When the Duke Found Love (29 page)

“Oh, my dears, my dears!” exclaimed Mama, coming so fast into the garden from the house to join them that she was nearly running. “Oh, my dears, you cannot begin to imagine the terrible thing that has happened!”

There was an uncharacteristic urgency to Mama’s voice, enough to make Diana turn at once toward her. Something wasn’t right, that was clear. She knew Mama had been out to her mantua maker’s and must have just returned, but she hadn’t paused to put aside her parasol or remove her hat, and her breathlessness only added to Diana’s foreboding.

“What has happened, Mama?” asked Charlotte anxiously, rising with the baby Georgie in her arms. “Is March—”

“No, Charlotte, no, it’s not March,” Mama said, “nor is there anything amiss with Lizzie or Hawke or their family. It’s poor, poor Sheffield. He has been jilted.”

“Sheffield?” Diana repeated, her own voice becoming traitorously breathless, too. “Sheffield’s been jilted?”

Jamie’s ball hit her squarely on the side of her face, knocking her sideways.

“Did so su’prise you, Aunt Diana!” he called, cackling gleefully. “Did so!”

“Hush, Jamie, hush,” Charlotte said impatiently. “Grandmother is trying to talk. Where did you hear this, Mama? Sheffield jilted by Lady Enid! Oh, I can scarce believe it! Poor, poor Sheffield!”

“Poor Sheffield indeed,” Mama said, sitting in a chair that a servant had brought for her. “I heard it first from Lady Salford at Mrs. Cartwright’s, but the entire shop was fair buzzing with the tale. It appears that Lady Enid ran off in the night with her brother’s old tutor, a lowly parson, and left poor Sheffield with nothing but a letter and her betrothal ring. Poor, poor Sheffield!”

“At least she left her ring,” Diana said, rubbing her face where Jamie’s ball had struck it and praying the sore spot wouldn’t blossom into a full-fledged bruise there on her temple. She’d known all along this would happen, but she was still taken aback by the haste, even with Lady Enid’s revelation. “The ring was very pretty.”

“A ring is nothing compared to a wife,” Mama said with scandalized relish as she arranged her skirts. “They say Lord Lattimore is mortified by his daughter’s behavior and has set out after her and her—her
paramour
to Scotland, while poor Lady Lattimore has taken to her bed with the vapors from the shock. And poor, poor Sheffield! To be used so cruelly and abandoned like this!”

Poor Sheffield, hah,
thought Diana. Likely he was laughing every bit as gleefully as her little nephew Jamie. He’d gotten exactly what he’d wanted, which was to be as free a bachelor as he had been before. But then hadn’t he once told her that he always did get everything he wished?

“What is the matter, Diana?” Mama asked. “You’re making dreadful sour faces. Do you have a headache?”

Diana sighed, seeing little point in blaming Jamie when most of what troubled her was Sheffield.

“No, Mama,” she said. “No, I am fine.”

“Then tell us, Di,” Charlotte said eagerly. “You were last with Sheffield and Lady Enid. Did you see any hints of this break? Any unhappiness or dissatisfaction when they were together?”

“None,” Diana said carefully. “I would never have guessed she loved another.”

She didn’t, that is, since there’d been no need for guessing, not with everything explained by Sheffield himself.

“It is
dreadful
,” Mama said, her voice dropping lower with confidential horror. “I would never have thought such a thing of Lady Enid. For a lady to leave a gentleman whom she has promised to wed—why, it is every bit as disgraceful as if she left her husband!”

Diana shook her head, thinking wistfully of how happy Lady Enid and Dr. Pullings were together, and how well suited they were to each other.

“But what if Lady Enid loved the other gentleman more, Mama?” she said. “Wouldn’t it be equally disgraceful for her to marry Sheffield?”

“Really, Diana,” Mama said, clucking her tongue with dismay. “How many times must we repeat this? The happiest marriages are made with respect and regard at their base, with love to follow. Consider your own match with Lord Crump, and how satisfactorily it is proceeding. If only Lady Enid had put aside her girlish infatuations, as you have done, and persevered with Sheffield! I’m certain that she would have been far happier with a duke than with a parson. Who knows what poor Sheffield will do now?”

Diana didn’t answer. Poor Sheffield wasn’t poor, and never would be. But she was the one who’d forgotten Mama’s cautious wisdom, forgotten her well-reasoned match with Lord Crump, forgotten everything except the empty promise of love that Sheffield had offered her, glittering there like fool’s gold.

