Diana barely avoided choking on her tea at Lady Stoke’s words. “Has he?” she managed to say.
Lady Stoke clicked her delicate cup to her saucer. “In his lucid moments, Captain Ardmore pretends not to know what I am talking about when I ask him about you. Or he refuses to answer.”
“That sounds like James,” Diana said.
“I had no idea who he meant by Diana at first, of course. Then I received a letter from my husband mentioning that he’d met Lady Worthing and her father, Admiral Lockwood. Plus the very interesting note that you had been asking about our mutual acquaintance. I remembered that, indeed, your Christian name was Diana, and everything became clear. I wrote you, concluding that if my cryptic hints meant nothing to you, you’d simply burn the letter and dismiss me as an eccentric.”
“Your hints meant plenty. Though I suppose it was audacious of me to come.”
Lady Stoke pushed a plate across the tea table. “Please, have some seed cake. You are tired, and you must keep up your strength.”
Diana knew the lady was right and forced a half a seed cake down. Under any other circumstance, she’d enjoy the honey sweetness and tart spices, but today it tasted like sand.
“I know it is gossipy of me,” Lady Stoke said, “but I simply must know how you met Captain Ardmore.”
Diana let crumbs fall back onto the rose-patterned porcelain plate. “First, you must tell me what you intend to do. Patch him up and send him on his way? Or turn him over to the Admiralty?”
Lady Stoke smiled. “He has been here some weeks, and I have not mentioned that fact to the Admiralty. What I hoped is that you would have some idea what you wanted to do with him.”
“And how do you know that I and my father will not betray him? My father has many friends who are prominent in the Admiralty, and James is an outlaw. If you wanted to protect him, you were courageous to send for me.”
Lady Stoke’s look turned wise. “Because he did not only call your name, my dear. He said many rather, er, complimentary things about you. A few times in his delirium, he mistook me for you, and the things he said quite made me blush.”
Diana’s face was already heating. “Oh.”
Lady Stoke took another sip of tea. “So of course it has all made me very curious.”
Diana studied the cooling liquid in her cup. An hour ago, she’d not wanted to talk of James, wanting to keep what she’d had with him close in her heart. But Lady Stoke’s presence was soothing, and Diana was so very tired. Locking it inside was harder than anything she’d ever done.
She found herself spilling out the tale to this elegant woman. She began with James’s abduction of her a year before then flashed forward to this wild spring, when James had washed up on her father’s island, and nothing had been the same. Diana related everything, ending with James’s flogging and escape from the frigate, and his disappearance.
By the end of the tale, Lady Stoke was sitting on the couch beside Diana, her arm about Diana’s shoulders. Diana’s tears wet Lady Stoke’s fashionable gown.
“You poor darling,” Lady Stoke said. “You’ve been needing this rather badly, haven’t you?”
“Forgive me,” Diana said, but only because the words seemed expected. She was not sorry to have told the tale.
“Not at all. We all need someone to talk to. When my mother died, I had Lady Featherstone, her dearest friend. But Lady Featherstone lives in Kent, and I sorely miss her.”
“My mother died when I was seven,” Diana said. “I had no one.” She remembered the last time she and her mother had waved at the boat taking her father out to his frigate. She’d hated saying goodbye to him, but she’d always smiled, pretending cheerfulness, as her mother had. Not long after the ship had left harbor, her mother had caught a chill that had never gone away. A scant fortnight later, she was dead.
“And you’ve had a difficult time of it,” Lady Stoke lifted a lock of Diana’s hair from her wet cheek. “I heard of your abduction last year, and the rumors that followed.”
Diana conjured a wry look. “Should you even receive me, Lady Stoke? I am too scandalous for words.”
Lady Stoke smiled, and suddenly Diana understood why Lord Stoke had fallen in love with her. The woman radiated warmth, kindness, and beauty, her eyes like a sun-dappled pond.
“Goodness, if I worried about convention, I would never have married Grayson,” she said. “I am certainly talked about plenty, believe me. And please, I want you to call me Alexandra. Two ladies fool enough to fall in love with Grayson Finley and James Ardmore should be the best of friends.”
