Evan had gone above and beyond what he’d promised her. He’d met with Mr. Bruce and her trustee alone, ultimately making sure Childers lost any grasp he had on her inheritance. And he’d harnessed every one of his contacts to help Luz establish herself once they left Braeburn Hall. It had not been an easy feat. Percy Childers made himself a nuisance at every step, even going to the lengths of threatening Mr. Bruce’s person if he didn’t help him hold on to the purse strings of Luz’s inheritance. But Evan had been relentless, and as of today, the nightmare was over.
Her rum-importing business was being constituted, and the initial steps for launching Aida’s Cordials were in place. Two days ago, with the first release of funds, she’d begun the process of purchasing the first shipment of limes and pineapples for her cordial production. In a few weeks, the first batch of raw materials would set sail from the port of Santo Domingo to Edinburgh.
Johnston had followed through after their encounter at the soirée and would do the transport for her on this occasion. The next day she was scheduled to visit the site of a bottling plant in Leith she was leasing. Things were in motion. Caña Brava would soon be able to be shipped anywhere in Europe, and Aida’s Cordials was no longer just a kernel of a dream.
Her head and heart were full to the brim with all the tasks she needed to complete. Really, she should be elated to have accomplished so much already. Instead she was walking with dread weighing down her limbs with what was to come.
The Duke of Annan’s ball was tomorrow night. Evan no longer seemed reluctant about her attending, although since they’d come back from the Braeburn it was hard for her to know what he was thinking. She’d barely seen him in the past few days as he endeavored to make all the legal arrangements necessary to ensure his father could not deny him the deed to the distillery. He’d told her he would make that demand at the ball the next evening, and then their obligations to each other would be over.
Just as they’d agreed.
Just as she’d told herself hundreds of times that she wanted.
Then why did she feel like her heart was breaking?
She looked up at Evan and saw that he was just as lost in thought as she’d been a moment ago. They’d been like this for days now. Sitting next to each other, but their minds somewhere else. It was bizarre. She’d given herself to Evan in every way imaginable in the two weeks since their marriage. She’d never felt closer, more open, to anyone than she had with this man. At times it felt like he knew what she needed, what she wanted, better than she did herself. And yet, she could not make herself tell him how she felt. It was absurd, when in their bed she was completely uninhibited in demanding what she desired. She had never felt freer than when she was in his arms, but there was a chasm between them that she could not bridge.
Every day he seemed to drift away a little more, and dozens of times she’d almost asked if it was something she’d done. But she would not behave like a lovesick girl. She would not open herself up for rejection. She knew how things would go. He’d attempt to let her down easy and would ever so kindly tell her he had no interest in a wife and that permanency was not the deal they’d made.
She couldn’t bear it.
“I did not like what Mr. Bruce said about Childers,” Evan said moodily, rousing her out of her thoughts.
When they’d arrived at his office that morning, Mr. Bruce had informed them that Childers had been to see him again, making threats. Her former trustee had not taken to being confronted with an unexpected husband, and since he could not threaten an earl, he’d been bothering Mr. Bruce instead. He’d even sent Luz an unhinged letter, demanding to be reinstated. She hadn’t mentioned it to Evan, not wanting to fan the flames of his ire toward her former trustee, he had enough to worry about. And the man was clearly delusional. Luz just wanted to put the entire thing behind her.
“There’s nothing he can do now that you’ve released the funds to me. He’s redundant, and he knows it,” she said in an effort to smooth the scowl on this face. As they reached their carriage, she took a moment to admire the crest on the door. Not that of the Sinclair family but the one belonging to the Braeburn.
“He’s a bloody nuisance. If you would just let me send one of my men to—”
“Evan, you will not have the man thrashed.” Despite herself she found her husband’s eagerness to defend her endearing.
“We can revisit this later,” he muttered, clearly not ready to put an end to the possibility of having Childers trounced. “I’ve a meeting with my own solicitor now, but the topic is most certainly not closed,” Evan said as he helped her into the carriage. When he stepped back instead of following her in, Luz realized he was not accompanying her.
“You’re not coming to the train with me?” she asked with as much indifference as she could manage when all her emotions seemed to be reaching their boiling point. Manuela and Aurora were arriving in Edinburgh from Paris. They would be at the ball with her and stay for a few weeks to help her settle—and to pick up the pieces of her shattered heart from every corner of the city.
“No.” He shook his head, eyes hidden from her. “I need to finalize some of the loose ends regarding my mother’s will. It’s only up the street from here.” He pointed to a gray building on the other side of the square. “Won’t Amaranta come with you?”
She flinched at his tone. As if she was an errant child he’d found someone else to mind. How could it be that merely hours ago, when she’d woken up in his arms, she’d felt like Evan could reach to the deepest part of her?
She looked down at him from her perch in the carriage and tried but failed to read whatever it was that he wasn’t saying. “She is. Thank you for all you’ve done, Evan,” she finally said through the knot in her throat. He made a pained sound and ducked his head.
Tell me that you’ll come with me. Tell me why you’ve been hiding from me, she pleaded in unutterable misery into the suffocating silence.
One of Luz’s uncles was a rice producer in Cotuí, right in the center of the island. Once, he’d taken her and her cousins to the fields with him. In preparation to step on the sodden paddies, she’d tied the hem of her dress at her knees and put on rubber boots. Her uncle had even given her and her cousins sturdy sticks they could use to keep their balance. Their party had barely got a few feet in when one of her cousins lost a boot in the mire and had to go back, and Luz didn’t fare much better. This was what she felt like now. She thought she’d been prepared, that she’d come into this arrangement with the tools she needed to walk straight through the other side. But instead, here she was trampling through a muddy mess that she was desperately ill-equipped to navigate.
“Nothing to thank me for. Simply honoring my side of the bargain.” He tapped the side of the carriage a couple of times, and immediately the coachman set the conveyance in motion. “I’ll see you at home,” he called before tipping his hat and walking away in the opposite direction.
Luz kept her eyes on him as he strode away with that forceful gait of his. Then, just as he reached the corner, she saw him stop by the side of a carriage and get in. There was a crest on the door, but she could not make out any details. Luz felt ill as she lost him from sight. He’d lied to her. She’d known it in the way his jaw clenched, how he could not look at her. He wasn’t going to see his solicitor. And what of it? Evan didn’t have to explain himself to her. He didn’t owe her anything.
Through eyes hot with unshed tears Luz applied herself to taking in Princes Street, wide and bustling before her, and wondered if anywhere inside those shops she’d find sandalwood soap to remind her of him when she could no longer press her nose to the crook of her husband’s neck.
“I told you I’d come here after I was done with Luz,” Evan groused as he stepped into the study of his half brother’s newly acquired Charlotte Square home.
“And I told you I had urgent business to discuss with you,” Apollo announced as they sat across from each other. Evan had walked away from Luz Alana with his stomach in knots and needed some time to clear his head. But Apollo’s carriage had been waiting for him only yards from Bruce’s door.
“So?” Evan asked in exasperation.
“Everything is settled. Our lawyers sent over everything.” Apollo waved a hand over the pile of papers on his desk. If the duke only knew that his sons had been plotting his demise for weeks only a few minutes from Annan House...
