Too Wilde to Wed (The Wildes of Lindow Castle, #2)(48)

“North,” she said, marshaling arguments that would address his arrogance and thoughtlessness, not that sweet expression in his eyes and the way he looked at her as if she were a queen, ugly shoes or not.

“Now I owe you a pair of shoes and a pair of stockings,” he said, as if that excused him. As he pulled on his silk stockings, having retrieved them from the grass, she remembered how smooth the silk stockings she used to wear had felt on her legs. Her favorites were embroidered with pansies, and tied over her knees with ribbons embroidered with the same design.

They had been a pleasure to wear.

North was stamping into boots that had voyaged to the New World and back, and yet, because they were so well made, looked hardly the worse for wear.

“I am a governess,” she said, resolving to make herself understood to him. No matter how much she missed wearing silk stockings, they were part of her past and not her present.

He pulled her arm through his as if they were strolling through Hyde Park, whereas in fact they were heading up a small hill and would be making their way through an apple orchard. They were quite improperly alone, in other words.

“I don’t have very many belongings and you cannot take them.”

His brow furrowed. “Don’t we pay you a decent wage?”

“It is absurdly generous, considering my poor credentials. But everything costs money.” Godfrey’s clothing, for one. Any treats she bought him—or Artie, for that matter. Prism had told her to inform him about what she spent on the children, but how could she do that? Godfrey was in the castle under false pretenses.

“My aunt was furious about the clothing that Boodle took,” North said.

She stole a sideways glance. He was rubbing his chin. How had she thought his face unreadable? That quirk on one side of his mouth was rueful. “She has a good point, but . . .”

The slumberous expression in his eyes made her stomach twist. “Boodle made it possible for me to catch your attention,” he said. “He took a man who didn’t know a French wig from a pile of straw and taught me everything.”

“I paid no attention to your wigs.”

He shrugged. “I thought you were fashionable. It wasn’t really you, I know now.”

Diana looked at her freckled feet, strolling through the thick grass of the west lawn. Two gardeners spent days every month rolling it flat and thick. But somehow that fact slipped away.

Her mother had forced her into a duchess mold, set her out to trap a duke, and succeeded. She hadn’t realized that North had done something like it—but for her, not for an abstract title.

“That wasn’t me,” she agreed.

“I didn’t know about the freckles on your nose, for instance.”

She glanced up at him. “Would that have changed everything?”

“Absolutely.” His mouth quivered but he didn’t smile.

“Imagine if you had known that I have them on my feet.”

He pulled her arm tighter, against his body. “I would have had to throw you in a carriage and set out for Gretna Green.” Looking at her with lustful eyes. “In order to save any other men who would be fooled into thinking there weren’t freckles under all that face paint. A sacrifice for the greater good of mankind.”

They rounded the corner of the castle and Diana pulled away. Hopefully no one had seen them strolling across the lawn. She certainly wasn’t going in the courtyard arm in arm with the heir to the dukedom. She headed toward the side entrance that led to the kitchens.

“Who would have thought you were so saintly?” she asked. “So willing to use the small tools you have to help your fellow man!”

He burst into laughter. “My cock, such as it is, is always at your service, Diana.”

She gasped. “I didn’t mean that!”

“I did.”





Chapter Eleven




Frederick, the footman who had earlier been carrying Godfrey on his shoulders, was manning the front door. “Is my family still in the drawing room?” North asked him.

Now he could tolerate a room full of Wildes. An hour or two drifting in a punt had settled his spirits.

That, and kissing a beautiful, befreckled woman.

“I believe the ladies accompanied Her Grace upstairs,” Frederick said.

North took the stairs two at a time. Shoes. His girl needed shoes.

He found the female members of his family—his aunt, stepmother, and all four sisters—in the duchess’s bedchamber.

North happened to know that his stepmother slept with his father, though no one would mention such a disreputable fact.

Her chamber had been designed to be a reception chamber, back in the sixteenth century. An enormous bed jutted from one corner of the room, surrounded by a low railing that served as a barrier in times past. Ladies’ maids and ladies-in-waiting would have been allowed inside the railing, whereas guests could only hover outside.

Naturally, his sisters were all over the room like chickens in the hen yard.

Artie was balancing on the railing, her mother waiting to catch her. Viola, Betsy, and Joan were clustered on the bed, the first two watching Joan cut something up. The bed was scarcely large enough to hold the three of them and their skirts. Aunt Knowe was seated on a settee to the side, poking at a bedraggled piece of knitting.