Diana began to laugh. To herself she sounded a bit hysterical, but Lady Stoke didn’t seem to mind. She folded Diana into her arms, and Diana, for the first time since she’d seen James beaten and subdued, felt the slightest bit better.
Chapter Twenty-Five
James opened his eyes. He lay facedown, exhausted, every limb aching. He must still be on the white-sanded beach, lying next to an anonymous English lieutenant he’d pulled from the wreck of the frigate.
He smiled, his lips cracking. Any moment now, she’d appear, cotton skirt lifted by the wind, giving him a glimpse of those fine legs in tight leather breeches. Her red hair would tangle about her, and she’d exclaim, “What the devil are you doing here?”
Now, how did he know the woman who’d find him would be Diana Worthing?
Because he’d dreamed this before. He remembered the taste of sand in his mouth, the wind in his hair, the sun on his back. He remembered the sound of her boots on rock, and opening his eyes to see her bending over him. He would wake later in a bed, and then Diana would touch him, rekindling the spark between them. They’d banter to hide their desires, sparring as only Diana Worthing could spar.
He wanted the dream to go on, to become a meeting in the sand outside the shallow caves. Diana would throw her arms about his neck and breath into his mouth, “James. Kiss me.”
The dream dissolved, and James opened his eyes.
He did lay facedown, his arms outstretched, but the white beneath him was linen, not sand. The bed was large, the sheets sweet-smelling, and a cool breeze issued from dark windows.
Was he home, in Charleston? Would Honoria tap on his door and drawl in her haughty voice that he would miss his supper, and Cook would be mighty put out?
But the air was wrong for Charleston. Charleston was mellow and warm, with the smell of orange blossom and peaches. The breeze that touched him was earthy and cool, overlaid with a tang of brine.
He opened his lips to tell Honoria he was getting up, but his voice did not work. He uncurled his fingers, one at a time, from the sheet, and pushed himself upright.
He was not in his rooms in Charleston or in any house he recognized. Light from a guttering candle showed him a high ceiling painted and gilded, with the same gilding repeated on the lavish doorframe. Brocade curtains hung on the bed, and his sheets were soft and fine.
A snore broke the silence. From a wingchair near the fireplace, two boots protruded. A head lolled forward, covered in a footman’s wig, pushed askew.
James made no sound as he slid from the bed and stood up. He was naked, the cashmere carpet soft to his bare feet.
He took a step forward and nearly fell, his legs so weak they barely held him upright. James clutched the bedpost and made himself stand still until he caught his breath.
He knew he’d been sick, powerfully sick. He remembered snatches of coherency, people shoving burning liquids down his throat, several heavy gentlemen holding him down as he thrashed in fever agony.
Where he was and how he came to be there was a mystery, but he knew he must be in England. Even the gaudiest home in Charleston could not rival this one for ornament, and the footman’s damn-fool livery could only be English.
James waited until his legs would behave, then he silently took up the nightshirt laid out on the chair next to the bed and pulled it on. The nightshirt had been made for a broad-shouldered man and fit him well.
&
nbsp; He made his quiet way across the floor, then opened the door noiselessly and went out.
James found himself on a wide, columned gallery that encircled a huge staircase hall. Marble stairs spilled to a cavernous hall below, and an equally impressive set of stairs rose to floors above. Gods and goddesses frolicked in a frieze that lined the ceiling, most of them naked and writhing in happy frenzy. Tall windows at the end of the hall let in a cool night breeze.
Two women woman started up the stairs. James flattened himself behind the nearest column and watched.
They ascended in graceful steps, one keeping a chocolate brown skirt out of her way as she walked upstairs, the other woman in blue, bearing a candle, the light burnishing her red hair.
Something happened to James when he saw the woman in blue — a blue that matched the gray-blue of her eyes. His heart eased at the same time his body tightened. Even in his illness he felt it, his pull to her, the need for her.
