Too Wilde to Wed Read online

  “I took the post to my old nanny’s home, but she had passed away.”

  Curses rose to his lips, but he cut them off. “I cannot believe that your mother threw you and her only grandson out the door without money.”

  “She gave me five pounds,” Diana said. “She was livid about the emeralds, and Godfrey, and my sister’s death, though she wouldn’t admit it. My mother never approved of me so much as when you courted me. I let her down dreadfully.”

  North saw no point in expressing his violent feelings toward Mrs. Belgrave. “My turn to apologize,” he said, putting her away from him, because in another moment he would bend his mouth to hers.

  “For what?”

  “For wooing you so ineptly that you couldn’t tell me about your sister’s death. Lecturing you about being a duchess. For God’s sake, Diana, why didn’t you just tell me to shut up?”

  “You were enjoying yourself,” she said, her mouth quirking up in the teasing grin that he never saw when they were betrothed.

  Because he was too busy being an ass.

  “I didn’t notice you were grieving, because I was trying to make you into a duchess.” His voice rasped.

  “I would have made a wretched duchess,” she said, with obvious conviction. She touched his arm. “Are you well, North? I thought you’d be asleep hours ago. You seem dreadfully tired.”

  “It’s not easy coming back to England after being at war,” he said, surprising himself. “The castle is so quiet.”

  “I think it’s loud.” She wrinkled her nose at him. “I would have thought stone was silent, but the floors creak.”

  “The ghosts make noises too,” he said, enthralled by the playfulness he’d never seen when they were betrothed.

  Her eyes grew bigger. “Ghosts?”

  “Has no one told you about the castle ghosts?”

  “In here?” Her gaze skittered around the kitchen.

  “There’s supposedly a priest up on the ramparts who carries his head under his arm, but I never heard of him straying into the kitchens,” he told her, adding, “My brothers and I made up more ghosts; unfortunately there was no evidence for their existence.”

  “Well, thank goodness for that,” she said tartly. She turned to go.

  A gentleman would escort her through those dark corridors to the nursery. But her wrapper had eased open and her nightgown was made of a flimsy cotton.

  Diana had beautiful breasts, the kind that made a man’s gut twist and yearn. Better he stay here, and let her go.

  She hesitated, and left.

  The space where she’d been assumed the shape of the ghost of the duchess he might have had.

  The duchess he would never have.

  Chapter Six

  The following night

  Months before, North had hoped that untroubled sleep would return to him during the interminable voyage back to England. If not then, once he’d returned to his boyhood bedchamber in the castle.

  But no.

  He had lost the gift of sleep at the battle where he’d lost most of his regiment. It didn’t matter how often a man told himself that he had sworn a vow to follow orders, no matter how idiotic.

  By buying a commission, North had put himself in charge of more than two hundred men. In making the vow to serve, he had put all two hundred lives at risk.

  In following that vow, he had sacrificed a number of them. He pushed the thought out of his head and fixed on another reason for sleeplessness: Diana.

  Her story had a number of gaps in it. Her sister had given birth to an illegitimate baby, and died shortly before the betrothal party. He could understand that Diana believed care for Godfrey was incompatible with a lady’s life.

  She was wrong; Godfrey could have been established in a warm and loving home. Or, if Diana insisted on having him under her eye, North knew several examples of noble ladies raising their own or their husbands’ bastards.

  When he and Diana were betrothed, he had been desperately in love with his fiancée, figuratively at her feet. If she had told him of the Foundling Hospital, he would have fetched her nephew without hesitation, if only to wring a smile from her. Any lady with an understanding of the power women could wield over men would have known that.

  Diana had had no idea. She had been naive, as well as impulsive.

  At the moment he was so weary that he felt groggy and not a little queasy. Aunt Knowe had ordered only three courses at dinner, but even those were two more than he could eat.

  Somehow, he had to return to being a man who expected four or five courses as his due. A man who would be offended by a table laid without at least eight to ten dishes at every course.

