Page 8 of Lady Diana's Lost Lord

Ben suppressed a snort. “Yes, well, I’m afraid you’ve ruined baths for both of us this evening. You’ve run through too much of our coal.”

“My hair is covered in flour!” She jabbed one finger at him in accusation. “Because ofyourdaughter!”

Ben reared back in offense. “Hannah would never.”

Silently, jaw firm and tense, Diana began to pluck the pins from her hair, loosing coils of hair that fell in skeins of black silk. Tucking the pins away into a pocket hidden within the folds of her traveling dress, she slid her fingers into her hair and gave it a brisk rake—and a cloud of white powder showered down. “Flour,” she said succinctly. “She cast handfuls of it at me.AndMiss Wright—the poor woman looked like a ghost when I arrived. I suspect it’s not the first prank she’d played upon a hapless victim. She was entirely too well-practiced at it. Sherequiresa governess.”

“I can’t afford a bloody governess!” In fact, the list of things he couldn’t afford was longer than that which he could…by several orders of magnitude. He couldn’t afford the candles she’d lit, the coal she’d wasted or the damned flour still coating the top of her head.

Frustration and resentment roiled within him; an unhealthy brew churning in the pit of his stomach. Without a word—lest it be an unnecessarily sharp one—he shoved himself up from his chair and stalked toward the small cabinet set against the wall and began to root through the shelves cluttered with linens. When had they last been washed? When had he last had thetimefor such a thing? But it didn’t matter that they were a bit musty; they needed to serve their purpose only for a night.

“Upstairs,” he grunted, pawing through the tangle of them in search of justonesheet that was not riddled with holes. “You may have my bed for the evening. I’ll take the spare room.”Spare roomwas putting it rather generously. It was hardly more than a closet. Its purpose had been for storage, but theyhadn’t had enough things to merit using the space as such. It was just large enough for a cot, which hadn’t been used in some time. God willing it would hold his weight.

“And a bath?”

Ben gritted his teeth against a scathing sound. “If you’re that desperate, there’s a pond just a short walk to the northeast. Though you could just as easily stand in the rain for a few minutes.” A well-timed flash of lightning, followed by a massive crack of thunder that shredded through the air, so loud that the force of it shook the very frame of the house. Probably the roof would begin to leak presently. “I wouldn’t recommend either.”

Her lips compressed into a flat, grim line. “I suppose I’m meant to thank you for your hospitality?”

Ben snorted. “I doubt you’ll manage to scrounge up even the slightest scrap of gratefulness.” At least, not once she had retired to his room and witnessed for herself its sorry state. She had no doubt lived in the lap of luxury the entirety of her life, and one night spent within this pitiful cottage would certainly be enough to send her fleeing straight back to London at the earliest opportunity. A formally-broken engagement would follow straight behind her.

Thank God. It was just the tiniest spot of luck amidst the wretched deluge of misfortune he’d weathered recently, and he wouldtakeit. One less bit of ruin hanging over his head. Perhaps it was a sign of better things to come. And there—a sheet, stuffed all the way to the back of the cabinet that felt somewhat less threadbare than the rest. There was a battered quilt, too, a bit moth-eaten, but still held together by fraying threads. He snatched up the sheet and the quilt both, and turned for the stairs.

Diana made a sound halfway between aggravation and frustration. “Where the devil are you going?”

“To bed,” Ben said, in a voice that did not invite argument. “You’ll find yours up the stairs, first door on your left.” It had come out something of a surly grunt, but then hewassurly at the moment and didn’t see any point in disguising it. “And put the damned candle out before you do.”

∞∞∞

She should have sent a bloody letter, Diana reflected as she carried the last candle up the stairs, which produced ominous creaks beneath her feet. The whole cottage—a charming appellation which it did not deserve—seemed a single strong breath away from crumbling to debris. How was she meant to sleep through the wail of the wind outside and the pounding of the rain on the shoddy excuse for a roof, much less the nagging suspicion that the cottage itself might collapse at any moment?

