Too Wilde to Wed Page 5

  North gave him a chilly glance before he pulled on the shirt. Lady Knowe might not travel to London and attend society’s events, but she definitely mattered. Diana . . . Diana mattered too.

  “You’ll never fit into the saffron coat,” Boodle said with all the heartbreak of King Lear facing death on the heath. “You’ll split it across the shoulders.”

  “I suspect you’re right.”

  “If you’ll excuse me, my lord, I believe His Grace left some coats in his wardrobe.”

  “Good idea,” North said, dropping into a seat and picking up the book he was currently reading. He had never been a reader as a young man, but since leaving England he’d spent hour upon hour lost in a book.

  It was better than playing cards, which he detested, or arguing with his superiors, which was even worse. Long days at sea had been tolerable only because of a tattered collection of plays by the Roman playwrights Plautus and Terence. When he couldn’t sleep at night, he stayed up reading by candlelight.

  After docking in London and being told by his superiors that no one—not even an American man fighting for independence—could show as much courage as a British soldier, he walked out of the Ministry, stopped by a bookseller, and left for Cheshire the same evening.

  The book he’d purchased offered a depiction of hell, which felt bitterly appropriate after his experience of war. Dante Alighieri described hell as a series of circles, each containing sinners organized by their sins and punished in appropriate ways.

  It was all very tidy and satisfactory. North would have put unthinking military commanders in one circle, doomed to run ceaselessly through battlefields full of dead and dying bodies, the air bitter with smoke from cannon fire.

  He was considering a circle reserved for spies and intelligencers when his valet swung back into the room, a black coat over his arm.

  After that, Boodle scampered about the room, pulling garments from two wardrobes that held North’s clothing, most of which had been acquired during his courtship of Diana. Everything ended up in a huge pile on the bed, since North shook his head over and over.

  No, he had no intention of returning to court in the near future, so he didn’t need a coat embroidered with gaudy silver thread, with rubies for buttons.

  “You may be right,” Boodle agreed. “The newest coats are embroidered only on the skirts, the pockets, and the buttonholes.”

  No, he wouldn’t wear that primrose silk again. Or azure satin with violet trim. Or striped stockings or stockings with clocks. Shoes with red heels? No.

  “High heels have lost their acclaim,” Boodle conceded, adding two pairs to the pile. “I won’t even ask about this wig, so full-bodied, so fashionable,” he mourned, holding up a wig that North’s brother Alaric had described as a cross between a parrot and a fancy chicken.

  No, no, and no.

  “I have come to a decision,” Boodle announced, after the stack grew to shoulder height. “I cannot serve a man who would countenance wearing those breeches to the dinner table, let alone one who shows disdain for lace cuffs. Forgive me, my lord, but I think we will both be more comfortable if I take leave of your service.”

  North put his book down. “I’m sorry to hear it, Boodle. I will hire my father’s new valet, if you’d like to serve the duke instead.”

  “No,” he said, with tragic emphasis. “I must express my talents for shaping perfection, sartorial perfection. Caring for His Grace was a trying experience, but I consoled myself with thoughts of the triumphs to come once you returned. I shall find a gentleman more appreciative of my genius.”

  North stood up and clapped him on the back. “I owe you great thanks, Boodle. You turned me into a paragon. I will happily give you a reference.”

  “I took a man who scarcely knew how to put on a wig and made him into a courtier who could have graced the court of Marie Antoinette herself,” Boodle said, nodding.

  “Without your help, I would not have caught the eye of Miss Belgrave.”

  That wasn’t entirely true. Because of North’s rank and fortune, every young lady began fluttering her eyelashes and giggling the moment he strolled into the ballroom.

  He had enjoyed the fact that Diana hadn’t gushed, but he’d had no idea that she was happier in the nursery than the ballroom, in a muslin cap than a wig. She had been as much an impostor as he, in his wigs and ribbons.

  Impostor? He’d been a fool.

