Page 18 of To Love and to Loathe
In truth, he had assumed a somewhat limited experience on Diana’s part; her husband had been considerably older than she, and had shuffled off this mortal coil fairly early in their marriage. Despite her reputation as a flirt, he’d never heard a single piece of reliable gossip linking her to any man in particular. However, that kiss had not seemed like the innocent kiss of a repressed widow. It was the kiss of a woman who knew exactly what she wanted—and how to take it.
It was…
… not something that made for appropriate breakfast table contemplation, if one wanted to avoid shocking one’s guests.
With some difficulty, Jeremy steered his thoughts away from this pleasurable detour and back to the present matter, which was the unfortunate appearance of Lady Helen Courtenay at the breakfast table. Jeremy heaved a heavy internal sigh; he supposed he could not have expected her to remain in her bedchamber indefinitely, though a man could dream.
Lady Helen was tall and willowy, and moved with a certain elegant grace that Jeremy reluctantly had to admire. Her hair was a pale blond, her eyes very light blue, her complexion fair and unblemished. She was an entirely pleasing creature to look upon.
Until she opened her mouth.
“Ahahaha! My lord, you aretoodroll!” she said to Penvale as she entered the room, his arm grasped tightly in her clutches. Jeremy guessed his friend had had the misfortune to encounter the lady in the corridor on his way into the breakfast room, and—judging by the barely concealed grimace upon his face—was heartily wishing he’d lingered in bed a few minutes longer.
“Jeremy,” Penvale said loudly as soon as he spotted his host. “I was fortunate enough to encounter Lady Helen on her way down to breakfast and offer her my escort.”
“Yes,” Jeremy agreed. “Most fortunate.” He blinked, and peered closer at Penvale’s arm—were Lady Helen’s fingernails actually digging into his flesh?
“Oh, my Lord Willingham!” the lady trilled, dropping Penvale’s arm—to the visible relief of its owner—and coming toward him, arms outstretched. “How positivelydelightfulto see you this morning.”
“Likewise, Lady Helen,” Jeremy said, rising to his feet and offering a rather listless excuse for a bow. For perhaps the first time in his life, he experienced a moment’s longing for a wife—if there were a lady of the house, he could pass Lady Helen over to her to entertain with whatever it was ladies liked to chat about. Gloves, perhaps. Watercolors. Handkerchiefs. Et cetera.
However, as the sole host for the house party, Jeremy had no one upon whom he could foist Lady Helen without appearing abominably rude, and so he resigned himself to a never-ending breakfast with the eagerly chattering lady at his side. He did his best to tune out her prattle—at one point, he distinctly noted that she was discussing the relative merits of fichus versus exposed necklines, and he promptly rededicated himself to the stack of generously buttered toast before him.
At some point during the proceedings, Diana entered the room; he glanced up and caught her eye, watching as she registered his captive state, her mouth twitching as she clearly fought to suppress a grin. He gave her a look that he hoped implied his promise that she would shortly suffer from mocking his misfortune, but the effect did not seem to be as threatening as he might have wished, for her mouth twitchings widened into a proper smile in response.
Meanwhile, farther down the table, Penvale and West were deep in conversation, no doubt regarding something exceptionally dull, like irrigation. Or sheep. Penvale’s family estate had been unentailed and sold to cover his parents’ debts upon their death, and he was obsessed with reclaiming Trethwick Abbey, his ancestral lands. West, who as Audley’s elder brother was heir to a dukedom, no doubt had all sorts of frightfully dull insights about estate management.
It never occurred to Penvale to ask Jeremy any of these questions, despite the fact that Jeremy was, in fact, a marquess—and one who had rescued his family estate from the brink of ruin, no less. Penvale knew this, in theory. In practice, however, it seemed that no one could imagine asking the merry, freewheeling Marquess of Willingham for advice on land management.
Which was exactly how he had liked it. He had spent many years creating the reputation he now had—he couldn’t reasonably complain that the results of these efforts were exactly as he had intended. Even if, sometimes, he wondered if there was anyone who saw beneath it.
Next to Penvale, Violet and Audley were sitting perhaps closer together than was strictly necessary at the breakfast table. Violet was speaking rapidly, as usual, about something Jeremy couldn’t hear, and Audley was watching her as though she’d hung the moon. Jeremy was pleased that these two had reconciled their marital differences, but hedid feel they took things a bit far, at times. Last night at dinner, Jeremy had observed Audley miss his mouth with his fork. Twice.
