A Rogue for All Seasons (Weston Family) (13 page)

“Because Mr. Weston must be toying with me,” Diana said softly, plucking at the bed covers. “That’s what you are trying to say, isn’t it?” She raised her head to meet Linnet’s eyes.

Linnet leaned forward and reached for Diana’s hand, but she tugged away.

“Diana, you are a beautiful young woman with a good head and a kind heart. Mr. Weston would be lucky to have you. My doubts have nothing to do with you and everything to do with him. I am certain he is an amiable young man, but he’s shown no indication that he is looking to marry. If you think sensibly, you will not believe his interest any more than I do.”

“Perhaps I don’t. Did you consider that? Perhaps I wanted to feel desirable for one evening. Can you not even let me have that? You’re not the only one who still hears the whispers!” Diana clapped a hand over her mouth.

Linnet saw the immediate remorse in her daughter’s eyes, but she bore the painful lashes of Diana’s words as her due. Knowing she deserved them didn’t lessen their harsh sting. “I beg your pardon,” she whispered, scrambling off the bed.

“Mama, I—”

Knowing she was going to cry, Linnet fled the room and hurried toward her own chamber. Once inside, she collapsed back against the door, overcome with hating herself and with what her life had become. Her breath came in shaky, shallow pants as she sobbed into her hands. Where had she gone so wrong?

Unbidden, her mind raced back to a long ago winter’s eve at Halswelle Hall, her family’s country estate…

She sneaked out after everyone was in bed. Her heart pounded with the fear of discovery, but the need to see Thomas spurred her on. She trudged through the snow around the back of the stables to the small cottage built to house the stable master. The darkness would have frightened her once, but now she was glad of its cover. She didn’t need light to see the way when she had the path etched on her heart. When Thomas opened the door, she hurled herself into his arms.

“Linnet? Why have you come?”

“I had to see you.”

“You shouldn’t come out in such ill weather for that, love. I’m not worth it,” he teased as he shut the door and gathered her close.

She snuggled into his heat. “When you hold me, I think everything will be all right.” She raised her arms and threaded her fingers through his thick, red-gold hair. She tugged his head down to hers, and they both groaned as their mouths met. He kissed her until her toes curled and she had trouble remembering her own name.

“Make love to me,” she pleaded. It wasn’t the first time she’d made the bold request. But just as he’d done every time before, Thomas stubbornly shook his head.

“Don’t ask me, Linny.” He stepped away from her and prowled around the small space. Even from across the room, his blue eyes burned her with icy fire. “You know how badly I want you, but not like this. I won’t dishonor you, and I won’t betray your father’s trust by stealing your innocence like a thief in the night.”

“Mother brought up the Season tonight. It’s only January, but she’s already fixed on it.” The words poured out of her in a panicked rush. “This year she won’t let me come home unattached. The only reason I escaped before was that the Duke of Inwood was still in mourning, and she thinks I have a chance at him. I thought if I had a Season and refused all my suitors, perhaps my parents would accept you as
my
choice. We couldn’t cause a worse scandal than a duke marrying the daughter of the King’s horse trainer.”

“Yes, we could. She brought him a great fortune. I can only give you all I am and all I hope to become. Society will forgive a duke who marries a commoner for money. They won’t forgive me for daring to love you. You deserve to be a duchess, and I would take that away from you.”

“I deserve happiness, and Inwood can’t give that to me.” She swallowed hard. “My parents will never give us their blessing, will they?”

“No,” he said softly. “I don’t believe so, but even if we kept in good with them, we wouldn’t have an easy time of it.”

She sank to the floor in despair. “What are we going to do?”

He picked her up and carried her over to the chair before the open hearth, settling her on his lap. “I love you, Linnet. You know I want to marry you, with or without your parents’ approval. This is your life, though, and this needs to be your choice. I will love you whether you pick a life with me or a life with them.”

“I don’t want to have to choose.” She buried her face in his chest and wept.

