Page 2 of A Lady's Wicked Revenge
“Dunn?” Diana’s mind raced for a moment before she put her finger on it. “You mean that Gerard Dunn I keep hearing Uncle James mention? The second son of a family in the … shipping business, was it?”
“Third son, I believe. Not that they tell me such things, of course. Er … begging your pardon, Miss.”
Diana swallowed, and the anxious pit in her chest descended to twist and churn in her stomach.Gerard Dunn … are you really in such a hurry to get rid of me, Uncle James?
Seeing the expectant look on Missus Fessler’s face and not wishing to get the kindly old woman in trouble with her employer, Diana gamely rose to her feet and let her body be carried through the motions of dressing and arranging her hair. All the while, though, as the housekeeper kindly if hurriedly assisted her with these tasks, Diana’s mind drifted back to the first moment she had set foot in the house that had become a prison to her.
It had all seemed like a mistake, then, like a dream or an amateur play, or some silly error that would be corrected before long, as soon as the responsible parties made their appearance and sorted things out with a chuckle. None of it had seemed real.
Even as she was greeted by the man she was told by kind Mister Arnold would be her guardian, Uncle James—a man she knew only faintly from half-remembered family dinners and holidays—Diana had taken it all with a good-natured shake of her head and a weary smile.
It wasn’t until Diana had laid down in the bed in James Leeson’s guest room that she realised for good and all that this was a dream there would be no waking from. And that first long, sleepless night, Diana had been unable to rid her mind’s eye of the cold, cruel, mirthless smile on Uncle James’ face.
His voice echoed in her ears, stealing the air from her breath as she realised this man was to be in charge of her, was to hold all of her affairs in his bony grey hand. This stranger, this miser—thisman was to be her future.
I still can scarcely believe he and Mother share blood; they are so dissimilar.Diana stifled a sob at the thought of her beloved mother, who had always been so steadfastly kind, patient, supportive … everything a mother should be, she thought.
And somehow she was sister to Uncle James, a man Diana learned anew every day was a crueller man than any she had ever had the misfortune of encountering. Yet indeed, such was her misfortune that in the absence of any other living relation, James Leeson was entrusted with her destiny. Diana was bound to him by blood as well as by law; he was her guardian.
When that thought truly sank into the firmament of Diana’s mind that night … that was when she began to cry.
She did not stop for three days or more. Neither did she eat nor drink. Trays of food were delivered and sent back or left to moulder on the table. There were times when Diana had prayed that she might pass away into whatever afterlife had claimed her beloved parents rather than spend another second in the same house as her wretched, grasping uncle. Eventually, that wish passed away into the numb, half-drowned misery that lingered over her still, and she allowed herself to go through the motions of life.
But even still, weeks later, when Diana remembered that this seemingly heartless man was her guardian, she felt her stomach turn.
“There you are, pretty as a picture!”
Diana blinked, suddenly pulled back into the moment. Reflected in front of her she saw Missus Fessler with a proud smile on her face, arms akimbo as she admired her work.
Still half-lost in her reverie, for an instant, the young woman Diana saw in the mirror before her looked strange and unfamiliar to her. The girl was indeed somewhat pretty, with a tangled mass of strawberry-blonde hair atop her heart-shaped face and icy blue eyes that looked as though they could cut glass. Her cheekbones were high and angular, and her skin as fair as milk.
Then Diana drew a breath, and she recognized a thousand changes to her appearance, as tiny as they were saddening. Her lips, at first looking rosy and flushed with health, now revealed little bloody marks from where she had worried at them with her teeth. The dark circles under her eyes that had been the cause of so much woe during her years of teenage vanity—they had widened now and darkened to the point that she looked as much a corpse as a girl of two-and-twenty. This effect was made all the more ghastly by how thin she had clearly grown over the past weeks.
“More a statue on a mausoleum than a picture …” Diana allowed herself to grumble, turning away from the mirror and towards the door, where Missus Fessler was already tapping her foot impatiently.
The housekeeper moved to scuttle in front of her, but Diana stopped her with a gently outstretched hand. “Thank you, Missus Fessler, but I know the way by now.” Missus Fessler opened her mouth, probably with some jape or another ready to fire, but contented herself with a half-hearted bow of her head instead as Diana strode away purposefully.
Uncle James’ house was not as large as the one where Diana had lived all her two-and-twenty years of life, though it was still a grand estate that belonged to one of London’s wealthier families. On top of that, it was a confusingly designed edifice; that was beyond dispute. There seemed to be no end of strange dead-ended corridors and identical studies and libraries and such. On the single occurrence when she was allowed a walk in the gardens, Diana had examined the house from the outside but found herself more puzzled than ever about its geography.
The first time Diana had left her little bedroom here in search of something to eat, she had become terribly lost in the winding staircases and ended up in a wide, airy bedroom that seemed to have been sitting vacant for some time.
Stricken with curiosity for the first time since arriving, Diana found herself looking around in the room, inspecting the books on the nightstand and breathing in the strangely appealing musky smell that lingered on the curtains. Until, of course, Uncle James had appeared in the doorway and furiously ordered her back to her bedroom.
Diana had not dared to go exploring in the Leeson house since then.
Since that day, however, Missus Fessler had shown her the way to the only rooms that seemed to be allowed to her: her bedroom, Uncle James’ study, the ladies’ parlour. Strangely, Diana found herself with little desire to roam; once she would have ached to spend time poring over the extensive library or playing the dusty old piano in the sitting room. No longer. She hardly even saw anyone but Missus Fessler and Uncle James these days, having turned away visitors like her parents’ friends, the Arnolds, in fits of grief. Now she would give anything to see a friendly face again.
I cannot decide which would be worse,thought Diana as she climbed the stairs up to the third storey, clenching her teeth.Being confined to this awful house for the rest of my days or being sold off like a brood mare to the highest bidder as Uncle James seems to wish so badly.
The thought congealed into something foul in Diana’s throat. Uncle James had said little to her that terrible evening when she first arrived, and she had understood even less of it at the time, so deep had she been in shock. It was only deep in the night when she had teased out the implications of all he said he intended for her and her house, her mother and father still barely cold beneath their shrouds.
That very night he had announced his intention to sell his dear sister’s house, to dismiss all the Hann family staff—the loving souls who cared for Diana as if she were their own child. Most perplexing of all was his plan to find a suitable husband for Diana.
This was a song he would sing often, it turned out; virtually every time Diana was compelled to share a meal or other excursion with her uncle, he talked of this bachelor or that whom he thought would be likely to take Diana to wife for a sufficiently cheap dowry.
Always money with him,Diana thought, trying not to grind her teeth down into powder.Never a question as to what I might need or want. Only concerns about how much more quickly and easily he can get his hands on Father’s fortune.
For herself, Diana had never given much of a thought to money. She was dimly aware that she and her family were reasonably well-off, with a full staff and a large house in a fashionable part of London and sufficient cash that she rarely, if ever, had to do without. Now, though, she was consumed by the thought that Uncle James was squandering her family’s fortune on himself, secreting it away so he could line his own pockets. Each time she asked after her financial matters, he grumbled something derogatory about women’s spending habits and waved her away. It was only after a particularly heated shouting match that she had even got him to tell her—