  “It is hard to believe that she was a leader in fashion,” Boodle said, shaking his head. “Lady Artemisia is never dressed to her station, never seen in a properly elegant frock. I have personally delivered illustrations of French children’s garments to the nursery, but no. Miss Belgrave dresses the children as if they were beggars.”

  North had nothing to say about that; he hadn’t paid any attention to what either child was wearing.

  “I will dispatch a tailor from London to create a new wardrobe in your chosen style, unless you’d prefer to find someone in the village,” Boodle said, adding with a touch of acid, “I hear that the baker’s wife takes in mending on occasion.”

  “I would be grateful for a tailor,” North said, sitting down and returning to his book.

  In Dante’s Inferno, the second circle was populated by lovers. Dante’s chat with Paolo and Francesca was written in old-fashioned Italian and dashed hard to understand, but North came to the conclusion that either the wind was howling in their ears or they were being blown about the world by the wind.

  Dante had caught something about the experience of falling in love. North might have denied falling in love with Diana, but in his heart, he knew perfectly well that he had experienced either a fit of madness or of love that had come over him with the violence of a summer storm.

  He liked the idea of blaming a fierce wind for blowing him into the ranks of dandies. He couldn’t believe that he had bothered to wear heels or a tall wig in an effort to court Diana. He had cared enough to wear patches on his face. It seemed inconceivable now.

  Boodle caught his attention by waving a fistful of neckcloths in front of him, each edged with lace or ruffles.

  “Don’t I have any plain scarves?”

  “Plain is not in my vocabulary,” Boodle said, nose in the air. “I would hope that you will replace me with a decent valet. Whatever you do, I beg you not to consider the second footman, Cozens. The man had the impudence to inform me that he meant to become a gentleman’s gentleman.”

  North grunted. In the back of his head, he was aware that he would be shortly dining with Diana.

  For the last time, perhaps.

  She would have to leave soon, taking that boy with her. His aunt was right. They needed to sit down in a civilized fashion and discuss her future.

  But no more apologies.

  “I told him,” Boodle said, “I told him that you couldn’t be a gentleman’s gentleman, if you weren’t a gentleman to start with!”

  North made a mental note to hire Cozens.

  Chapter Four

  Diana slipped into the Prussian Dining Room to find it empty. A settee and a few chairs were arranged in front of an unlit fireplace, and a round table was set for the evening meal.

  Supposedly the chamber had gained its name from oak panels painted Prussian blue, but North’s brother Alaric had confided with a wicked twinkle that they all thought the name derived from the second duchess’s seduction of a Prussian nobleman.

  Diana skirted the table, noting absently that Prism had laid out the Leboeuf china, which Lord Alaric had recently sent from Paris.

  Now that she was a member of the household, she knew far more about silver and china than she ever had before. The gold-embossed, porcelain plates were superb—and worth a king’s ransom. Prism himself would wash them tonight, entrusting Mrs. Mousekin to dry each plate as he handed them to her.

  Sometimes she felt overwhelmed by how much she hadn’t known about the work required to manage a large house and its occupants. She had had no idea that a single muslin gown might
take hours to press. She hadn’t known that servants often stayed up until the wee hours to clean the library, if the master chose to work late at his desk.

  She hadn’t known anything important.

  Catching sight of her tired black gown in the mirror over the mantelpiece made her wince, so she veered over to the window seat and sat down, leaning her chin on her crossed arms. Somewhere off to her left, Fitzy, the castle’s irritable peacock, must be parading around his territory. She cocked an ear but didn’t hear his screech.

  During her first visit, she hadn’t known that it took four gardeners and up to ten helpers to maintain the castle’s gardens, the lawns rolling off to the west, the apple orchard, the ornamental pool that surrounded a Roman-style folly.

  And yet she thought she could be the mistress of this ancient pile of stone, with its traditions, its priest holes, its sprawling nursery wing? It seemed unimaginable. Lady Knowe spent Tuesday—all of Tuesday, every Tuesday—going over accounts. Because the duchess spent most of her time in London with her husband, and North had gone to war, the duke’s sister had stepped into the gap.

