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W hen Diana went to speak to her brother the following afternoon, she brought reinforcements.

She knocked on the door to his study. “Come in,” Marcus called. Diana held up a finger, requesting that her companion wait a moment before making her entrance, then opened the door.

She found him seated behind his desk with his one-and-a-half-year-old son, Alaric, on his lap. Marcus had a pile of papers and an open ledger in front of him, and Alaric, who was his spitting image, had his own stack of papers, which he was scribbling on with a pencil.

Marcus frowned upon seeing her, but Alaric’s face lit up. “Aunt Diynah!”

She came around the desk and kissed his golden head. “Good afternoon, my little prince.”

His nursemaid appeared in the doorway. Diana had selected this time because she knew it coincided with Alaric’s nap. “Shall I take him, Your Grace?”

“Yes. Thank you, Maureen.” Marcus ruffled Alaric’s hair, his expression turning fond. “Rest up, my boy. We have more ducal business to attend to this afternoon.”

Alaric hugged his papa around the neck, then left with Maureen. Diana took the chair opposite Marcus. “We need to talk.”

He scowled. “I was afraid you would say that.”

She might as well come out and say it. “I am strongly considering setting my cap for Harrington Astley.”

Marcus looked as if he’d drunk vinegar. “You cannot mean that.”

“I do.” She waved her arm, struggling to find the words to make him understand. “I like him, Marcus. Very much.”

He shut the ledger he’d been reviewing with a snap. “You will meet someone else whom you like even more.”

She sighed. “That’s just it. I don’t think I will.”

He looked at her then, and his eyes held a twinge of concern. “Of course, you will. Why would you say such a thing?”

“Because it’s been three years since I made my debut, and I haven’t met anyone else that I like even a little bit.” She gave a humorless laugh. “Most of the men who swarm around me are interested in nothing but my fortune.”

He inclined his head in acknowledgement. “I had to put up with the same thing for many years. But eventually, if you sift through enough silt, you will find a diamond. I did.”

“I think I have as well,” Diana countered. “And that diamond is Harrington Astley.”

Marcus’s scowl snapped back into place. “He is fool’s gold, at best. And not every man courting you is a fortune hunter. What about the Duke of Hunwicke?”

Diana gave him a baleful look. “He is forty years my senior and plagued by gout.”

Marcus frowned, but he couldn’t argue with that. “Well, how about the Marquess of Beasley? He’s young and handsome.”

Diana snorted. “I have had more stimulating conversations with Inge.”

This was not a ringing endorsement, as Inge was one of Aunt Griselda’s hunting dogs.

Marcus’s lips thinned into a line, but he soldiered on. “Then what about Viscount Ryburn? He’s young, handsome, and intelligent.”

“And completely disinterested,” Diana shot back. “I’m not sure how you failed to notice, but his efforts at flirtation have been directed not at me, but at you .”

Marcus froze, and she marked the moment he realized she was right.

Not that he was prepared to admit as much. He narrowed his eyes. “You’re not supposed to know about such things.”

She rolled her eyes. “Thank goodness I do. What a disaster that match would have been! My point is, I have done everything you asked. I have considered every suitor you suggested. And I haven’t felt so much as a sliver of interest in any of them.

” She leaned forward. “Not until Harrington returned.”

He rubbed his brow. “We’ll keep looking. We’ll find someone else.”

“I’m not so certain.” She looked at her brother with real sympathy.

Because even though he could sometimes be an overbearing arse, she knew the reason he was an overbearing arse was because he loved her, and because he wanted desperately for the next phase of her life to turn out better than her early years.

Marcus was nine years her senior, and he had always viewed protecting her as his responsibility.

The period when Diana had been forced to live under the same roof as their father had been brief, less than a month, and the servants had largely succeeded in helping to keep her hidden from the cruel, violent former duke.

But she knew that Marcus regarded the fact that it had happened at all as a personal failure, and he did not consider the fact that he had been the one to rescue her, to coerce his father into allowing her to go and live with Aunt Griselda, as an absolution for this lapse.

Almost twenty years had passed, and he was still anxious to make sure nothing bad ever happened to her again.

Knowing all of this made it possible to love Marcus even when his attempts to protect her crossed the line into controlling her.

She regarded her brother across his desk.

She needed to get this next part right. “I was aware that you were Harrington’s favorite target for pranks while the two of you were at school.

But I had somehow formed the impression that you saw him as a nuisance.

I did not realize that he had… wounded you. ”

Marcus looked away. “Your initial impression was correct,” he answered, his voice tight.

“Other than that one incident with Mother’s portrait.

But he did return it, once he realized that I…

” He broke off, clearing his throat. “I was several years older than Harrington, and at the top of the proverbial ladder. He was an annoyance, but I did not spend my nights weeping into my pillow. In truth, I scarcely spared him a thought.” His eyes, as brittle as ice chips, found hers.

“But the fact remains that he is a wastrel, and I want better for my sister than the likes of him.”