  Not offended for himself, he thought, stumbling through an explanation he’d never considered before Diana broached the subject. Offended for the title. Reflexively protective of the title. He was always waiting, he realized now, for someone to point out how ill-fitted he was to the role, in comparison to Horatius.

  It made it all the more ironic that Diana had shielded him from her bastard nephew in order to protect the title.

  The deeply shaming part, the nagging fact he kept revisiting, was that he had glimpsed Diana’s desperate straits when he’d found her in that cottage. Nevertheless, he had ridden away in the grip of a savage rage, thinking she’d chosen a footman over him, over a duke.

  Except that there hadn’t been a footman, nor an insult to his bloody honor. If he hadn’t been so defensive of his rank, he would have marched into that house and made sure she was taken care of, lover be damned.

  He would have discovered that Diana had no lover. He would have learned of Rose’s illegitimate baby.

  Godfrey’s parentage clarified Diana’s future.

  She was his problem, not his father’s. Ophelia could solve the problem of who would care for Artie—but he would solve the problem of who would care for Diana.

  She didn’t want him. She didn’t need him.

  No, she did need him. She was destitute.

  His mind went around and around, like a rat in a trap. It occurred to him to send her to the family house in Scotland, but that felt terribly far away. What if something happened, and she needed him?

  He swung out of bed and made his way to the writing desk that stood before his window. Down below him, out there in the darkness, was Lindow Moss, the peat bog that spread east of the castle. With the window open, he could smell the wind that scoured across it.

  London air was choked with smoke and dust. The air over Lindow Moss smelled like peat, not entirely pleasant, but clean, in its own way.

  He was damned lucky to have been jilted. Lucky that he wasn’t in love any longer. Lucky that he recognized love for the mad wind Dante described before it was too late. Obviously, he hadn’t been in love with a real woman. He had never met the Diana whom he’d encountered yesterday: funny, rueful, deeply loyal.

  Even her hair was a revelation.

  Before, he had always known where Diana was in any room, because of the tall white cloud that was her wig. He’d been so besotted that he had always marked her location.

  Thinking about that idiocy, he shoved his hand through his hair. It was growing again. He used to shave it as that made it easier to tolerate heavy wigs, as well as to avoid the lice that plagued his men.

  Diana’s hair, her real hair, was dark red, with a sheen like a fox’s pelt, but softer.

  He stared out over Lindow Moss, counting stars as a way of curbing his own stupidity.

  In love with a governess?

  The worst governess the castle had ever seen?

  Hell, no.

  This was merely the disagreeable aftermath of being jilted. Whenever he had woken in his tent in America after dreaming of Diana, the edge of erotic longing he felt had made him furious. He refused to lust after another man’s woman.

  But as it turned out, she belonged to no man.

  Godfrey, that plate-throwing boy, was her nephew, not her son. He almost liked the boy just for that. He
himself had thrown a plate or two at Horatius, his infuriating brother—who was always right, always the best. Who wouldn’t have thrown a plate at Horatius?

  Even now, he would love to throw something at the fool for getting drunk and taking a bet he could gallop across Lindow Moss. No one could cross a bog on horseback in the night. They’d rescued his horse, although Horatius’s body was never found.

  Dead men, Horatius among them, crowded into his brain at night. He kept going over the names of those who died at Stony Point. John Goss, who was missing two front teeth. William Peach, mocked for the fuzz of his first beard. Peter Lithgow, the one they all called Gower.

  Surviving prisoners of war from his regiment were due to be exchanged for American prisoners any day now. His father had pressured the Ministry to make certain that his men were part of the next exchange.

  He couldn’t bring them home; they would be sent to another regiment. But he wasn’t sure they wanted to be home. They had joined willingly enough. He hadn’t pressed anyone into service, or hired Hessians to fill his regiment, the way other lords had done.

  He turned from the window and walked to the door, unable to even glance at his bed. If he lay down, he’d fall into dreams of smoke and cannon fire, weeping men and groans of the dying.