“I expect he’ll find another lady soon enough,” Charlotte said, swaying to calm Georgie, who’d grown restless in her arms. “Sheffield does need a wife, and he is a duke, and wealthy, besides.”

“That’s not what Brecon believes,” Mama said. “Brecon fears that this turn of events will quite wound Sheffield, with the most dire of consequences.”

“When did you converse with Brecon?” Charlotte asked with surprise, finally passing Georgie to a waiting nursemaid. “I thought you’d gone to Mrs. Cartwright’s.”

Mama brushed her hand before her face, shooing away an insect, or perhaps Charlotte’s question, too.

“I was with Mrs. Cartwright, yes,” she said. “But when I was finished there and had heard the news, I happened upon Brecon in the street. He is certain that Sheffield will now abandon us all completely and return to France. He may have gone already, to avoid the talk.”

“Who can fault poor Sheffield for that?” Charlotte said, raising her voice over the baby’s howls. “Think of what the men must be saying in the clubs! He has had such a dreadful reputation for tempting ladies to be faithless, and now to have the tables turned upon him!”

Mama waited as the nursery maid calmed Georgie. “What Brecon fears most, of course, is that now Sheffield will marry some French lady instead. Preserve us, a
French
lady!”

Diana gulped and stared down at the grass so no one would notice the tears that surely must be in her eyes. Sheffield was leaving London and returning to Paris, likely the way he’d planned all along. She doubted he’d marry a French lady; she doubted he’d marry anyone. Why should he? Under the pretense of a broken heart, he’d be free to do whatever he pleased, while she was left behind and forgotten without a thought or care.

Forgotten, and ruined.

“Oh, dear,” Charlotte said, listening to the servant who had come to whisper a discreet message. “Diana, Lord Crump is here to see you.”

“Now?” Diana looked up swiftly. “Here?”

“You can’t have him shown here,” Mama protested. “He is a bachelor gentleman, and he won’t be at ease with the children about.”

Charlotte nodded to the servant to fetch the marquis. “He’s a bachelor, soon to be a groom. The sooner he learns how to adapt to children, the better it will be for his own.”

“But it is the middle of the day, when he is always occupied with his business affairs,” Diana said, bewildered, her emotions so confused she could not begin to sort them. “How can he be here now?”

“Because clearly he could not bear to keep away from you, dear,” Mama said, smiling fondly. “Now come, gather yourself. Where are your shoes and stockings?”

Diana scrambled to her feet, brushing bits of grass and soil from her skirts. What had been perfectly appropriate for playing with Jamie was not at all right to receive the fastidious Lord Crump. Her clothes were worn, grass-stained, and rumpled, and she looked more like the village goose keeper than a future marchioness.

“My shoes are upstairs,” she said with dismay. “I must go have Sarah dress me properly so—”

“There’s no time,” Charlotte said serenely, as always the very picture of a duchess, even here in the garden. “Here’s Lord Crump now.”

Here he was indeed, stalking along the garden path behind a footman. Dressed in his customary black mourning and white wig, he did not look so much like an ardent suitor as a determined one. Without so much as a hint of a smile, he first greeted Charlotte, then Mama, before finally coming to Diana.

She sank into as graceful a curtsey as could be managed in bare feet, remaining down until he gave her leave to rise with his usual gesture, an almost impatiently brisk flip of his fingers. The first time he’d done it, Diana had been wounded, wondering why he didn’t take her hand to raise her, as more-gallant gentlemen would. Now she merely accepted it as only another of Lord Crump’s little quirks. At least this one would end when they were wed and therefore of equal rank, and she need no longer curtsey to him.

“Lady Diana, good day,” he said, a genteel greeting undermined by his perplexed expression as he stared at her rumpled clothes. “Forgive me for having called at such an inopportune hour. I appear to have disturbed you.”

“I was playing with Lord Fitzcharles, Lord Pennington, and Lady Amelia, my lord,” Diana said quickly. “The children.”

“Ah,” he said. “The children.”

As if cued by a prompter, the baby loosed a rising wail of unhappiness. Showing empathy for their brother’s misery, the twins likewise began to cry, sobbing and blubbering and burying their faces in their nursery maid’s skirts. It was a familiar enough racket to everyone in the garden save Lord Crump, whose pale face so filled with horrified repulsion that Diana almost expected him to begin crying, too.

At once Charlotte motioned to the nursery maids to remove the children, giving last little pats and kisses to console them as they were carried past her. Their wails continued long after they had left the garden, echoing distantly from within the house.

