Page 26 of Lady Diana's Lost Lord

“I have dozens of dresses. I won’t feel the lack of just one,” she said. But it had made her happy to see just how thrilled Hannah had been. Between Mrs. Walton’s other customers, it would likely take a week or more to produce the dress, modified to Hannah’s size. Would she be here, still, to see it?

Was it very wrong of her to hope so, even though it would mean the delay of their seaside cottage?

“But you didn’t have to,” Ben said again. “You’ve been so good to her. Far more so than I had any reason to expect. Far better than any other lady in your situation could be expected to be.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You could have gone straight back to London the moment you arrived. I extorted you into staying, in far less comfortable conditions than those to which you are accustomed. And given our situation—the position in which I have placed you, through my absence—you deserved better.”

Yes, she had. But she had also gained an understanding of why he had been absent. Of the things that he had sacrificed to bepresentfor his daughter.

“I thought you deserved to know that,” he said. “I have nothing to my name of any material value, but I can at the very least give you my thanks. You cannot know how much I appreciate what you have done for me. For Hannah.”

Had her father ever expressed even the slightest appreciation for her mother? She could not recall a time he’d had so much as a single kind word for her. Not even the tiniest bit of praise for keeping his house in order, or raising his children. And yet Ben doled out such words so easily, without the slightest twinge of reluctance.

“I didn’t expect any of it,” Ben said, reflectively. “I was certain that you would hold me in just as much animosity as you had when we were children.”

“What?” The simple statement pulled Diana from the cloud of her thoughts. “Whatever do you mean? I never had any animosity for you when we were children.”

Ben’s brows lifted. “Of course you did,” he said. “I can’t recall a time you weren’t glaring at me.”

“Glaring!” Diana huffed. “I wasn’tglaring—I was squinting!” She pinched the earpiece of her spectacles and wiggled them upon her nose. “I can hardly see two feet before my face without them.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really!”

“Well, I was terrified of you,” he chortled to himself. “I used to get such wretched stomachaches whenever Father told me we were visiting. I was terribly afraid that you might be tempted to give me a shove over a convenient ledge only to be rid of me.”

She didn’t doubt it; he’d been quite a timid child. Quiet, and all the time with his nose in a book. “Had there been a ledge convenient when you pulled my plait, I might have considered it.”

“Instead, you planted me a facer.” His hand stroked his chin as if he could remember the sting of her fist.

“Did you ever pull another little girl’s plait thereafter?” she inquired.

“No, I can’t say I ever did.”

“Good, then. It worked.” She knew she wore a silly little smile, but she masked it with a sip of tea. “I never hated you,” she said, and it was the truth, but really, the truth was that she had never really known him. They had never really known each other. How could they have done? They had been only children, forced together by their fathers.

“Your spectacles,” he said. “They suit you.”

“Really?” She touched the nosepiece with the tips of her fingers. “My father always said they made me look like a governess. He loathed them to the depths of his soul. And—” She hesitated. “I thought the same for such a long time. I let his opinion of me shape my own.” To the point that she hadso often refused to wear them. For years, she had kept them hidden away in her reticule, only taking them out when she had been certain she was not being observed. “It is so easy,” she said, softly, “to let others make us feel ashamed.”

But he knew that, already. It was why he had stayed absent from London. Because he wasn’t the sort of man her father had been. He would never slice Hannah down to the size he had determined she deserved to be. And he would never let anyone else do it, either.

∞∞∞

Diana had never hated him.

Ben didn’t know why that little revelation had struck such a chord with him, but it had settled into the depths of his brain when he had at last fallen onto his cot the evening before and lingered there all night. It had been the first thought to shove itself to the forefront of his mind when he had woken in the morning, and he had ruminated upon it further after he had kissed Hannah goodbye and left for the mine.

She hadn’t hated him. They might not ever have truly been friends, but she hadn’thatedhim.

He didn’t want her to hate him. It shouldn’t have mattered—once she had gone back to London, they would never meet again—but itdid. He didn’t want her to hate him. He didn’t want her to look back on the time she had spent here with anything but fondness.

Christ, what a mess. Even if she didn’t hate him, he had nothing to offer her. Her dowry had no doubt been spent to the last farthing by his wastrel father years ago. He couldn’t offer her the sort of life she deserved even if he managed to open a previously-undetected vein of graphite. An investment of a few thousand pounds might see Hannah and him through to the ends of their lives, but they had both become accustomed to less.

He couldn’t even offer herLondon.

But she didn’t hate him.

Frustrated beyond reason, he swung his pickaxe in a mighty blow, and the rock it slammed into chipped away in a curious crumble. There was the glint of something there, a dull shine he had come to recognize, revealed beyond the damaged rock.