At last they turned into Monument Square, without question one of the wealthiest sectors of the city. Here the effects of the war were less obvious. The grounds looked tended. A black woman—slave or employed?—pushed a pram down the walk. A gaggle of ladies sashayed along as if they hadn’t a care in the world.
Scarlet curls peeking from one of the bonnets caught his gaze, and the face they framed held him captive. An appreciative noise slipped out. He may have reformed his ways, but a man still had to give credit to the Lord’s craftsmanship.
Hughes chuckled. “I see you have spotted our neighbors. Though several of those ladies are married, so do be careful who earns those hums of approval, Osborne.”
She was middling in height. Her fashionable coat probably provided little warmth, but neither did it hide her figure. And an admirable figure it was. “The redhead?” Not that he could afford divided attention, but a man had to know these things.
He felt Hughes stiffen before he glanced over and saw his smile freeze. Ice snapped in his eyes. “My brother’s widow. She is still in mourning, you understand.”
“Ah.” Yes, he understood. He understood she was wearing lavender, though she ought to be still in second mourning. He understood the possessive gleam in Devereaux Hughes’s eyes.
He understood his one little sound of admiration had just labeled him as someone to be watched. Blast it to pieces. His mother had been right. Nothing good ever came of letting one’s eyes wander.
Glancing out the window again, he chose another young lady at random. “What about the blonde there?”
Perhaps Hughes relaxed a degree. Or perhaps it was wishful thinking. “Miss Lynn. She had a sweetheart at the start of the war, but…”
“Miss Lynn.” He put a grin in his voice as he tested the name.
Mrs. Hughes glanced their way as they rumbled past and smiled. No innocent greeting of her brother-in-law, that smile. No, there was something far more in her cat-green eyes. Something that contained both recognition and question. Both passion and…anger?
Dangerous woman.
The carriage turned into a drive, and Slade’s host barely waited for the door to open before jumping down. “Come. I’ll show you to a room. We have half an hour before we must repair across the street. My mother is a stickler for promptness, even though she has been bound to her rooms this past month.” His face finally softened, a light in his smile.
Slade slid on the old, carefree grin he hadn’t worn in so long. “Mine is the same way.”
But when he stood in the silence of a guest bedroom a few minutes later, he didn’t rush for the basin of water. He didn’t loosen the cravat he wanted to take off altogether or poke around the room’s elegant appointments. He strode to the window and leaned against the frame. He closed his eyes and, for the first time since he boarded the train in Washington earlier, dared to draw in a long breath. To be the man he was rather than the man he had once been.
Father God. Another deep breath, to clear his mind and cleanse his heart. Father God, here I am. Where You sent me. Keep my heart focused on You.
Any further prayer was cut off by the entrance of the manservant who had driven the carriage, Slade’s trunk bowing his back. Though he nearly stepped forward to help, he stopped himself. He even let a second man fuss over wrinkles and cuff links. And then he went down, twenty minutes later, to find his host waiting by the door.
Hughes nodded at his appearance and led him outside, across the street to an edifice even larger than his. “The family home,” the man said, motioning at it. “I was fortunate to find a house so near when I moved back to Baltimore four years ago.”
Had Lucien willed it to the missus despite her giving him no heir, or did Devereaux let her continue living there with his mother out of the goodness of his heart? Or out of something, anyway.
A black man in livery opened the door for them before Hughes could even knock. “Evenin’, Mr. Dev. Sir. Come right on in outta that cold, now.”
His host made some reply, but Slade couldn’t have said what. He’d no sooner taken off his hat and handed it over with his overcoat than he spotted her. First the deep flame of her hair, and then the swish of her pale purple skirt. She came their way from somewhere down the hall, gliding forward with that grace Southern mamas seemed to instill in their daughters from birth.
“Good evening, Dev.” Her voice was what he’d imagined it would be. A warm alto, thick with honey.
He recognized the tug in his gut for what it was. She was beautiful. Too beautiful, the kind that knew well the power it gave her over the male half of the species. And if he read that calm control in her eyes aright, the kind that used it like an overseer would a whip. Still, recognizing it didn’t stop the tug from repeating when she turned those pale green eyes his way.
“And this must be Mr. Osborne.” Her smile was all rehearsed charm as she held out a hand, wrist limp. “So good of you to join us.”