Page 10 of A Diamond for Christmas (Diamonds of the First Water #6)

G eoffrey stormed through his house, wanting to throw something, anything. Mostly he wanted to plant a facer directly into Mangue’s sappy, concerned visage. And why didn’t the man’s valet trim his ridiculous single eyebrow? Surely someone ought to tell him he looked like a monkey.

And yet Caroline had an understanding with him!

That fact, Geoffrey could simply not fathom. Her words, “Yes, I knew,” continuously crashed down upon him like a wall of crumbling bricks.

How could she possibly have said yes to Mangue? At the same time, she continued to keep furtive company with him, enjoying every clandestine meeting.

For two people meant to stay apart, they’d managed to kiss many times. And more!

Shaking his head, he stalked through his silent townhouse, unable to sit. He’d only pleasured her in the butler’s pantry because he believed they were going to figure out a way to be together. Never would he have let himself get carried away if he had truly thought she was already spoken for.

Regardless of his father’s outrageous past, Geoffrey didn’t go around ruining ladies! Not even ones who all but begged to be ruined.

Why would she do such a thing if she was promised to Mangue ?

Unless she was being forced.

He stopped. Of course! She didn’t want Mangue. The man was titled and had a good fortune, but that was all that recommended him. Geoffrey had jumped to conclusions, and now it would be even harder to get close to Caroline to speak to her.

Hastening to his study, he picked up a piece of cream-colored paper. Then he dropped it. He couldn’t risk putting anything in writing. Without regard for the time, he donned his jacket and left for Trent’s house. If he didn’t find him at home, he would track him to their club.

A half hour later, he was satisfied Jasper would get a message to Caroline.

“Simply tell her to return to Hatchards tomorrow at the same time as previously.”

“Ridiculous,” Jasper said. “I cannot even promise to see her tomorrow. And if I do, I highly doubt she can drop everything and go to a bookseller. You had best make it the following day.”

“Very well.” Frustration welled in him.

“But don’t expect too much,” Jasper added. “After all, I may be refused entrance.”

“Why would you be?” Geoffrey realized he was running his hands through his hair like a madman.

“If your lady-friend is in disgrace and has been forced to accept an offer,” Jasper said, “then maybe she won’t be allowed to see any other man, including me.”

In disgrace! Geoffrey felt his heart sink. If she was, it was because of him. He should have been more careful. What a clod pate!

“Do your best,” he said. “Whatever it takes to get a message to her, I suppose, even if you have to write a missive. I cannot imagine a note from you would be suspect.”

“You are in love with her,” Jasper concluded .

Geoffrey nearly naysaid him on the spot. Then it dawned on him what the pain in his chest was and why his heart felt like a solid lump of brass. He wouldn’t deny he loved her.

“I believe it crucial to my future happiness that I halt any marital plans being made for Lady Caroline with that dratted Mangue.”

“Agreed,” Jasper said. “Life is hard. For some it’s short. We shouldn’t squander something as precious as love.”

He spoke like a man in earnest. Geoffrey stared at him.

“Are you in love?”

Jasper shrugged. “I may have my sights set on a lucky lady.” Then he grinned. “But let us deal with you first, shall we?”

Caroline didn’t think she could feel any more miserable, but then she heard Lord Trent’s voice downstairs. Geoffrey was plainly trying to reach her despite thinking her complicit in some scheme of treachery, which she couldn’t imagine.

Hardly sleeping the night before, she was torn between the wondrous sensations Geoffrey’s intimate touch had elicited and the black melancholy from seeing how he looked at her after Lord Mangue arrived.

Plainly, Geoffrey thought himself betrayed, but she hoped he had come to a more sensible conclusion.

Their butler informed Lord Trent she was not accepting visitors. Caroline assumed her mother had given those instructions. She would not create an unpleasant commotion by rushing down the stairs and trying to see him against Lady Chimes’s wishes.

However, as soon as he departed, Caroline descended, hoping Geoffrey’s friend had at least left a note.

Her mother was in the drawing room, reading from a single sheet of paper .

At her entrance, Lady Chimes looked up, her green gaze hard as emeralds.

“I don’t know what you’re playing at, but I will not let you throw yourself away on Diamond.”

“Throw myself away?” Caroline sputtered. “He’s not a pauper or a reprobate.”

Her mother pursed her lips and looked back down. “You shall not be going to Hatchards bookshop again, not until you are a happily married woman.”

“Happily?” Caroline shot back. “Or merely married to anyone as long as he does not carry the name of Diamond.”

“Why is Lord Trent acting as a messenger?” She waved the note she was holding. “I allowed him to dance with you in good faith and even to spend time with you at Vauxhall. Apparently, he is as unsavory as Diamond.”

“Mother, please give me the letter if it was intended for me. You have no right to —”

In response, her mother turned, crumpled the page, and tossed it into the glowing hearth.

Caroline nearly darted forward to snatch it back, but she was a woman, not a child. Instead, she straightened her shoulders and lifted her chin.

“If I don’t want to marry Lord Mangue, then I won’t. I have your red hair, and I also have your spirit.” Turning on her heel, she walked out.

With no idea when she was supposed to go to Hatchards, she couldn’t meet Geoffrey.

Lingering for hours in a bookseller’s shop was not an option.

Her other avenue of communication was Daphne.

However, not wishing to bring scandal to her friend’s door, she would have to tread carefully in that regard.