Diana held his gaze. “Let’s see, shall we?” She turned to face the door. “Ceci? Would you come in, please?”

Marcus groaned, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands as his duchess entered the room. “Not you, too.”

Ceci, who was heavily pregnant, grasped the arm of the chair next to Diana as she lowered herself into the seat. Marcus sprang to his feet and was around the desk in a flash. He made sure his wife was comfortably settled before returning to his chair.

“The truth is,” Diana said, “having grown up a stone’s throw from the Astley family’s estate in Cheltenham, Ceci knows Harrington better than either of us. I thought it only logical that we should ask for her opinion.”

A gleam came into Marcus’s eyes as he turned to his wife. “Indeed. Please regale us with stories of Harrington from your youth. I believe one of them involves a toad.”

“At least three of them involve toads.” Ceci ticked them off on her fingers. “On my pillow, in my sewing basket, and my personal favorite, inside my glass of water.” She shuddered. “When I say I have kissed some frogs, unfortunately, I mean it literally.”

Marcus turned to Diana, his smile triumphant. “Do you see?”

“But…” Ceci interjected, a note of steel in her voice.

Marcus wrinkled his nose. “But?”

Ceci shifted in her seat, no doubt trying to find a comfortable position. “But these were minor infractions in the grand scheme of things. When the stakes were high, Harrington showed his true colors.”

Marcus’s brow remained low. “Explain.”

Ceci turned to Diana. “The summer I turned thirteen, there was a boy in town who liked to mock me. I’ve never been what you would call willowy?—”

“You are stunning and gorgeous, and any man who says otherwise will be meeting me at dawn,” Marcus said darkly.

Ceci cast a fond smile at her husband. “Thank you. But I am sorry to report that not everyone shares in your opinion. That summer, the boy in question bestowed upon me a new nickname.” She grimaced, as if the memory was still painful. “Cecilia Cheno- width .”

Diana winced in sympathy at this unkind variation of Cecilia’s maiden name, Chenowith.

Marcus’s chair skidded across the floor as he surged to his feet. “What is his name?”

Ceci raised a hand, her expression placating. “It was a long time ago?—”

“I insist that you tell me.” Marcus paced across the room to the hearth in four quick strides. He raised a hand before the mantelpiece, then closed it into a fist, as if he had barely suppressed the impulse to grab one of the Dresden porcelain figurines atop it and hurl it into the fire.

Ceci smiled fondly at her husband. “I appreciate your desire to defend me. But I assure you, there is no need. It is my understanding that this young man trained as an apothecary and set up his practice in Worcester.” She gave a little shrug. “I can’t imagine that our paths will ever cross again.”

“They most certainly will not,” Marcus muttered darkly as he resumed his seat and seized one of the blank sheets of paper Alaric had been using to scribble. Diana watched him scrawl down the words apothecary , Worcester , and ask Fauconbridge .

Diana rolled her eyes. Typical Marcus. At least Lord Fauconbridge would talk some sense into him.

Ceci cleared her throat. “One day, Harrington stumbled upon me crying behind the stables. I didn’t want to tell him what had happened, but he eventually wormed it out of me. And do you know what he did?”

“What?” Marcus asked in a clipped voice.

“He wrote a play about it, of all things. You see, a company of traveling players had come to Cheltenham for the high season, and there was a contest in which they would present a work written by one of the local youths at the summer festival. Harrington wrote a brilliant comedic scene in which a moonstruck young man makes a fool of himself trying to gain the attention of a pretty young lady through mockery.” Ceci laughed, remembering.

“He didn’t use our names, but he wrote it in such a way that all the local residents knew to whom it referred.

He portrayed my tormentor as a pathetic dunderhead. ”

Ceci paused to dab her eyes with her handkerchief.

“In the end, ‘I’ threw him over for a man who turned out to be a prince in disguise—a nice bit of irony, considering I went on to marry a duke. My antagonist became a laughingstock overnight, and wouldn’t you know it, he never said a word to me again. ”

At some point during Ceci’s story, Marcus had slumped down in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest. He did not look thrilled about the fact that Harrington was the hero of this particular story. “Hmph.”

Diana turned to face her sister-in-law. “What, then, is your overall impression of Harrington?”

Ceci directed her answer toward her husband. “He could certainly be annoying at times. But when it was important, he never let me down, and I am pleased to count him as a friend.”

Marcus’s expression was distinctly sulky. “I’m still not convinced he is worthy of you.”

Diana leapt in. “But you’ll give him a chance to show that he is.”

Marcus scowled, but he muttered, “I suppose.”

Diana sprang to her feet, eager to seize this small victory and make her exit before he could change his mind. She came around the desk and kissed her brother on the cheek. “Thank you, Marcus,” she whispered.

As she hurried from the room, Ceci cast her a significant look. Don’t worry , it said. Her sister-in-law would soothe the savage beast.

Diana smiled as she stepped out into the corridor. Her next opportunity to see Harrington would come in two days, at a picnic being hosted by Lord and Lady Morsley.

She could scarcely wait.