Too Wilde to Wed (The Wildes of Lindow Castle, #2)(18)

“You look—” She stopped. Perhaps he had engaged in hand-to-hand combat in the war.

He came to a halt before her, a glass in each hand. “We have both changed, haven’t we?” He glanced at her. “A plain black dress. No emeralds. No wig. Those shoes.”

They were sturdy, black shoes, made for a baker’s wife. She had traded her last pair of satin slippers for the only shoes the cobbler had that fit her. She had disliked the showy, colorful clothing her mother made her wear—except for her shoes.

For some reason, she loved frivolous, brightly colored slippers, the more spangled and bejeweled, the better.

She didn’t care a fig for North’s opinion, but being pitied still hurt.

“They are long-wearing,” she said, around a lump in her throat. “And appropriate to my station.”

The sympathy left his face as if it had never been there. “We need to talk about that, don’t we?”

“Not yet.” She raised her glass and took a reckless gulp. She was beginning to feel tipsy. “I would like to pretend to be Miss Diana Belgrave for a short while longer.”

There was an arrested look in his eyes, but she ignored it. Whether he understood or not, she would never be Miss Belgrave again. Not merely because her mother had informed her she was no longer a member of the family, but because something inside her had changed when her sister died.

She no longer had the faintest inclination to follow society’s dictates. She was her grandfather’s child now, for all intents and purposes.

“What would happen if you met me now?” North asked suddenly. She was still seated by the window, but he had withdrawn, most properly, to a chair across from her.

Diana almost laughed. He would have strolled past her. It was absurd to imagine that a future duke would have noticed her without all the jewels, the duchess-worthy attire, the face paint. Moreover, she had red hair, and without clever use of lip rouge, her mouth was too wide. He wouldn’t have distinguished her from the wallpaper.

Or the wallflowers, more to the point.

“What do you mean?” she asked, stalling.

“What if we had not met during the Season? What if we had not met until this moment? Would you still run to the other side of the room every time I approached?”

Despite herself, a little puff of air escaped her lips.

“Did you think I didn’t notice?” He raised his glass to his lips again. “I put it down to virginal shyness, which is somewhat absurd under the circumstances.”

She had to tell him that Godfrey wasn’t her son, but that could wait five minutes. Perhaps ten. “I am not terribly shy,” she admitted.

“I seem to have been remarkably obtuse. At some point one of my brothers asked if you were an interesting woman, and I replied that I didn’t want an interesting wife.”

She cracked a wry smile at that. “I have certainly proved fascinating to the gossips. But I’m not interesting in the right ways. Your brother’s implied judgment was correct.”

“I don’t think Alaric was implying anything, as you had scarcely met. What are ‘the right ways’?”

“For a noblewoman to be interesting? Your duchess should be someone like Lord Alaric’s wife. Willa is intelligent, and thoughtful, and never puts a foot wrong.”

“So you do put a foot wrong?”

She widened her eyes comically. “The only way I succeeded during the Season was by keeping silent. I was terrified of misspeaking every time we conversed. It was easier to avoid you.”

He flinched, just a small movement, but she saw it.

“The grand duke-to-be,” she said, rushing into speech, waving her hands as she found herself doing whenever she had confessed something embarrassing that she would have preferred to have kept to herself. “Graceful and stylish, perfect in every way. I had been hoping for a baronet. A kind man with a coach and four and a comfortable house, who would overlook the grocer in my family.”

“So it was disappointing when a gentleman who owned more than a coach and four made his interest known?” he asked dryly.

“My mother was not disappointed.” She grinned at him, because she liked the unpretentious flash of humor he was showing now. She’d certainly never seen any sign of it when they were courting. “I knew you were too grand for me, but she felt rightly that your interest was confirmation of her brilliance.”

“‘Her brilliance’?”

“Remember, my mother is a grocer’s daughter, for all she married a lord,” Diana explained. “My mother put months into making me fit to marry a duke. The woman whom you courted was her creation, and she rightly took the credit.”

She thought North’s gaze was cold before, but now it was icy. Yet she refused to allow him to believe a lie any longer. “You weren’t betrothed to me,” she said flatly. “Your bride-to-be was a docile girl shaped by my mother to your specific requirements.”

He scowled at that.

“Everyone knew that you were considering matrimony,” she told him. “My mother studied Lindow Castle and your family. She thought about tossing me at Lord Alaric’s feet, but at that point we had no idea when he would return to England, and besides, your brother will never be a duke.”

His shoulders moved sharply, as if he’d like to do something violent.