Page 59 of Lady Diana's Lost Lord
His arms held her too tightly, but it wouldn’t matter. Already they had slipped through one another’s fingers; an inescapable resolution that had been written for them years before they had had the audacity to fall in love.
Ben had never promised her more than he could give. There would be no more tomorrows, but—
“Tonight.” It was only an aching whisper, since her sorrow had stolen the better part of her voice. She pressed her cheek to his, and knew that the warmth of the tears on her face did not belong to her alone. “Give me just tonight.”
“Yes.” His lips found hers in a burning kiss that felt like it had branded itself onto her soul. The sort of kiss that she would feel well into the interminable lonely years that stretched before her. “Yes. Tonight.”
Chapter Twenty Two
Hannah hadn’t wanted Diana’s company at bedtime, and that had been a blow all of its own, another lash to the tender meat and muscle of her that was already bruised and bleeding so deep beneath her skin.
“How is she?” Diana asked as Ben slipped within her room, the warped bottom edge of the door grating across the floor as he closed it behind him. Within the shelter of the aged quilt, she rubbed her hands over her bare arms, struggling to warm herself even a little. It didn’t help. Probably that biting cold went straight to her soul.
“Sleeping. Finally.” Ben blew out a breath, and his hands worked the buttons of his shirt, opening just enough to allow him to drag it over his head. His shoulders slumped as he balled up the fabric in his hands and cast it aside; a tiny show of helpless aggression she suspected he could not mask. “Please don’t take it personally. She just feels…”
Betrayed. Diana did understand it. Once the delight of the dream-come-true had faded, they had had to explain that the time had come for Diana to leave them. To leaveher.
To say that it had gone poorly would have been an understatement. But then, Hannah was just a child, and she hadn’t the experience to manage such large emotions: pain, fear, loss. It was easier to lash out when those feelings were too much for so small a body to contain.
“I told her she would regret it,” Ben sighed as he kicked off his trousers and sat at the edge of the bed, bracing his hands on his knees.
“Don’t.” They would all have enough regrets between them. Hannah didn’t need more of them heaped upon her small shoulders. “I don’t want her to feel guilty.”
A mirthless smile touched his lips. “She will, anyway. Eventually,” he said.
“Better anger than shame.” Perhaps it would even be better for Hannah, in the end. If she could keep hold of that anger, then maybe the grief wouldnever come for her. “We don’t have togiveher guilt.”
The rain had washed away the remnants of dirt and sweat from his skin, and he smelled…clean. Fresh. Like the new beginning he’d earned with years of labor and struggle. He made room for her there within the circle of his arms, imbuing her with his heat. It wouldn’t last through the dawn, but just now it was a balm to her weary soul.
She breathed in that fresh, clean scent and held it in her lungs. “Tomorrow, then,” she whispered against his throat as she exhaled slowly. “We never really planned for it.”
“No, I suppose we didn’t.” His fingers stroked through the tangles of her hair, gently plucking free the tiny knots. “There’s a coaching inn not too very far away. I’ll secure a carriage for you in the morning. Probably it will be ready for you by noon.” He turned his head, surveying the ruins in which she’d left the room. “You’ll want to be packed.”
It was only one trunk, and she’d no doubt simply cram the rest of her belongings within. “It’s only a little mess,” she said. “I was—considering what I ought to leave behind for Hannah.”
A soft sigh near her ear. “We can’t take much,” he said. “We never do when we leave. There simply isn’t room. The furniture came with the let of the cottage. Very little of what is here belongs to us.”
A few books, then. Perhaps a gown or two that could be refashioned—no. They’d have no need of such things, now. There would be plenty of funds for new dresses for Hannah that hadn’t gone through several other pairs of hands first. They wouldn’t be living hand-to-mouth any longer.
“You’re soon to leave, yourselves, then,” she said, tracing the line of his jaw with the tip of her finger. He’d shaved today, but there was still the slightest scratch of new bristles growing there, abrading the pad of her finger.
“Yes.” His hand splayed over the small of her back, pressing her closer. “I have a man in the area who will buy the graphite. Probably he hasn’t got quite enough coin to cover what it is worth, but I will take whatever he’s got and he’ll write a bank draft for the rest.” His knee edged between hers. “Whatever ready coin I can get for it will be enough to see us on our way. Enough to start a new life. The rest of it will be invested.”
“I’m happy for you,” she whispered. And she was—or shewouldbe, when she could manage to bury the grief enough to find that happiness again. But just now it felt so very real, that life they might have had. The one she had surrendered out of love. “We would have been happy.”
“Diana, don’t.” His breath hitched in his chest, and a fierce shudder sliddown his spine. “Don’t, please.”
But it would have been such a beautiful life. “We’d have had a house in London. Your family estate in the countryside. We’d go there for Christmas, I think. Does it get much snow?”
For a long moment she thought he would not answer. But finally he did, with a queer tremble in his voice. “Yes,” he said. “It’s in Hertfordshire, and there is often snow at Christmas.”
If she closed her eyes, she thought she might see it a little too clearly; that country seat she had never visited and would not ever see. “I’d want to decorate for the holiday,” she said. “Wreaths, holly. We’d go sledding, sing carols. Have a family portrait done, all three of us.”
“Hannah would adore that.” The rasp of his voice scratched over her ears. “She’s had a lonely sort of childhood. She’d want a brother or a sister to keep her company whenever we could not.”
“One of each, then.” It didn’t mean anything; it was only the last flickering embers of a dying dream. Kept alive in just these few moments by whispered wishes that would never come true. “Probably they’d help keep her out of mischief.”
“Or into it.” A rough, hoarse sort of laugh, the kind he had had to scrape up from some place deep within him. “You’d have the devil of a time bringing her out into society, when the time came for it. She hasn’t got the temperament that society expects of a young lady.”
