“I’d believe the distillery is the sole reason for your dedication for the land if Mrs. Crawford hadn’t made a point of regaling me with a long list of reasons why her Master Evan is an absolute saint.”
He let out a pained groan.
“It was very sweet,” Luz said, laughing. “Despite your efforts to seem heartless, it’s clear your family and those in your employment care a great deal for you. That’s admirable.”
He made a sound of dismissal, feeling very uncomfortable with the conversation.
“I hardly think treating people with civility merits admiration.”
“Fair enough,” she conceded. “Although in my experience, simply behaving civilly rarely elicits genuine affection and respect.”
“You have a lot of experience with civil men, then,” he teased, but she seemed to take him seriously.
“My father was like that. Though he had his shortcomings, he always tried to be fair.”
“I thought you had a good relationship with your father,” Evan said, surprised.
“I did. He was a good man, but he was overprotective and more old-fashioned than he liked to admit. When he died we were already reaching a point where what he wanted for me was very different than what I wanted for myself. He never said it outright, that he preferred I marry and give up my involvement in Caña Brava, but given the conditions of his will, I wonder.” She paused there, her face grave, as she ran a finger over the linen sheets that covered them. “After he passed away, I found out that he’d already selected his general manager to take over the distillery when he retired.”
“Is that why you let go of your shares?”
She didn’t answer, instead torturing him by steadily running her hands over his thighs. She made a sound of appreciation as she reached the wider, more muscular parts.
“You seem particularly drawn to this area of my body.” He liked when she touched him possessively. As though taking stock of her belongings.
“They’re like Greek columns!” she cried in feigned alarm. “The Parthenon has less heft hoisting it up. You’re nearly too virile, frankly.” She sounded utterly affronted, making him laugh. “And yes, it was in part why I returned the shares.” She spoke very quietly. “You’re the only person I’ve said this to. Not even the Leonas know.”
Evan scarcely knew what to say, much less how to grapple with what was happening inside him.
“Guzman, that’s the person running Caña Brava now, is a good man,” she continued. “He was practically born on the land. His father was one of the cutters. In truth, he deserved the position. It was just that my father never told me what he intended to do. He decided to give away what I thought I’d been working for without telling me. And I wonder if it was because he didn’t trust me, or because he assumed I’d eventually come to my senses and settle down to domesticity.” She sounded so outraged at the very idea anyone could think such a thing. Evan decided in that moment he’d do whatever it took so that Luz Alana could pursue whatever it was she wanted without ever wondering if she was enough.
“I’ve barely known you two weeks.”God, how could it be only that long?“And I am certain suggesting domesticity to you is the surest way to put me on the receiving end of that pistol you always carry around.”
Her shoulders shook with mirth, and after a moment she laid her head on his shoulder.
“That assessment is not very far from the truth.”
Evan sighed, considering his own conflicted feelings regarding his own parents—especially his mother.
“My mother was fragile,” he heard himself say. “But despite how much my father exploited that, I think in the end she loved him more than she loved us.”
“Maybe she had no choice. Women’s lives can be a series of daunting choices. Our freedom or our peace, our safety or our pride. Every day we negotiate these things.” He grunted at the power of her words and shifted so that more of her was laying on him. He liked her weight there. “It’s easy to judge our morality or call us weak, but when the world is controlled by men who see us as dispensable, our survival depends on learning to discern between the battles we can win and which ones we can’t afford to lose.”
He thought of how quiet his mother became when his father was in a rage, as if she wanted to disappear, and he wondered what horrors she’d had to endure when she was alone with him. He remembered Charlotte, who had five younger sisters and a father who was a drunk and a wastrel: perhaps her choice to marry a duke had been about more than vanity.
Perhaps the woman next to him saw this world and its realities a lot more clearly than he did.
“Maybe,” he echoed, lost in his memories. “I used to stand up to him, when he was cruel to my sisters, when he pushed my brother Iain too harshly. But he never punished me, he just treated them worse and let me know it was my fault.” This was something he’d never shared with anyone. It was the reason he didn’t want her anywhere near his father. “I’d beg him to hit me instead, but he knew that seeing them pay for my rebellion was the best way to wound me.”
She turned around then, quietly, slowly, as though he was a skittish wild thing that would run off if she got too close.
“That’s horrible. I’m so sorry,” she said, wrapping her legs around him as if to shield him with her smaller, softer body from the harshness of his past.
“He sent my mother to the asylum after I confronted him about my sister Adalyn. He wanted to marry her to this disgusting peer. The rumor was the man beat his first wife relentlessly, so I helped Addy elope. He was furious, mainly that my mother, for once, took my side.” He remembered that night, his mother’s shaky, small voice as she asked her husband to understand, the duke’s fury when she didn’t blindly take his side as usual. “A month later he shipped her off to an asylum in the Orkneys.”
“Oh, Evan.” She pressed kisses to his chest, mouth open, as she spoke soothing words. He didn’t deserve her comfort, and yet he was too damn wrecked to push her away.
“What happens when we get to Edinburgh?” she asked, her face turned up to him so that her lush mouth was alluringly presented to him for a kiss. “Even earls who repudiate their standing have certain responsibilities.”
