Page 61 of Lady Diana's Lost Lord
“I’m—so happy you have each other,” she said. “Perhaps someday”—far into the future, no doubt—“I could come visit.”
A slow shake of his head. “You’ll have other obligations,” he said. “Your husband—”
“I don’t intend to have one.”
“Youpromisedme—”
“I lied.” She swallowed hard, past the lump forming in her throat, growing tighter and tighter every second. “I am leaving because it is what is best for both of you. You cannot ask more of me than this.”
“I can ask you to be happy.” The ragged words sounded as if they had been torn from his lungs in shreds. His voice pitched low, and his shouldersfell as if the weight of the world had dropped upon them. “I want every happiness for you, Diana, and I can’t be the one to give it to you. You can never be mine.”
“I know.” She hadn’t made peace with it, precisely, but she had accepted it as an inevitability. Like the dawning of a new day, or the setting of the sun each evening. Like the carriage that would carry her away from them forever.
His hands clenched as if to resist the temptation to reach for her. “But I—I will always be yours,” he said, and there was a wealth of regret within the words, a pain that went straight to his soul. “I will always be yours.”
Diana turned her face to the sky, lest the devastated expression he wore grind the tiny pieces of her heart to dust. Such a lovely day. She would have preferred the rain that had passed in the night. A long, drawn-out goodbye was ever so much more painful than a short one.
She allowed herself only one last look to the small window on the upper floor, where the curtains fluttered still. But there was no Hannah framed within them, and she thought—perhaps that was for the best. Perhaps it would have broken her beyond bearing to bid farewell to the child she had come to love so dearly.
“Goodbye,” she said, and managed to summon forth a smile every bit as bright as the day, hiding her tragedy beneath it. “Please tell Hannah for me. Goodbye.” She would let them both go with a smile, and a cheery wave of her hand—though they were not reciprocated.
The carriage door swung closed behind her, and in only a moment there was a lurch as the horses pulled the wheels from the stick of the mud. She watched through the window as the cottage grew smaller and smaller, fading into the distance.
And when at last the carriage had left the village in its wake, when it had finally turned upon the main road heading south toward London, Diana buried her head in her arms and wept.
∞∞∞
Ben watched until the carriage faded from view, and at last let the loss of her crash over him like a tidal wave, sweeping his legs out from beneath him. He sat heavily there upon the lawn, his lungs heaving as if he had been running for miles, a breathlessness that he doubted would ever ease.
“No!” The front door slammed open, and there was the furious pound of small feet behind him as Hannah darted out onto the lawn, her face flushed a fierce red and her hands bunched within the folds of her skirt. “No!” she shrieked again, tears trembling upon her lashes. “She can’t go! Papa, shecan’tgo!”
“Hannah.” It was only a rasp across dry lips, through a throat gone too tight with the grief of it. “She couldn’t stay.”
Hannah rounded upon him, her shoulders shaking as she dashed the back of her hand over her eyes. “You were supposed to stop her!”
“Come here, sweetheart,” he said in a wretched whisper, and patted his knee. With a tiny sob, she flung herself at him, looping her small arms around his neck and tucking her face into his shoulder. Ben banded his arms about her, stroking her soft hair as she cried into the collar of his shirt. “I couldn’t stop her,” he said softly. “She had to go back to her home.” And, God, he could never explain to her the reasons behind it. That Diana had left to protect her, to give her the stability and safety she deserved.
Diana would not have wanted to inflict that sort of guilt upon Hannah.
“She was supposed tostay,” Hannah whimpered. “She was supposed to stay and to be my mama. She was supposed to love me. Doesn’t she love me?”
“Oh, Hannah—of course she loves you.” So much more than Hannah would ever know.
“I didn’t get to say goodbye.” It ended on a pitiful wail, and Ben kissed the top of her head, murmuring soothing nonsense. That much had been Hannah’s choice, but she hadn’t known what the consequences would be when she had made it. Probably she had hoped that she could delay the inevitable, that if she refused to come out, then Diana would not leave. A child’s logic. She couldn’t have known any better.
“She told me to tell you goodbye,” he said into her soft hair. “And to tell you that she loves you very much. And—” He still held that handkerchief clutched in his hand, the one pressed against Hannah’s back. “She gave me this to give to you.”
With one hand she shook the crumples out of the fabric that the tight clench of his fingers had pressed into it, and her eyes slid over the lovely artistry of the delicate stitches, flowering vines and blossoms and leaves blooming against the lace-edged border. Hannah’s initials rendered in one corner with elegant flourishes. A labor of love, which had taken so much time and effort to produce for the little girl who had requested it of her; a memento tocherish.
Hannah buried a wail of grief against his shoulder, her whole body trembling with it. And Ben saw it at last, the stitches that had evoked that desolated reaction. There in the center, in precise, perfect lines wrought of pristine white thread.
Wherever you go, you take the whole of my heart with you. I love you always.
Chapter Twenty Three
The journey home was a blur of long stretches of lonely roads and coaching inns. She had slept at night, Diana was certain, and she must have passed the time in the carriage in some fashion or another, and of course there had been meals and quite possibly a bath or two—but it was the misery she recalled most. The sense that she had left her heart behind her somewhere out there, unrecoverable.
When eventually the carriage arrived in London, she was nearly grateful to see it. To have some manner of distraction from the pain. She watched the city pass by through the window, the familiar streets, the crowds of people, the shops and parks and stately townhomes, until at last the carriage began to slow, and that interminable journey came to an end.
