Free The Book Of Scandal by Julia London

settling in beside her.
    “No!” she whispered loudly, moving away from him. “Go back!” she demanded, pointing to the empty seat beside Frances.
    “Sssh,” Nathan said. He put his arm around her shoulders, drawing her in close.
    “Stop that!” She slapped at his hand and his leg, but it was no use. Had he always been so solid and immovable?
    “You may as well enjoy the ride,” Nathan said, and pulled his cloak across her body, tucking her in beneath it and next to his long, firm body. “I’ve no intention of going anywhere.”
    It was warmer beneath his heavy cloak. If she hadn’t been so furious with him, she might have actually appreciated the warmth. She was reminded of their first Christmas together. They had traveled four miles to dine at the home of the closest gentry, Mr. and Mrs. DuPaul—the same Alexandra DuPaul who Evelyn had considered a friend and who would later betray Evelyn—but on that particular night, on the drive home it had begun to snow, and Nathan had taken off his cloak, arranged it around them, and held her in his arms. They’d laughed at the plumes of their breath. “It is just as I always suspected. You are all wind, sir,” she’d teased him. “You didn’t think I was all wind last night,” he’d said, nuzzling her neck.
    If there was one place where she and Nathan were in perfect harmony, it was his bed. His big, soft, bed…
    The memory of it gave her a deeper sort of chill, and Nathan’s arm tightened around her. “Why must you make this so difficult?” she groaned.
    “I don’t believe I am the one who is making this so difficult. You are being unduly peevish.”
    He said it so congenially that Evelyn wanted to punch him. “Peevish? I have been abducted from my home and hied halfway across the country!”
    “Now, now,” he said, as if she were a child. “You were abducted from the street, not your home, which, I might also point out, is Eastchurch Abbey and not the queen’s house, as you seem to believe. And neither are you being hied halfway across England—we are within a day’s drive to London.”
    “You know very well what I mean!”
    “You are hardly bound for Perdition, Evelyn, at least not today. You are bound for home.”
    “For what was my home,” she said petulantly. “I have not resided there in three years. It is nothing to me now but a place of wretched memories.”
    “Ah, how that warms my heart. If they are all truly wretched, then we must make an effort to create some pleasant memories,” he said with a wink.
    “Please,” she muttered, and looked down at her lap. “There is nothing about that house that can ever be a pleasant memory.”
    He said nothing for a moment, but when he did speak, his voice was low and soothing. “You are not the only one who misses him, Evie. I miss him, too.”
    He was referring to their son, their beautiful son, who died at the age of fifteen months. He’d been a sickly baby, and the last fever had come upon him so quickly that he was, for all intents and purposes, lost to them before the doctor arrived. They could do nothing but wait four agonizing days for his death. Frankly, they had waited fifteen months for his death—but he’d been a beautiful boy, and she—they—had loved him dearly.
    Evelyn swallowed down an unexpected whimper of grief. Not a day passed that she didn’t think of Robbie. But the raw grief, the grief that had once clawed at her throat every waking hour, had subsided with time. In its place was a distant and dull pain, an ache that pulsed weakly but persistently at the bottom of her heart.
    She feared Eastchurch Abbey would bring that excruciating pain back to her. Not just the death of her son, but the implosion of their fragile marriage under the weight of his death as well. Their marriage, which was based on the compatibility of fortune and privilege, had strengthened with Robbie. But with his death had come a cold distance that only deepened with time to the point that