“I know.” His tone was gentle as he stroked her hair. “I hate that I’m the one making you choose, but I can’t let you go, even when I know I should.” He patted her back. “Please, no more tears, Linny. It breaks my heart to see you unhappy. You don’t have to decide anything just now. There’s time yet before the Season.”

Linnet looked up at him, her choice suddenly made. “I may be forced to choose because of loving you, but my parents are the ones who are forcing me to make the choice. If they care about my happiness a fraction as much as you do, they will come to accept you.” Her smile was at once tremulous and tender as she brought a shaking hand up and splayed her fingers over his heart. “You, Thomas. I choose you.”

A soft scratching at the door brought Linnet back to the present. She dashed away her tears with the backs of her hands. “Yes?”

“
Pardonnez-moi,
my lady.” Though her mother’s lady’s maid had lived in England at least as long as Linnet’s parents had been married, Martine had never entirely given up her native tongue. “
La duchesse,
she wishes to see you.”

“Tonight?”

“Oui, maintenant.”

Linnet sighed. It did not matter that she had no desire to see her mother just now. A summons from Her Grace was not a request; it was an order.

“Very well, Martine. I will be along in a few moments.”

The washstand was in the small closet attached to her room. Linnet splashed some water on her face, washing away the salt from her tears, and then tidied up her bedchamber. There was no need. One of the chambermaids would see to any clutter the following day. But in the early years of her marriage, when there had only been enough money for a maid-of-all-work, Linnet had learned to clean up after herself. She hadn’t minded, but Thomas had been distraught over her work-roughened hands.

Oh, Thomas. She had loved him from the first. Even with the years of separation, and in spite of all the hurt and anger, she loved him still. But the price paid for that love—by her, by Thomas, by her children, by her family…

She wanted better for Diana. She wanted safety. Marrying for love was foolish, especially in their class. She had followed her heart, and it had only brought her pain. She’d been so certain that love was enough to span the gap between their stations, to bridge their differences, and for years, it had seemed to work. And then her world had fallen apart, everything crashing down at once, collapsing like a house of cards caught in a tempest gale.

She’d been so shocked. She’d believed her marriage was as enduring, as stalwart as a fortress. But she and Thomas had built on rocky foundations, and tiny cracks she hadn’t thought worth noting had accumulated over the years.

There were some larger cracks, too, and when they became impossible to ignore, they patched them as best they could and went on with their lives. Each of those repairs had weakened her marriage a bit more, but she never realized how fragile it had become. Not until it crumbled at the slightest push.

The tears welled up again, and she let them come. When she felt she had herself sufficiently under control, Linnet headed to see her mother. The duchess sat before the fireplace in her bedchamber. Like the rest of Lansdowne House, the room was formal and grand, opulent and… oppressive.

“Good evening, Mother.” Linnet pressed a kiss to her mother’s wrinkled cheek. “Lady Kelton sends her regards. Are you feeling at all improved?”

The duchess shrugged. “At my age, one becomes accustomed to feeling poorly. I doubt I shall feel improved until I am dead.”

Ever the optimist,
Linnet thought wryly. Aloud she said, “Please don’t say such morbid things. I am sure you have many years left on this earth.”

“All I ask is to see my granddaughter wed.”

“I want that as much as you do,” Linnet reminded her. “As it happens, at dinner I was seated next to a very promising suitor for Diana.”

“His name?”

“Sir Samuel Stickley. I understand he is a cousin of Lady Kelton’s.”

“A baronet,” the duchess said with distaste. “At this point, we cannot afford to be particular. Did he seem taken with Diana?”

“Unfortunately, Sir Samuel received a summons home before he and Diana could meet, but I believe he means to call upon his return to London.”

“We shall have to wait and see, then.” The duchess motioned for Linnet to sit on the footstool by her chair. “Martine,” she called, “bring the hairbrush from my dressing table.” She untied the strip of linen from the bottom of Linnet’s braid and unplaited her hair.

Taking the silver-backed brush the maid brought over, she began to brush Linnet’s hair. This was a familiar ritual, one Linnet usually found calming; tonight she found it cloying. She was still a child in this house, no matter that her own child was grown and of marriageable age. She would always be a child in this house. Like a child, she couldn’t escape punishment for her mistakes.

