“It sounds uncomfortable for all concerned,” North said. He wasn’t overly sympathetic, because Prudence had nearly murdered both Alaric and Willa.
“Especially for the poor chaplain,” Aunt Knowe said, gurgling with laughter. “Apparently he’s sixty-seven and has led a blamelessly chaste life.”
“The first set of breasts he saw as an adult were Prudence’s?” North asked with a real smile on his lips. “That could rival Alaric’s play. What the Vicar Saw, A Comedy in Three Acts.”
Aunt Knowe threw back her head and laughed. “I’m so glad you’re home.” She stopped and put a callused hand on his cheek. “We were all terrified that something would happen to you over there, so far from home.”
North managed a crooked smile. “Here I am, safe and sound.”
“Safe, anyway. Sound will come, darling. It will come.”
Three hours later, North felt as if the heaviness that had settled into his bones would never leave. As the castle grew darker and quieter, the ghosts grew louder.
He paced in circles in his room, cursing his own stupidity. This weakness wasn’t him. He loathed weakness. He had never been weak, not when Horatius died, and not when young Peach had died in his arms.
An hour or so after the castle fell into complete silence, he found himself moving swiftly through its deserted corridors. This time he didn’t pace around the picture galleries—either of them—or visit the kitchens.
One lamp affixed to the wall in the nursery corridor had been turned low but left burning. He stopped for a moment, wondering if it was a sign, a welcome for tired visitors who had sailed from a far continent and washed up on this dark little island.
At the end of the corridor, the door of Diana’s room was slightly ajar. He pushed it open, because the needling instinct he felt to go to her was stronger than the prideful instinct to avoid the woman who had jilted him.
He breathed easier as soon as he entered the room. It smelled like a tallow candle, and he made a note to tell Prism that servant though Diana might be—at the moment—he didn’t ever want to see a tallow candle in her room, or in the nursery as a whole, for that matter.
It also smelled like woodsmoke, honey, and Diana. She didn’t wear a complicated perfume concocted only for her. Her scent was light and joyful, flowery with a hint of lemon.
Her bed was empty, but a jar of honey and a plate of melting butter had been left on the hearth. One chair—her chair—held a sleeping person wrapped in a blanket.
He moved soundlessly across the room and stood with his back to the fire. The blanket was snuggled to Diana’s ears. Her hair was partly caught under its folds and partly tumbling down her side.
God, she was beautiful, her skin so translucent and delicate that he could see a pulse fluttering in her forehead.
For some reason he felt weak in the knees, so he dropped to a crouch. No wonder the monstrous Mrs. Belgrave had known she could launch her daughter onto the marriage mart and catch the biggest fish of all.
Diana had the beautifully knit bones of royalty, along with a fresh sensuality to her mouth. He’d never seen the like.
He was close enough to touch her knee, but he didn’t. It wouldn’t be proper.
The damnable thing was that he didn’t think he had been spellbound by the clear planes of her cheekbones, or her straight little aristocratic nose, back when he first met her. It was her laugh.
He’d asked her to marry him when she was covered in a bucket of face paint and rarely murmured more than a sentence at a time.
So what could have entranced him, if not her laughter?
Archie Ewing had been a decent lad, which didn’t explain why he had debauched his own fiancée. But if Diana’s sister was as beautiful as she, Archie had likely fallen in love with Rose, never imagining that Fate would send a drunken coachman his way.
North was staring absently at Diana’s rumpled hair when her eyes opened. She met his gaze with no sign of embarrassment or surprise. Instead, the corners of her mouth tipped up, and his heart eased in a way that should have given him great concern, and didn’t.
“Come for more toast, have you?”
There was nothing pitying in her tone, or even sympathetic. It was as if men often wandered the castle at night, washing up at her doorstep like jetsam thrown from a ship.
“Yes,” he said, keeping it simple.
