here to do. He had come to sever the ties that had so swiftly and unwisely been made between them upon the road, to convince the duke’s man that there was nothing between them, nothing that would encourage Yarmouth to use her in order to hurt him. He could not allow another girl to be harmed because of him—especially not this precious girl.
But he must be certain of one matter before he carried this charade to its end.
“Come now, minx. Don’t make a fuss over it.” He pressed the words through his lips, allowing a slight slur, each syllable an effort. “It’s not as though you’re in the family way, after all.” He gestured flippantly to her waist, then blinked hard and peered more closely. “Are you?”
“No.” She crushed her fist to her breast and her beautiful eyes flared. “You know, I don’t believe in love—at least not the kind between a man and a woman. So you haven’t broken my heart. But if I did believe in it, I think you would have been the man I fell in love with. But I can see I am justified in my skepticism, because instead all you are is—is u-unworthy. Of both of us.”
She was wrong. If he knew nothing else at this moment, he knew this, because his need to wrest the unhappiness from her eyes could not be more violent. He believed in the sort of love she now decried because he was, quite simply, hers.
He nearly spoke, the words upon his tongue desperately seeking escape, aching to take it all back and tell her the truth. But he clamped his jaw shut and watched her, with her hand over her mouth, swiftly move to the door.
Sir Tracy stood in the aperture. Behind him hovered three servants not bothering to hide their interest. Wyn would have applauded his own wildly successful plan if he had the spirit to do so. Within minutes of his departure the entire household would know of this scene. Within hours the duke in Yarmouth would have word of it. And she would be safe.
“Yale,” Lucas growled, his face blotched with red. “You’ve done it again.”
“Tracy!” Diantha’s lashes fanned wide. “What did you hear?”
“I don’t need to have heard anything.” He scowled. “Your tears speak for themselves. Can you see now why I didn’t want this for you? This fine gentleman? Go upstairs. I will speak with you after I have escorted him from the house.”
“No need to banish her to the belfry, old chap.” Wyn retrieved his hat and crop and sauntered toward the doorway. “On my way out anyway.”
“You won’t be welcome here again,” Lucas snarled. “I’ll thank you to remember that.”
“Your servant, sir. Ma’am.” He executed a sloppy bow, donned his hat at a foppish angle, and went onto the street to claim his horse, and after that, his future without her. A future he began to hope would be brief after all.
Diantha wrapped her arms around her waist, numb everywhere. She was vaguely aware of Tracy dismissing the servants and shutting the parlor door.
“Sis, don’t let that blackguard—”
“The things he said . . .” Hurtful things. If he were any other person, she might imagine he had intended to hurt her.
“Here. Sit down.” Tracy guided her to the sofa. “Have a cuppa.”
She gripped his wrist, sloshing tea across her skirt. “Tracy, how do men usually behave when they are badly foxed?”
“Like cads. Beasts, some of them. Fools, at the very least. Then there are the quiet ones like our father.”
“Like our father.” Like with her father, the lure of the bottle had proven too much for Wyn. Because of her? Because she had driven him to it by touching him in the garden, like that night at the inn, begging him for touches when he was trying to be a gentleman?
No. It couldn’t be. He had left behind the bottle in Knighton because of her. For her. He had given it up to ensure her safety. Her father had been a loving man but weak, dispirited by his wife’s criticism and disapproval. But Wyn was strong.
Why had he done this?
Perhaps . . . because she was unworthy?
But that was not true. Her mother’s voice no longer rang in her head, reminding her of her deficiencies. And for pity’s sake, why had she wished to hear that voice again? Had she imagined speaking to her mother would change anything? But she had changed. She was no longer that girl from four years ago.
“Di?” Tracy pressed the tea forward again.
She sprang up and hurried to the window. In front of the house a stable boy held Galahad’s reins. The big horse’s attention was turned toward his master standing several paces away beside a closed carriage pulled by four magnificent grays. Marked with a crest, the carriage door was open, revealing only shadows within.
“Diantha.” Tracy’s footsteps came behind her. “If you’re thinking Yale’s like our father, then you’re thinking wrongly. Our father did his best for all of us before the end.”
Sir Reginald Lucas had been a quiet inebriate, not howling and debauched but exhausted and sad. Wyn had been, rather, contained. Disciplined. On the road he’d never shouted or railed, and he had not handed her cruelties. Only that night at the inn the darkness in his eyes and the desperation of his touch had frightened her. But he’d told her afterward that he hadn’t been trying to frighten her. He had only wanted her.
An arm extended from the carriage and a heavy hand grasped Wyn’s shoulder. He dislodged it then climbed into the vehicle, and the carriage started away. Diantha’s gaze followed it around the corner.
“Don’t tell me you’re hoping he’ll return,” Tracy said behind her. “Because even if he does I won’t allow it.”
Out on the street, the boy reached up to stroke Galahad’s ebony neck and the thoroughbred dipped his head for the caress.
“Sis, I’ve news that will take your mind off that bounder.” Tracy shifted from one foot to another and shot a glance toward the window. “It’s about our mother. You see, she’s here in London.”
During the moment then in which she could not quite draw breath, Diantha considered the vicious irony of discovering she loved a man and then losing him within minutes of rediscovering the mother who had never loved her. It was, frankly, nearly too much to bear.
“London?” she said weakly. “But I thought her in France. That is to say, Papa said something to that effect.”
“Well, there’s the thing. I don’t know that our stepfather knows she’s here.” Tracy scrubbed a palm across his jaw. “If she’d told him, he might have alerted the authorities.”
“Authorities? What do you mean? Is she not supposed to be in England?”
Tracy’s eyes widened. “I thought you knew.”
“Knew what?”
“About that trouble with the law four years back.”
“The law?” She gaped. “Tracy, is Mama in exile? Is that why she left?”
“That, and Carlyle wouldn’t keep her any longer,” he said tightly. “Not after the smuggling.”
“Smuggling? Mama? Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
He shook his head. “Everybody knows it.”
“Only I didn’t because you never told me!”
“I supposed Serena did, or that you’d read it in the paper, and you didn’t wish to speak of it.”
Diantha sank into the chair Wyn had vacated minutes earlier. “I didn’t,” she whispered. “I did not wish to know.” It was, it seemed, a day for painful understandings.
The baroness had often said Diantha was not biddable enough, not demure enough, not beautiful enough. But the greatest cruelty her mother had perpetrated on her—the cruelty that only the housekeeper Bess and Teresa knew about—that she had not been brave enough to tell Wyn about even after all he had shown her of himself—that cruelty she had only learned of two years ago. In seeking out her mother in Calais, she had wanted to confront her with it, to tell her that she knew about the lie and that she had overcome it. But she could not have pursued that interview if she’d known her family might be hurt by renewing the connection with her mother. So she had never asked them why the baroness left. Not once.
Wyn was not the only one who had told untruths. She had lied to herself. Over and over again.
