Page 35 of Lady Diana's Lost Lord
“They couldn’t prevent it. Unscrupulous men are just as skilled at hiding their nature from other men as they are from women.” A wry little laugh slipped up her throat. “My own father conspired to separate Marcus and Lydia. He betrayed his son to achieve his own ends, and yet he presented such a convincing false face to theTonthat no one would have spoken of him with aught but praise.”
His dark eyes glittered with something like sympathy. “Still,” he said, in a voice gone low, “you should have that chance. To find someone you will love. Who will love you in return.”
She thought—shehoped—perhaps she already had. At least a little. At leastenough. “I’d rather have the chance to do as I please,” she said. “I’m eight and twenty. I have earned the right, I think, to decide for myself what it is that I want.” A life without regrets. To be able to look back upon the things that she had left behind with more fondness than grief. To know that she had seized every moment, every opportunity.
A falling star caught and held in her pocket. A wish that might live for at most a few weeks more, if she were very lucky, before it winked out. But while it lasted, she would treasure it. And when it was gone, she would look back upon it for the pleasure, not the pain.
“What do you want, Diana?”
Somehow, in the past few weeks, she had acquired a boldness she had never once before evinced. A willingness to throw caution to the wind that had been absent in her orderly, regimented life. Unsteady upon her knees, she braced her free hand upon his shoulder and leaned in. “A kiss,” she said against his lips. And another—and another thereafter.
“Christ.” It was a ragged sound, a puff of air against the corner of her mouth, and then his hands were tangling in her hair, pulling her closer, closer still. The heat of his skin burned away the slight chill of the breeze. He took her mouth like a starving man, tongue stroking deep as he stole the very air from her lungs.
It lasted a moment, perhaps two—and then he all but threw himself away from her, his chest heaving with a desperate gasp. “You don’t know what you’re inviting,” he snarled as he shoved himself to his feet. His hands thrust themselves into his hair much like he’d done to hers, and he ruffled thedark strands with them as if he were attempting to shake sense into himself. “I won’t take such advantage of you.”
“Advantage!” She’d practically thrown herself at him.
He speared her with a severe look, his dark eyes flashing with aggravation. “Go to bed, Diana,” he said, his voice gritty. “And for God’s sake, lock your damned door.” With a pronounced, jerky motion, he spun on his heel and stomped off the porch. “I’m going for a swim. Donotwait up for me.”
“What?” A swim? Atthishour? Diana climbed to her feet, nearly upending the candle with the clumsy motion. “The sun set hours ago—the water will be frigid now!”
He hadn’t even paused. “That,” he said, as he retreated into the enveloping darkness, “is exactly the point.”
Chapter Thirteen
Hannah performed a little pirouette, giggling as the skirt of her new dress belled out around her legs in a flutter of sky blue muslin the precise shade of her eyes. Diana hadn’t expected such quality work in a village of this size, but it appeared that Mrs. Walton was not only a competent seamstress, she could produce items lovely enough that they would have earned her a respectable clientele even in London.
The woman had an eye for patterns and style that bordered on the uncanny. She’d attributed her skill to the years she’d spent in doing the mending for those that could afford to pay for her services, but Diana suspected that the woman had a good deal of natural talent for such creative endeavors, and she had been delighted to produce a gown of her own devising, even if it had been intended for a child.
“Papa, look—I’ve got lace!” Hannah thrust her arms into the air, the better to allow her father to admire the thin border of lace that had been stitched to her capped sleeves.
Dutifully, Ben glanced over his shoulder as he scraped stew from the pot he had been working over into bowls arranged upon the kitchen counter. “Yes, I see,” he said. “Very pretty. The ribbon, too.”
That had been a gift from Mrs. Walton; a thick band of pink ribbon at the high waist of the gown, which she said had been languishing away for some months now for lack of use, since there hadn’t been much demand for it.
Hannah preened, dipping into an exaggerated curtsey. “Thank you,” she said, so sweetly and precisely that Diana smothered a laugh behind her palm.
“Go change, darling,” Diana said, nodding toward the stairs. “You don’t want to stain your pretty new dress during supper.”
With a little wrinkle of her nose at the suggestion of soiling her dress, Hannah turned for the stairs to do as she had been asked. Diana winced at the thunderous stomps that rattled the ceiling overhead.
“Except forthat,” Ben said dryly, turning his gaze toward the ceiling, “she’s growing more and more into a little lady every day.” There was something wistful in his voice; as if he could see her drifting away before his very eyes, each milestone representing a step toward independence.
In a few years, she wouldn’t be a little girl in plaits any longer. She’d be a young lady preparing to enter society. Whichever rung of society that happened to be.
“She must look a great deal like her mother,” Diana said.
“Not especially,” Ben replied. “But just now—yes, I can see her mother in her.” He sighed heavily and turned to set a bowl before her. Carrots, onions, and potatoes bobbed in the rich brown broth alongside chunks of salted beef. “I wish I had something of her mother,” he said. “At least a miniature for her to look at. It’s a shame that Hannah never knew her. All I’ve got are stories.”
And yet it was to his credit still that he had done his best to keep Hannah’s mother’s memory alive for the girl who would never know her. Many men would not have bothered. Death in childbirth was an unfortunate reality that had taken too many women too soon, and in her circles, it was more common than not for a man who had lost his wife to replace her quickly with a new woman to be a mother to his children. Too often those women who had come before were, through grief or apathy, erased from memory by widowers who preferred to forget them.
“I’m sorry,” she heard herself say. “You must have loved her very much.”
For a moment Ben froze, one hand poised to lay down a spoon beside her bowl. “No,” he said at last. “No, I didn’t. And she didn’t love me, either. But she was a good friend to me, and she deserved better than to be forgotten.” He laid down the spoon and turned his back once more, hefting a knife to saw off chunks of bread from the loaf she’d purchased in the village earlier. “She gave me Hannah,” he said. “And for that and more she deserves my gratitude and respect.”
By the tone of his voice, Diana presumed that he had determined the subject to be closed, and did not intend to expand any further upon it. Which was a shame, as she would have dearly liked to know more.
The crack of footsteps descending the stairs once more put paid to any hope of wheedling more out of him, besides. Hannah fluttered into the room in a clean, if worn, brown dress and climbed into her chair, settling her hands upon thetable. “Papa, where’s mine?”