At least there was no risk of becoming lost. There was just a short hall with three doors—one to the left, one to the right, and one at the very end. The furthest one, she knew, belonged to Hannah. After that bit of nastiness with the flour, she had been tempted to pull the little miscreant out by her ear and give her the lecture of her life, only the child had locked her out before it could be accomplished.

Faint voices came from within, muted by the clash of thunder outside, but audible just enough for her to know that Ben had woken his hellion of a daughter against her advice. She eased forward, curling one hand around the handle of the door that he’d indicated she ought to take, but instead of stepping within, she paused to listen for a moment, wishing she could make out the words.

Could one experience nostalgia for a thing they’d never known? There was a sort of bittersweet ache in the vicinity of her heart as she realized that although the words themselves weren’t audible, the tone of them was. They weren’t the sharp, strident tones of chastisement, they were just…fond. There was a low rumble, followed by a child’s laugh, and it hurt, just a little. Diana could not remember a time her own father had come to wish her good night. Probably he never had.

She wasn’tjealous. She was—she waswistful. How many years had she wasted, striving for the sort of perfection that Father had demanded, only to fall forever short? So short that she could count on one hand the number of times he had expressed anything even slightly approaching approval. She had been a woman grown before she had realized that that which she had so desperately craved—just the tiniest morsel of affection—was far beyond his capabilities. That no matter how perfect, how exemplary she endeavored to be, she would never earn it from him.

And thischild, this dreadful little hellion, hadn’t ever had to earn it. It simply was. Like an immutable truth, a law of nature.

Hannah’s father loved her so dearly that he would eschew the comforts of London simply to ensure that his natural daughter never experienced thesnobbery of the society to which he had once belonged. While Diana’s father would not have sacrificed so much as a single feather from his pillow if it might have been somehow to her benefit.

The candle trembled in her hand, and she turned away from the door. She had dwelt too long upon such thoughts, given her father far more consideration than he had ever deserved. And it would avail her nothing, besides. Father had passed away a year ago, somewhere in Paris, where he had fled after Marcus and Lydia had roundly humiliated him before theTon.

None of them had mourned his death. But, privately, Diana had nurtured certain regrets. That any hope of a change in his character was now forever extinguished. That any hope of mending a relationship with his children had died with him.

That the man who had died had been a father by blood, but otherwise a stranger.

The door stuck as she pushed at it, warped wood scraping the floor as it opened into the room. Spare and sparse, just as the rest of the house. She didn’t know why she had expected different, and yet it was still a shock to see it—the low wood bedframe better suited to a servant than to an earl; the battered pillow, the threadbare counterpane that looked as if moths had feasted upon its ragged edges. It looked more like a cell that might be the prison of a tragic heroine in a Gothic novel than a place meant to offer comfort and respite.

A flash of lightning burst beyond the window, illuminating a jagged crack running through the center pane. The thunder that rolled in quickly upon its heels proved it close enough to rattle her bones. They would all be lucky if the house remained standing through the violence of the storm.

She blew out a breath, setting the candle on the nightstand that gave a precarious totter even at the scant weight laid upon it. It was only one night, she thought, as she plucked at the buttons of her traveling dress, breathing a sigh of relief as the bodice came loose at last and she could push the whole thing off of her shoulders and over her hips. She’d have preferred a nightgown to the chemise, but she had little enough choice in the matter, since her traveling trunk had remained with the carriage, and the carriage was—elsewhere. At least until morning.

She slipped her shoes off of her feet and gently placed them beneath the bed, half expecting to see the glowing eyes of some sort of rodent peering back at her from beneath it. But there was nothing except for a cluster of cobwebs. At least, she hoped they were only cobwebs.

The mattress sagged as she sat down upon it. Good lord. How long had it been since the ropes that supported it had last been tightened? It was practically a hammockfor its severe dip in the middle. A sprinkle of flour drifted free of her hair as she climbed into the bed at last and set her spectacles alongside the candle upon the nightstand. A quick breath directed at the flame of the candle plunged the room into darkness. A bath tomorrow, then, certainly. The coachman would come retrieve her in the morning, no doubt bursting with apologies for his tardiness. She would delay the journey home to stop at the first inn available, and then take the longest bath of her life.