He’d never seen Brecon’s face so stern, nor set so determinedly against him, not in all their times together. It stunned Sheffield, and it wounded him, too.
“Why the devil not, Brecon?” Sheffield demanded. “I love her, and I’d swear by all that’s holy that she loves me. She’s meant to be my other half, the way the poets say. She’s of a suitable rank, and her family’s so ancient that not even His Majesty could complain. She’s—”
“She’s married to another gentleman,” Brecon said, his voice hard, “or will be in two days’ time. She’s not free, Sheffield, and I won’t have you ruining their lives and our entire family’s peace simply because you imagine yourself in love with the girl.”
“But I am in love with her,” Sheffield protested in disbelief. “I love her a hundred times more than Crump ever could. A thousand times more!”
Brecon shook his head. “In many ways, Sheffield, Crump is a better man than you, and I’ve no doubt he’ll make the lady a far better and more respectable husband than you ever could. I warned you away from her the first night you returned from Paris. Yet you ignored me, and you see the sorrow your petty intrigue has caused.”
Abruptly Sheffield rose and turned away, unable to face Brecon any longer. Brecon, who had been like a brother, even a father, to him through much of his life. Brecon, who had always done whatever was necessary to guarantee his happiness, was now denying him the one thing Sheffield most wanted, and needed, too.
He wanted the love of Diana Wylder.
“I am serious about this, Sheffield,” Brecon said, continuing as if Sheffield faced him still. “You know as well as I do that His Majesty wished you to marry Lady Enid, and his disappointment was keen when the lady ran off. If he were ever to learn your part in her elopement, and how blithely you contrived to avoid obeying his will, I can promise you his displeasure would make your life here in London very difficult indeed.”
“You would do that to me, Brecon?” he asked without turning, bitterness welling up inside him. “You would tell His Majesty?”
“I would not,” Brecon said firmly. “No matter what you now believe of me, I would never do that to you. But if you continue to leap from one scandal to another—and disturbing Lady Diana’s wedding to Lord Crump for the sake of a fancied passion would definitely constitute a scandal—in direct contradiction to His Majesty’s plan for a more respectable court, then I am sure that there will be others willing to tell him a great many things about your behavior. Some may even be true.”
The last thing he wished to hear now was Brecon’s wry wit. “I do not appreciate your jests, Brecon.”
“I do not intend them to be jests,” Brecon said. He sighed, and his voice softened a fraction. “Perhaps it is for the best that you return to the Continent for a while. Stay there, amuse yourself, until you have recovered yourself and forgotten Lady Diana. I know that Celia—”
“Celia? Who is Celia?”
“That is, Lady Hervey,” Brecon said quickly. “I know she has invited you to dine at Marchbourne House tomorrow night, and to attend the wedding the following day. She is a warm and generous lady, without a notion of your unfortunate attachment to her daughter. If she did, I am certain she would agree with me that it would be better for us all that you stay away. Do you truly want to risk ruining the girl’s name?”
As far as Sheffield was concerned, he’d already done far more than that with Diana, which was part of the reason he could not let her marry Crump. Yet he couldn’t explain that, not even to Brecon; what had happened on the settee in the Sultana Room was between Diana and him, and no one else.
Lightly he touched his mother’s ring, still tucked inside his waistcoat. Brecon could argue the rest of the day as far as he was concerned, but it would not change his mind. Until Diana told him she did not love him, the ring—and his heart—belonged to her.
“Give me your word that you won’t behave like a fool,” Brecon urged. “Your word as a gentleman, Sheffield.”
Slowly the younger man turned back to face Brecon and bowed. “You have my word,” he said. “I’ll not be a fool.”
No, he wouldn’t be a fool where Diana was concerned. But he would behave like a man in love, and no man, not even Brecon, could stop him.
Diana stood before the long looking glass in Charlotte’s dressing room, letting the lady’s maid put the final critical tweaks and touches to her hair, which was styled in a way that Charlotte had declared too fashionably complex for Diana’s own maid. Charlotte, and Mama, too, had decreed this night was Diana’s to shine, even if the company would only be members of their own ever-growing family.
