Too Wilde to Wed

by Eloisa James

  North looked down at Diana, her beautiful, impulsive face solemn and earnest, and bellowed with laughter. He scooped up Godfrey, who started laughing too, a spiral of boyish giggles that floated into the night air.

  “Stop that, you two,” Diana cried. “That was a heartfelt offer. It’s possible I would be a good duchess. I just don’t want to make promises I might not be able to keep.”

  “I don’t want you to be an inept duchess,” North said, catching his breath.

  “You don’t?”

  “I want you to be next to me, to be my partner, not my duchess. I want to grow old with you, and love you, and argue with you.”

  He set the boy down and squatted before him. “You’ll be my son, Godfrey. Is that all right with you?”

  “Yes,” Godfrey said, as nonchalantly as if he’d been speaking for years.

  “We shall live in a different house, not the castle, but Artie can visit you.”

  “Yes.”

  Diana came down on her knees. “We will be a family.”

  A moment later, the door swung shut behind Godfrey, who was headed to the parlor with orders to be polite to his newfound great-uncle, and stay close to Artie and the duchess.

  Diana wound her arms around North’s neck. “You needn’t give up the dukedom,” she said. “I can do this. You know I can.”

  “I would hate being a duke.” The rough emotion in his voice told its own story.

  “But Horatius . . .” Her voice trailed away.

  “You’re a wonderful mother to Godfrey, but you aren’t the same mother that Rose would have been, are you?”

  She shook her head.

  “I tried to be Horatius, but it was impossible. Fortunately, my father was farsighted enough to have many sons. Erik is only eight, but he does have an air of command. He won’t be Horatius, but he might take on the title in his own way.”

  “From a governess’s point of view, I can assure you that Erik is quite devilish,” Diana said.

  “An excellent attribute for a future duke. I needn’t renounce the title immediately; there’s time for Erik to grow up as a normal lad, not the Marquess of Saltersley. Perhaps Alaric will decide that he wants to be Duke of Lindow. Perhaps Leonidas will change his mind. I don’t care. I see no reason to formally renounce a title I never assumed until my father passes away, hopefully not for many years.”

  Diana’s mind was clearly whirling with questions, but she smiled, came up on her toes, and kissed him. “I haven’t answered that question you asked me.”

  Their eyes met and she knew there was nothing to tell him. He knew. He was her heart, and the joy she felt was as natural as the morning.

  A number of kisses later, the innkeeper emerged and informed North that a steaming bath was waiting in his best bedchamber. They followed him inside. North stopped at the parlor, looking around the room full of people laughing, talking, and welcoming the Laird of Fennis to the Wilde family, until he caught his aunt’s eye.

  Lady Knowe grinned and nodded toward Godfrey, the boy whom he would soon adopt as his son. “All’s well,” she called.

  Diana tugged on his hand, and he took a last look at the people he loved so much. And then turned away to follow the person he loved most of all.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  North carried Diana into the inn’s best bedchamber in the middle of a kiss, managing to kick the door shut behind them.

  Diana was having trouble breathing. Her lungs were moving in and out, but she was taking in North’s air, and that made all the difference. Every touch of his tongue made her feel a shudder between her legs, a flare of heat.

  “North,” she whispered. “Does this mean that you will make love to me again?” His hand flattened and slid up to her shoulder, then down her back. “I want you,” she said, telling him the truth. “I want you more than a bath.”

  He tipped up her chin, and his lips came back to hers. “Just so you know, I am kissing the you whom I know. The woman who hates wigs, wears no lip rouge, and knows nothing of peafowl. Who reeks of ale.”

  Her heart was breaking from the sweetness of it. She kissed him, rather than the other way around: licked his lips and welcomed his tongue, and wrapped her arms around his neck.

  “You know what I wondered after you kissed me goodbye at the door of my chamber?” she whispered into his ear, a while later.

  “What?” His voice had fallen to a growl, a hungry, male growl.

  “Whether making love could be . . . Can you do it standing up?”

