Andrew had been not much older than a boy when they married. He had looked at her with sunny pleasure in his eyes. Ward was a man, with a more abandoned, burning, and sinful emotion in his gaze.
A voice deep inside was shrieking about duty and morality, ethics and Snowe’s, her reputation. But it was a small voice, and far away.
For seven years, she had been extraordinarily careful of her reputation. This was madness, but an oh-so-potent madness.
She was in the grip of a strange calm, like being in the eye of a storm: just the two of them, and the walls of this preposterously luxurious coach. No sounds but their voices, the rumble of wheels on stone streets, the slight creak as Ward’s perfectly matched horses drew up in front of Gunter’s.
It was an unfashionable time of day for tea, and the tearoom was all but empty. As they entered, the ladies in the room turned toward Ward like sunflowers in the morning.
Lady Hyacinth Buckwald’s gaze, for example, drifted over Ward as if he were one of those Greek statues: head to foot and back up with a pause in the middle.
“Mrs. Snowe!” the lady raised her hand and curled it closed two or three times in the sort of greeting with which a duchess might greet a chimneysweep. “I am surprised to see you here. One thinks of you as immured in that little house of yours. I would introduce you to my eldest daughter Petunia but she has retired to the ladies’ waiting room.”
Eugenia paused by her table. “Good morning, Lady Hyacinth. How are your younger children?”
“I can assure you that we found a most respectable governess,” the lady said, her face darkening.
Ward had been exchanging a few words with Mr. Sweeney, the headwaiter of Gunter’s, but now he came up behind Eugenia.
“If it isn’t Mr. Reeve,” Lady Hyacinth cried. “I haven’t seen you in years.”
“It was lovely to meet you again, Lady Hyacinth,” Eugenia said with a nod, after which she allowed Mr. Sweeney to escort her to a table in the back, more or less protected from prying eyes by a well-positioned fern.
Behind her there was a brief murmur, and Ward followed. It was extraordinary, the way she could feel his presence behind her. She eased into a voluptuous walk, the faintest swing of her hip.
She didn’t feel like a governess, nor like the successful proprietor of Snowe’s Agency.
She felt like a woman.
Ward watched as waiters loaded their table with delicacies, and then told them to prepare a hamper for his siblings. “But no ices,” he added.
“I assure you that Mr. Gunter has devised a way of storing ices that can keep them stiff for hours,” Mr. Sweeney said earnestly.
“Mrs. Snowe told me in the park that promises of that nature are never kept,” Ward replied. The look he gave her should probably make a bolt of lightning come right down and consume the two of them.
The headwaiter blinked madly for a moment and closed his mouth. He bowed and promised to return with a hamper in due time.
“I’d like a small hamper for my return to Oxford as well,” Ward said.
“Certainly, sir. What would you like in it?”
“Roast beef and a bottle of red wine.”
Eugenia laughed. “You’re such a man.”
“Yes, I am,” Ward said.
Color crept up her face. “I meant that ladies generally prefer white wine and chicken.”
“We men have to keep up our stamina. But today I shall order like a lady. White wine and chicken it is. And some of those ices, because I’m certain they can stay stiff enough to eat for luncheon.”
Eugenia choked back a giggle as Mr. Sweeney left.
“I must say that it’s tragic to think you’ve been disappointed in this particular area,” Ward said. “Stiffness.” His gaze was purely wicked.
“I haven’t been,” Eugenia retorted. With a reckless grin, she added, “After all, I married when my husband was eighteen.”
Ward’s eyebrow shot up. “In case you’re wondering, many of us retain the abilities we had at eighteen well into our later years.”
Eugenia looked at Ward’s body under her lashes. Eighteen-year-old men were . . . well, slender. Ward was muscled. A shadow on his jaw would be considerably darker by the end of the day.
“Are you already planning for your old age?” she asked.
The intensity in his gaze was a little unnerving. “When it comes to that part of my life, absolutely.”
Eugenia was amazed to hear the husky giggle that came out of her mouth. She was not the sort of woman who giggled. Ever.
Except, it seemed, when a man whose eyes were full of lust boasted about his prowess in the bedroom some sixty years on.
Chapter Thirteen
Ward could not have been less interested in Eugenia’s story of some dreadful child who had painted himself blue. But he recognized at the same time that he would happily listen to anything she wanted to tell him.