Diana’s gown was a rich silk robe à la française, with deep flounced cuffs on the sleeves and the pleated back drifting gracefully from her shoulders. The crisp silk brocade was silvery blue, shot through with metallic threads that glinted in the candlelight, but what Diana liked best about the brocade was its chinoiserie pattern of little pagodas and foreign ladies. With such an elegant gown, Mama had even permitted Diana to have her hair dressed high and powdered, with Charlotte’s maid now tucking tiny paste brilliants, winking like stars, into the elaborate pale curls.
“That’s fine, very fine,” Charlotte said, walking slowly around Diana to study her hair. “What jewels are you wearing?”
“You know I don’t have any jewels, Charlotte, at least not that you’d consider,” Diana said. “I thought I’d wear my coral beads, with the small pearls for my ears.”
“Oh, that’s not nearly sufficient for this gown,” Charlotte said. “I must give you some things of mine for the evening.”
Charlotte unlocked the door in the tall chest that held her jewels. She herself was dressed opulently, a dramatic red and gold brocade gown that showed her famous pearl and diamond necklace and earrings to best advantage. Her pearls were famous, too, the kind of jewels that made other ladies stare at balls, having been long ago given to the first Duchess of Marchbourne by her royal lover. Diana was certain there wouldn’t be anything like them (or anything as disreputable) in Lord Crump’s family.
“Spitalfields silk of that quality deserves diamonds,” Charlotte said, returning with a flat blue box. “I believe this will suit you much more admirably.”
She fastened a necklace of diamonds set into curling silver loops around Diana’s neck—modest stones by Charlotte’s standards, but vastly more valuable than any Diana had ever worn. She touched them lightly with her fingers, accustoming herself to the chilly weight of the necklace settling against her skin.
“There,” Charlotte said with satisfaction, her reflection smiling with satisfaction beside Diana’s in the looking glass. “Now you look like a proper marchioness.”
Diana gazed at her image. She did look like a marchioness now, pale and elegant and impeccably dressed, and so composed that she almost didn’t recognize herself.
No, there wasn’t an almost about it. She didn’t know herself, not like this. Tomorrow night at this hour she would be married, and the Marchioness of Crump. She would be alone in a coach with her new husband, being carried far away from London and everyone in her life that she held dear.
“Oh, Charlotte,” she whispered, still staring at this unknown version of herself. “I’m to marry Lord Crump tomorrow, yet I do not even know his Christian name.”
“Poor lamb,” Charlotte said, slipping her arms around Diana’s shoulders, though taking care not to crush the silk brocade of her gown. “Every noble bride is anxious the day before she weds.”
“But what shall I call him?” Diana begged, her voice rising with uneasiness. “How shall I address him?”
Charlotte sighed. “He hasn’t told you his name? He hasn’t given you leave to use it?”
Diana shook her head, her eyes filling with tears she knew she could not shed.
“Then you must call him ‘my lord’ until he says otherwise,” Charlotte said gently. “I have heard of peeresses who have always employed their husband’s titles, even in times of, ah,
intimacy, and still have been the most loving and contented of couples.”
Yet still Diana shook her head, closing her eyes against her reflection and the reality of the marriage she did not want.
“I do not love him, Charlotte,” she said, her words tumbling over one another in desperate haste. “I thought by now I would, or at least feel a fondness, a regard, but though I have tried my best to discover an affection, I feel nothing toward him, Charlotte, nothing, and now—now I must be his wife.”
She pressed her hand over her mouth to keep from sobbing. It wasn’t Lord Crump who made her weep, but Sheffield. If only she had never met him, if she’d never known his laughter, his teasing, his kindness, his passion, then she’d never have realized what love could be.
“Please, Diana, please,” Charlotte said, resting her cheek against Diana’s temple. “You cannot cry, dear, not now.”
“I cannot help it, Charlotte,” she said, her voice breaking. “I can’t.”
“But you must, Diana, you must and you will,” Charlotte said, holding her close. “I can hear the carriages in the drive already. You can’t show yourself like some pitiful scullery maid, with a red nose and swollen eyes. You’re almost a marchioness, a peeress, and you must act like one. You must be beautiful and serene when you walk down the stairs, and no matter what sorrow or unhappiness you feel within, you must never let it show.”
