Page 6 of Lady Diana's Lost Lord

Those precious plaits bounced as Hannah shook her head, edging closer still, hands fisting in the depths of her pockets. “No. There’s no one.”

“I’ll stay with you, then,” Diana said. “Until your papa returns.”Someonehad to mind the girl, and Diana supposed it would have to be her. Surely Miss Wright had gotten halfway back to the village already. Dark was probably only a few hours off; she could send the coachman back to the coaching inn to secure a room for her, and have him return closer to the time Hannah’s father was meant to arrive. “Just one moment, dear. I must tell my coachman—”

Quick as the strike of a snake, the child—the sweet, innocent child—pulled her hands from her pockets and cast fistfuls of flour straight into Diana’s face. With a mad, gleeful shriek of a cackle, she whirled and scampered off, and Diana could see nothing but the cloud of flour in the air concealing the girl’s hasty retreat.

A raspy wheeze left her flour-choked lungs, and Diana scraped one hand across her face, but she knew that much like Miss Wright, she would only be moving the flour around. Her spectacles were coated, blurring her vision well past the point the flour cleared from the air. Her traveling gown was ruined—or, at least, it would be until it had had a good washing out.

Somewhere behind her, she heard the distinct sound of a hastily-muffled laugh, and it was an effort to quell the urge to turn her head and glare.You can’t murder your coachman, she thought to herself.He’s your only way back to London.

Regrettably, murdering the child was also firmly off the table. No matter how much said child might deserve it.

But she certainly would pass along Miss Wright’s words to Hannah’s father. Along with a few of her own.

∞∞∞

Ben had hardly mounted his horse before the rain began. A hard, English rain—not uncommon in late spring. Orever, really, though the Lake District seemed to receive more than its fair share of it. It was not the first time he would return home soaked to the skin, and it would probably not be the last. But as Miss Wright was unlikely to have thought to prepare a bath, a good hard rain would likely be as close as he’d see to one this evening.

It wasn’t a long journey back to the small cottage he shared with his daughter, but the condition of the path had deteriorated rapidly beneath the sudden onslaught of rain, and his horse had slowed to a trot, hooves sticking in the thick mud. The night had well advanced already, but over the course of the past several months, the horse had learned the path well enough to make the journey even in the pressing darkness.

Light glowed in the distance as the cottage appeared, dull and dour, on the horizon. Candles, he thought grimly, gritting his teeth against the tendency to chatter in the chill.Toomany candles lit, and Miss Wright ought to have known better than to do so. The added expense of so many of them—lit and wasted—was just enough to turn a poor mood proper foul. It was enough to put an extra stomp into his step when he dismounted at last to lead the horse to the small stable behind the cottage, where he unsaddled the poor animal and patted it dry as best he could, offering up a hearty scoop of oats for supper.

His boots squished through the mud as he tromped back toward the cottage, and he paused only long enough to scrape off a thick layer of it upon the worn boards of the rear porch before he caught the handle of the door and yanked.

Locked.Locked? Christ!

Ben pounded his fist against the solid wood of the door, swallowing down the aggravation of it all though it threatened to choke him. How Miss Wright was meant to hear a knock above the wail of the wind and the crash of the rain was beyond him, and he doubted he had the strength remaining—between a hard day’s labor and the chill of the rain—to break down the door.

Somewhere in his pocket there was a key, but he could not force his aching fingers through the sodden fabric of his trousers. He clenched his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering and pounded once more upon the door. Through the dust-covered panes of the window to his right, a shadow passed before the light of the candles, and then,thank God, the door opened at last.

The spill of light from within cast Miss Wright in silhouette, and Ben gritted his teeth against annoyance this time, the cold abruptly forgotten in the surging heat of anger. The bloodycandles. The damned expense!

He pushed past her, into the toasty interior of the cottage. Coal overused as well—did she mean to beggar him? “Hell,” he grunted, curling his fingers around the back of a chair to drag it out from beneath the small kitchen table. With his damp fingers he pinched off the wicks of three of thefourcandles assembled upon it. Four! As if he had the coin to spare for them! “Hannah!” he called.

The door creaked closed once more, reducing the roar of the rain to a dull chatter. “She’s asleep. At least, Ihopeshe’s asleep. She locked herself within her room some hours ago.”

The soft, genteel voice surprised him, since Miss Wright had a marked tendency toward shrillness. Ben jerked his head up and stared toward the door. His brow furrowed at the vague outline of the woman standing there. “Where is Miss Wright?”

It might have been a scowl that pulled at her lips, but in the now-reduced light, it was difficult to be certain. “She left. Some time ago, in fact. Said to tell you that your daughter was the devil’s own get, and I can’t say I disagree.” A Londoner, by accent, if he had to guess. “She mistook me for a governess and fled at the earliest opportunity. Back to the village, I expect.”

Christ. He supposed he had mentioned the desire to hire one on at one point or another, though the likelihood of scraping together the wages for a governess seemed more remote by the day. “That does not explain your presence here, madam.”

“Yes, well, it’s been a day of mistakes all around, I suppose,” she continued with a longsuffering sigh as he yanked at his boots, wriggling his toes against the cold that had begun to stiffen them. “I suppose Rafe’s sources were not so infallible as he imagined,” she mused. “But not to worry; I’ll be on my way as soon as my carriage returns for me.”

Rafe? A queer sense of unease prickled the hair at the nape of his neck. He had known a Rafe once, in his childhood. In London. Years and years ago. His fingers groped behind him on the table for the lone lit candle resting upon its base, and he nearly overturned it in the process.

“Good God,” he rasped, holding the candle up. “Diana?”

The woman drew in a shaky breath as she took a reflexive step backward. “Ben?” she whispered, adjusting her spectacles. “But I thought—that is, you don’t look at all as I expected.” The fine arch of her brows lifted toward her hairline in surprise. “Mr. Gillingham?”

She said it like an accusation. “Gillinghamismy surname,” he said, awareof the defensive tone of his voice.

“You’re a damnedearl! And…and you are livinghere?” Behind the silver rims of her spectacles, her dark eyes widened as if another thought had only just occurred to her. “With your daughter!”

It had been some time—a decade at least—since Ben had been out in anything that might be considered high society, but he remembered it well enough to hear the unspoken ‘you absolute cad’ lingering within the frosty cadence of her voice. Probably she was entitled to her offense, given their longstanding engagement, though he would be damned if she would direct it toward Hannah. “My daughter is none of your concern,” he said.

“She should beyourconcern at the very least! Imagine, a lady brought up in such—”

“Miss.” It was terse correction, issued in a low voice. Ben felt a muscle tense and pull in his jaw. “MissHannah Gillingham.” The dim candlelight flickered across her face, which had gone rigid with shock, and he watched the words and their import settle over her.