Too Wilde to Wed (The Wildes of Lindow Castle, #2)(52)

North had survived two nights without venturing into the nursery wing.

His family was here now. They had been cross with him for tossing Diana’s shoes in the lake, but if they learned he had invaded her chamber at night?

No gentleman did such a thing. He’d only done it in the grip of madness.

It reminded him of Alaric’s pithy summing up of the duke’s eldest sons: Horatius had been arrogant but true; Alaric foolhardy and adventurous; North rakish and half mad. And North couldn’t quibble with Alaric’s appraisal.

“Rakish and half mad” were obviously making an appearance again, even though North would have said his childhood was far behind him, buried in a deluge of ducal responsibilities.

At midnight, he was no closer to sleep than he’d been at nine o’clock, when he’d drunk a large amount of brandy and beat Leonidas and his father at billiards, only to lose to Betsy. His sister had laughed madly, cackling about Marie Antoinette’s love for the game—and went on to beat them all handily.

He threw an arm behind his head and stared at the gathered canopy over his bed. Of course he would sleep. It was just a matter of closing one’s eyes and allowing darkness to descend. He’d wake up in the morning refreshed.

Bloody hell, why had he ever complained about anything when he could sleep? The last two nights he’d lain wide-eyed until the darkness outside his window lightened to gray, followed by a faint pink.

He could remember times when he had caroused until dawn and slept until two in the afternoon. Granted, those halcyon days came before he inherited Horatius’s title and its responsibilities, back when he was earning Alaric’s characterization.

Finally, he gave up. He got out of bed, pulled on his breeches and shirt, and started pacing.

His bedchamber was forty-four steps long, and thirty-eight steps wide. He distracted himself by designing perfect bedchambers in his head. Now that he was free to leave the castle, he’d gone back to planning a mansion of his own. His bedchamber would be large, with a separate room for bathing, and a water closet off that room. There would be a dressing room for him, and a boudoir for his wife.

Despite his resolution to stop thinking about Diana, he pictured the gowns she used to wear, doubled the size of the boudoir, and then added a sizable alcove that could house a large wardrobe.

The bathing room would hold a ceramic tub like those Alaric had described seeing in Florence. He moved his imaginary mansion to Italy, on a hill overlooking fields of silver-leaved olive trees. He enlarged the windows and raised the bathtub so that it looked down the hill at the ocean.

A large bath, big enough for two.

His mind obligingly presented him with an image of Diana smiling at him, hair spilling over the side of the bath, cheekbones flushed by warm water and desire.

He began pacing again. Forty-four, turn. Forty-four, turn. Forty-four . . . He flung open the door and moved into the corridor. His bedchamber was in one of the oldest parts of the castle, where the corridors were stone, and a chill wind whistled around the window glazing in the winter. Snow sometimes found its way in. He padded barefoot through the castle, not even the clip of his boots accompanying him.

One hundred and twenty-three steps later, he started down a pair of winding stone steps that looked as if they belonged in a production of Hamlet, or at the very least, in a melodrama with a ghost.

A desperate man will do anything. He was a desperate man.

Intent came over him the way hope might come over a dying man, or love a desirous one. Like an unexpected visitor who can’t be denied.

The fastest route from the east wing to the nursery was across the echoing ballroom, through the ladies’ retiring room, up one flight and down another, and down a long crooked corridor. He emerged at the servants’ staircase leading to the nursery, which was just as steep and narrow as the one designated for family.

There was no welcoming lamp turned low in the corridor.

The door to Diana’s bedchamber was shut tight. Yet surely she hadn’t locked it, in case Godfrey came to her bed with a nightmare. He and Godfrey, both plagued by nightmares and both in search of a single remedy.

He turned the doorknob as deliberately as if he’d entered a hundred maidens’ chambers, though he hadn’t. “Rakish” had never involved virgins, and Diana was a virgin; he was certain of that.

Whether she remained so was up to her.

Intent again.

She was curled under the covers, facing away from the door. The fire was low, and he saw with a quick glance that no jar of honey and half-melted butter were to be seen. The stab of disappointment he felt was wildly out of proportion.

It wasn’t as if he needed toast. The chef had made six or seven dishes per course, as was normal when the duke was in residence. In the midst of all the French cooking, there had unexpectedly appeared simple English dishes, the kind he used to have as a child.

So he had eaten cottage pie, followed by a pasty with a wonderfully flaky crust, and then a bit of suet pudding.

He toppled a log on the fire before moving silently to Diana’s bed, scarcely breathing. Her skin glowed in the moonlight like the inside of a periwinkle seashell they had in the nursery when he was a boy.

His breeches were on the floor in a moment. But his shirt . . .

He didn’t want to be that character in the Shakespeare play, the one parodied in the etching. If he slipped naked into bed with her, was he any better than Shakespeare’s ravisher?