what most delighted his wife, only because she’d displeased him?
The same kind who would force her into marriage by threatening her father with debtors’ prison and her fiancé with ruin?
When she’d first related to him the reasons behind her marriage, he’d rejected the story with contemptuous disbelief. But from the bits he’d just pried from her, it was just possible that her tall tale might be true.
Another memory surfaced: once during their courtship, he’d read her a piece of effulgent, adjective-laden verse, then waited expectantly for her reaction. After a few moments, her lips opening and closing as she sought a response, she’d blurted, ‘Oh, Alastair, that was awful!’ After a moment of outrage, he’d laughed and admitted that it was overwritten.
He’d teased her that she’d have to marry him rather than some dandy of the ton, for as impossible as she found it to prevaricate, she’d never be fashionable. She’d readily agreed, confessing that her mind went completely blank when faced with constructing a polite evasion to mask her real thoughts, especially if pressed by her questioner.
As he had pressed her tonight.
What was he to make of what she’d revealed...and what she’d left out?
Puzzlement and something more than curiosity stirred in him. Something like compassion, and a concern he didn’t want to feel.
All he’d hoped for tonight was to have the gift he’d offered relax Diana enough to finally break the hold she was maintaining over her response to him. Still, he had to admit, he’d enjoyed looking for something to tempt her.
He’d always loved giving her gifts. She’d accepted even the simplest with joy, appreciative of the care he had taken in choosing them. He’d been delighted when he hit upon the idea of the paints, sure she would find them impossible to resist. He’d spent a good deal of time looking for the finest pigments and brushes available.
Instead of accepting the supplies with the pleasure he’d envisaged, she’d put them back in the box and recommended he return them.
He tried once again to take in the incomprehensible notion that a girl of her ability no longer painted.
Well, he’d not be returning them. It was a travesty for an artist of her skill to give up the brush, almost an insult to the father from whom she’d inherited her talent.
He’d have to try tempting her with them again.
Which reminded him of her shocking response to his offer to give her pleasure. Though he’d been stung when she’d seemed suspicious of his reasons, he had to concede her instincts hadn’t been all that far off the mark.
He hadn’t entered this affair for her benefit. Not that he’d precisely wanted to hurt her. Indeed, given how indifferent she’d appeared to him the last few times they met, he’d not considered it possible to injure her. He had, however, wanted to reach her and force a response.
He still wanted that. Every instinct he possessed told him that tonight, he’d come a hair’s breadth close to sweeping her beyond control. Next time, he was convinced, he would bring her all the way to completion.
But now, he wanted more than physical surrender.
Not just her body had responded to him. He’d caught her staring at him when he entered the parlour tonight; unaware he was inspecting her closely as well, she’d not been wearing the impassive mask behind which she normally retreated. In her unguarded expression, he’d read wonder, attraction, and a vulnerability completely at odds with the controlled, emotionless woman she tried to appear.
Had she truly been coerced into marriage? What had the Duke done to turn the vibrant girl he’d known into a woman who turned an indifferent face to the world, who seemed desperate to maintain a rigid self-control?
Now, he knew he couldn’t walk away from her until he uncovered the whole truth about Diana.
Having fled Green Park Buildings without waiting for a footman to call her a sedan chair, Diana quickly traversed the dark streets, keeping herself into the shadows. Arrived safely at Laura Place, grateful for the enveloping cloak that had allowed her to travel with her gown not fully fastened and to be able to remove it without having to wake up a maid, she crept up to her bedchamber. Knowing she was too distraught to think rationally or worry over what Annie would think of this sudden ability to get herself out of her gown without assistance, she’d shed her garments, thrown on her night rail and wrapped herself, trembling, in the bedclothes.
With her dissatisfied body humming and her mind racing in panicked indecision, she slept poorly.
* * *
Diana woke early, hardly more rested than when she’d laid her head on the pillow. But the last hour before dawn was the only time she’d have alone to think before the household was stirring.
Escaping Alastair and his too-persistent questions last night had been the most temporary of solutions. She was still bound to return to him tonight, where she was likely to face even more pointed enquiries.
She could just tell him everything, rather than waiting for him to trick and dig it from her. But, with Graveston having methodically isolated her from everyone she’d known, she’d lost the knack of making confidences. Besides, how could she revisit those scenes of misery and despair, without the risk that some of the ugly emotions she’d worked so hard to bury might escape the pit into which she’d thrust them?
She was free of that place now, of him. She didn’t want to remember any of it.
She could still send Alastair a note, breaking off all contact.
The possibility tantalised. With no Alastair Ransleigh to challenge her control and distract her thoughts, she could bend all her energies into preparing herself to counter the move from Blankford she knew would soon be coming.
At the cost, of course, of whatever honour she had left.
She tried to talk herself out of that conviction; after all, ‘honour’ was a concept invented by the same gentlemen who wrote the laws allowing husbands to beat wives with impunity, assume control of all their assets and property to use or waste as they chose—and take away their children.
She tried to convince herself, but it wouldn’t wash; she was too much her father’s daughter. The idea that a pledge once given must be followed through, that a wrong done must if at all possible be righted, were precepts ingrained in her from earliest childhood.
But hard upon the swell of despair brought by that thought, a new, much more promising possibility occurred to her. One that set her needy senses racing.
Why not give Alastair what he wanted? What he truly wanted, which wasn’t the sordid details of her marriage, or some sloppy flood of emotion, but her physical surrender. If she allowed herself to respond to him, the nights at Green Park Buildings could be pleasant for them both, rather than exercises in frustration, as she tried to resist his touch. After inciting her to passion, he would be too satisfied and replete for conversation.
Excitement feathered through her, dissipating the lingering fatigue. She’d burned