Despite assurances of forgiveness from her mother—her father refused, then and now, to speak of his daughter’s fall from grace—Linnet knew the truth. Her parents had accepted her back into their household, but they would never forgive her. Neither would they forget, or let her forget, the failed marriage that had predicated her return. In what time she had left after regretting the past, Linnet worried for the future; she preferred either to dwelling on the present.

“Go on,” the duchess urged. “Who were Diana’s dance partners?”

“She spent a good deal of time with the Weston boy.”

“He is a handsome fellow. Being seen with him can do her nothing but good.”

“I’m worried she is too taken with him,” Linnet fretted. “His reputation…”

“He is a young man.” Her mother dismissed Linnet’s concerns. “He is from a good family and will inherit a viscountcy. As the wife of the oldest son of a viscount, Diana would take precedence over a baronet’s wife. She cannot depend upon her father’s rank as you can.”

There it was—a not-so-subtle jab at Linnet’s socially inferior choice of husband.

“Henry Weston may be from a good family, but he isn’t right for Diana,” she insisted. “Why should he suddenly start paying her attention now?”

“Perhaps he is ready to do his duty by his family.”

The “unlike you, you undutiful child,” went unsaid. Linnet decided to change the subject. “Diana asked me the other day if this could be her last Season.”

“Perhaps it should be. If she does not make a match this year, there is little reason to think she will make one next year or the year after.”

Linnet blinked. “I thought you were determined to see her wed.”

“If my determination were enough, she would have wed years ago, but I do not intend to give up. If Diana has not managed to bring a gentleman up to scratch by the end of the Season, and you know as well as I the unlikelihood of that coming to pass, we must consider other possibilities. Perhaps we should spend a few months in Bath or Brighton. Such places force one into much more mixed company, which is distasteful, but some men of good breeding must be there. Then again, I have thought for some time now that an older gentleman would suit Diana nicely. I shall ask Lansdowne to make a list of his acquaintances that are in need of youthful companionship.”

“No!” Linnet leapt to her feet. She would sooner see Diana in a nunnery than married to some lecher old enough to be her grandfather.

“I beg your pardon?” The duchess’s voice was soft—Linnet could not recall having heard her mother speak in anything other than this carefully modulated, ladylike tone—but steely.

“I would not wish to put Father to all that trouble just yet,” Linnet lied, sitting back down. “The Season is only just beginning, after all.”

“You have a point,” her mother agreed as she resumed brushing. “And there are worse things in life than Diana remaining unwed. She would be a comfort to you in your old age, just as you have been to me.”

But I want more for her than that
, Linnet wanted to yell.
I don’t want her living my life. Unlike you, I care about my child’s happiness more than my own comfort.

Her parents’ selfishness had ruined her marriage and any chance of happiness she might have had. No, that wasn’t entirely fair. Her marriage had fallen apart for other reasons, but her parents’ refusal to approve of the union had not helped matters. They had worked to drive a wedge between their daughter and her undesirable husband, and it had worked.

The duchess set aside the hairbrush and began to braid Linnet’s hair. “Have you any news of my grandson?”

“None since last I told you.”

The duchess made a sound of annoyance. “That was nearly three weeks ago.”

Linnet laughed. “I would have news of him every day if I could, but young men at university have better things to do than write their mothers. I am certain you need not worry. Alex has always been sensible and even-tempered; he has never given me a moment’s worry.”

“I cannot help worrying about my grandson. What with your brother off in India, refusing to come home and take some of the burden of running the estates off your father…”

She had heard this diatribe against her older brother so often she could have recited the words along with her mother. Linnet hardly knew David. Eight years her senior, her brother had gone off to school before she could talk. She’d seen him during school holidays, but he hadn’t wanted much to do with her. Once he finished at Cambridge, he’d sailed off to India on some business, apparently never-ending, for the British East India Company. Though she didn’t know David well, Linnet certainly understood his actions. There were times when she wished herself as far away as possible from her parents.