If Charlotte only knew how she felt within, or if she could only tell her! Diana held her sister tightly, painfully aware of how much she would miss her after tomorrow.
Because even now, Charlotte was right. She wasn’t some hapless girl, but a noble-born woman who’d already made certain choices in her life that couldn’t be unmade. She had been a lover, and tomorrow she would become a wife; for all she knew, she might already be a mother as well. Love without marriage, and marriage without love. That was her fate, and all the tears in the sea would not change it.
With a shuddering sigh she raised her head from Charlotte’s shoulder, and with another she opened her eyes. She took a handkerchief from the dressing table and carefully blotted the corners of her eyes. She turned toward her reflection in the glass one last time and smiled. A tremulous smile, but a smile nonetheless.
Charlotte smiled, too, and slipped her hand into Diana’s to lead her, the way they’d always done as girls.
“Though he doesn’t realize it just yet, Diana, Lord Crump is the most fortunate man in all London,” she said. “Now come, we’ve kept the gentlemen waiting long enough.”
* * *
Sheffield arrived at Marchbourne House exactly thirty-five minutes later than Lady Hervey had requested. He hadn’t anything against Lady Hervey per se, but he didn’t like arriving at entertainments along with everyone else, herded from front hall to cloakroom to drawing room like overdressed cattle. Instead he preferred to saunter into a room after the others had assembled and begun to drink, which made for a much better entrance, even for a duke.
Tonight, too, he’d decided to make that entrance even more memorable by bringing Fantôme with him. Lady Hervey had stressed that the gathering would be for the family alone, and at present Fantôme was the sum of his immediate family. Besides, for what he’d planned this night, having Fantôme along could only bring him extra luck.
But as late as Sheffield was when he was shown into the room, to his dismay the ladies—most especially Diana—had yet to present themselves. The room was as thoroughly male as any club, even to March presiding before the fireplace. On his left side stood Brecon, and on his right was Crump, with Brecon’s three sons slumped together on a bench, generally ignoring their elders. At least Fantôme felt perfectly at his ease, trotting on ahead of Sheffield with his tail wagging and his tongue lolling in a wide, sloppy grin.
“Good heavens, Sheffield,” March said. “You’ve brought that beast of yours.”
“I have,” Sheffield said. “Fantôme always enjoys company, you know.”
March sighed, patiently submitting to Fantôme’s snuffling of his shoes and legs. “He’d better behave himself, or else Charlotte will have him sent down belowstairs with our dogs for the night.”
“He’ll behave,” Sheffield said with more confidence than he should. “Charlotte is very fond of Fantôme, and so are your children.”
“I’ve heard all about what happened last time he visited,” Brecon said, not smiling. “Pray keep him from leaping into the pond again, Sheffield. I can promise you that ladies dressed for evening will not find his antics nearly as amusing.”
Sheffield leaned down long enough to pat the dog on the back of his neck. “The pond will hold no allure for him at this hour, Brecon,” he said. “He’s a staunch believer in morning bathing, with not a drop of water after noon.”
He smiled, but none of the other men did. He could understand why Brecon wasn’t happy with him, making it clear he’d wished Sheffield had taken his advice and stayed away. He supposed March was simply being his ordinarily slightly stuffy self, and of course he never expected Crump to smile at anything.
“Have you any dogs, Crump?” he asked, idly imagining what Crump would do if he’d known Sheffield meant to steal away his bride.
“No, Your Grace, I do not possess dogs,” he said, and that was that. His thin-lipped expression did not change, nor did he so much as blink. How the devil could anyone expect Diana to marry a man as dull and humorless as this?
Even March glanced toward the door with obvious desperation. “I wonder what is keeping the ladies so long.”
Brecon, too, looked longingly toward the door. “You know how ladies are,” he said. “Every curl and ruffle must be perfect before they can show themselves.”
“I should rather not be kept from the table,” Crump said. He drew his watch from his pocket, frowning down at the face. “It is neither healthy nor agreeable to the constitution to dine so late in the evening.”
