Too Wilde to Wed (The Wildes of Lindow Castle, #2)(21)

“Your tears,” he stated. “I am sorry for your loss.”

She gave him a crooked smile.

“I will admit that I’m relieved to know you were not weeping over our proposed marriage. Is that why your mother didn’t accompany you to the party?”

She nodded.

“I have no wish to take your grief lightly,” he said, his voice dry as dust, “but the news that you jilted me in order to care for a child who wasn’t your own seems tailor-made to knock down my ducal arrogance. Couldn’t you have simply told me of the boy’s existence, either before or after your sister passed away?”

Diana shook her head. “My mother felt that adding a besmirched sister to a grocer grandfather would make me persona non grata among the ton. Certainly not duchess material.”

“That suggests that I am as shallow as the leaders of the ton,” he observed. His face didn’t show a hint of emotion, but she had the odd impression he was hurt.

“You are not simply you,” she said, fumbling to explain herself. “You are the future Duke of Lindow.”

She saw that strike home. He would have married her, because he was an honorable man. As yet for the future head of one of the oldest and most august families in all England, a lady with a besmirched sister ought to be out of the question.

“Why didn’t you tell me the truth when I came to say goodbye before leaving England? You knew what conclusion I had reached.”

Diana tried to summon up another smile and failed. “It seemed kinder to let you think that I was . . . that Godfrey was mine.”

An ominous darkness crossed his eyes. “Because I would pine for you, unless I thought myself betrothed to an arrant whore?”

The last two words were spoken mildly, but they stung.

“I was ashamed to have jilted you without explanation.” Her fingers were quivering again, but she didn’t let her chin drop, kept holding his gaze. “I deserved to have you hate me. You should hate me. I mean, you probably already did, because—”

“I could never hate you,” North said evenly.

Diana gulped. “That’s—that’s very good to know.”

“So you let me believe the child was yours to spur my dislike.”

“It was an impulse,” Diana whispered. “A very stupid one.” She cleared her throat. “I was determined not to accept help from you, and if you knew Godfrey was my sister’s you would have felt compelled to . . .”

He raised an eyebrow.

“To be the hero,” she said in a rush. “I deserved to be the villainess, don’t you see?” She couldn’t tell if he was incredulous or just plain scornful.

He gave a short bark of laughter. “Bloody hell, you were trying to save me, weren’t you? You thought I was in love with you, and so I would fight to make you my wife.”

Her fingers twisted so hard that she winced. “I thought that you had made a promise to marry me, and you would insist on seeing it through. I couldn’t allow that to happen.”

North threw back his drink, leaned over, and pulled the bell cord that summoned Prism. “I think they’ve left us alone long enough, don’t you?”

“Prism has certainly been gone quite a while,” Diana said, steadying her voice.

“My aunt likely has him tied to the balustrade.”

“What?”

“Oh, not for erotic purposes, but so that he can’t interrupt our deep and meaningful conversation. You hadn’t noticed that you have made a conquest of my Aunt Knowe? She’s hoping that I’ll be overcome by the dregs of passion and compromise you.”

The dregs of passion . . . She deserved that.

“It’s impossible to compromise a governess,” Diana observed, desperate to talk of something other than their personal history. “Once a lady accepts a wage, she is no longer a lady.”

“I don’t think that’s the case.” He frowned. “My governess, Miss Raymond, had a voice like a frog and an unfortunate tendency to grow hair on her upper lip, but no one would have said she was less than a lady.”

“The condition of being a lady is complicated, like the five hundred pounds that a lady must pay out of her dowry to excuse her indiscretions, even though a gentleman has no such requirement,” Diana explained. “I can assure you that a woman can’t be compromised—which implies marriage—by a man who pays her wage.”

North’s brows snapped together. “A gentleman who treats a lady with injudicious attention has compromised her, and must offer his hand in marriage.” That was a growl. Diana decided not to remind him that the hour they just spent together would be considered fodder for a forced marriage proposal by any rule of polite society that she’d heard.

“It’s different with us,” North said, apparently reading her face.

“Oh, why?” She smiled into her glass; good manners dictated that a lady shouldn’t smirk at a gentleman.

And she was still a lady, albeit one with a wage.

“We are old acquaintances, and my aunt will join us any moment,” he said stiffly.

Diana wasn’t impressed, and let him know it with a roll of her eyes. “If you return to polite society with that naive attitude, you’ll be compromised before you know it. Actually, you’re lucky my mother doesn’t have a third daughter, because you’d be snapped up in a second.”