The castle chef had served up lambs’ tongues in aspic that evening, which caused North to lose his appetite entirely. He wanted more from Diana than toast. The conviction made itself known deep in his gut, but he refused to listen. If he did listen, he would pick Diana up and then sit down again in the chair big enough for two.
She’d be in his lap and he could rest his chin against all that rumpled hair. Something deep in his bones told him that her weight on his legs would keep him from marching over battlefields in the dark.
“I laid it out for you,” she said, sounding less sleepy. She extracted one arm from under the blanket and waved at the fireplace.
Next to him was a plate of inexpertly cut slices of bread, a jar of honey that was silky and liquid after being warmed at the fire, and butter that had melted into a low hill surrounded by a moat.
“May I make you a piece of toast?” he asked.
“I’d like a bite or two,” she said, curling her feet under her. “I was dreaming that I was back in a London ballroom. It should have been a nightmare, by rights, but it wasn’t.”
North wrestled the first slice of bread onto a fork. She had known he would come. He should feel wary. A future duke visiting the governess. The governess confident that the lord would arrive. Leaving her door ajar.
“Was I in the dream?” That was a reasonable question. After all, they had once been betrothed. Before coming to Lindow Castle for their betrothal party, their only conversations took place in and around ballrooms.
Likely because he didn’t lecture her there, his conscience reminded him. But he had never meant to lecture her, and hadn’t thought he was. He was only . . .
He had lectured. Damn it.
“You were in my dream,” she said.
He waited, turning over the toast.
She leaned forward and touched his upper arm with a slender finger. “Aren’t you going to ask?”
North turned his head slowly, because from this distance he could have leaned over and claimed her mouth with a kiss. As the queen of the impetuous gesture, she hadn’t anticipated that. He saw her eyes widen as she took in a silent breath.
I could steal the air from your lips, something deep inside him growled. But he kept his face bland. “I trust that I comported myself adequately on the ballroom floor?”
She settled back in her seat, acting as if she didn’t know about the rosy flush on her cheekbones. “You were a graceful dancer, Lord Roland, as always.”
North narrowed his eyes at her.
“You weren’t wearing your high wig,” she said in a rush. “Nor those silk coats you always wore, with the tight—” She waved her hand at the lower part of his body.
“Tight?” Amusement leaked into his voice.
“Breeches.”
“I believe a young lady is not meant to notice.”
“Everyone notices.” She pulled up her knees and hugged them. “Presumably that is just the attention you wanted. Why would any gentleman wear tight breeches unless he wanted attention?”
“I’m almost sorry for the loss of my newest pair,” he observed.
“The loss? What happened?”
“Boodle handed over some yellow—no, saffron—colored breeches and the back split in two pieces a moment later.”
She broke into laughter that cascaded around his ears and made him feel warmer than the fire did.
“Boodle took that pair and all the others with him to London. After,” he added scrupulously, “I told him that I would never wear them again.”
Her mouth fell open. “Boodle stole your pantaloons?”
“I prefer to think
that he gave himself un pourboire.” At her raised eyebrow, he added, “A tip of staggering proportions.”
“Did he take all those fancy coats you used to wear as well?”
He grinned at her over his shoulder. “The neckcloths edged in lace. The boxes of patches. The heeled shoes and clocked stockings. The ornate perfume bottle that he’d decided I must carry with me wherever I went.”
“I don’t like to judge people,” Diana said, sounding as if she was confessing to one of the seven deadly sins. “Boodle is somewhat foolish, but he is not evil. Still, by any measure, that is theft.”
“Prism is remarkably displeased, and went so far as to suggest that I take action,” North said, turning the toast. He was unable to make himself care.
“You have lost a tremendous amount of money,” she pointed out. “We all heard about the perfume bottle that came from France and was meant to protect your nose from the unwashed hordes. Will you send the sheriff after Boodle?”
North shook his head. “He helped me win you.”
“Under the circumstances, you wouldn’t be blamed for wishing him locked up for life,” she said, her eyes falling to her hands.
