Page 32 of Lady Diana's Lost Lord
God help him, it would kill a part of him to let her go. Not only to send her up to bed, but to let her walk out of his life. And still, he stroked the curve of her cheek with the pad of his thumb and ended it how he’d begun it; just the slightest touch of his lips right there to the corner of hers. He could feel the evidence of a smile there upon her lips beneath his, a sort of satisfaction he’d not truly expected to earn from her.
Her fingernails scraped through the hair at the nape of his neck, and he suppressed a shudder. “That’s enough,” he said, as gently as he could manage. In fact, it had been rather too much. Probably for both of them. “You’ve got to go now. Upstairs, to bed.” While he could still let her. While he could will his fingers to release her.
He managed to lift her off of his lap and set her on her feet once more—and his hands didn’t want to let her go. They settled there at her waist, warmed by the heat of her skin beneath the soft fabric of her wrapper. And she—she made no effort to leave. She held her feet, but her eyes were dazed, her cheeks flushed, her lips bruised. She fumbled for her spectacles, sliding her hand across the table until she brushed the earpiece with just the tips of her fingers.
He waited until she’d got them on at last, pushing them up the bridge of her nose, because he wanted her toseehim. “It wasn’t empty flattery,” he said, and let her go at last. “You do understand that now. Don’t you?”
Chapter Twelve
Diana stared through the clinging darkness, watching the shadows gather and shift in the blur of moonlight that struggled through the window.I am eight and twenty years old, she thought to herself, turning her cheek into the cup of her palm.I am too old by years and years to be agonizing over something so simple as a kiss.
Ten years ago, perhaps, she could have been forgiven for the odd giddiness that fluttered like a trapped sparrow within her chest. But she had not been a giddy young girl even then, and nowshe was a woman grown, far too old to weave silly dreams around such things.
She would be a fool to build dreams aroundhim. And she—
Lord, she wassucha damned fool. Was she so pitiful, so desperate for even the smallest hints of affection that she would wear her heart out upon a man who had nothing to offer her?
She had come here with such clear intentions: to break their engagement, to claw back a little of the pride that had been savaged for a decade, with each Season that had failed to bring her betrothed home again. It had been so easy to stew in her bitterness, to concoct a villainous image of him within her mind. She’d crafted it carefully over the years, but the capricious, cold earl she had expected had been so far removed from the reality that it had been impossible to hold on to the anger she had once harbored for him. She would never have allowed the man she had thought he’d been to kiss her. Sheshouldnever have allowed the man he had turned out to be to kiss her.
It wasn’t empty flattery. You do understand that now. Don’t you?
She should have been pleased. Probably he’d meant her to be. Instead, she had been devastated. She had always known a kiss could ruin a woman’s reputation—but it had never occurred to her that one could ruin a woman’s heart.
And, oh, itached. The bittersweet pangs eclipsed even the sting of the cut on her palm. She’d seen marriages enough to know that happiness withinthem was the exception, not the rule. Even if Marcus and Lydia made it look effortless, she knew their happiness had been hard won.
Securing her own happiness would not be hard won—it would be impossible. Every day seemed to push that goal of a broken engagement and the freedom it would bring her a little more toward the back of her mind. Every day she thought a little less of what she would do when she left. Every day this wretched bed with its sagging mattress grew a little more comfortable. Not to her body, per se, but to her mind. Her heart. Every day she awaited Ben’s return with nearly as much anticipation as did Hannah.
She had learned something of herself here, from him, from Hannah. She had learned that she could only ever have loved a man whom she knew would make a good husband and father—and now, she thought, she knew exactly what that looked like. She could have left him heart-whole if he had been anyone else. But he had justhadto be exactly the sort of man she had always wanted for herself.
It was the worst sort of cruelty, really. That she had come to be rid of him, and had found herself instead hopelessly ensnared by the longing for something that could never be hers. That the self-righteous set-down she had intended to give would no doubt turn out to be the most painful farewell she would ever experience.
It would leave her heart battered and bleeding.Brokenin a way she could scarcely have comprehended before now. Somehow, he and Hannah had claimed the largest portion of it for themselves. What would remain of it when they parted?
Only enough, she thought, to live out the rest of her days in wondering what might have been.
∞∞∞
Ben wanted to kiss her again. Now. Immediately. While the last echoes of a laugh still clung to the corners of her lips; a delightful response to Hannah’s silliness at the dinner table. While she would still taste of the toffee candies she had shared with Hannah for dessert.
Surreptitiously, he swept one hand over his face, and the beginnings of a beard rasped against his palm.Damn. It had been a foolhardy desire, anyway. Unwise in the extreme. And he could never have peeled Hannah from herside long enough to manage it, besides.
Hannah had grown so attached to her. Surely Diana would supplant evenhimin his daughter’s affections soon enough. But then, Hannah had been lacking a proper feminine influence. He’d not thought it all thatimportant to her upbringing, but there was no denying that Hannah had bloomed beneath Diana’s care. Probably she would always be halfway to a hellion—but she could make quite a pretty curtsey now, and even her table manners had improved dramatically.
She read to him in the evenings before bed nearly as often as he read to her. She didn’t even complain over her sums any longer, and she preened with pride whenever Diana pronounced them perfectly done. Before his eyes, his daughter was becoming a little lady.
Probably Diana hadn’t noticed, but Hannah had for some time been struggling to emulate her—studying her walk, her posture, even her handwriting. It was the last of these she did now, canting her head to watch Diana’s fluid script flow across the sheet of paper before her.
“How do you write so pretty?” Hannah asked, casting a disgruntled look down at her own paper. Though both her penmanship and her spelling had markedly improved, still they were a far cry from the delicate, flourishing script a properly educated lady could manage.
“Lots of practice, darling,” Diana said. “In London, we receive a great deal of correspondence. Replying to all of it can be a daunting task, since there is so much of it.”
“What’s correspondence?” Hannah inquired. With the pencil in her left hand, she absently scratched out a little sketch upon her own paper, foregoing her penmanship exercises in favor of conversation.
“Letters and such,” Diana said. “We receive a great number of invitations, but even those we do not accept are deserving of a response.” She paused to scratch out another line. “The post can be delivered as many as six times a day in London,” she said. “So even if I answered everything received in the morning, there might well be just as much delivered again in the evening.”
“Oh.” Hannah frowned over her paper. “Nobody ever sends me letters,” she said. “Will you send me a letter?”
Ben stilled, his fingers clenching around his tea cup. “Hannah—”