  Better to go—

  Anywhere.

  Out in the dark, echoing corridors, he paced restlessly, tracing the path he had forged the night before. He walked over stone flagging that stretched into irregular wings added by ancestors. Up and down staircases he went, through the kitchens again, and into the ballroom. The only floor he avoided was the nursery wing.

  Perhaps he would summon Diana to the library on the morrow. Sit behind the great desk where he used to examine the estate’s ledgers, and demand to know why she had fled the castle without asking for help.

  Or he could summon her to the drawing room without warning. She might arrive with her hair falling down her back, and he could stare at its color surreptitiously while he inquired whether it was their kiss that had sent her running.

  Why had she left all her jewelry except that pair of earrings? He remembered Diana wearing an emerald necklace that could have supported her for years. Yet she hadn’t taken it in order to ensure her future.

  No, she had fled the castle without a second thought.

  Not unlike the way he bought a commission and left the country, a voice in his mind suggested.

  He was making a third circuit around the Great Portrait Gallery—so called to distinguish it from the East Portrait Gallery, which was older and smaller—when he made up his mind to visit the nursery.

  Diana wouldn’t be awake, but he could check on Artemisia. Or Artie, as his little sister wanted to be called. Poor Artemisia had been given an even worse name than Betsy, whose real name was Boadicea. “Betsy” was acceptable on the marriage market, but what gentleman would want to court “Artie”?

  The names resulted from the duke’s determination to name all his many children after warriors. Horatius and Alaric had been lucky. He had chosen North over Roland. Leonidas turned himself into Leo; Alexander and Joan accepted their names, as did Erik. His stepsister Viola had joined the family with her name intact. But what about Artie and Sparky? Presumably Spartacus no longer allowed himself to be called Sparky. He’d been complaining about that before North left for the war.

  Making his way to the nursery wing, he surprised himself with a bark of laughter, thinking of Artie, Sparky, and Betsy.

  He descended stone steps, walked a long corridor, and headed up the wooden staircase to the nursery floor. At the top, he stopped in the dim light and felt under the ornamental knob atop the newel post that graced the top of the stairs.

  Sure enough, the big H was still there. Years ago Horatius had carved his initial, claiming the castle in some foolish game they’d played.

  Except it was never foolish to Horatius. He had relished the role of future duke, strutting around like a bantam cock from the age of five. Dressed in velvet, most of the time. Keeping himself clean while Alaric, North, and the duke’s ward, Parth Sterling, rolled in the dirt.

  North’s hands tightened on the knob, making the white scar that bisected his right hand gleam in the low light of the lamp burning in the nursery wing.

  Within a month or two of landing in America, he’d known that the war was hopeless—and immoral. That country belonged to its rough and ready inhabitants, not to the red-coated British. He could have lost all the fingers on his right hand—or his life—and the war wasn’t worth that, let alone the lives of men on both sides.

  With a half-suppressed sound of disgust, he walked down the corridor. The nursery bedchamber was in the middle on the right. He pushed the door open and stood for a moment, accustoming himself to the dim light.

  An empty rocking chair was placed next to the fireplace. Presumably a maid sat up all night only when a baby was in residence. Around the large room, pushed against the walls, were small beds, each with its own set of curtains. There were as many as one might find in a small orphanage, thanks to his father’s three fertile duchesses.

  Only one had its bed curtains closed, so he stepped over and quietly drew back the fabric. Artie lay fast asleep, clutching a wooden doll with brown hair and violent red spots on its cheeks. The doll wore a nightdress printed with small blue flowers that matched Artie’s. North was instantly certain that Artie’s governess had made it for her.

  He had clear memories of his sisters’ bedtime. They went to bed shining clean, their hair tightly braided. Artie’s face was clean enough, but her hair was a tangled cloud on the white pillowcase.

