To Love and to Loathe (The Regency Vows #2)(91)

He’d made a mistake, and he was suffering for it now. But he would not make such a mistake again.

With a determined nod, he turned from the window to ring for his valet and begin the day.



* * *




Diana had slept like a baby.

Well, that might not have been strictly accurate. Because while she had, on occasion, observed a baby in a heavy slumber, she doubted that this effect was achieved by the application of a dose of brandy, administered rather liberally. Rather, she hoped not, for the baby’s sake.

Because no baby deserved to be feeling how she was feeling at the moment: like she had been run down by a carriage. Or as though a flock of sheep milled about on her head.

“Ouch!” she said, clapping a hand to the aching head in question after a particularly sharp tug of the hairbrush as Toogood dressed her hair.

“Apologies, my lady,” Toogood said, not sounding sorry at all. She gave her mistress an assessing look in the mirror, and Diana straightened her shoulders, attempting to appear bright-eyed and refreshed. Like a heroine from a romantic novel.

Or a rabbit.

“I don’t think you need to apply quite so much force, Toogood,” she said mildly, examining her nails in a casual fashion.

“I don’t think you need to apply quite so many spirits, my lady,” was her maid’s reply.

“I beg your pardon, Toogood?” she asked sweetly. “Surely mine ears did not detect the sound of my maid, of all people, offering commentary on my behavior?”

“No indeed, my lady,” Toogood agreed, securing a hairpin with a jab that Diana could only describe as vicious. “You must have misheard. Perhaps a poor night’s sleep has your ears struggling to work properly this morning?” Another hairpin, another sharp jab.

“I’ll have you know that I slept extremely well last night,” Diana said pleasantly. “Like the dead, some might say.”

“Some might,” Toogood concurred. “Or like the inebriated, some others might say.” She jabbed yet another hairpin into the knot at the nape of Diana’s neck.

“How many pins does this coiffure require, Toogood?”

“About as many tots of brandy as widows require, I expect.” Jab. Jab. Jab.

“Toogood, do you have something you wish to say to me?” Diana asked severely.

“Not at all.” Jab. “Just offering some conversation to pass the time.” Jab. “Thought it might brighten your spirits.” Jab.

This torture session was mercifully interrupted by a sharp knock at the door. Diana stiffened, wondering who it might be—it was late morning, and she had neglected to put in an appearance at the breakfast table, instead taking a tray in her room. Surely it wasn’t Jeremy? Surely he could not possibly think she wished to speak to him after the fiasco of the previous evening?

Surely nothing, she thought darkly. Making assumptions based on the presumed common sense of the male sex was a recipe for disaster. A moment later, however, her worries were dissipated by the sound of Violet’s voice.

“I know you’re in there! I will burst into this room even if I need to fetch a battering ram to do it—what, Emily?” The response was indecipherable through the thick wood of the door; a moment later, Violet exclaimed, “What do you mean, you can pick locks?”

“Let them in, Toogood,” Diana said, somehow suppressing a sigh and a smile at the same time. A moment later she had been descended upon by her two dearest friends in the world, whom she loved as much as she loved anyone—and whom she very much did not wish to see at this particular moment.

They, however, decidedly did wish to see her; with a nod at Toogood, who speedily departed, Diana turned on her stool to face the inquisition.

“Good morning,” she said calmly, folding her hands in her lap. She was wearing one of her favorite morning gowns of periwinkle blue, having decided that even if she felt, physically and emotionally, as though she had been dragged behind a cart down a bumpy country lane for ten miles, there was no reason for her outward appearance to reflect that.

“You weren’t at breakfast,” Violet said, stating the obvious.

“You weren’t at breakfast,” Emily said to Violet, a note of mild objection in her voice. “You only know Diana wasn’t there because I told you.”

Violet’s cheeks flushed. “I was… otherwise occupied. That’s not the point!”

“How do you know I wasn’t ‘otherwise occupied’?” Diana asked, attempting to forestall the moment of explanation for as long as possible.

“Because Jeremy was there,” Emily said quietly. “Looking as though he hadn’t slept a wink. And not in a good way,” she added hastily. “He looked, in fact, about as miserable as you do at the moment.”

This was, in some sense, gratifying to hear—Diana should have hated to have worked herself into such a state over a man who was indifferent to her, after all. But in large part, this merely served to stoke her ire even further, considering that the unhappiness on both their parts was entirely of his own making.

“I assure you he deserves every bit of misery he has experienced,” she said viciously, rising to her feet and commencing to pace back and forth across the length of her bedchamber.

“I take it your conversation last night did not go well?” Violet asked, perching atop the arm of one of the chairs clustered before the fireplace.