Fortunately Fantôme had wandered toward the three young men on the bench, giving Sheffield an excuse to follow. He’d always liked Brecon’s sons, partly because they were closer to his age than his older cousins. They’d grown significantly since he’d seen them last, no longer the boys he’d remembered, but young gentlemen in their own right. Lord Hargreaves, or Harry, was the oldest, and Brecon’s heir, with Lord Geoffrey close on his heels, both tall and dark-haired and much like their father. Lord Rivers, the youngest, was still at school, and even now had his nose in a book, striving to distance himself from his older brothers.
Which, perhaps, was not such a bad idea. It was clear that Harry and Geoff, newly returned from their tour of the Continent, had acquired a foreign taste for gaudy waistcoats and exaggerated collars, along with a studied swagger that could only have been acquired from pursuing French and Italian ladies of dubious morality. Sheffield recognized the signs at once, and it made him feel nostalgic, and a little old, too.
Most noteworthy, however, were the spectacles that both Harry and Geoff were affecting, square silver frames with dark green lenses that must have made seeing much of anything difficult in the candlelit room. Sheffield could tell by the way they peered over the tops of the foolish glasses, like old scholars instead of young lords, as they dutifully rose to bow at his approach.
“What new fashion is this?” he asked. “Will we all be wearing colored spectacles to balls next season?”
“Father won’t,” Geoff said with cheerful relish. “He loathes them. He says they make us look like blind beggars.”
“All the gentlemen of fashion wear them in Venice,” Harry said, more world-weary. “They are excellent protection against the glare from the canals.”
“I wager they’re also excellent protection against the morning glare stumbling half-drunk from a brothel, too,” Sheffield observed. “Mornings can be like that.”
Harry and Geoff laughed, but Rivers only groaned dramatically.
“I wish I had spectacles to protect me against you,” he said to his brothers, putting aside his book to pet Fant
ôme. “You two look like a right pair of asses, and you bray like asses, too.”
But no one was listening to him, because the ladies had just entered the room.
“Damn,” said Harry with hushed reverence. “Isn’t Cousin Diana splendid!”
Sheffield could only agree. Diana was splendid, so splendid that it made his heart squeeze tight in his chest. He’d never seen her look like this, with her hair powdered and diamonds around her throat and her expression so serene and noble that she was more like a goddess than a mere mortal woman, drifting into the room on a cloud of rustling silvery silk.
A serene goddess, that is, until she glanced his way and spotted him, over the shoulder of her elderly Aunt Sophronia. Her eyes brightened and her cheeks flushed and her lips parted with surprise and eagerness. It was only a second that he’d held her gaze, only a second that she’d dropped her carefully composed mask before she quickly looked away, but it had been enough to tell him what he needed most to know.
When he asked her to marry him, she’d say yes.
He fought the urge to throw himself at her feet and ask her now, before everyone. That, of course, would not succeed. He might be desperate, but he wasn’t a fool. If he did that, he’d be locked away in the scullery with the rest of the ill-behaved dogs, and they wouldn’t release him until it was too late and she was married to Crump.
No, he’d have to bide his time and let the whole wretched evening progress until the right moment. He’d have only one chance, and like every good thief, he’d have to make it count. Until then, he’d have to keep politely distant, even disinterested, so that no one would suspect him.
One chance, one chance …
But was there anything more difficult than watching Diana with Crump as she curtseyed gracefully before him, displaying that dizzying expanse of creamy white breast as she did?
Yet Crump’s face remained as impassive as ever. He didn’t so much as offer Diana his hand to lift her up, merely flicking his fingers instead to signify she might rise. She did, and while the others smiled their approval, she leaned close to Crump, her hand on his black sleeve, and brushed her lips against his pockmarked cheek with the shyest of kisses. As pretty a gesture as this was by a bride to her groom, for Sheffield it was pure torment, and he couldn’t help imagining her kissing him instead, the feather-light touch of her fingers on his arm, the softness of her lips against his cheek, the heady scent of her perfume as she leaned close.
When the Duke Found Love Page 25