  He made a hoarse sound, and twirled around. He put an arm over her head, leaning against the wall. “The answer is yes.”

  “You just said I smelled of ale. I must have a bath first,” Diana decided. “What’s so funny?”

  “You,” North said, kissing her nose.

  “I’ve just realized something.”

  “That you and Godfrey and I will travel to Rome, where we will conceive a little girl covered with freckles?”

  “That there is one time in life when it is entirely acceptable to be spontaneous!”

  Much later, Diana lay on her back, her head nestled on North’s shoulder. “It was shockingly difficult to be a barmaid.”

  “Harder than being a governess?”

  “I am not fond of changing nappies,” Diana said, considering it. “But managing whining children is easier than lustful men.”

  North rolled on top of her. “What about this lustful man?”

  Diana looked up at him. North’s warrior face was tired; he probably hadn’t slept the night before. There were wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and a darkness in him that would lighten, but never leave.

  He wasn’t the perfect future duke, the fashionable gentleman in powder and patches, but he was so much more.

  “I love you,” she said, wrestling with a swell of emotion that made the words catch in her throat. “I love you enough to become a duchess, or a barmaid, or a governess. I would live with you in a hovel or a castle. There is one thing I do well: love you and Godfrey, so I might as well do that.”

  His eyes were dark and rawly possessive. “I won’t let you be crushed by the title,” he said, the words growling from his chest. She wound her arms around his neck. “You’re perfect as you are, and you’re mine,” he whispered. “My wife, my love. I have a present for you.”

  North rose and went to a battered traveling bag the innkeeper had put in the chamber earlier that evening. Diana watched as he pulled it open and tossed a few nappies and a change of clothing for Godfrey onto the bed.

  “How did you know to bring nappies?” she asked, her heart full. Most fathers wouldn’t think of it.

  He looked up at her, astonished. “Is Godfrey still in nappies? I asked Prism to make sure Godfrey had whatever he needed for the night.”

  “Only in case of accidents,” Diana said, nodding.

  North reached the bottom of the bag and carefully maneuvered out a box wrapped in a length of silvery blue fabric. He brought it back to her, his eyes wary. And hopeful. He put it in her lap.

  Diana looked up, loving him so much it hurt. “A present?”

  “From myself and Joan.”

  Joan? A present from his sixteen-year-old sister was unexpected. She stared down at it, instinctively stroking the lustrous silk “I’ve seen this fabric before,” she whispered.

  “I bought it from Mr. Calico,” North said. “I tried to give it to my aunt, but she laughed at me. She knew it was meant for you.”

  Diana carefully unwrapped the silk and stared down at the box. At one point it had been a plain wooden box designed for snuff; a slight scent of tobacco still clung to it. But now its lid was covered with arrogant paper aristocrats with slashing paper eyebrows and tall paper wigs.

  All of them male.

  All of them North, by the looks of it, and cut from the prints that made him notorious.

  Diana laughed. At the very center of this array was the most amusing depiction of all: North, rising from a small trunk,
his muscular, hard chest lovingly detailed.

  “You look like a genie coming forth at a lady’s command,” she said, tracing the depiction of his chest with her finger. “A very nicely shaped genie, I must say.”

  “I prefer that idea to being likened to Shakespeare’s rapist,” North said. There was something guarded in his voice, a hint of vulnerability. He was not certain of her, Diana thought. Because she had refused him so many times.

  “Is there another present inside?” She looked up, loving the angular shape of his jaw, the darkness of his blue eyes, the way he looked back at her. As if she mattered. As if she was the center of his world.

  He nodded.

  She opened the lid and saw a nest of blush silk, in the center of which lay a ring. Not the ring he’d offered her the first time: that one had been ostentatious, a duchess’s ring.

  This ring was plainer and, to Diana’s mind, more beautiful: one simple ruby surrounded by diamonds. North sank to his knees in front of Diana and picked up the ring. “The color reminds me of your hair.”