Diana hadn’t abandoned him. She wasn’t on Haven nursing Lieutenant Jack, or in London doing whatever society ladies did in London, or in Bath taking the waters. She was here, wherever here was.
But why the devil was she here, and where was the Argonaut, and was the lieutenant he’d raced away to save dead or alive?
He slid from the shadows as both women gained the upper floor. Diana gasped and dropped her candle, which extinguished in a pool of wax on the carpet.
“Don’t burn the house down, Diana,” he said. His voice didn’t work right, all scratched and grating. He glanced again at the garish gods and goddesses. “Though it probably wouldn’t make much difference to this place.”
“Grayson’s great-uncle built it,” Alexandra Stoke answered, as though that excused the bad taste. “What are you doing out of bed?”
“Thought I’d take a stroll.” James’s legs shook so much, he feared he’d fall down in front of them. “What happened to me?”
“You do not remember?” Alexandra asked while Diana remained a silent statue. “You had a knife wound, as well as the flogging stripes on your back, and they festered. You’ve been in a fever for quite some time.”
“Hmm.” James reconciled the dreams that had swum around his head with his current weak state. “And where am I, exactly?”
“I told you. In the house Grayson’s great-uncle built. Grayson inherited it when he became viscount.”
“I meant, where in England?”
“Ah. The Cornwall coast.” Alexandra hesitated. “Grayson has gone to the Channel Islands.”
“Does he know I’m here?”
“He does now.”
Snatches came back to James — swimming in dark waters, his struggle with Carter, grinning faces of smugglers, his brutal trek across land, and the carriage from which slender hands had reached to pull him in. Landing on the floor, coughing, needing sanctuary. The dreams had come after that.
“I think I remember asking you not to tell him,” he said.
Alexandra gave him a reproachful look. “He is my husband, James. But as I say, he has gone to the Channel Islands, and not about to rush to the Admiralty and announce the fact that you are staying in his house.”
Diana continued to say nothing, merely staring at him, her chest rising under the silk-lined décolletage, as though astonished to see him alive. And maybe she was.
Alexandra frowned at him with the air of a sickroom nurse. “You ought to be in bed.”
“You’re probably right. I’m just a little tired of that bed right now.” James’s limbs felt weak as a baby’s, which didn’t make his stomach any happier.
“James.”
At the sound of Diana’s contralto voice, Alexandra, the hall and twisting staircase, the garish house, faded to nothing. For the moment, James saw only Diana’s face in the sconce light, the mist of curls framing her forehead, her soft cheekbones, her lovely blue-gray eyes.
“I will be all right,” he said quietly to her.
“Only if you get back to bed,” Alexandra broke in. “Heavens, James, you have been extremely ill.”
He had been. James had seen enough men laid low, not from their wounds but from the diseases that followed, to know that he was lucky to be alive.
However, the last time James had been awake and aware, he’d been wearing leather breeches and nothing else. He plucked the front of his nightshirt. “This is Finley’s, isn’t it?”
“His are the only nightshirts that would fit you,” Alexandra said. “It is of no matter. Grayson never wears them.” She stopped and turned a brilliant shade of red.
James’s chuckle grated on his sore throat. He slid the nightshirt off over his head and thrust it into Diana’s startled hands. “Thank you, but I’ll wear my own clothes.”
Alexandra swung away, her face flaming. But Diana didn’t flinch or turn away in shock. She looked at James over the pile of nightshirt in her arms, her gaze roving unashamedly over his naked body.
James liked that. Her touch was a caress, warming the cold places inside him. He needed to turn away before he betrayed just how awake Diana’s gaze was making parts of him.
He felt much better as he walked back into his bedchamber and closed the door, the cool air pleasing his hot skin. He wanted to linger and think about Diana — what had been between them and what would be between them — but his body was tiring, and he needed to get into bed before he collapsed to the floor.
The footman was still snoring. James climbed back into the bed, pulled the sheet over himself, and fell hard asleep.