  Which Diana, frankly, could not have done.

  Her mother considered money the provenance of the middling sort and below. Ladies went shopping with a maid and a footman, who had charge of a velvet coin purse. Sometimes the merchant simply sent Diana home with the merchandise.

  She had never considered how her beautiful shoes and silk stockings had been paid for.

  Her mother had been deeply opposed to her daughters learning anything that had a smell of commerce, as if an understanding of currency would make everyone remember Diana’s grandfather—whom no one forgot, anyway.

  No wonder North had tried to ease her way with lectures on this and that.

  One thing she had never fooled herself about was her ability to hold the attention of the man who would be lord of all this. North would have seen through her masks, wigs, and lip salve, and been bored to death by her, if not repulsed by her hair and freckles. It had been a terrible strain trying to appear duchess-worthy: intelligent, thoughtful, and all the rest of it.

  Her own mother had acknowledged the truth in their last terrible encounter, when Mrs. Belgrave had ordered Diana to be gone and to take Godfrey with her. Rose had been a true lady—cultured and intellectual, whereas Diana was impulsive and foolish. Apparently, their mother had always known Diana would muck up her marriage; she had just hoped it would happen when it was too late for North to cast her off.

  Mrs. Belgrave had gone on to say something so cruel that recalling it sent a shiver through Diana’s whole body, but she had become an expert at banishing that memory. Now she forced herself to savor the peaceful view behind the gardens. She was safe. Godfrey was safe.

  Behind her, the door opened and Prism said, “Good evening, Miss Belgrave. May I offer you a glass of sherry?”

  Diana scrambled off the window seat. “Oh, good evening, Prism!” When she returned to the castle, they’d come to a silent agreement that “Mr. Prism” wasn’t appropriate when she was dining with Lady Knowe. “I would love a glass of sherry.”

  The butler poured her a glass, placing it precisely in the center of a silver salver before he carried it to her.

  “Do you think that I could become a lady’s maid, Prism?” Diana asked.

  “With all due respect, Miss Belgrave, I do not.” With that, he bowed and made his way out of the room, maintaining a dignified silence as regarded his reasoning.

  Diana sat down again with a sigh. She was prone to saying the wrong things at the wrong time—unless her mother was in the room to terrify her into silence. That wasn’t a desirable quality in a lady’s maid, who was expected to keep all her mistress’s secrets.

  Moreover, she couldn’t even mend a ripped hem with any skill, thanks to her mother’s ban on practical skills. Her governess had taught her to stitch a sampler, which was useless, in retrospect. She could paint a picture backward on a piece of glass, which was even more pathetic.

  A few strands of ivy had crept up the side of the castle and grown into the room, where they would inevitably be snipped off by a housemaid. She couldn’t help thinking that they were like her and Rose. Upstart sprigs, trying to enter the ton, to become part of polite society . . . likely to be clipped off.

  Clambering up on her knees, she pushed the strands back out the window—and saw the nest. It was tucked on the stone ledge to the left of the window, hidden from the wind by a curtain of ivy.

  Cautiously she leaned out a bit further. To her great pleasure, three spotted blue eggs lay in a soft, neat hollow lined with feathers.

  Artie would be so excited . . . but quite likely Diana and Godfrey would be gone when the eggs hatched. Prism could arrange to have Artie brought to see the fledglings. Or she could tell North, now that he was home.

  She had forgotten him for a moment. She’d actually forgotten he was back.

  As if to prove that he was there in the flesh, strong arms wound around her waist from behind and hauled her back into the room.

  Diana had never been embraced by North; their bodies had never even touched. But she knew instinctively that the hard chest at her back was his.

  “What in the devil’s name are you doing leaning out that window?” he asked, sounding perplexed instead of annoyed.

  That raised the question of whether North ever became angry. Even when he’d found her in the cottage, she had thought his expression was bleak, not angry. He had been disillusioned, because he had put her on a pedestal, and she had tumbled all the way belowstairs.