  In the house he meant to offer her, Diana would have a cook, a maid, a nanny. She probably needed two maids. It couldn’t be a cottage, because she would need room to house those servants, so that she and Godfrey could be comfortable and happy.

  That was crucial. She had been his, for a short time. He had believed she would be his for life, and it was a hard idea to shake.

  He straightened and softly pulled Artie’s curtains back in place.

  Godfrey must have refused bed curtains. He himself loathed the stifling feeling of sleeping surrounded by heavy draperies. To this day, he preferred his bed curtains tied back, and a window open as well. Even the brutal conditions of an American winter hadn’t changed his mind about the delights of fresh air.

  The next bed was empty, which surprised him. He’d have thought Artie and Godfrey would sleep near each other, but perhaps that wasn’t proper.

  The following bed was also empty, and he made his way more quickly to the bed beyond that. A conflicted feeling was rising in his gut. Dread. Guilt.

  Damn it, she couldn’t have left without warning a second time, could she? His gut twisted at the thought of Diana gone, this time with a little boy instead of a hatbox.

  Surely she wouldn’t have handed over Artie to be cared for by that ill-tempered nursemaid.

  “Hell and damnation,” North muttered when he inspected the last bed, keeping his voice quiet so that Artie wouldn’t wake up. He glanced around the room one more time, then pushed open the door to the nanny’s bedroom.

  It was empty.

  The nursery at Lindow Castle was made up of a sprawling suite of rooms that included the children’s bedchamber, a bathing alcove, the schoolroom, the dining room, and even a priest’s hole.

  He suddenly remembered that his governess, Miss Raymond, had had a sitting room of her own, where she used to retreat when four energetic boys—Horatius, Alaric, he, and Parth—wore her out. In retrospect, she had done an excellent job, handing out butterfly nets and sending them on daily rambles around the countryside.

  Once in the corridor, he turned right, passing the dining room and the schoolroom. Next to it was the door to Miss Raymond’s chamber.

  He had no memory of ever being invited to enter, nor, indeed, wishing to. He and his brothers hadn’t devoted any thought to their governess, although now he wondered if she, too, had been caught
between the family and the household, not fitting into either place.

  His heart sank. The door stood ajar. No lady left her private chamber door open.

  Curses spun through his head. Diana was gone, and he would have to chase after her. He pushed open the door, thinking that Prism had to have been aware of her departure. Nothing happened in the household without the butler’s knowledge. Yet no one had informed him?

  An indefinably flowery warmth hung in the air. Bread had been toasted at the fire in the not-too-distant past.

  She hadn’t left.

  His heart hitched in a way that sent a shock down his spine. It was merely because he was grateful not to have to chase the woman down, he told himself quickly. That would have been a bother.

  The chamber was good-sized, with a small desk by the window. A narrow bed was nestled in the corner, but he didn’t allow his eyes to rest on it, looking instead at the fireplace flanked by two padded chairs, worn enough to have been there since his childhood.

  It had been a chilly evening, and a fire was still giving off enough light that he could see watercolor paintings propped up on the mantel. They were likely gifts from his sisters, considering their dashing colors and complete lack of talent. The room was full of reminders of his siblings, from a broken bow to a pile of children’s gloves awaiting mending.

  The fireside chairs were wide enough that a slim governess might read aloud to one or even two small children, and in light of the stack of children’s books on the hearth, that happened on a regular basis. An unfinished sampler, perhaps belonging to Joan or Betsy, lay across a stool, a bag of embroidery thread beside it. A roughly carved wooden boat leaned against one wall, waiting for its creator to return from Eton, presumably.

  Big plump pillows were piled to one side so that a child could throw herself on the floor and read a book.

  A grin spread across North’s face—such an unfamiliar facial movement that he noticed it—when he realized that one wall was taken up with a gallery of prints depicting his brother Alaric, or “Lord Wilde,” as he was known to readers of his books as well as playgoers who saw the infamous Wilde in Love which, before being shut down, was the most sought-after theater ticket in all London.