Too Wilde to Wed (The Wildes of Lindow Castle, #2)(20)

Diana felt as if her stomach had shriveled into a small, hard lump. Some errant, prideful part of her didn’t want North to know how little respect her mother had for her.

Even after Rose had been summarily cast out of their life for the crime of carrying a child out of wedlock, Diana had kept making excuses, kept trying to love her mother, until she was sent off to a betrothal party in brightly colored silks and satins, while Mrs. Belgrave remained in London to plaster over a vexing setback.

Rose’s death.

“My mother will never relent,” Diana said, allowing the familiar grief to resonate silently through her bones. “She thinks very poorly of me.”

“Why didn’t you turn to the child’s family?” North asked.

“Godfrey’s father and grandfather passed away in a carriage accident, and his grandmother died years before.”

“You are Lavinia Gray’s cousin,” North continued, his eyes steady on hers. “You cannot tell me that Lavinia would not invite you to live with her. Even if her mother refused, she would share her pin money.”

Diana managed a wry smile. “Lavinia and Lady Gray moved to France directly after our betrothal party. I tried to write to her, but I didn’t have her address. I’m sure she wrote to me, but my mother would have destroyed the letter. I doubt Lavinia has any idea what happened after I jilted you, unless those terrible prints depicting us are circulating outside of England.”

“Bloody hell.” North reached up as if to run his hands through his hair, only to encounter his wig. Without pausing, he tossed it onto a nearby chair.

His hair was black and short. Without the white wig, his eyes appeared darker and his cheekbones sharper. He had always been beautiful, but now—now he looked potent. Masculine.

Diana could at last imagine him on the battlefield. It had been impossible to picture the man she had known mincing around a battlefield in a tall wig and high heels.

But this man? He was a warrior, from his heavily muscled shoulders to his—to everything.

“Did you know that they are saying that I raped you?” He sounded as if he were gritting his teeth.

Diana almost apologized again, but she had the feeling he would snarl at her. “I have seen the print depicting us as characters in Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. Could you dismiss them as an artistic flight of fancy?”

“No matter how fanciful, I dislike being depicted as a rapist.”

“The print doesn’t pretend to be accurate,” she pointed out. “You are caught in the act of emerging from a little trunk, which seems to be crammed with jewels as well as you. And you are not a small man.”

She let herself enjoy his broad chest from beneath lowered lashes.

His mouth had turned to an uncompromising line. “I don’t find it amusing, no matter the size of the trunk.”

“Well, you must change your attitude,” she said firmly, ignoring his curt tone. “The print is as absurd as those depicting Lord Alaric slicing off the head of a giant sea monster.”

“Absurd they may be, but I feature as the villain instead of the hero.”

Diana made a face at him. “You aren’t a villain; we’ve already discussed the fact that our comedy of errors has a villainess, and I am she. I shall find some way to make the ton understand that you had nothing to do with Godfrey, nor with my employment. I promise you that.”

“You needn’t bother,” he said flatly. “I don’t give a damn.”

“You can’t have it both ways,” she pointed out. “Either you are unamused by your depiction in a Shakespeare play, or you don’t give a damn, in which case, the fact you extract yourself from a trunk half your size is as entertaining as your brother’s subjugated sea monster.”

Miraculously, his eyes went from frigid to amused. “Subjugated sea monster?”

She grinned, happy to see that glimmer of laughter. “Subdued squid? Licked leviathan?”

“In the midst of my lecturing, did I mention that the perfect duchess never points out when her spouse has ceased to be logical?”

“I’m sure you would have got around to it, given time,” Diana said.

His eyes were at half mast, glittering at her with an expression in them that she hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t longing, or affection—

And it was gone.

“So that’s the tale of how I ended up in the cottage where Lady Knowe found me,” Diana said, circling back to his question. “There’s no one to blame, I assure you.”

Ever since Rose’s death, she had spent a good deal of time thinking about blame. Whom does one blame, when life isn’t as one wishes?

She could blame her mother. Or Archibald Ewing, for anticipating his wedding vows. Or the drunken coachman who overturned the Ewing carriage and killed Archibald and his father. Or . . . it was endless.

The one person she couldn’t blame was North, and it was time to tell him the whole truth.

“Godfrey isn’t your child, but he isn’t my child either,” she said, feeling a wash of pink traveling up her chest. “He is my sister Rose’s child.”

His eyes traveled slowly over her face. “Your sister’s child.” The words thumped down into the room, as if susceptible to gravity. “Illegitimate, I presume.”

“Yes,” Diana said flatly, adding, “Rose died of a fever, two days before we were due to leave for the betrothal party.”