Page 3 of Lady Diana's Lost Lord
Emma and Phoebe exchanged glances once again, and she knew that they were thinking of every tea they had shared, every fanciful plan they had made between the three of them to ruin the wretched earl who had left Diana waiting all these years. They had likely never expected such plans would truly come to fruition.
But they would not deny her.
“I am not much out in society,” Emma said slowly, her gaze falling to her cup. It was true; much like Phoebe and Diana, she was viewed as something of an oddity, and had been ever since she had been widowed some years ago. She and her husband had not had any children together, but he had left her a vast estate. Rather than leverage the power of the wealth left to her to make an advantageous second marriage, she had instead turned her grand house into a foundling home. While she had been applauded for her charity, there were those who considered her a bittooinvolved—more so than a lady ought to be. “But I will do what I can.”
“And I,” Phoebe said, with a hesitant smile. “Since it seems you havequite made up your mind. And you are you absolutely certain that this is what you want?”
It was more than what she wanted. It was what sheneeded. Diana had made up her mind ages ago.
And Benjamin Gillingham, the long lost Earl of Weatherford, would never see her coming.
∞∞∞
When Rafe arrived at half six in the evening, Diana was a fretting bundle of nerves already. It was an incredible effort to come down the stairs at the butler’s summons as if she had nothing on her mind but a friendly visit, and then to wait for the maids to serve tea and quit the drawing room.
Her fingers trembled on the handle of her cup. “Have you got it?” she managed to say, inflecting her voice with even notes of inquiry.
Rafe was holding back a scowl, and not doing it particularly well. It lurked just at the corners of his mouth and tugged at his lips like a fish might a hook. “I have,” he said. “Suppose you tell me what you are scheming.”
“Scheming!” Diana protested indignantly, hand over her heart—even though she had most certainly been scheming. “You—you are the mostwretchedof brothers—”
“Ihavegot the address,” Rafe reminded her, his voice chiding. “And I remember the sort of scrapes you used to get yourself into—”
“Atyoururging!” Diana plunked her fists on her hips and affected a glare, which only served to make Rafe laugh. Despite the years that separated them, they had been thick as thieves as children, since they had shared the condition of being largely forgotten in Father’s eyes, excepting those occasions he had found for whichever criticism he had wished to dole out. Though she had still been quite young when Rafe had been sent away to school, she had treasured every holiday he’d been home again.
“I mean to say,” Rafe said, “that Iknowyou. Likely better than either Marcus or Lydia. So I know that you are planning some sort of harebrained scheme, and out of brotherly loyalty I have chosennotto inform on you.”
“Generous of you,” Diana quipped, and held out her hand. “I’ll have that address, then.”
Rafe reached within the interior pocket of his coat and withdrew a folded slip of paper, which he dangled above her fingers only to snatch it away the instant before she could grasp it. “You’ll havethis,” he said, fluttering the paper just out of reach, “when you tell me what you intend to do with it.”
Diana resisted the urge to groan. Brothers could be such a damned nuisance. It was a mystery why she’d let so many years pass without chucking either of them straight into the Thames for one reason or another. “You must promise me you won’t overreact,” she said.
Rafe’s brows lifted in interest. “I promise to react precisely the correct amount,” he said, laying one hand over his heart to seal the pledge.
It did not reassure her, since even a perfectly correct reaction could cause a great deal of trouble for her. But there was a reason she had applied for Rafe’s assistance and not Marcus’. Rafe had always had a bit of the devil in him, and that made him a far safer confidant. “I’m going to put this business to bed at last,” she said. “This—this dreadful, never-ending engagement that has been hanging over my head all my life, I mean to say. I’m going to havedonewith it once and for all.”
Rafe made a low sound of agreement beneath his breath. “I suppose I can’t fault you for that,” he said. “But really, Diana—is such cloak and dagger secrecy necessary if you only meant to post a letter?”
“I’m not posting a letter,” she said. “I amgoing, Rafe. Once you give me the address.”
A curious silence descended over the drawing room as Rafe’s mouth opened—closed—opened again. Words, which he had always had in plentiful supply, seemed to have deserted him entirely. Diana sipped her tea in the tense quiet and waited him out.
“Have you gonecompletelymad?”
And there it was—she winced at the horrified hiss, but she supposed it was, in point of fact, neither an under nor overreaction. “I don’t expect you to understand,” she said. “You—you’re aman. You’re permitted to go anywhere you please and do anything you like.”
A faint noise floated on the air, rather like the sound of Rafe’s teeth grinding together. “You are alady,” he said. “If you were to undertake this madcap scheme and anyone were to discover it, you would beruined. Utterly and entirely.”
Diana pulled a false pout. “And I would never be invited to any social events again? How dreadful. Just think of it: I would have to surrender the opportunity to sit with the chaperones at balls—since nobodyever asks me todance—and to forfeit the company of women who pity me for being unmarried at my age. Why, imagine! I would never again have the pleasure of sitting through interminable musicales, or be invited to dinner parties at which I am inevitably paired off with ancient gentlemen, since nobody else much likes the company of a spinster.”
Rafe blinked, arrested by the vehemence behind the speech. Again, words vanished from the place where they had congealed just at the very tip of his tongue. At length, he muttered, “If you had wished to dance, I’m certain Marcus would have danced with you.”
“Of course,” Diana said tightly, “everyyoung lady wishes to dance with her brother.” She held her hand out expectantly. “Give me the damned address, Rafe.”
His fingers pressed creases into the scrap of paper contained within them. “You seem to have given this a great deal of thought,” he said.
“I have, and I have concluded that I have waited entirely too long already. I don’t expect to be missed, but if somehow someone should discover where I have gone and why, then I will accept the consequences of my decision with good grace.Youwould not shun me, would you?”