Page 46 of Lady Diana's Lost Lord

The frenetic chatter of her mind quieted at once, and the queer silence of the countryside reigned again. Not peaceful; not soothing. Rather it seemed filled with the weight of a sorrow to be endured for the remainder of her life. One that had been sewn upon her heart with the awkward, clumsy stitches of a little girl who hadn’t yet mastered the art of embroidering her letters. One that had been carved there by a man who was the sort of father that every little girl should be so lucky as to have—even if he had not given her life himself.

She let that dream slip away from her fingertips, and it receded into the shadows to be swallowed up within them. More than fair a trade, she thought.Her happiness for theirs. A hopeless dream for a dream thatwouldbe made real.

However much time she had left with them, she would make it count. Scrape every little bit of happiness from it that she could manage, and hold on to those memories. Because they would be all that remained of her dream when it ended.

∞∞∞

It hurt some long-forgotten corner of Ben’s heart to watch them, Diana and his daughter, as they sat side by side at the kitchen table, heads bent over their needlework. Diana was stitching away at a sampler, flowery patterns sliding out from beneath her fingertips with each draw of the thread through the fabric in her hands.

Hannah managed it rather more awkwardly, her brow furrowed in concentration. “Diana,” she said, between haphazard stitches. “What is your middle name?”

“Sophia,” Diana replied absently, as a new leaf bloomed upon the trellising branch pattern she had been working.

“Oh.” The little furrow between Hannah’s brows deepened to a scowl. “I don’t like it.”

Diana laughed lightly. “Whyever not? I’m rather fond of it.”

“Because anSis a terribly hard letter to stitch,” Hannah said. “It’s all curly and wobbly. I wish it could have started with anL. I’m good at those.” She heaved a dramatic sigh as she held up her fabric and dangled it before Diana’s nose.

Ben caught sight of the lopsidedDalready stitched there. It bulged a bit at the top, and narrowed too swiftly at the bottom, but it was clear enough that Hannah had put a great deal of effort into it.

Diana blinked. Once, twice. As she cleared her throat, she adjusted her spectacles upon the bridge of her nose, and behind the lenses Ben could see that her eyes had gone a bit glassy. “Are you monogramming a handkerchief for me?” she asked.

Hannah wrinkled her nose. “Yes, but—but it’s not going to be very good. It’s hard to do the letters that don’t have as many straight bits.”

“I think it’s going to be perfect.” Diana traced the malformedDwithsomething like reverence in the slow strokes of her fingers. The handkerchief was only a simple scrap of muslin, one of the cast-off bits that had once comprised one of her dresses. Probably she had a dozen handkerchiefs at home, a hundred. Monogrammed and otherwise, and all far finer than this.

But none of them would be so treasured. God, it made his heart ache something awful. There was a bridge there, stretched between them, and it could never be crossed. A bridge far too fragile to bear the weight of the things he carried with him. And still it was too late for all of them, with the attachment that had grown between them.

Perhaps he would spent the rest of his life at the water’s edge, staring across that impassable boundary, wondering what might have been.

It would be best, he thought, to begin to sever that connection. A little pain now to avert a future heartbreak. Best for him, best for Hannah—best even for Diana, though he had not the right to make such a determination for her.

He said, “Hannah, will you go give Snowball his breakfast? He’ll need something substantial before I take him out.” The horse would forage for grasses near the mine while he worked, but still he’d appreciate a scoop or two of oats in advance of his daily excursion.

Hannah climbed out of her chair, abandoning her stitchery for the moment. “Can I play after?” she asked.

“If you avoid mud puddles, and come straight home again when Diana calls.” Probably she’d still come back muddy, since the summer sun had barely risen, and though the day promised to be hot, it had not yet advanced enough for the heat of the sun to bake away the muddy water that lingered still in patches on the lawn.

Diana sighed as Hannah skipped merrily out the door. “You know she’ll come back with mud straight up to her waist, do you not?”

Frankly, he would be surprised if Hannah somehow managed to restrain herself from selecting a choice mud puddle to roll straight through. Checking such impulses had never been one of her strong suits. “You know how to heat water for a bath,” he said. “I’m confident you can manage a little mud.” With one hand he drew out a chair from where it had been tucked beneath the table, and dropped into it. “Don’t romanticize it,” he said. “Parenthood, I mean to say.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

He meant that glassy-eyed look she’d worn, and that heart-turned-over expression that had settled so easily over her face. Asif she would have handed Hannah her beating heart straight from her chest, if the little girl had asked. “I mean she’s every bit as capable of contrariness and rebellion as she is sweetness,” he said. “She can throw a tantrum that would threaten to burst your ear drums. She’ll slam doors and whine and beat you near to death with questions that are impossible to answer. It’s not all monogrammed handkerchiefs and hugs.” It wasn’t evenmostlythat. “There’s tears and sulks and nasty words. There’s disobedience for its own sake, and arguments, and rudeness and belligerence.”

“I know,” Diana said dryly. “I remember.”

All right, he supposed she had already been treated to at least some of Hannah’s worst behaviors. “I mean that this is temporary,” he said. “Any good mood always is. Inevitably, the bad will follow the good. She’ll be cross and obnoxious about it. She’ll drive you to distraction with all manner of poor behavior.” And Diana’s present enchantment would fade when she realized just how muchworkchildren truly were.Hehad taken up that task by choice—she, by circumstance alone.

“I believe I take your meaning,” she said softly. “But I don’t think you’ve made the point you meant to.” Her fingertip sketched across that awkwardDembroidered upon Hannah’s abandoned handkerchief. “When I was a little girl, I was never allowed the luxury of being cross,” she said. “Moods and tears were never permitted. Always I had to be the perfect little lady, for my behavior was meant to be a credit to my parents. And do you know—I never was.” There was a peculiar sort of sadness in the tiny smile that turned her lips. “I can’t recall ever having thrown a tantrum. I would have been terrified even to consider it. It would have displeased my father excessively, and I would never have wanted to draw his notice in such a way.” She canted her head a little to the right, her gaze gone distant. “I suppose in some ways, I’m still that frightened little girl. That fear of disappointing my father has been bred so deeply into my very bones thatstillI wonder what he would think of me, whether he would approve or disapprove. And it doesn’t even matter. He’s been dead more than a year. I ought to have shaken myself of that long ago, but it’s become force of habit, I suppose.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, because it seemed the sort of thing he ought to say. Not sorry, exactly, that her father had passed on. But sorry that he hadn’t been much of a father to begin with.

“Hannah,” she said, “will never know that fear. She will never feel anxious when she hears your footsteps outside her door, and wonder what lectures she will have to endure, and for which infraction, imagined or otherwise.She will never, not for one moment, doubt that you love her.” Her lips pursed into firm line. “I know that she is every bit as capable of causing trouble as she is of being perfectly charming,” she said. “I don’t imagine her to be anything other than she is—a little girl who has the perfect security of knowing that even at her worst, she is still loved. And do you know, Ben? That says just as much of you as it does of her.”

“Diana—”