Too Wilde to Wed (The Wildes of Lindow Castle, #2)(15)
“I will dispatch a tailor from London to create a new wardrobe in your chosen style, unless you’d prefer to find someone in the village,” Boodle said, adding with a touch of acid, “I hear that the baker’s wife takes in mending on occasion.”
“I would be grateful for a tailor,” North said, sitting down and returning to his book.
In Dante’s Inferno, the second circle was populated by lovers. Dante’s chat with Paolo and Francesca was written in old-fashioned Italian and dashed hard to understand, but North came to the conclusion that either the wind was howling in their ears or they were being blown about the world by the wind.
Dante had caught something about the experience of falling in love. North might have denied falling in love with Diana, but in his heart, he knew perfectly well that he had experienced either a fit of madness or of love that had come over him with the violence of a summer storm.
He liked the idea of blaming a fierce wind for blowing him into the ranks of dandies. He couldn’t believe that he had bothered to wear heels or a tall wig in an effort to court Diana. He had cared enough to wear patches on his face. It seemed inconceivable now.
Boodle caught his attention by waving a fistful of neckcloths in front of him, each edged with lace or ruffles.
“Don’t I have any plain scarves?”
“Plain is not in my vocabulary,” Boodle said, nose in the air. “I would hope that you will replace me with a decent valet. Whatever you do, I beg you not to consider the second footman, Cozens. The man had the impudence to inform me that he meant to become a gentleman’s gentleman.”
North grunted. In the back of his head, he was aware that he would be shortly dining with Diana.
For the last time, perhaps.
She would have to leave soon, taking that boy with her. His aunt was right. They needed to sit down in a civilized fashion and discuss her future.
But no more apologies.
“I told him,” Boodle said, “I told him that you couldn’t be a gentleman’s gentleman, if you weren’t a gentleman to start with!”
North made a mental note to hire Cozens.
Chapter Four
Diana slipped into the Prussian Dining Room to find it empty. A settee and a few chairs were arranged in front of an unlit fireplace, and a round table was set for the evening meal.
Supposedly the chamber had gained its name from oak panels painted Prussian blue, but North’s brother Alaric had confided with a wicked twinkle that they all thought the name derived from the second duchess’s seduction of a Prussian nobleman.
Diana skirted the table, noting absently that Prism had laid out the Leboeuf china, which Lord Alaric had recently sent from Paris.
Now that she was a member of the household, she knew far more about silver and china than she ever had before. The gold-embossed, porcelain plates were superb—and worth a king’s ransom. Prism himself would wash them tonight, entrusting Mrs. Mousekin to dry each plate as he handed them to her.
Sometimes she felt overwhelmed by how much she hadn’t known about the work required to manage a large house and its occupants. She had had no idea that a single muslin gown might take hours to press. She hadn’t known that servants often stayed up until the wee hours to clean the library, if the master chose to work late at his desk.
She hadn’t known anything important.
Catching sight of her tired black gown in the mirror over the mantelpiece made her wince, so she veered over to the window seat and sat down, leaning her chin on her crossed arms. Somewhere off to her left, Fitzy, the castle’s irritable peacock, must be parading around his territory. She cocked an ear but didn’t hear his screech.
During her first visit, she hadn’t known that it took four gardeners and up to ten helpers to maintain the castle’s gardens, the lawns rolling off to the west, the apple orchard, the ornamental pool that surrounded a Roman-style folly.
And yet she thought she could be the mistress of this ancient pile of stone, with its traditions, its priest holes, its sprawling nursery wing? It seemed unimaginable. Lady Knowe spent Tuesday—all of Tuesday, every Tuesday—going over accounts. Because the duchess spent most of her time in London with her husband, and North had gone to war, the duke’s sister had stepped into the gap.
Which Diana, frankly, could not have done.
Her mother considered money the provenance of the middling sort and below. Ladies went shopping with a maid and a footman, who had charge of a velvet coin purse. Sometimes the merchant simply sent Diana home with the merchandise.
She had never considered how her beautiful shoes and silk stockings had been paid for.
Her mother had been deeply opposed to her daughters learning anything that had a smell of commerce, as if an understanding of currency would make everyone remember Diana’s grandfather—whom no one forgot, anyway.
No wonder North had tried to ease her way with lectures on this and that.
One thing she had never fooled herself about was her ability to hold the attention of the man who would be lord of all this. North would have seen through her masks, wigs, and lip salve, and been bored to death by her, if not repulsed by her hair and freckles. It had been a terrible strain trying to appear duchess-worthy: intelligent, thoughtful, and all the rest of it.
Her own mother had acknowledged the truth in their last terrible encounter, when Mrs. Belgrave had ordered Diana to be gone and to take Godfrey with her. Rose had been a true lady—cultured and intellectual, whereas Diana was impulsive and foolish. Apparently, their mother had always known Diana would muck up her marriage; she had just hoped it would happen when it was too late for North to cast her off.