Too Wilde to Wed (The Wildes of Lindow Castle, #2)(25)

When he and Diana were betrothed, he had been desperately in love with his fiancée, figuratively at her feet. If she had told him of the Foundling Hospital, he would have fetched her nephew without hesitation, if only to wring a smile from her. Any lady with an understanding of the power women could wield over men would have known that.

Diana had had no idea. She had been naive, as well as impulsive.

At the moment he was so weary that he felt groggy and not a little queasy. Aunt Knowe had ordered only three courses at dinner, but even those were two more than he could eat.

Somehow, he had to return to being a man who expected four or five courses as his due. A man who would be offended by a table laid without at least eight to ten dishes at every course.

Not offended for himself, he thought, stumbling through an explanation he’d never considered before Diana broached the subject. Offended for the title. Reflexively protective of the title. He was always waiting, he realized now, for someone to point out how ill-fitted he was to the role, in comparison to Horatius.

It made it all the more ironic that Diana had shielded him from her bastard nephew in order to protect the title.

The deeply shaming part, the nagging fact he kept revisiting, was that he had glimpsed Diana’s desperate straits when he’d found her in that cottage. Nevertheless, he had ridden away in the grip of a savage rage, thinking she’d chosen a footman over him, over a duke.

Except that there hadn’t been a footman, nor an insult to his bloody honor. If he hadn’t been so defensive of his rank, he would have marched into that house and made sure she was taken care of, lover be damned.

He would have discovered that Diana had no lover. He would have learned of Rose’s illegitimate baby.

Godfrey’s parentage clarified Diana’s future.

She was his problem, not his father’s. Ophelia could solve the problem of who would care for Artie—but he would solve the problem of who would care for Diana.

She didn’t want him. She didn’t need him.

No, she did need him. She was destitute.

His mind went around and around, like a rat in a trap. It occurred to him to send her to the family house in Scotland, but that felt terribly far away. What if something happened, and she needed him?

He swung out of bed and made his way to the writing desk that stood before his window. Down below him, out there in the darkness, was Lindow Moss, the peat bog that spread east of the castle. With the window open, he could smell the wind that scoured across it.

London air was choked with smoke and dust. The air over Lindow Moss smelled like peat, not entirely pleasant, but clean, in its own way.

He was damned lucky to have been jilted. Lucky that he wasn’t in love any longer. Lucky that he recognized love for the mad wind Dante described before it was too late. Obviously, he hadn’t been in love with a real woman. He had never met the Diana whom he’d encountered yesterday: funny, rueful, deeply loyal.

Even her hair was a revelation.

Before, he had always known where Diana was in any room, because of the tall white cloud that was her wig. He’d been so besotted that he had always marked her location.

Thinking about that idiocy, he shoved his hand through his hair. It was growing again. He used to shave it as that made it easier to tolerate heavy wigs, as well as to avoid the lice that plagued his men.

Diana’s hair, her real hair, was dark red, with a sheen like a fox’s pelt, but softer.

He stared out over Lindow Moss, counting stars as a way of curbing his own stupidity.

In love with a governess?

The worst governess the castle had ever seen?

Hell, no.

This was merely the disagreeable aftermath of being jilted. Whenever he had woken in his tent in America after dreaming of Diana, the edge of erotic longing he felt had made him furious. He refused to lust after another man’s woman.

But as it turned out, she belonged to no man.

Godfrey, that plate-throwing boy, was her nephew, not her son. He almost liked the boy just for that. He himself had thrown a plate or two at Horatius, his infuriating brother—who was always right, always the best. Who wouldn’t have thrown a plate at Horatius?

Even now, he would love to throw something at the fool for getting drunk and taking a bet he could gallop across Lindow Moss. No one could cross a bog on horseback in the night. They’d rescued his horse, although Horatius’s body was never found.

Dead men, Horatius among them, crowded into his brain at night. He kept going over the names of those who died at Stony Point. John Goss, who was missing two front teeth. William Peach, mocked for the fuzz of his first beard. Peter Lithgow, the one they all called Gower.

Surviving prisoners of war from his regiment were due to be exchanged for American prisoners any day now. His father had pressured the Ministry to make certain that his men were part of the next exchange.

He couldn’t bring them home; they would be sent to another regiment. But he wasn’t sure they wanted to be home. They had joined willingly enough. He hadn’t pressed anyone into service, or hired Hessians to fill his regiment, the way other lords had done.

He turned from the window and walked to the door, unable to even glance at his bed. If he lay down, he’d fall into dreams of smoke and cannon fire, weeping men and groans of the dying.

Better to go—

Anywhere.

Out in the dark, echoing corridors, he paced restlessly, tracing the path he had forged the night before. He walked over stone flagging that stretched into irregular wings added by ancestors. Up and down staircases he went, through the kitchens again, and into the ballroom. The only floor he avoided was the nursery wing.