*** *** ***
Diana could not sit. She paced the sitting room that faced the sea the next afternoon, the lowering clouds and gray ocean matching her mood.
After James had gone back to bed, he’d slept the rest of the night and most of this day. A natural sleep, Diana had been assured by Alexandra’s housekeeper, who was looking after him.
Indeed, when Diana had peeped into James’s bedchamber this morning, he’d been sleeping heavily, his head pillowed on his arm. Later, he’d awakened and demanded a meal, the housekeeper said, which he’d eaten all of, then demanded more.
When James had pulled off the nightshirt in the upstairs hall last night, Diana’s heart had hammered so hard she thought she’d faint. Candlelight had touched skin made more pale from his confinement, but the muscles of his chest and shoulders had been as strong as ever. It would take more than a few weeks of fever to weaken this man entirely.
When he’d turned away, she’d seen the healing stripes on his back, the cuts ceasing where his waistband had been. His backside was firm and unmarked, the leather breeches having stopped the whip.
She’d wanted him with a longing that maddened her. Diana needed his arms around her, wanted his bruising kisses on her mouth. But James had gone back to bed, naked and alone, to fall into exhausted slumber.
Alexandra had informed Diana only a few minutes ago that James had risen from his bed, dressed, and was coming downstairs.
So now Diana paced the sitting room, her knees trembling, clenching and unclenching her hands.
Alexandra had instructed Maggie to keep the children busy while James made his first appearance downstairs. Diana wanted to send for Isabeau, so they could greet them together, but Alexandra smiled wisely and forbade it.
The wind picked up. Diana wandered to the window, watching the whitecaps rise on the sea. A small fishing vessel, listing hard to starboard under the wind, hastened toward shore. Diana wished she were out there battling wind and waves instead of listening to the clock tick in the stuffy sitting room.
“Diana,” said a gravelly voice behind her.
Diana swung around. James stood just inside the doorway. He wore clothes that must belong to the viscount — fine kid breeches, leather top boots, a frock coat, and linen shirt. James had not donned a collar or cravat, but he’d bathed and shaved, his dark hair still damp.
“Why aren’t you on Haven?” he demanded.
Typical of him. No inquiry about Diana’s health or well-bei
ng. No rushing to her, gathering her in his arms, declaring his devotion.
Why did that make her heart swell with joy?
Because if he had rushed in, swept her up, and proclaimed how happy he was to see her, with all the hearts and flowers, Diana would have wondered what the devil was the matter with him. Been certain that the fever had addled his brain.
She faced him over the striped back of the Sheraton sofa. “I’ve been in London,” she said. “We took Lieutenant Jack there, after the surgeon saved his life.”
“He’s recovered, then?”
“He’s much better, thank heavens, but the poor man still has no memories. But he’s discovered he is the younger brother of a duke.”
One eyebrow went up. “Happy news for Jack.”
“Not really. He seems rather unnerved by it all. He is married, as well. Has children. Twins.”
James slowly circled the sofa, never taking his eyes from Diana. “That must have been a blow. Full of surprises, isn’t he?”
“So are you.”
James regarded her steadily for a few moments, then he turned and walked to the French windows. “Forgive me for staring,” he drawled. “I’m just not used to seeing you so . . . tidy.”
“Of course I am tidy,” Diana said. “The elegant Lady Stoke is to be thanked for that.”
Diana had donned her best afternoon gown for the occasion — a pale cream, high-waisted muslin trimmed with black braid and tiny black buttons. The gown was long-sleeved, leaving some bosom bare, and a cameo rested against Diana’s throat. Alexandra’s lady’s maid had swept Diana’s unruly hair into a prim and sleek knot, somehow patting every hair into place.
A far cry from her cotton frocks with breeches underneath on Haven. She didn’t look herself, and James didn’t look himself either. They made a most constrained pair.
“Lady Stoke’s a fine woman,” James said, almost absently.
He leaned one hand on the window frame as he scanned the horizon. Outside, the lawn dipped to a low wall, along which was a walkway and benches so that someone on a Sunday stroll could rest and watch the sea.