Too Wilde to Wed (The Wildes of Lindow Castle, #2)(64)

“Let’s go!” Artie cried, hopping on one foot. “Now!”

Godfrey took Diana’s other hand and nodded vigorously.

Diana wanted more than anything to escape. Lavinia was so kind—but she gleamed with the beauty that was possible when one had a maid, or even two maids, devoted to one’s care. Quite unlike herself, who scarcely found time to wash her face, let alone apply rosewater masks and pineapple tonics.

She was certain her freckles stood out like ink dots. Lavinia must have seen them. And she hated being rescued. It made her feel helpless, rather than bold and independent.

From the corner of her eye, she could see North and Lavinia bending over a print, their shoulders brushing. They looked like china figurines, a matched pair of aristocrats.

“We could walk to the edge of the village, and ask the bird’s owner if he’s for sale,” Diana said.

“Yes, please,” Artie cried. “Please, DeeDee.”

Lavinia, North, and Leonidas were sorting through the stack of prints, pulling out any that featured a Wilde. “Mr. Calico, I wouldn’t want to interrupt your customers. Would you inform them that the children and I are strolling to the other end of the village? They should feel free to return to the castle without us.”

“Certainly,” he said. “Lord Roland will pay for the toys, so you may take them with you.”

“I shall pay for the horse,” Diana said, taking out a handful of coins.

Mr. Calico looked as if he was about to refuse, but Diana gave him a direct look, and he accepted her money. “Before you go, I wonder if you would have any use for this fabric, Miss Belgrave,” he said. “I believe it would suit your hair.”

He pulled a bundle of cloth from a lower shelf. It was pale blue gossamer silk, shot through with silver threads, the sort of thing her mother would have rejected as fit only for a strumpet.

“Pretty!” Artie said. Godfrey was squatting on the ground, making his horse buck its way through the dust.

“It must be very dear,” Diana said, hating that she hadn’t the faintest idea how much it ought to cost.

“A trifle,” Mr. Calico said promptly. “One pound ten.”

Diana just managed to swallow her shock. That was more than two weeks’ wages. “I can’t,” she said regretfully, returning it to him.

“One pound?” he asked.

She shook her head. “A governess doesn’t make enough money to justify silk.”

“Isn’t that the truth?” he said, putting it back on a shelf that held bolts of silks and calicos, all mixed up. “Walk past the church, Miss Belgrave, and you’ll come across the peacock soon enough.”

On the other side of the wagon, Leonidas was waving a book. He and North seemed to be discussing a Greek playwright.

If North hadn’t truly known Diana when they were courting, it was clear she hadn’t truly known him, either. She would have said that he was a man of action, not one to read books, or design houses.

“Thank you,” she said to Mr. Calico. She walked away, Artie and Godfrey trotting beside her.





Chapter Fifteen




“What do you mean, ‘They went for a walk’?” North asked, frowning. He had given Diana time to recover from the shock of Lavinia’s arrival, only to discover that she and the children had disappeared.

“A short walk,” Mr. Calico said. “You needn’t worry about Lady Artemisia’s safety, my lord. Miss Belgrave will stay within the bounds of the village.”

North had no such worry. He’d been talking to Leonidas, thinking absentmindedly that he wanted the right to touch Diana. To hold her arm, hold her hand, tuck a curl behind her ear, dust a kiss on her cheek.

Diana had looked mortified when Lavinia arrived, and he wanted to comfort her. Pull her against his side and face the world as a couple.

Which they were not—and never would be, if she had her way.

“I’ll pay for the toys, Mr. Calico, as well as this book.” He had found a book describing ancient Greek temples. He had spent hours as a boy tracing buildings on paper before going on to model them with mud and twigs. He’d tried to make a miniature Parthenon once.

“Miss Belgrave has already paid for the young gentleman’s wooden horse,” Mr. Calico said.

North couldn’t stop himself from growling. “You shouldn’t have allowed that. She can’t afford to pay for trinkets.”

“Governesses deserve better wages,” he replied, unperturbed. “Miss Belgrave is prudent with her money. She admired this bolt of fabric, for example, but decided it was too dear for a governess.”

“She’s not a governess,” North said, giving the peddler a dark glance.

Lavinia joined them. “Where has Diana gone?”

“She went on a walk with the children,” Mr. Calico said, turning away to help Leonidas with the stack of prints he had selected.

“What did you say to her?” Lavinia demanded.

North frowned at her. “Nothing. I said nothing. I was with you.”

She folded her arms over her chest. “Were you truly unaware of her plight?”

“I believed that she had jilted me for love of another man, with whom she had borne a child,” North replied. “My aunt employed her in my absence. Do you truly believe I would have allowed Diana to enter the servants’ hall if I’d known of it?”