Page 78 of Lady Diana's Lost Lord
No, she didn’t, and she wouldn’t claim to. Not on an acquaintance of only a few weeks. But then—neither did he, really. He hadn’t in such a long time, and it wasn’t his fault. She suspected that his father had not been an easy mantoknow in decades. She could not make up Ben’s mind for him, or force him to see his father differently than circumstances and experience had taught him. But perhaps she could open the door that had been so firmly shut between them these long years. Just a crack.
She said, “When I had to leave you, I wallowed for a time. It would have been so easy to let myself be swallowed up within my grief, to convince myself there was nothing to be done for it. I knew your father had left you without options, without resources—but then it occurred to me thatIwas not without them. That I did not have to meekly accepthis interference. I did not have tolethim win.”
Ben drew in a sharp breath. “Are you telling me—”
“I went to see him,” she said, and gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. “I was furious with him. Justifiably so, I am assured. I had him built up in my mind to this—this fantasticalmonster, straight out of a child’s fairytale. I had a speech rehearsed, practiced before a mirror until it was just perfectly scathing, and I meant to demand what I was owed from him.”
“I can’t imagine he took it terribly well.” The bland syllables held an undercurrent of anger, of righteous condemnation.
“He didn’t,” she allowed. “At first. Oh, Ben. It wasn’t at all what I had imagined. I thought I was confronting a dragon in his lair, and instead he was…pitiful. Living in worse conditions even than you. Your family’s estate had gone to rack and ruin, half-crumbling, half eaten by weeds and worse. He had made you miserable, but you should know that he had madehimselfperfectly wretched.”
“Good.” It was a vicious snarl, full of contempt. He had honestly earned the right to it, and she could not fault him for it.
“You should know,” she said, “that he surrendered those letters to me—the ones you wrote to him—and we burned them together. And he has agreed to support us in establishing Hannah’s legitimacy.”
A brief hesitation. She knew he did not quite believe it, but then, he’d had rather a lot of reasons not to trust his father. “You threatened him intoit?” he asked.
“Well, I admit Ididlead with a threat. It seemed an expedient way to get what I desired of him. But do you know,” she said, “I don’t think it was the threat that won him over.” She tucked her cheek against his shoulder. “You named her Hannah, and he didn’t know.”
“Why should it have mattered?”
“Because I think it made him remember,” she said. “That he hadn’t just lost a wife. You had lost your mother. And you both loved her.” In the faint light flickering through the curtains, she saw the clench of his jaw, the doubt scrawled across his features.
“He wasn’t—” She heard him swallow, long and hard. “He wasn’t a good father,” he said. “After Mother died, he hardly spoke to me at all. It was as if he would have preferred I did not exist.”
Probably it had felt like that to a very young boy. “You look just like her,” she said.
“How could you know that?”
“Because he keeps a family portrait of the three of you. The one thing he never let go to rot.” She smoothed away the little frown that creased his brow. “He was a deeply unhappy man,” she said. “And he made you suffer for it. It wasn’t right of him, and you do not owe him your forgiveness. But you can allow him to attempt to make amends. For Hannah’s sake.” And his own. Perhaps he wouldn’t see that immediately. Perhaps it would never happen at all. Perhaps the marquess had earned only a cordial but distant relationship. Then again, that crack in the door might just be enough room to let love slip through.
“He has made us all miserable,” Ben said tightly. “How canyouforgive him?”
“I didn’t say I had,” Diana said. “In truth, he is on a very short leash, and well he knows it. Only time will tell the sincerity of his efforts. But,” she added, “he has also capitulated to all of my demands, and together—together we are working on restoring the estate.”
Ben snorted. “A fool’s errand. He’ll gamble it all away again.”
“Not,” she said, “when we’ve ensured he has nowhere to play. Not when he’s turned over the management of the family finances to me. Marcus has advanced us the costs of turning at least the family wing of the manor livable again, and we’re working on finding new tenants and repairing relationships with those that remain, and I think…I think it will work out. If we are frugal and willing to put in the work for it, we can save it. We know something of hard work, don’t we?”
She felt the tension slowly slip free of him, heard the little sigh he gave as he framed her face with one hand and turned her toward him. “Yousaved it,” he said. “You saved all of us.” His nose rubbed hers, a small, affectionate gesture. “It’s not how such stories are meant to go, you know. God knows I’ve told enough of them to Hannah. The knight is meant to rescue the princess.”
She supposed he wasn’t wrong. But then, perhaps just occasionally, a battle-weary knight could require rescuing himself, when one defeat after another had worn his armor down to nothing. And perhaps a princess could wield a sword of her own.
“I have…certain reservations,” he said as the carriage began to slow. “But in spite of them, I trust your judgment. So in this, I will bow to your greater wisdom.”
“Good,” she said. “Since I’m meant to have supper with your father this evening, and I would very much like you and Hannah to come along.”
“He’s in London?”
“For the time being. The manor truly was unlivable, so we’ve put him up in my mother’s house,” she said. “But the family wing should be repaired by Christmas, and I would very much like to spend it there with you and Hannah.” In Hertfordshire. Where it snowed.
Ben managed a small chuckle as the carriage came to a stop, and he thrust the door open. “Then we’d best go get married,” he said.
∞∞∞
“It will be all right.”
Ben hadn’t realized exactly how tense he had become until Diana laid her hand upon his arm and squeezed. He looked down at it, that gentle hand with its long, elegant fingers. At the ring that rested there, which he had only an hour ago placed again upon her finger as he had spoken the words that bound them together irrevocably. And he realized itwouldbe all right.