“Hmmm.” He didn’t feel like clarifying his feelings, so he set to work on the first piece of toast, which was now evenly brown, as perfectly cooked as the lambs’ tongues he hadn’t brought himself to taste.
“Talking of theft, my mother wrote me a letter accusing me of stealing the emerald necklace and diadem I wore during our betrothal party,” Diana said in a rush. “I didn’t! I only sold my earrings.”
He glanced at her large, vulnerable eyes. “She repeated as much to Aunt Knowe, who finds your mother repellent, and didn’t believe her, any more than I would. Prism returned your jewelry with all items intact, under the care of your maid and one of my father’s grooms.”
He spread butter on her toast, thinking that he’d like to lick butter off her chin. Or at the least, watch her lick it off her lips.
“I did take the matching earrings I was wearing that day,” she said, her voice dropping. “I am a thief, though my mother exaggerated the matter considerably.”
“Did the earrings belong to Mrs. Belgrave?”
“My grandmother gave me the set for my eighteenth birthday, but my mother always acted as if they were hers.”
North dripped honey carefully on the toast, thinking about a vituperative woman with the audacity to accuse her daughter of theft when the jewels in question were a birthday present.
“A gift should stay a gift. I don’t like your mother,” he observed.
“I don’t either.” Her voice was miserable. “I think accusing me of theft is a way of making herself feel better about not supporting me,” Diana said. “She’s not terrible. She wouldn’t want me to be destitute.”
“All evidence to the contrary,” he said gently.
She was silent.
“Eat this.” He handed her a piece of toast, dripping with butter and golden honey.
She took it gingerly. “I know what you’re doing.”
“You do?”
It was lucky that the saffron breeches had already met their maker, because they would be splitting apart, and not in the back. What was it about Diana’s velvety laugh and gray eyes that made him feel like the kind of dissolute rake he had never been?
Like a man who had never heard of rank or title and didn’t give a damn . . . a man closed in a dark room with a warm woman?
“You’re trying to fatten me up, aren’t you?” Diana said, mock scowling at him. “Lady Knowe has probably complained to you. She keeps telling me that I’m overly thin.”
North felt a pulse of alarm. Diana had nothing to lose, from his point of view.
“That’s a ferocious glare you’re leveling at me,” she said mildly. “You and your aunt should go head-to-head.”
“You don’t need to lose weight,” he stated.
“I could say the same to you.” She took a bite from one corner of her toast, and licked her lips afterward.
Honey toast was the food of the gods. Every nerve in North’s body was attuned to Diana’s shining lips.
“Lady Knowe is a worrier,” she said, taking another bite. “I’m no smaller than I was the last time I saw you. All my gowns fit precisely as they used to.” She giggled. “If I was in the habit of wearing breeches, they wouldn’t split!”
Diana in breeches . . . slim legs enclosed in tight silk. Round bum—
He wrenched his mind away. The word “proper” had lost all force, and he knew it. As if it had been a magic spell, and now the magic had worn off and he didn’t give a damn about what was an appropriate subject of conversation, and what was indelicate.
He did give a damn about whether Diana had lost weight, because if she had, she was working too hard while enslaved by the evil lord of the manor: himself.
North propped another slice of bread close to the fire and inspected her face carefully. Her delicate jaw and cheeks weren’t taut.
She smiled at him, lips glistening, and swallowed. “Agree with me?”
“I’d need to make a closer inspection,” he said, allowing desire to show in his eyes. In the wavering firelight, she looked like a goddess. Diana, emerging from the woods to strike a mere mortal man silent with her beauty.
She snorted. It was ladylike—but definitely a snort. “Here, you eat the rest,” she said, pushing the toast at him. “I had supper and I’m guessing you didn’t. Besides, you’ve burned your piece.”
Sure enough, the bread had turned black on one side.
“Try another,” Diana said. “I thought you never burned toast!”
