Too Wilde to Wed (The Wildes of Lindow Castle, #2)(85)

The fact she had loved every sinful moment they’d spent together?

Not the point. Women loved all sorts of things that were bad for them. She smoothed her skirt with trembling fingers.

Rose would have wanted Diana to raise Godfrey with love, even if love came with uncertainty and dirt. Diana had no particular fondness for hard work, but it was tolerable.

Intolerable would be if she—if North kissed her like that again, after she had taken money from him.

She had to get out. Now.





Chapter Twenty-two





The next day



“I don’t wish to live with you and Lady Gray,” Diana told Lavinia. Her cousin’s face fell. “I am so grateful that my reputation is restored. I truly am. But I don’t want to marry the Baron of Houston, nor dance with him again. I’m not made for this life.”

“Because you are in love with North?”

Diana was folding Godfrey’s shirts and putting them in a valise. “No.” She looked up. “Did you enjoy the ball?”

Lavinia scowled. “Parth Sterling was rude to me.”

“Why does that always happen?” Diana asked. “He is such a gentleman to me, and I mean that in the best of ways.”

“He saves his true self for me,” Lavinia said, then shook her head. “Enough of him. If you don’t live with us, Diana, where will you go? Obviously, I will support you and Godfrey. No more governessing.”

“I don’t mind work,” Diana said.

“I mind you doing it,” Lavinia retorted. “I don’t ever want to see you in a dress like that black rag again.”

“I thought I might live in Manchester,” Diana said, avoiding the subject of work. “It’s not terribly far away. I can bring Godfrey to pay visits to Artie.”

“But not when North is in residence,” Lavinia said shrewdly.

“It wouldn’t be good for either of us.”

Lavinia pressed her lips together, thinking it over. “I shall accompany you to Manchester,” she said, finally. “I must know that you and Godfrey are safely housed before Mother and I return to London.”

“Doesn’t your mother need you?” Lady Gray had declined in the last two years. She rarely left the sofa, and spent most of her time pressing cool cloths to her forehead and demanding special broths and preparations.

Lavinia shrugged. “I shall buy her a new bonnet, and she will be satisfied.”

“We could tell everyone that we are going to Manchester to visit the shops,” Diana said, inspired. “Godfrey can remain in the nursery with Artie.”

“Yes!” Lavinia clapped her hands. “We will find you a charming house. Whatever you do, you mustn’t run away the way you did last time.”

Diana replaced Godfrey’s shirts in the wardrobe. She had been dreading telling the duke and duchess, let alone North and Lady Knowe, about her decision to move to Manchester.

It would be much easier if she had already found a house. Perhaps she could work for the milliner Lavinia loved so much. She didn’t want to be dependent on anyone.

“We want to come with you,” Artie protested, when Diana told them she was leaving for a couple of days. “Mama could come too.”

The three of them had never been separated since the moment Diana entered the nursery. “I’ll be back very soon,” she promised.

“The baby birds might be born while you’re gone!” Artie cried.

In the end they gave her tight hugs and covered her face with kisses. By contrast, North betrayed no emotion when Diana informed him that she and Lavinia were going to Manchester for a couple of days.

Prism assigned Hickett, one of the senior grooms, to take them to Manchester. Hickett was a stout man with a wrinkled face whose habitual expression resembled Artie’s when she needed a nap.

She and Lavinia climbed into His Grace’s solid, bulbous traveling coach with the ducal crest on the door. It was terribly generous of him to allow them to use it.

“Knock if you need the coach stopped,” Hickett said, securing their valises in the boot. “We should reach Manchester in two hours if we aren’t delayed. We’ll stay at the Royal George.”

Lavinia plopped down on a seat, looking unusually vexed, given that she had a generally sunny disposition. The moment Hickett closed the door, she burst out, “Sometimes I cannot bear my mother!”

“I can understand,” Diana said, seeing no reason to prevaricate. In her opinion, Lady Gray was intolerably selfish.

“She had a tantrum that would have been shameful on Artie’s part. Weeping, and carrying on about how selfish I am, merely because I am leaving her for two nights. What will she do when I marry?”

“I suspect she’ll find a companion, and badger her instead,” Diana said.

“That’s why you won’t stay with us,” Lavinia gasped, her eyes rounding. “Oh, Diana, you’re right to move to Manchester. She’s my mother, so I have no choice, but you would be made miserable.”

“Truthfully, I do not believe your mother and I could live harmoniously together,” Diana admitted. “I think I am unfitted to be Lady Gray’s companion.”

“I wouldn’t have told you this, Diana, but she is simply beastly about Godfrey. As if it’s his fault that his parents weren’t married!”