Page 64 of Lady Diana's Lost Lord
They’d been here four days already, having taken up a room at a local hotel—one close enough to the water to walk. It had started as a holiday of sorts, the kind they had never had the funds or the time to take, with lemon ices and shopping, and lazy afternoons spent on the shore and in the sea. They had even enjoyed it, after a fashion.
As much as they were able.
That shallow enjoyment had waned, he thought, as the days had passed. Once, it had been their shared dream. But it was notthedream. Not any longer.
Only this morning they had come across the perfect house. Quiet and private, with a kitchen garden and a sunny lawn in the front with several tall trees perfect for climbing, as well as a wooden swing. A sandy path wound behind the house, rolling down toward the sea which was visible upon the horizon. Ben had discovered it advertised for sale in the newspaper. Forsale, not let—it could be theirs forever, this lovely little house with its tidy stone façade. He doubted that the floors were warped within, that any doors would stick or grate across the boards as they opened. The roof would not leak when it rained. It would be clean, comfortable. Perfect for just the two of them.
He stood, hand in hand with Hannah, and tried his damnedest to dredge up even the tiniest amount of enthusiasm for it. “Well?” he asked. “What do you think?”
Hannah shoved her hand within the pocket of that blue muslin dress that Diana had had made up for her, and he knew she was worrying the fabric of that handkerchief between her fingers. She peered at the sparkling windows, the swing, the vibrant green of the grass.
A little cat—agingercat—wandered out from somewhere beneath a few flowering bushes, leapt up upon the polished board of the swing, and began to daintily lick one paw.
Every dream they had once shared. Here and now. Theirs, if only they were to accept them.
Hannah heaved a sigh far too severe for a child of her age. “No,” she said.
He hadn’t thought so, either. It wasn’tthedream. The one they had somehow acquired together in the last few months, and which had pushed every other so far to the fringes that they could no longer be content with a small house by the sea and a ginger cat.
“We’ll keep looking,” he said, and he squeezed her hand in his. “We’ll keep looking.”
But he was afraid that they both knew that what they dreamed now would not be found within any of the towns they might visit.
Dianawas the dream. And she could only be found in London—where they could never go.
∞∞∞
“How are you going to manage it?” Emma asked over tea, a little more than a week after Diana had returned to London. “Your engagement, I mean. Surely something will have to be done on that score.”
“Yes,” Diana said, biting back a sigh. Yes, somethingwouldhave to be done. Once, she had hoped for a mutual dissolution, and for Ben’s assistance in managing the public perception of it. But now she would have to do it alone, and while itcouldbe done, it would doubtless be a bit trickier. “But not just yet, I think.”
“Better to do it sooner rather than later,” Phoebe said, wincing a little at the shrieks that even the sturdy mahogany door of Emma’s sitting room could not hope to entirely muffle. “Good heavens. Is someone being murdered?”
“No, but probably he’d rather be,” Emma sighed, placing her teacup back upon its saucer to rub at her temples. “A new boy arrived today. He’s about ten years of age, I think. He was just crawling with fleas and lice, poor thing. Bitten bloody in places. He has got to be bathed before he can have a bed and settle with the other children, but he certainly isn’t pleased about it.”
They never were. Diana had heard more than a few such shrieks over the years, ever since Emma had turned the grand house she had inherited from her deceased husband into a foundling home. That Phoebe hadn’t been treated to such sounds was something of a miracle, but then, Phoebe had not the affinity for children that Emma did, and she tended to avoid them whenever possible—but Diana had yet to accept an invitation to a single event since her return to London, and only Emma’s home could provide the sort of privacy she had wanted for this chat.
They all breathed a sigh of relief when at last the shrieks died away, and Emma poured fresh tea into her cup. “You really can’t avoid it forever,” she said. “Sooner or later, the news will come out, and broken engagements have a way of reflecting far more poorly upon women than upon men.”
“It’s not so simple as that, so Marcus has informed me,” Diana said. “There are legalities involved. A betrothal contract that must be dissolved.” While the violation of it would be hers, thus forfeiting the dowry her father had already paid, still she could not simplyannounceherself free of thebetrothal. At least, not of her own accord. It would have been so much simpler a thing to dissolve it by mutual agreement.
“Surely,” Phoebe mused, “you are not going to mount a suit?”
“No,” she said.God, no. That would be ruinous, and not only to her reputation, but to Ben and Hannah as well. “I suppose I could settle for an announcement in the papers. Notideal, perhaps, and there will likely be gossip—”
“I should like for someone to say something nasty in my hearing,” Phoebe hissed. “Onlyonce.” By the icy cut of her blue eyes, Diana supposed she meant that onlyoncewould be necessary—for no one would ever dare to suggest anything unseemly in her presence ever again, if they knew what was good for them.
It was lovely to have such good, loyal friends. But it wouldn’t matter if therewasgossip. Gossip of this nature would not see herpersona non gratawithin society. It might have damaged her chances of making a good match, but since she didn’t intend to make a match—good or otherwise—it hardly mattered whether or not any gentleman considered her eligible to become his wife.
“I only meant,” she said, placing one hand over Phoebe’s to coax her down from her temper, “that it’s not quite so simple as announcing myself free to marry.” And she was in no particular hurry to take an action that might result in that perception, besides. “I will have to prevail upon my brothers to make the necessary arrangements, and to communicate them to the marquess.”
“Really,” Emma said, her brows pinched together in bewilderment. “Your brothers?”
“Yes, of course.” Diana hesitated, startled by the doubtful tone. “Why?”
Phoebe tapped her fingertips upon the delicate china of her teacup. “Well,” she said carefully, “it’s just that you were so eager to prove your mettle only a few months ago. Diana, you chased a man you’d not met in nearly two decades all the way across England only to give him a piece of your mind.”
That was true enough, but Ben’s father was a bloodymarquess, and—and she was so damnedangry. He had ruined three lives. She could have happily throttled him. He hadwon, and it had been at her expense. And Ben’s. And Hannah’s. She could not look him in the eye and surrender to his manipulation, his cruelty.
