The Everseas were not as subtle as they thought they were. She would get to the bottom of that particular mystery in time, she knew.
    And then she stopped and knelt near a particular stone. A certain Lady Elizabeth Stanton had passed a good thirty years ago at the age of twenty-one. Did Lady Elizabeth marry her title, or was she born with it? Why did she die so young? Was it childbirth or a fever or a fall from a horse or . . . ? Had she ever lost her powers of speech when a boorish man stared down at her as if he could read every thought in her head and found them criminally mundane?
    She didn’t have any flowers on her grave, but she was flanked by graves that were freshly adorned, and this struck Tansy as wholly unfair.
    “There aren’t any flowers on this one.”
    Genevieve sympathetically studied Lady Elizabeth