  She looked at him, a smile wobbling on her lips.

  “Will you marry me, Diana Belgrave? For better, for worse? In the face of illegitimate relatives and sleepless nights? I love you. I fell in love with you at first sight. I never stopped loving you, and I never shall.”

  Diana held out her left hand. He slid the ring on her finger. It fit perfectly. “The only thing I’m not afraid of failing at is loving you,” she said, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. “Loving you is like breathing.”

  North arrowed his fingers into her hair and it spilled over his hands. “We needn’t ever attend balls or pay morning calls.”

  Diana smiled, peaceful joy in her eyes. “You promised Italy and babies.”

  “You’re mine, now,” North said. “No running away, Diana.”

  She shook her head. “I will never leave you again. I was so angry at Rose for dying that it made me afraid to love so deeply again. But I trust you.”

  “You trust me to stay alive?” He kissed her gently. “I can’t promise to die after you, Diana. But I will love you until the moment I take my final breath. And if I go before you, I pray that your face is the last thing I see before I close my eyes. That sight will hold me until we meet again.”

  Blinding joy swirled through Diana, mixing with desire, and trust, and love. An hour later, she came back to herself, sweaty, pleasure-drenched. Her mind was foggy, but one question wouldn’t go away. She rolled on her side and propped herself up on her elbow.

  North was lying on his back, looking like a man who had everything he wanted in life. One arm was behind his head and the other hand was absently caressing the curve of Diana’s hip.

  “We’ll go to Rome first,” he said.

  “North,” she asked, “how did you manage to arrive at the Beetle & Cheese just when I needed you?”

  Her fiancé’s smile was still rare, and the sight of it lifted Diana’s heart. “I thought I timed it perfectly.”

  “You were waiting outside, weren’t you!” she cried.

  “It’s possible.” He stole another kiss. “You’re mine, Diana. I shall be ruthless in protecting you. But I will never crush you.”

  “You waited outside to see if I got in trouble?” Laughter poured out of her.

  “If you had struck that drunk in the eye, I would have waited longer,” he said. “I must teach you how to fell a man with a tankard.”

  Diana leaned over, and his large hands lifted her onto his body. She shivered, enjoying the way her senses sparked to life. “May I request another demonstration of your concern for my happiness?”

  “Yes,” he said, keeping it simple.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Lindow Castle

  June 4, 1780

  The following day

  “Mother, I have some terrible news,” Lavinia said, once she had greeted Lady Gray and given her a pretty hat from Manchester.

  Her mother put down the hat and dropped into her chair. “I know it already.”

  “You do?”

  “Diana Belgrave has stolen Lord Roland from under your very nose. At this rate, you will be nothing more than an old maid, and my horrid cousin will have a duchess as a daughter!”

  “I was not referring to Diana,” Lavinia said.

  Her mother put a drop of Dr. Robert’s Robust Formula on her tongue. “What could be more important than the fact my daughter has bungled yet another chance to become a duchess?” She sighed and tipped her head back, closing her eyes. “What I would do without these drops for my poor nerves, I really don’t know.”

  “My pearls have been stolen,” Lavinia said bluntly. “The string I have are made of paste. My ruby earrings are worthless glass.”

  Her mother didn’t respond or open her eyes. Lavinia picked up her hand. “Do you understand, Mother? I’m almost certain that your jewelry will be found to be counterfeit as well.”

  “Oh, they’re long gone,” her mother said, still not opening her eyes.

  Lavinia’s mouth opened in a silent gasp.

  “I’ll not forgive you for many a month for allowing Lord Roland to slip back into Diana’s clutches,” her mother said fretfully. “I thought the emeralds would give us time, but you were too selfish to choose one of those Frenchmen.”

  “Emeralds? What do you mean by that?” Lavinia asked. Neither of them had emeralds, to the best of her—

  A terrible thought occurred to her. “Diana’s emerald necklace,” she breathed, feeling as if someone had struck her hard. “You took it? You—you sold it?”