“Pray forgive my little ones, Lord Crump,” Charlotte said, her smile full of apology. “It is the way of all children, I fear. When weariness seizes them, they must cry, and there is no help for it but to put them to bed.”

Mama smiled, too, bending a fraction to one side as two footmen set the tea table before her.

“I know children’s voices must seem a savage din now, Lord Crump,” Lady Hervey said. “But once you are a father yourself and the children are yours, you will come to believe the sound the sweetest under heaven. Would you care for tea, Lord Crump?”

“Thank you, no, Lady Hervey,” he said, finally taking the nearest chair as Diana, too, sat in a chair instead of the grass. He drew his handkerchief from his pocket and tipped his hat back long enough to blot his forehead around the edge of his wig. “I have come not for refreshment, but with purpose and resolve.”

He cleared his throat with a ragged rumble, apparently to vocalize that purpose and resolve. “I have this morning learned that I must leave London within the week, and will be away for some months’ time. His Majesty has honored me with a special commission to observe and report on the collieries of the Manchester coalfields, and how these mines may be best developed and encouraged for increased usefulness to the country.”

Diana nodded encouragingly and tried not to think of how this sounded like the dullest, least interesting topic imaginable. He had not a smidgeon of Sheffield’s wit or charm. But Lord Clump was here with her, and not on his way to France; she must remember that.

“What a handsome honor to receive from His Majesty,” Mama said, smiling warmly as she poured tea for herself and her daughters. “To be sure, we will miss you whilst you are away, but we must begin wedding plans in earnest so that when you return we—”

“Forgive me, Lady Hervey,” he said, interrupting with rare urgency. “But that is exactly why I have come this day. My duty will take me far from London and among strangers, and a wife would prove useful to me. In short, Lady Hervey, I wish to marry Lady Diana as soon as can be decently arranged, so that she might accompany me as my wife.”

Diana gasped softly, pressing her hands to her mouth with shock. He wished to wed her at once, within days. He would never know she was ruined, and if in a few weeks’ time she found herself with child, she would never know for certain if it was Sheffield’s or her husband’s. It was not exactly an honorable solution, but it was a kind of salvation, offered by the unlovely hand of Lord Crump.

“You wish to marry my daughter before you leave, Lord Crump?” Mama set the teapot back down on the table with a thump. “ Forgive me, Lord Crump, but that is quite, quite impossible! At least three weeks are required for the banns to be read—”

“Not with a special license,” Lord Crump said. “I have already taken the liberty of procuring one.”

“But we had agreed upon the autumn,” Mama insisted, “or perhaps at Christmastide, when you would be done with your mourning!”

“I cannot believe that you would ask such a thing of my sister, Lord Crump,” exclaimed Charlotte indignantly. “To make the Manchester coal mines her wedding trip! To expect her to begin her wedded life in some mean lodgings, without a proper household or staff to call her own!”

But Lord Crump ignored them and instead turned toward Diana. He was no more handsome than when they had first met, no more agreeable, no more charming. He wished to marry her now only because she would be “useful.” There was nothing of the gallant about him. He’d yet to press those thin, pale lips against hers in a kiss, and she could not begin to imagine him making love to her the way that Sheffield had.

But Sheffield had coaxed and warmed her heart with meaningless promises of love, and then had vanished. With Lord Crump, her heart would be cold and achingly empty, but it would be unbroken. Truly, it was no choice at all.

“I will do it,” she said softly, so softly that she feared at first no one would hear her. “I am honored, Lord Crump, by your—your eagerness, and I will wed you as soon as you wish.”

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

Sheffield stood waiting beside the fireplace in Lady Hervey’s green room, running his fingers restlessly along the carved marble mantle. On the nearest chair were the flowers he’d brought for Diana, an exuberant bouquet of early roses tied up with silk ribbons, and in his waistcoat, over his heart, was his mother’s ring in readiness.

He was determined to do this properly. He had waited one day after Lady Enid had broken their empty engagement, and then another day after that, to make sure that Lord Lattimore failed to find his wayward daughter, and to let the gossip die down a bit. He would first ask Lady Hervey for her daughter’s hand, and then, once she agreed (as of course she must; he was confident that a duke always trumped a mere marquis, especially such a sorry specimen as Lord Crump), he’d ask to see Diana. He would propose exactly as he should, pleading his case on his knees the way that poets recommended, and then he’d put his mother’s ring on her finger himself.