Too Wilde to Wed (The Wildes of Lindow Castle, #2)(71)

“Your mother is a fool.”

“Lavinia said Mother’s been shunned by polite society.” A huge sob shook Diana’s body. “She must be so unhappy.”

North rocked her some more. Given a choice, Diana never would have married for the sake of a title. She was like his aunt in that.

Unless someone forced her to.

“How did Mrs. Belgrave make you behave as she wished? She didn’t harm you?” His voice fell an entire octave.

Diana squeaked. “Absolutely not!”

“Then?”

Silence.

“Diana.”

“She threatened not to support Rose and Godfrey,” she said, her voice desperately sad. “I promised I would behave just as my mother wished, and wear whatever she wanted, and after I married, my mother would give Rose her dowry.”

A growl came from low in North’s throat.

“She thought I couldn’t do it, but I could and I did. I would have done anything for Rose. And Godfrey too.”

“Rose was very lucky to have you,” North said.

Tears wavered in her voice again. “I don’t know why she got that fever. She had money for a doctor.”

“People are fragile,” North told her. “They die easily. You mustn’t blame yourself.”

“You blame yourself, and you’re telling me not to? You lie awake at night thinking about the men you lost, don’t you?”

He rubbed his cheek against her hair. “Something like that.”

“Leaving Lindow Castle, leaving you, was the cruelest thing I could have done to my mother. I’m sure it broke her heart.” She took a deep, shuddering breath and wiped her eyes again.

“I think it is grossly optimistic to assume that your mother has a heart,” North said flatly. He stood up and placed her on her feet. “The water must be cooling. May I bathe you, Diana?”

She put her hands on his chest, and he tried very hard not to look down at her breasts, scarcely covered by her light chemise. Just as he had before going to war, he tried to memorize her, everything from her rounded lower lip to her curling eyelashes. “God, you’re so beautiful,” he said hoarsely.

Up on her toes, she pressed a kiss on his mouth. “I would be grateful for help bathing.”

North nodded, turned around, and locked her door. Then he followed her to the bathing alcove. She was lucky enough to have a sturdy wooden tub, not a flimsy one made of tin. She looked over her shoulder before she pulled her chemise over her head and threw it to the side.

If he hadn’t had a cockstand simply from being in her presence, it would have leapt to attention now. Her body was like a beautiful instrument, her breasts tapering to her waist, curving out again in a generous haunch, beautiful arse, legs . . .

He watched her lean over and test the temperature of the water with one finger and managed not to groan. Another glimmering smile over her shoulder, and she stepped into the bath, carefully keeping her right hand well above the water.

North shed his clothes faster than he ever had. She watched him, eyebrow raised. “None of my other maids have disrobed.”

“It’s an efficient way to bathe.”

North had never felt so large as when he squeezed into the bathtub, Diana between his legs, his erection pressed against her hip. She was soft and small, compared to him, and the flood of pleasure he felt was almost unbearable. When he picked up the ball of soap—honey-scented—his fingers trembled.

Having Diana in his arms was a shock of joy. Like being struck by lightning, and all the more precious because it couldn’t be done again. His calm center—the part that navigated battlefields fearlessly—informed him that this would be the last time. She was not his, and she could never be.

He made a lather, leaned forward, and soaped the delicate arch of her right foot. “You left your betrothal ring behind,” he said. “You could have sold it for a great deal of money.”

“We grocers’ granddaughters don’t think it’s polite to sell a ring that a gentleman has given in promise of marriage.” Diana had her right hand well out of the tub, but the fingers of her left caressed his wrist, gently following the curve of his arm from wrist to elbow and sliding back again.

“You broke your promise to your mother, rather than tell me the truth,” he pointed out. “I would have gone with you, Diana. I would have forced your mother to support you and Godfrey.”

“I panicked. I did think of telling you, but how could I word it? ‘Excuse me. I’m so sorry, but I have to rescue my sister’s bastard and raise him as my own’?”

“I would have done something.” He picked up her left foot.

Diana found herself smiling reluctantly, because North was as stubborn as she was. “Hidden Godfrey away in some cottage in the country so he could be brought up to an honest trade, perhaps as a cowherd?”

“You believe that I—that any Wilde—would do such a thing to a member of our family?”

She turned and put a kiss on his shoulder. “I didn’t know you, any more than you knew me. I wouldn’t have trusted any gentleman with that knowledge.”

“None of us?” he repeated.

Diana allowed her head to fall to the side so she could look back at him, but North merely looked thoughtful. He had finished soaping past her knees and he was sliding up her thighs.