  Lady Gray sniffed, opened her eyes, and blinked at Lavinia. “How do you think we survived? It was only because we lived in France that I was able to keep the country house and the townhouse. We have no money.”

  She said it as casually as one might remark on the lack of good weather.

  “What do you mean, we have no money?” Lavinia cried, springing to her feet.

  Lady Gray waved her vinaigrette. “I mean just that,” she said, in a familiar, tragic tone. Except this time, she wasn’t complaining about coddled eggs or a chilly breeze. “We have no money. We are destitute.”

  “What happened? Did you—did someone persuade you into an improvident investment?”

  “What on earth do you mean?” Lady Gray cried. “I hate it when you use large words, and you know it. We haven’t had money for years.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “I took Willa in,” her mother said. “An orphaned child.”

  Lavinia felt a sudden wave of sickness. “Please tell me that you didn’t use Willa’s inheritance.”

  “Use? I took care of her, as her parents asked me to do.”

  “Do you mean to say that Willa’s inheritance paid for our servants, our clothing, our travel . . . everything? School? Carriages?”

  “No one can say that I didn’t do my duty by her, because she married the son of a duke. If you were a better daughter to me, and less selfish, you’d be engaged to the heir to the dukedom now, and none of this would matter. Why do you think I allowed you to leave Paris, where we were so comfortable, and come to Lindow Castle? You were supposed to marry the heir!”

  “Oh, no,” Lavinia whispered. Willa had no idea; she was certain of that. Lavinia had to tell her. Repay her, somehow. And she had to tell Diana, obviously. How on earth could she ever repay the emeralds? They had to be worth a king’s ransom.

  “After Willa married, Lord Alaric’s solicitors wouldn’t pay any more bills.” There was a shrewish note in Lady Gray’s voice, as if she believed Willa’s estate should have kept sending money.

  Lavinia looked numbly around her mother’s bedchamber in Lindow Castle. The pretty, festive hat she’d purchased for her mother was one of three. The duke had paid for them, and she’d told him that Lady Gray would repay him.

  “The question is, what are we going to do now?” her mother said. “If you hadn’t been such a ninny, turning down those marriage proposals,
you could be married by now and no one would know the difference!”

  “My dowry,” Lavinia said dully. “Do I still have one?”

  Her mother hesitated.

  Epilogue

  Palazzo Wilde

  Florence, Italy

  July 3, 1784

  Four years later

  Diana walked out into the large enclosed garden behind the palazzo, and shaded her eyes against the bright Italian sun. North was supervising the completion of an octagonal wrought-iron pergola designed from his own sketch; a pair of workmen were presently perched atop of it, putting into place its crowning detail, a magnificent twisting finial.

  For a jarring moment, she had a memory of years earlier: North in his wig, powder, and heels, versus the man who stood before her now. It wasn’t just that North’s skin was golden from the sun, or the thin linen shirt hastily tucked into his breeches. Or that he wore a wig only if she made him.

  Or even the bundle tucked in his left elbow, a bundle with a small fist waving in the air.

  No, the difference was written plainly on North’s face, and it was happiness. Happiness, it seems, isn’t elusive. Not when you have a partner to laugh with, eat with, travel with, and sleep with.

  A partner to love.

  Her husband came toward her. “She’s fine,” he said. “Doesn’t mind the banging at all. Rose is a true Wilde, as stouthearted as can be.”

  Diana took their baby, kissing her on a button-sized nose graced with three adorable freckles. Rose had her father’s blue eyes, and her mother’s hair, and a temperament so sweet that Diana swore she’d inherited it from her namesake, Diana’s sister. The baby cooed in greeting before smiling so widely that dimples appeared on both plump cheeks.

  Diana looked up from Rose and surveyed the pergola. “It’s marvelous, North.”

  “It’s almost complete,” he said, pointing to the exuberant finial at the top. “This afternoon, they’ll stretch the canvas roof, hang the curtains, and bring in the furniture.”