Belfry was in deep discussion with Henry Langely, another of Jeremy’s Oxford friends. Langely was a decent sort—second son of an earl, rather bookish. He and Jeremy didn’t run in precisely the same circles these days—Langely had never been known as a womanizer, having had the same mistress for years now. As such, Jeremy couldn’t imagine what on earth he and Belfry had to talk about. Belfry’s reputation was even less savory than his own—thumbing one’s nose at one’s aristocratic father and being disinherited before going on to found a semirespectable theater did tend to have a damaging effect on one’s reputation.
It was all the more intriguing, then, that Belfry was here, trailing around after Lady Emily, of all people. Jeremy was hardly a matchmaker—indeed, he shuddered at the very thought—but he could not help wondering what precisely Belfry’s aim was where Emily was concerned. There was the obvious fact that Emily was almost ludicrously beautiful, but he’d never gotten the impression that Belfry struggled to find female companionship. Whatever Belfry’s interest was, he had little doubt that Diana would sniff it out before too long; she and Violet were taking quite an interest in the proceedings between Emily and Belfry, and he could hardly blame them, given that the alternative was Emily’s continued courtship by Oswald Cartham.
Cartham was a seedy sort, born in America to a younger son of an aristocratic family; he’d returned to England in his teens and had remained ever since, operating a legendary gaming hell and, from all Jeremy had heard, keeping more than a few aristocrats in his pocket by virtue of a combination of gambling debts and blackmail. Belfry was a bit scandalous, but by comparison with Cartham, he represented the height of respectability.
Jeremy had little time to contemplate this, however, because his attention was drawn to his grandmother, who had just entered the room.
“Ah, Lady Templeton,” she said, sounding as pleased to see Diana as if she’d last seen her twelve months ago, rather than twelve hours. “I do hope that seat next to you is being saved for me, because I have been so wishing to have a cozy little chat with you.”
Diana’s face, Jeremy was amused to note, bore a look of barely concealed alarm; she was as aware as he was that “cozy little chats” with the dowager marchioness frequently led to ladies shutting themselves up in their rooms in tears. He was certain Diana could bear his grandmother’s sharp tongue with equanimity; the two ladies were not dissimilar. He wondered if Diana would be something like his grandmother when she achieved a lofty age.
What a terrifying thought.
For her part, Diana was feeling rather cheerful this morning. She’d lain awake far too long last night, reliving Willingham’s kiss, and had awoken this morning still focused on the remembered pressure of his mouth on her own. Clearly, she and Willingham should have done this years ago—the attraction that crackled between them wasn’t going to vanish on its own, and she was pleased they’d finally decided to take the sensible step toward becoming lovers. They’d have a nice romp or two in bed, and then they’d be ready to move on.
By the time she arrived at the breakfast table, Willingham was already there, but fully ensnared in the clutches of Lady Helen Courtenay. As Diana filled her plate at the sideboard, she caught snatches of their conversation—though “conversation” might have been an overlygenerous term to describe what sounded more like a lengthy monologue on Lady Helen’s part, with occasional pauses for Willingham’s wordless murmurings of assent.
“…sopleased you included me in your invitation,” she was saying, as Diana placed a plump piece of spice cake on her plate. “Rothsmere is always somaddeninglyclose-lipped about what you gentlemen get up to, and I, of course, am simplydesperateto learn all of your scandalous little secrets.” The titter that emerged from her mouth at this juncture was a sound that Diana was reasonably certain would haunt her nightmares for years to come.
She made her way to the far end of the table, but Lady Helen’s shrill voice carried, so that over the course of the next ten minutes, Diana became intimately familiar with the lady’s opinion on fichus—she would not have thought a scrap of lace at the neckline to be worthy of such strong emotion, but according to Lady Helen, they were a last bastion of moral authority before the wastelands of sin—as well as strawberries (delicious), raspberries (disgusting), and musicales (delightful, though Diana disagreed).
On the one hand, it was torturous to listen to; on the other, it made for a nice distraction from the uncomfortably fluttery feelings in her abdomen whenever she thought of Willingham’s kiss, or recalled the memory of his blue eyes so intent and focused on her own.
Another distraction shortly arose in the form of the dowager marchioness, who wasted no time at all in settling herself beside Diana with a cup of tea and a disturbingly innocent smile.
