Page 71 of Lady Diana's Lost Lord
“We’ll make room.” She wasn’t certain howthey would do it, precisely—but shewascertain she knew exactly what he wished to bring along. That painting that hung still upon the wall, when every other had gone.
“Best get to it, then,” Rafe said, jamming his hands in his pockets. “At this rate, we’ll be lucky to make it back to London before nightfall. You’ve got ten minutes whilst I round up Marcus and Lydia to collect whatever you need.” And then he was gone, striding through the door, and they were alone once again.
Diana slid her hand slowly over the pocket where she had stuffed the packet of letters, feeling the slight crinkle of paper inside. For now, it was enough to have them, but it would relieve her still further when she could feed them to a fire and watch the ugliness they represented, the years of pain and suffering they had caused, crumble to ash. “It will all end up as it’s meant to,” she said, reluctant to make a more favorable promise in Ben’s stead. “I can’t say it won’t be a long, difficult road. But your son is a good man. Patient. Kind. He’s got a daughter with the makings of a hellion; he’s had to learn all of those virtues to be the father she needs. If you talk, he will listen—but those first steps toward reconciliation must be yours. You must ask for forgiveness for it to be granted to you.”
“Yes, I—I think I take your meaning.” The marquess gave a little sniffle,the sort a stoic man might have blamed upon the dust. “Your spectacles,” he said. “They’ve gone a bit crooked. May I see them?”
He couldn’t know that even this had, in a roundabout sort of way, been his fault. But that was just how such things went; consequences so far-reaching that they rippled out into a thousand different places, marking everything they touched. “I bent the earpiece a few weeks ago,” she said as she eased them off her face and the world went blurry and indistinct. “I haven’t gotten round to having them repaired yet.”
“No matter,” he said as he collected them from her fingers. “I believe I can do something for them.” In the weak strains of sunlight through the window, she saw his hazy shape turn toward the desk, heard the slight knock of metal on wood. A low hum, a reflective murmur to himself. She couldn’t see exactly what he was doing, even squinting, but he gave a small grunt, and then— “There,” he said. “That ought to do it.”
The glint of the lenses in the light gave her something to reach for, and she curled her fingers around the frames and settled the spectacles back upon the bridge of her nose, where they sat perfectly flat and even once more. “Oh,” she said. “You bent it back.”
“Only a minor adjustment. I’ve grown accustomed to doing such things for myself. They suit you,” he said reflectively, as if it had surprised him. “The spectacles.”
Perhaps Ben and his father had more in common than even they knew. “Yes,” she said. “I think so, too.”
∞∞∞
Ben and Hannah had fared little better in Southport than they had in Blackpool. Neither had they found Cardiff suitable, or any one of the half-dozen other towns they had, however briefly, visited. It had been a journey of a few days to venture further south, but even Bournemouth, Portsmouth, and Worthing, each lovely in their own way, had failed to meet their expectations.
Eventually, they would have to pick a place to settle. Though he had enjoyed this opportunity to spend time with Hannah in the daylight hours, with no other obligations hanging over his head to pull him from her side, it could not continue forever. Even if he no longer had to break his back to support them, she needed the stability of a permanent home and a propereducation.
Hannah’s hands were still sticky with the remnants of the lemon ice she’d devoured a short while earlier as they returned to their rented room, and she wiped them upon the skirt of her dress, unwilling to soil the handkerchief that lay shoved perpetually within her pocket.
Except, of course, at night. When she tucked it beneath her pillow to worry between her fingers, as if the words stitched upon it comforted her into sleep.
“We’ll have to choose a place soon,” Ben said, as Hannah lifted her arms over her head so that he could wrestle off her day dress and replace it with the worn nightgown. “What do you think,” he asked as he picked free the ribbons binding her plaits. “Blackpool? Portsmouth?”
“No.” It was decisively delivered as Hannah crawled into her bed and slid between the clean white sheets. She puffed away a lock of hair that had fallen into her eyes. “I don’t want to live in any of those places. Papa, why can’t we live with Diana?”
Ben blew out a breath. “That’s…a complicated question. Too complicated for a little girl.” He tucked the covers up around her as she settled her head upon her pillow. “How about a bedtime story instead?”
“No!” Hannah’s lower lip thrust out into a petulant pout, and she wriggled her arms out from the tight tuck of the blankets. “I want to knowwhy.”
“To begin with,” Ben said, “We can’t afford her.”
“But you said we had money now!”
“Yes; enough for a small house and to keep you in clothes as you grow and for a governess to educate you. But not enough for the sort of life Diana is accustomed to. I’ll bet the cost of just one of her gowns could keep us fed and housed for a year.” While she’d been with them in the Lake District, she’d paid for every expense and had never batted an eye at the cost. “Probably she has got some money of her own,” he said. “But the money that was meant to ensure that she had a comfortable life—that’s long gone, now.”
“But she loves us,” Hannah said. “She’d let us come live with her, if we asked.”
Despite himself, Ben felt a smile tugging at his lips. “Diana lives with her brother,” he said. “Ladies don’t live on their own, at least until they’ve reached a certain age. So you see, she can’t offer up her brother’s house to us.” He hesitated, stroking his fingers through her hair. “Sweetheart, there’s so much more than only this. The place where Diana lives, the people in her social circle—they can be so very cruel.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I suppose some people can only feel good about themselves if they are making someone else feel small. It’s the only way they know how to feel big and important.” He braced his elbows upon his knees and clasped his hands. “Do you remember,” he asked, “when we talked about how your mama and I were never married? That Mama was my very best friend, but I was never her husband?”
She nodded, her brow furrowing. “You said you didn’t plant me, but you were still going to be my Papa.”
“That’s right,” he said. “Well, there’s nasty names that people use for people whose parents weren’t married. It’s not right, and it’s not fair. It’s not your responsibility, but there are people—there are people who will use that knowledge to try to make you feel like it is, try to make you feel ashamed.” He peeled her hand away from its tight grip upon the covers and encompassed it in his own, squeezing tightly. “A very long time ago,” he said, “when you were just a tiny little baby, I made the mistake of sharing that information with someone I thought I could trust. That person…he threatened to tell everyone what he knew, to make certain you could never be welcome in London.”
Hannah wiggled against the pillow, pressing her elbow down into the mattress beneath her to shove herself into a sitting position. “Will you still love me,” she asked, “even if people say mean things about me?”
“Of course.” He bent to press a kiss to her forehead. “Of course. You’re my precious little girl. Nothing could ever change that.”
“And you’ll still be my papa, even if…even if some people say you aren’t?”
