Page 69 of Lady Diana's Lost Lord
“To begin with, I understand you are in possession of certain letters which you intended to use to make life difficult for your son,” she said, and watched his mouth fall open in shock. “I will have them.Now.” She held out her hand expectantly.
A crinkle of confusion marred his forehead, set right between his brows. “How could you know?” he murmured beneath his breath. And yet his hand eased toward the right-hand drawer set into his desk, and it creaked open beneath the pressure of his fingers. Rifling within, he withdrew a small packet of papers bound in brown string. “What do you intend to do with them?”
Diana waited until he had set them into her hand and she had closed her fingers around them. “I am going to burn them,” she said.
“Burnthem?” He half-rose in his seat as if he might snatch them back. “Are you mad? They’reproof,” he spat. “Proof of my son’s foolishness.”
“They are proof of a father’s love for his daughter,” she said, lifting her chin in response. “The only proof in the world that could be used againsthim. Now they are mine, and I will destroy them. And you—you will never, by word, deed, or intimation, make even the slightest suggestion that they once existed, nor even the vaguest allusion to the contents therein. Am I understood?”
“The child is a bastard! Not evenhisbastard, that damned stupid boy. He was played for a fool; he allowed some mercenary harlot to pawn her child off upon him. Damn it all, I tried to savehim from himself! I meant to saveyouthe shame of it all.” His fist slammed down upon the desk, rattling the drawers within it.
“No,” she said, “you meant only to save yourself.” Her fingers crimped the edges of the letters, and she had to force herself to ease her grip. “However, I am willing to overlook the sins of your past for the promise of your future good behavior.”
“Why?” he asked. “There can be no benefit here to you.”
Not one that he could see, at least. Not at present. But in time? She hoped he would. “I want them both,” she said. “Your son. Your granddaughter. I mean to have them, but that cannot happen until it is safe for them. Until Imakeit safe for them. The destruction of these”—she brandished the letters—“will be a step toward making that a reality. The rest is in ensuring that we present a united front. And that requires securing your compliance.”
“You cannot mean to—to present the child aslegitimate.”
“Whyever not?” Diana canted her head to the right.
“Because she isn’t! She isn’t even my son’s get. She has no right whatsoever—”
“To what? A courtesy title?” Diana lifted her brows in inquiry. “Last I checked, yours wasn’t among the rare titles that may devolve upon a female. She will never inherit your title, nor have any claim upon your estate. So what does it matter, truly?”
The marquess had no ready response to that. His jaw worked desperately, but no words fell out of his mouth, no hot retort, not even the vaguest attempt at argument.
Diana continued blithely, “We’ll not provide more details than necessary. A whirlwind courtship on the continent whilst Ben was on his Grand Tour, followed by a simple ceremony in a church somewhere. The marriage records have sadly gone missing, but who would doubt the word of an earl that they had, at one point, existed, when there is no one to speak to the contrary?” She gave a little shrug. “It was a brief marriage, unfortunately. Grace—your son’s wife—sadly perished in childbirth, leaving your son the father of an infantdaughter. No one would dare to refute it, when there is no proof otherwise.”
A rough sound emerged from his throat. “Have you not considered how that will reflect upon you? Your engagement is common knowledge. The whole of theTonwill believe that he threw you over.”
“Yes,” she said, “and that was really too bad of him. But it will be little more than a minor curiosity. We’ll give them a romantic story to cling to instead; a marriage ten years in the making realized at last when we renewed our acquaintance and fell in love while I was visiting my mother in Scotland—all very proper, mind you. So there will be nothing for anyone to concern themselves with. Hannah will simply be—”
“Hannah?” the marquess croaked the name, and he blinked fiercely for a few moments, though even that failed to erase the sudden moisture from his eyes. “He—he called the child Hannah?”
Oh. Diana had quite forgotten that Ben had told her, once, for whom Hannah had been named. “Yes,” she said. “Hannah Grace Gillingham.” For her mother.Andfor Ben’s. “Didn’t you know?”
He gave a brisk shake of his head, but his lips trembled and his head bowed, and this—this was the man he truly was beneath the bluster and the arrogance and the years and years of unhappiness. Fragile, pitiable, and so very lonely. “He never mentioned her name,” he said.
“She’s just eight years old,” Diana said, striving for a softer inflection. “She’s an artist at heart, marvelous at sketching. She has the most precious golden curls which she wears in plaits and the bluest eyes, and she’s not very good at maths yet, but she’s learning so quickly. She loves to read and she swims like a fish. She is kind, and clever, and brave, and so, so beautiful. In every way she is a credit to your son, just as your son is a credit to you. Couldn’t you find just a tiny corner of your heart for her? For the darling little girl who loves your son so very much, and who could benefit from a grandfather to love, as well?”
The marquess muffled a harsh sound—perhaps a sob—with the palm of his hand. His shoulders shook as he squeezed his eyes shut. “Lady Hannah Gillingham,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “I never thought I would hear it again.” He swiped his hands across his eyes, blinking back the moisture still within them. “You were never in Scotland, were you?” he asked.
“No,” she admitted. “I was with your son, but I think you must have already determined that. Would you—would you like to hear about them?”
“Yes. Oh, yes,” he said, with a pronounced wobble in his voice, rather like that of a man who had experienced more emotionin the last ten minutes than he had in the last ten years. He truly knew nothing at all of them, she realized. He’d had only a handful of letters, the last of which had been posted to him years and years ago. “Please. Tell me everything you can.”
Chapter Twenty Seven
It was perhaps an hour later that Rafe strode into the study with a brisk rap upon the door to announce his presence. “Marcus sent me,” he said. “He grew a bit concerned, I think. Thought you might’ve fallen through the floor somewhere.”
“No,” Diana said, from her perch upon the corner of the marquess’ desk. “We were just…chatting.” She rose to her feet, brushing off her skirts, which no doubt bore several dusty marks. “My lord,” she said, “may I present my brother, Lord Rafe Beaumont?”
“A pleasure,” Rafe said, in bland, dry tones that suggested the words were for the sake of politeness alone. “Deerborne, isn’t it?”
“Yes, though I’ve not done the title much credit in recent years.” The marquess rose to his feet on creaky knees. “I don’t stand much on ceremony these days,” he said, somewhat apologetically. “Algernon will do just as well. Your sister is…quite an interesting young lady.”
Rafe muffled a laugh behind his fist, the tension in his shoulders relieving itself slowly. “Yes,” he said. “She is that.”
