Page 41 of Lady Diana's Lost Lord
“It’s still quite valuable,” he said, “but most of the largest mines have given out. One has to have a great deal of patience to find the bits that were left behind, undiscovered. And I am only one man. I can’t work so fast or sothoroughly as a crew of a dozen might.”
He would find it. This chunk of wad she held in her hand, this unassuming bit of graphite—it was proof that his work had paid off. Not enough just yet.
But soon. Sooner, she thought, than either of them would have liked.
∞∞∞
“Ouch!” Hannah hissed and pulled her hand from beneath the swath of fabric stretched across her lap, sucking her finger into her mouth.
“That’s what the thimble is for, darling,” Diana chided as she bent to observe Hannah’s work. “How lovely,” she pronounced, peering at the misshapen stitches arrayed upon what had been meant to be a sampler. “I particularly like the tree.”
“It’s a cat,” Hannah said with a disgruntled little frown.
“A cat?” Diana supposed that the odd, rough stitches she had taken for spindly branchescould, in fact, have been meant to be whiskers. “Oh, yes, I see,” she said. “What a fine example of a cat.”
Hannah sighed. “Embroidery is notanythinglike sketching,” she said, her voice rife with disappointment. “And it takes too long, besides.”
“It’s an exercise in patience,” Diana said. “But it can be quite satisfying to see the stitches come together.” Hannah had gotten halfway through the alphabet before she had grown bored of the exercise, her stitches growing sloppier until the letters had begun to droop as if they were melting toward the bottom of the sampler. But she was quite a proficient little artist with a paper and a pencil. “Why don’t you first sketch your design with a pencil and then use it as a pattern for where to place your stitches?”
Hannah squinted up at her. “Could I?”
“Yes, of course. I’m certain there are many ladies who are skilled enough to stitch as they go, but it’s just as common to purchase patterns and use those to guide one’s stitches—particularly for those who have no gift for such artistry.” Hannah was clumsier with the needle than she was with a pencil, but with a sketch to show her where to stitch, she’d no doubt find it a more pleasant process.
Hannah laid her fabric out over the table and scrambled for a pencil. Bending over the fabric, she stretched it taut as she carefully sketched out thefigure of a cat. Properly proportioned this time, with a long, curling tail and six precise whiskers.
“I would like to have a cat,” she said absently. “Papa says I may have one when we’ve got a proper house of our own.”
“That sounds wonderful,” Diana mused. “What will you call him?”
“I don’t know yet,” Hannah said. “I think I’ll have to see him, first, to know what he should be called. But I would like a ginger cat, with a long tail and lots of stripes.” She scrawled several stripes across the back of the cat she had sketched upon her fabric. “Do you have a cat?” she asked.
“I’m afraid not,” Diana said. “I have no pets at all; not even a dog.”
“Why not? Wouldn’t you like to have one?”
“I suppose I would,” Diana said slowly. “I hadn’t given it much thought before. My father always said that animals were meant to remain out of doors. He would never have allowed me to have a pet.” She shook her head, clearing it of the unpleasant memories. “It’s been a year since he passed away, but still it never occurred to me that I could have one.”
Hannah looked up from her sketch, placing her pencil aside as she gathered her fabric into her lap once more. “I don’t think your papa was a very nice papa,” she said.
“He wasn’t,” Diana said. “I don’t think he knew how to be happy.” And he had taken a perverse delight in inflicting his dissatisfaction upon everyone in his life. “I would have liked to have a papa like yours.”
“He’s very nice,” Hannah agreed. “Even when he’s scolding me. I don’t think he likes to do it very much. Did your papa scold you very often?”
“Very,” Diana said wryly. “And I was so afraid of him.” Still she could remember the terror that had swept over her at only the sound of his footsteps upon the floor. “I wanted so badly to make him proud of me, but I only ever seemed to make him angry. Do you know,” she said softly, “until my brother and his wife had their son, I don’t think I knew that fathers could actually like their children.” Marcus had been the exception, not the rule. And his son, Edward, was still so young—it was easy, she thought, to love a baby. Even in the rare instances he cried, he could so easily be quieted when scooped up and cuddled by one of his parents.
“My papa loves me,” Hannah said.
“Of course he does,” Diana replied. “But helikesyou, too.” Hannah wasn’t a burden that Ben shouldered with stalwart forbearance, or an obligation to which he tended out of duty alone. “He plays with you,” she said. “He reads to you and takes his meals with you.” If he could—if he had the luxuryof it—he would spend the whole of his day with her. Since the rain had kept him away from the mine today, they had largely spent the day in leisure activities instead of at lessons. Diana had half-expected Ben to spend it catching up on much-needed sleep, but she supposed she ought to have known that he wouldn’t have let the rare opportunity to spend time with his daughter pass him by. Only the obligation to feed Snowball his supper and give the horse a good brushing had pulled him from her side at last.
“Didn’t your papa ever play with you?”
“No,” she said. “Not ever. I don’t think it ever would have occurred to him to do so.”
Hannah pawed through the spools of thread arrayed upon the table, selecting a vivid orange. For her ginger cat, Diana supposed. “That’s mean,” Hannah said. “A papa is supposed to love you more than anything in the whole world. Even more than toffee candies.”
Diana muffled her snicker in her palm as she helped Hannah snip off a length of thread. “I think so, too,” she said. “And that’s just exactly how much your papa loves you.” But she could see that the little girl hadn’t had to be told. She knew it already, because Ben was exactly the sort of father that had made certain that she did.
Diana might have missed her chance to have that sort of father, but she took a sort of vicarious pleasure in watching Hannah with hers. To know that here was one little girl who would never be made to feel less than deserving of that love, who held the whole of her father’s heart in the palm of her hand. An unshakable bond, and an unbreakable faith in that constant, ever-present affection. Every little girl should be so lucky.
