Chapter 3

Luc rolled his neck to try to ease it of tension. It had the opposite effect. The muscles hardened like planks of wood.

Letting out a sharp breath, he knocked on the door.

“Come in,” the feminine voice called out.

He opened the door and met the gray gaze of Mevrouw ter Bane. He wasted no time with pleasantries. “You have a lot of explaining to do, mevrouw.”

Shutting the door behind him, he leaned against it. “You lied to me.”

The matchmaker steepled her fingers together. Her eyes narrowed as she spoke in a deliberate way. “How did I lie to you, mijnheer?”

Still holding her watchful gaze, he retrieved her letter from his breast pocket. Unfolding it, he read the part that he’d spent the last fifteen minutes reading over and over. “Juffrouw Eva Van der Heiden is of small stature with light brown hair, hazel eyes, and passable features. The lid of her left eye is dominated by a black birthmark. She has never married and spends her days assisting in the care of her younger sisters and brothers. Well adept at managing hearth and home, she has an aptitude for arithmetic and is learned in both English and her native tongue.”

He glanced up. “You wrote these words to me, correct?”

“Ja,” she answered slowly.

“Then you lied to me.” With forceful movements he folded the paper and put it back into his breast pocket. “Why would you do something like this?”

“Mijnheer, in what manner did I lie to you?”

He dragged his fingers through his hair. “Passable features? If Eva Van der Heiden is of ‘passable features’ then Helen of Troy must have looked terrible!”

Mevrouw ter Bane’s eyebrows squished together. “I don’t understand.”

“She’s beautiful!” He spun away in a fit. “I’ve never seen anyone as lovely as that.”

“And that is a problem for you?”

“What do you think?” he spat.

“I think you’re the first man I’ve ever met complaining that their soon-to-be wife is lovely.”

Luc snarled. “Do not pretend, mevrouw. You gave me the impression that I would be marrying a spinster. A woman of some doddering age who had never been married.”

“That is correct.”

“That woman out there is hardly of a doddering age! What is she, seventeen, eighteen years of age?”

“Well, doddering to some. Eva is twenty-four years, mijnheer.”

“She hardly looks it! How can she manage a household?”

“She is the eldest of fourteen. Mijnheer ... Luc ... you do sound quite mad, you know,” the matchmaker said in soothing tones. She looked on in sympathy as if she could see past his ire and to what lied beneath.

Some hidden part knew he made as much sense as a raving lunatic running bare skinned in the streets. What man would object to a beautiful wife?

No man save himself.

He had accepted the matchmaker’s selection on the condition he’d marry a woman who wouldn’t stir anything within. An older woman with whom, after she brought forth his heir, he could have a friendship with.

When Eva ... no... Juffrouw Van der Heiden had lifted those eyes of hers, a wallop struck the center of his chest. No one in his life had ever made him feel that way.

Earlier that afternoon, when he greeted her on the rickety pier that led from the river, sunlight had washed over her bound hair, transforming the thick mass into a bronze ornament. Her petite figure and slim waist bore an air of fragility the sight of which summoned protective impulses.

The icy prick of fear came on the heels of it.

No. This would not happen.

“I’m sorry, mevrouw but I will not marry her. You will have to find another woman.”

“Let me understand you. You wish for me to send the juffrouw away because you find her beautiful?”

“Ja. I mean, nee,” he sputtered. “You don’t understand.”

“I am waiting to understand,” she said evenly.

He pushed away from the door. Going over to the single window, he looked out at the scenery. There wasn’t much to see. Evansgrove in the evening hardly sparked any sort of imagination. A ragged old woman in the daytime, she became a ghostly specter at night. Wind howled through the husks of the building. Long moaning cries of some animal pierced the eerie quiet.

“The kind of wife I want is one to which I will have no emotional attachments to after she bears my child.”

“What makes you think you will have an emotional attachment to Eva?”

How could he answer it? His response could not be qualified in words. It was born of some deep-rooted male instinctive. Staring blindly at the spindly shadows of a tree, he recalled how Juffrouw Van der Heiden had stolen his breath away with that singular look of her eyes. His feet had frozen to the spot, unable to move even if he wished it. The world shifted in that moment.