  His arms fell away and she looked over her shoulder. “There’s a nest with three eggs in it, North. You are taller than I am, so you’ll see it easily.”

  Somewhat to her surprise, he put a knee beside hers and braced his hands on the ledge. “A finch’s nest.”

  “A finch!” Diana exclaimed. “How lovely!” And, remembering that ignorance was not a sin: “What is a finch?”

  “A bird with a forked tail and a wheezy song, as I recall. My older brother was fascinated by bird nests and used to collect them.”

  “Did Lord Horatius sketch or paint pictures of the nests he collected?”

  North shook his head. “Horatius would have thought such a womanly art was beneath him.”

  “What a shame,” Diana said, getting to her feet and shaking out her skirts. “I can’t paint well at all; it’s above me. Perhaps there’s a book about birds in the castle library. Artie would love to watch the baby birds hatch.”

  As would Godfrey, but she didn’t want to mention her nephew yet because . . . here they were. The two of them. They had to discuss Godfrey, but the cowardly side of her wanted to stand beside North and pretend that she hadn’t brought disgrace onto both of them.

  “May I offer you another glass of sherry?” North asked.

  Diana hastily finished the last of her drink. “Yes, please,” she said, holding out her glass. “That’s one thing I do not like about the servants’ hall,” she confided. “No wine to drink, except on Christmas.”

  North glanced over his shoulder. “Prism doesn’t have a glass of wine in the evening?”

  “Oh, yes, he does,” Diana said. “The upper servants have their own sitting room, where they share wine and dessert, while lesser mortals drink small beer. I almost always retire to the nursery, as I am comfortable in neither place.”

  “Because you are neither upper nor lower?” North said, pouring sherry.

  “As governess, I would sit with the upper servants or even the family, but as a nanny, I belong with the lower servants. Many gentlewomen become governesses, but they rarely become nannies.”

  “You are higher than all of them,” he said, matter-of-factly. “You are Miss Belgrave, after all. Your father was a knight.” He handed her a glass.

  “Hierarchy is a matter of context, don’t you think?” Diana asked. “There must have been times in the colonies when you were considered a lower mortal compared to your commanding
officers. And yet, were you standing beside those men in a ballroom, you would be superior to them.”

  “My title led to complications,” he agreed.

  “Is that why you sold out?” Diana asked, and, seeing the barely perceptible tightening of his jaw, “It’s not my business, so please forget that I asked. As for me, there are times when I think it would be easier to be the mistress of the whole castle than the governess of the nursery, but most of the time, I like having work to do.”

  His brows were drawn together, but his mouth eased. She was absurdly happy to see that.

  “I know just what you’re thinking,” Diana said, babbling because her mother wasn’t there to call her a fool, and North didn’t seem to have much to say. “You’re right. I would have made a terrible duchess. My mother was adamant that her daughters should marry into the gentry or the peerage, but I seem to be more akin to my grandfather. For example, I like hard work.”

  “Do you think that a duchess doesn’t work?”

  “Lady Knowe works very hard on Tuesdays, going over the castle accounts,” Diana said. “But most ladies’ labor is limited to dressing and undressing.”

  “Should that not count as work?” He took a sip, regarding her steadily over his glass.

  “I don’t consider it such. A lady stands motionless while one or two maids tie and pin her into a garment with as many as eight layers. It may take those maids three hours to clothe their mistress for dinner, and that’s just evening clothes. There are all the other changes: morning and afternoon dresses, riding costumes, walking costumes, and so on.” She shrugged.

  “I thought you delighted in fashion,” North said dryly. “You were pointed out to me as the most elegant young lady of your Season, a celebrated paragon.”

  She took a bracing sip of sherry. “You assume that I was allowed to choose my own clothing. I can assure you, Lord Roland, that when it comes to hierarchy, a young lady ranks far beneath her mother.”

  “I understood that you would have no choice as regards your spouse, once I made my interest clear.” His voice was rueful.