Caroline regretted the hint of impropriety having already taken place in the Hollidge home.

Having already sent Daphne a letter of apology, Caroline would wait until she encountered her at the next assembly and hope they were still as close as sisters. Meanwhile, there was nothing she could do to further her own cause.

By dinnertime, with the delivery of the evening papers, her world had turned upside down.

Lord Chimes came from his study clutching a newspaper.

“My daughter was caught in a compromising situation at a dinner party, and I have to learn of it in The Times ?” he demanded of his wife.

Caroline and her mother were silently seated in the drawing room, ignoring one another. She was reading the Waverly novel while her mother attempted needlepoint and doing it badly, as she always did.

At her father’s words, Caroline and her mother exchanged matching wide-eyed verdant glances. Suddenly, they were on the same side of the battle, for they had both kept the truth from Lord Chimes.

That gave Caroline a small sense of satisfaction.

“I would have thought Mother might have come straight home and told you,” Caroline said, sounding bored.

“What?” Lord Chimes exclaimed, rounding on his wife. “Lydia! What is our daughter saying? You knew about this?”

“I rescued her from Diamond’s clutches,” her mother said dramatically. “No one saw her, not even the hostess.”

“No one except Lord Mangue,” Caroline pointed out. Perhaps the man had changed his mind, and instead of marrying her, he’d decided to drag her name through the gutter as revenge.

“And Diamond,” her mother said.

“Of course it was Diamond,” her father spat out, sounding bitter. “I suppose he didn’t like being thwarted.”

Then he turned to Caroline.

“He was thwarted, wasn’t he?”

She felt a flush of heat creep up her neck and over her face. This was a discussion she had hoped never to have with her parents.

“He was thwarted, Father,” she insisted. Was that the truth? She didn’t know if Geoffrey’s fingers upon her counted as ruining her, but she doubted it. It must be the act of creating children that was the true destruction of a woman’s virtue.

“He was thwarted!” her mother insisted. “I told you that I barged in on them. The rascal had kissed her, but that was all.”

Her father sighed. Then he threw the newspaper onto the table.

“I suppose Mangue will cry off any marriage arrangement after this.”

“That’s convenient,” Caroline said, “because I don’t intend to marry the man.” Furtively, she leaned forward and pulled The Times toward her.

“Is your daughter speaking to me that way?” her father asked, looking at her mother.

“Yes, dear, but she is our daughter after all. Would you have her be a noodle-headed namby-pamby?”

“I would have her be sensible and obedient,” her father retorted. “If I go to the trouble of arranging a fine young man to marry her, I think she should be both grateful and agreeable.”

“Speaking about me as if I am not in the room is intolerable,” Caroline said. “If I am old enough to be married, then I am old enough to be treated as an adult and not a mischievous child. I don’t find Lord Mangue to be a fine man, at least not fine-looking. Moreover, he has a tepid nature.”

She wrinkled her nose, unable to explain why he reminded her of runny custard or tasteless blancmange while Geoffrey Diamond was like the best juicy piece of roast beef or a delicious slice of buttered toast.

“Why are you smiling then?” her father demanded.

“Merely looking forward to dinner.”

“I tell you what,” Lord Chimes said, “marry Mangue, if he’ll still have you, and I’ll add a little something extra to your dowry for your marital allowance.”

“I cannot be bought,” she insisted .

“It is dreadfully difficult to live a happy life without money,” her mother pointed out.

“Are my own parents threatening me with penury?” Caroline asked.

There was a moment’s hesitation, and then her father blinked.

“No, of course not. I was only thinking to gift you with more if you decide to be sensible.”

“And if I decide to marry for love?”

“Do you fancy yourself in love with Diamond?” Lady Chimes asked. “You scarcely know him except for his dark-haired looks.”

Caroline could hardly confess to how many conversations and kisses they’d actually shared. She merely shrugged.

“If he did tell The Times about your tryst in the pantry, then he is a blackguard,” her father reminded her. “After all, it’s unlikely it was Mangue unless he wants to appear a fool. Why would he blacken your name before he takes you as his wife?”

They were back to Lord Mangue. Caroline hoped he did in fact cry off because of the article in the paper, despite a ruined reputation being nothing to celebrate.

Yet if Geoffrey had been the one to disclose their encounter, then she didn’t want him either.

Such a betrayal was the opposite of chivalry and gentlemanly behavior. It was unforgivable.

She scanned the single paragraph in the column on London’s fashionable folk. While the rag-writer only vaguely referred both to her and to Geoffrey, their identities would be clear to anyone who knew the members of the ton .

“Young Lady C__ who chimes like a bell and Lord D__ who knows well how to ring said bell with sparkle to spare ... ”

As she came to the conclusion, she stifled a gasp .

“... were found in a pantler’s closet, where the former, a diamond of the first water, was being polished by the latter, a diamond in the rough.”

Her father had handled such a titillating public denouncement very well. Frankly, she was shocked and embarrassed to be the topic of such a scandal.

Could Geoffrey be the type of person to do such a thing out of anger?

For the first time, she wondered if he was exactly like his father after all, a flagrant rake who stole other people’s sweethearts and ruined them. On the other hand, his father had married Lady Diamond, thereby restoring her to respectability.

If Caroline didn’t receive and accept a marriage proposal quickly, her own reputation might be irretrievably lost.