Page 30 of Anything But a Duke
“Compelling,” Diana finally said. “He’s very compelling.”
“He’s very rich.” Grace turned the page around so that Diana could see and placed her finger over a number. “Is that truly his annual income?”
“Only an estimate. I calculated based on records I found related to dividends he’d received from his investments.” Diana shrugged. “Could be more or slightly less.”
“And yet with all this money, he won’t invest in your device?”
“He did initially refuse.” Diana bit her lip, thinking of the letter she’d impulsively sent. “But I still have hope.”
Grace continued sifting through the pages and rested her chin on her hand. “What if no one invests? What will you do?”
“I’ll join you in the marriage hunt. Which will make my mother very happy.”
“And you very miserable?”
“Perhaps.” Diana couldn’t imagine that possibility yet. She told herself that it would not come. She’d find funding and then she wouldn’t need to marry. At least not immediately. If she waited, perhaps she’d have time to read poetry and begin to believe in something as fanciful as love.
“Why does this all matter to you so much?” Grace asked with a wave of her hand around the cluttered workshop. “These inventions. This drive to fund one of them. Are they truly your dreams, or your father’s?”
“They’re mine, Grace. These designs, everything you see here, is mine.” Diana clenched her jaw and glanced behind her at the row of brushes, rulers, hammers, and chisels. They’d been her father’s tools. In some ways, they were her legacy. But what Diana built, she built to prove her own merit, not to carry on for her father.
At Bexley she’d been teased for collecting bits of metal and wooden crates in order to build models of her ideas. After she had returned home, her mother discouraged her from scientific study. She’d never forbidden Diana from spending time in her workshop, but her mother made it clear that she believed all the hours spent there were wasted time.
If Diana could never succeed with one of her designs, then her mother would be right.
“This matters to me because it’s who I am. Even if I weren’t in this workshop every day, the ideas, the drive to create, would be whirling in my head. It never quiets. But I need it to be more than fanciful notions.” Her mother claimed that Father’s inventions had ruined their family. “I need my inventions to be real and make someone’s life better.”
Diana realized she was rambling, talking too fast, speaking so that she didn’t feel.
Grace reached out and laid a hand over hers. “I’m sorry. Forgive me.”
Diana nodded, but she could no longer find any words. Her mother spoke about their father often, but never of his death. Even she and Dom, as close as they were, had never been able to revisit that pain.
“I wonder why. The question haunts me,” Diana finally managed. “Why that particular day at that particular hour? And why did none of us know he had become so hopeless?”
Others referred to Frederick Ashby’s death as tragedy, but no one dared mention that he had taken his own life.
Diana didn’t pursue her inventions simply to follow in her father’s footsteps. Her ideas were her own. But his life, and his death, were always in her mind.
“I won’t lose hope. I can’t give up no matter how difficult this path might be.”
Grace squeezed her hand. “I understand a little better now.” She settled back on her stool and turned contemplative. There was a look that came over her, one Diana remembered from finishing school. She was plotting, and few plotted as well as Grace Grinstead.
“What are you thinking about?”
“How I might help you. My father isn’t much of a venturer when it comes to investment. He doesn’t have the funds to risk. But he knows men who do. Club friends. Railroad barons mostly. One man who helped fund Brunel’s steamship. He may know someone. I shall ask.”
“Thank you, Grace.” Diana spent so many hours alone, so much time in her own head, that it felt odd to have an ally. Odd and yet wonderful. Her heart felt fuller, and the day seemed brighter, but worry still crept in. “How can I repay you for this?”
“You must wait until I do something worth repaying,” Grace reminded her. She reached out a hand and sifted the pages of Diana’s notes about the gentlemen of the Duke’s Den. “Though I must say that my mother would be forever grateful if you could introduce me to a man as wealthy as Aidan Iverson.”
The words came punctuated with a trill of laughter. There was as much tease as seriousness in the request, Diana knew. But even that light jest caused something to knot in Diana’s stomach. A burn of irritation and possessiveness when she had no right to either.
“I’d be happy to introduce you to him,” she told her friend, “if I ever see the man again.”
Chapter Ten
A week after Diana Ashby’s presentation at the Duke’s Den, Aidan paced the pavement in front of her Cadogan Square home, debating the folly of going inside.