“That is none of your concern.”

“Oh, but it is, Luc. Particularly when she has left her family and traveled all this way to become the bride you desired. I thought that was important.”

“It is.”

“Then why do you want to send her away? Because of her beauty? What kind of man complains of a woman’s beauty?”

“Mevrouw—”

“Nee, Luc. I am not going to tell that poor child in there that you don’t want her because you find her too beautiful. You hired my services to procure you a wife who can bear you a child. A woman who would not object to the swiftness at which the marriage must take place. Tell me, how long do you have to fulfill the obligation of your father’s will?”

He leaned his forehead against the cold window and sighed. His breath fogged the glass.

“Further, if you decide not to forge ahead with this marriage, my fee is still payable to me.”

What was he to do? He needed a wife. He needed an heir.

A sharp pain pierced his chest once again. Why had Father forced this marriage? It made no sense. Long before his father’s death, majority control had been ceded over to him. The Hive had grown in their holdings with investments all over the world. He’d follow in the footsteps his father had ordered. Given up everything for the Hive. Nothing else had mattered.

Luc’s hand splayed open on the window as he looked out at the desolate night scene. The coolness of the glass pane seeped into the pads of his fingers and traveled down his arm. The muscles along his forearm tautened. After all he’d done, why wasn’t it enough?

That feeling he thought he’d buried several days ago pounded on the coffin of its confinement. He pressed hard against the glass.

Don’t think about it. There are bigger things to worry about.

Luc let his hand fall away and took a step back from the window. The time in which to secure his heir ticked by.

“Very well, mevrouw. I will marry her. I don’t have a choice.”

“You have a choice, mijnheer. You can choose another woman to be your bride.”

That made sense. He could select another bride, one that matched his preconceptions of the woman he wanted. But strangely, he didn’t want to. Against his will, or because of it, he brought to the forefront of his mind the beautiful features of Eva Van der Heiden. He gulped and passed a shaky hand over his eyes.

Don’t think of her. Focus on other things.

Luc pivoted away from the window. “Do you find your room comfortable?”

They had arrived two days later than scheduled, but Luc was glad for it. This pathetic town hadn’t any sort of boarding house. They could have easily achieved lodgings at the town across the river, but he decided against it. Evansgrove needed their presence. It was easier to move all the men together and give the women this room.

“It is, dank u. It must be crowded for all of you.”

“Nee. I have shared many a cramped space with my associates over the years.”

The matchmaker gave a cough. “This may be of a delicate nature, but have you secured any ... private lodgings for you and your bride?”

His face heated up. “I have.”

“That’s good to know.” A queer look passed over the matchmaker’s face. She reminded him of a cat who’d taken the cream.

It had taken some doing. He’d had to rely on Friar Jack, but when his wedding night came, he and his bride would have some privacy. His associates, despite his vehement protests, had insisted he spend the wittebroodsweken, or “white bread weeks” alone with her.

At the time he’d found the notion ridiculous. To pretend this marriage was anything more than a business arrangement was folly. In the end, he’d succumbed to their demands, believing six weeks alone with a woman past her prime wouldn’t be a hardship.

All that had changed. The idea of being alone with Eva Van der Heiden for six weeks...

“Is there anything else you wish to speak to me about, mijnheer? The wedding will go on?”

Luc jolted out of his reverie. Swallowing to moisten his dry throat, he shook his head. Time enough for that later. He smoothed his palms over his thighs. “Ja. Welterusten, mevrouw.”

Opening the door, his heart lurched as he came face to face with his soon-to-be bride.

The last person Eva expected to see was her soon-to-be husband. His broad form dwarfed the doorway of the small room she shared with her aunt.

Eva’s fingers dug into the folds of her damp wash rag. She wasn’t ready to share her room with a man.

“Goedenavond, juffrouw.” Luc de Jeu stared down at her from his impressive height, his dark eyes unreadable within his hard-lined face.