To Love and to Loathe (The Regency Vows #2)(19)
“And what qualities would these be?” Willingham asked. “All ones that I, your beloved grandson, already possess, I assume?”
“There you would be wrong, my boy,” his grandmother said sternly. “You are as much a fool as most of the other young bucks I see running wild these days, although I will grant you that you’ve the face of an angel, which softens the blow.”
Diana rolled her eyes, which Willingham of course noticed. He grinned at her, then widened his eyes in an approximation of angelic innocence. She stared back at him, stony-faced.
“But the more angelic the face, the more devilish the man, that’s what I always say,” his grandmother added, giving her grandson a suspicious look. “I’m certain I only hear a quarter of the appalling gossip about you, and that is entirely too much already, I assure you. I wish I could say your father would be ashamed, but he was a scoundrel through and through.”
“But,” Emily began hesitantly, “wasn’t he your son?”
“That he was,” the dowager marchioness agreed without a trace of sheepishness. “He would no doubt be delighted to see his own son following in his footsteps.” She paused dramatically. “I, however, have higher hopes for this family. It’s about time the name Willingham came to mean something more than drunken womanizing.” She gave her grandson a hard stare. “I applaud your efforts and your stamina, my boy, but you’ve made your point.”
Violet let out a cough that Diana was certain was a hastily concealed laugh, then said, “Well, I, for one, am glad that you were able to see Lady Emily here safely, at least.”
“Yes,” Emily agreed, and smiled at Willingham. “Thank you for the invitation, my lord. I know that eligible misses are not traditionally counted among the numbers at your house parties.”
“We seem to be bucking that tradition this year,” Willingham said darkly.
“Yes,” the dowager marchioness said, “I have been given the charge of chaperoning Lady Helen Courtenay—her mother can be fiendishly determined, when she wants something.” She cast a quick glance around the room. “Sparing us her presence this evening, though, is she?” It did not seem to give her even a moment’s pause that she had only now noted the absence of the lady whose virtue she was supposed to be so carefully guarding.
“Lady Helen professed to be fatigued by the journey and has requested a tray in her room,” Willingham said in tones of thinly veiled relief.
“Hmph,” snorted the dowager marchioness, in a way that suggested that was all that needed to be said about such deviant behavior. “She’s an odd one, that Lady Helen.”
“What do you mean?” Diana asked, turning back to her.
“She’s developed rather a reputation as the most desperate, marriage-minded girl of the ton—men are terrified to dance more than once with her, as I understand it.”
“Yes,” Diana said. “But what about that is odd?”
“I knew the girl when she was growing up, and she was nothing like that at all,” the dowager marchioness finished thoughtfully. “She seems so different a creature these days as to be entirely unrecognizable.”
“It just goes to show how dreadful the marriage mart is,” Violet said sternly, her gaze softening as her eyes fixed momentarily on her husband across the room.
“Which is why marriage is an institution I’ve no intention of entering into,” Willingham said smugly.
“That’s what you think, my boy,” his grandmother said, swatting him on the arm. “That’s what you think.”
Diana grinned at this—it seemed the dowager marchioness had well and truly taken Diana’s casual mention of her wager with Willingham to heart. She was rather looking forward to the next couple of weeks—if it was going to involve the dowager marchioness flinging Willingham at every unmarried lady of quality who crossed his path, she thought this might make for the most entertaining country house party she’d attended in years.
Watching Willingham suffer was always an experience to savor, after all.
* * *
Dinner quickly taught Diana that she had been overly hasty in her glee. It began as soon as they were seated, whereupon the dowager marchioness made rather a production out of her concern for Emily’s bare arms, claiming that her seat—directly to Willingham’s right—was in the line of a mysterious draft that would naturally cause one with such a delicate, fragile constitution (Emily, in fact, was rarely ill) to take a chill.
“Lady Templeton, why don’t you trade places with her?” the dowager marchioness asked, in a tone of voice that made it perfectly clear that this wasn’t really a question at all. “You’re much sturdier and heartier than Lady Emily, I’m certain you won’t be at risk.”
“Thank you, Lady Willingham,” Diana said sweetly, rising to follow orders. “I’ve never heard myself described quite so similarly to a horse.”
A few seats down, Penvale made a sort of aborted neighing sound—aborted, Diana was fairly certain, because Violet had elbowed him in the stomach. On her other side, Audley looked as though he was trying hard not to laugh. Under different circumstances, Diana would have been pleased to see him looking so cheerful—the past few weeks of marital bliss had turned him nearly unrecognizable from the overly serious man she had known for so long—but at the moment she was not feeling terribly charitable.