Too Wilde to Wed (The Wildes of Lindow Castle, #2)(34)

North swallowed another curse.

“I’ll show you my favorite later,” Lady Knowe said, her grin broadening. “It’s entitled Too Wilde to Wed. You’re dressed for court, with patches, rouge, and a wig fit for the Lord Chancellor.”

North groaned.

“A young woman representing Diana is kneeling at your feet, her hands clasped in entreaty. Very dramatic. All you need is a playwright to pen your life in order to sell out a theater. A play about your depraved habits might well outsell the play about Alaric’s love life. Or perhaps they could do a back-to-back matinee! Wilde in Love followed by Too Wilde to Wed.”

“Thank goodness, the only dramatist we know is not free to write that play,” North said, adding, “She isn’t, is she?”

A couple of years ago a deranged playwright named Prudence Larkin had fallen in love with Alaric and been unable to curb her jealousy. The Duke of Lindow had eventually placed her in a comfortable sanitarium.

His aunt shook her head, her face sobering. “I’m afraid not. The poor girl has fastened her attentions on the chaplain.”

“Has she written a play about him?” North asked, fascinated. Having met Prudence, he could imagine her smuggling a play out of the asylum and having it presented at Theater Royal in Drury Lane.

“Worse. A few weeks ago she tore off her gown in the chapel. He was mortified, and the mistress of the house wrote me that Prudence had to be given a sedative, as she is convinced she is being kept from her lover.”

“It sounds uncomfortable for all concerned,” North said. He wasn’t overly sympathetic, because Prudence had nearly murdered both Alaric and Willa.

“Especially for the poor chaplain,” Aunt Knowe said, gurgling with laughter. “Apparently he’s sixty-seven and has led a blamelessly chaste life.”

“The first set of breasts he saw as an adult were Prudence’s?” North asked with a real smile on his lips. “That could rival Alaric’s play. What the Vicar Saw, A Comedy in Three Acts.”

Aunt Knowe threw back her head and laughed. “I’m so glad you’re home.” She stopped and put a callused hand on his cheek. “We were all terrified that something would happen to you over there, so far from home.”

North managed a crooked smile. “Here I am, safe and sound.”

“Safe, anyway. Sound will come, darling. It will come.”

Three hours later, North felt as if the heaviness that had settled into his bones would never leave. As the castle grew darker and quieter, the ghosts grew louder.

He paced in circles in his room, cursing his own stupidity. This weakness wasn’t him. He loathed weakness. He had never been weak, not when Horatius died, and not when young Peach had died in his arms.

An hour or so after the castle fell into complete silence, he found himself moving swiftly through its deserted corridors. This time he didn’t pace around the picture galleries—either of them—or visit the kitchens.

One lamp affixed to the wall in the nursery corridor had been turned low but left burning. He stopped for a moment, wondering if it was a sign, a welcome for tired visitors who had sailed from a far continent and washed up on this dark little island.

At the end of the corridor, the door of Diana’s room was slightly ajar. He pushed it open, because the needling instinct he felt to go to her was stronger than the prideful instinct to avoid the woman who had jilted him.

He breathed easier as soon as he entered the room. It smelled like a tallow candle, and he made a note to tell Prism that servant though Diana might be—at the moment—he didn’t ever want to see a tallow candle in her room, or in the nursery as a whole, for that matter.

It also smelled like woodsmoke, honey, and Diana. She didn’t wear a complicated perfume concocted only for her. Her scent was light and joyful, flowery with a hint of lemon.

Her bed was empty, but a jar of honey and a plate of melting butter had been left on the hearth. One chair—her chair—held a sleeping person wrapped in a blanket.

He moved soundlessly across the room and stood with his back to the fire. The blanket was snuggled to Diana’s ears. Her hair was partly caught under its folds and partly tumbling down her side.

God, she was beautiful, her skin so translucent and delicate that he could see a pulse fluttering in her forehead.

For some reason he felt weak in the knees, so he dropped to a crouch. No wonder the monstrous Mrs. Belgrave had known she could launch her daughter onto the marriage mart and catch the biggest fish of all.

Diana had the beautifully knit bones of royalty, along with a fresh sensuality to her mouth. He’d never seen the like.

He was close enough to touch her knee, but he didn’t. It wouldn’t be proper.

The damnable thing was that he didn’t think he had been spellbound by the clear planes of her cheekbones, or her straight little aristocratic nose, back when he first met her. It was her laugh.

He’d asked her to marry him when she was covered in a bucket of face paint and rarely murmured more than a sentence at a time.

So what could have entranced him, if not her laughter?

Archie Ewing had been a decent lad, which didn’t explain why he had debauched his own fiancée. But if Diana’s sister was as beautiful as she, Archie had likely fallen in love with Rose, never imagining that Fate would send a drunken coachman his way.