“I was distracted by the question of whether you were withering away,” he retorted, discarding the blackened bread as a bad job. He ate the remains of Diana’s piece in three huge bites. He hadn’t been hungry for months, but now he felt ravenous.
“I sliced the whole loaf,” she said, reaching forward with a slender foot and nudging the plate closer to his leg. She met his eyes with a bland smile. “In case you burn another piece.”
“I would snort,” he said pointedly, “but gentlemen try to express themselves in words. They never mock a lady’s comment.”
She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, chin cupped in her hand. “Would you like to know more about what you were wearing in my dream?”
“I believe you said that I was naked from the waist down. I was hoping that you were in dishabille as well.”
“No, I didn’t!” she squealed. “You may not have been dressed like a dandy, but you were certainly wearing clothing!”
“Quel dommage.”
“Too bad?” she asked. And, at his nod, “I don’t speak French. My mother considers it a language spoken only by debauchers and lechers.”
“You’re the one dreaming about naked men,” he pointed out.
“As I said, you weren’t naked! You simply weren’t wearing silk pantaloons. Nor a wig, or jewels, or even a patch.”
“Boodle would have considered me naked,” he said. He waved another piece of toast at her, but when she shook her head, he made short work of it. After that he arranged a log on the hearth so that he could toast two more pieces and watch her at the same time.
“I should have kissed you more when we were betrothed,” he said, telling her what he was thinking.
“That would have been most improper!” Pink crept into her cheeks.
He was a little taken aback by the vehemence of her comment. “Why?” Then, frowning: “Because of your sister’s plight? I can assure you that I am capable of kissing a woman without losing control.” He managed to sound indignant, though he knew he would have trouble stopping at one kiss, if he ever managed to get Diana into his arms again.
But only Diana. No other woman. And only if she were willing.
“Those prints suggesting that you despoiled me are rubbish,” she said, leaning forward and wrapping warm fingers around his forearm. “No one who matters thought twice about them.?
??
North turned his two pieces of toast, thinking of Boodle’s assessment of who mattered. “Who matters?”
“Lady Knowe and your family,” she said without hesitation. “Leonidas has bought as many prints as he could find. Last Christmas he added devil horns in crimson ink and posted them all around the house. I’m told he did the same for Alaric’s prints before I joined the household.”
It was oddly comforting to remember that. “Did I get a tail as well? I remember that Alaric had extra bits top and bottom.”
“Bottom,” she said, chortling with laughter. “That’s quite naughty of you, Lord Roland!”
He turned back to her. “I can be far naughtier than that, Diana.” He knew his eyes were hungry and dark, and not for honey toast. For her.
Diana frowned, and he wasn’t sure whether she understood what he was thinking. Probably not. She was one of the bravest, most independent women he’d ever known, and at the same time, she was startlingly naive. She didn’t seem to recognize when a man was staring at her with stark lust. She didn’t think of scandal when she took employment in the nursery of her former fiancé’s home.
“Leonidas’s decorations had to be removed,” she said. “The younger girls began examining the Shakespeare print depicting you as the rapist leaping out of a trunk, which led to conversations about men who might ask you to store trunks of jewels in your bedchamber. Spartacus thought it would be funny to jump out the wardrobe in the nursery when Viola was asleep.”
North ate two more slices and another one while Diana’s voice washed over him like a benediction, sweet memories of family and home and people who loved each other and laughed together.
Apparently all the girls had screamed bloody murder. He hadn’t grown up with so many little sisters without learning what girls’ screams sounded like. Diana tried to describe the chaos, and he drank the mug of milk waiting on the hearth, even though he hadn’t drunk warm milk since he was a boy.
But Diana had put it out for him, so he drank it.
He put a couple more logs on the fire, and poked it until he thought it would keep burning until dawn or thereabouts. Diana was still wrapped in that blanket, and part of his mind made a forcible suggestion that he should unwrap her like a present.