Instead, he bid his coachman drive him to the Palace of Westminster. Parliament wouldn’t open its first session for three more hours, which would hopefully give Cole enough time to push his failed marriage proposal out of his mind and focus on the speech he was meant to give to his peers on public works and fisheries.
Tonight would determine his place for the rest of the parliamentary season.
This was his one chance to make the right impression. If he appeared knowledgeable enough, reliable enough,lordlyenough, they might choose him to replace Fortescue as committee leader.
It was what he wanted. What he had been working toward. And, if he were as honest as Diana, it was a goal far easier to achieve without her.
They wouldn’t trust him with Acts of Parliament if he couldn’t make his own wife respect society’s rules. And he certainly couldn’t leap on stage blathering about an overabundance of bushels or why England should ape Napoleon’s meters. Not without becoming a laughingstock, an object of ridicule, never to be trusted again.
And yet her words still stung his ears.Have youeverlistened to me?
Chapter 16
“What are you doing back here?”
Diana lifted her unfocused gaze from the floor outside her cousin’s private drawing room to find him at the other end of the short corridor.
Normally at this hour, Thad’s hair was still mussed from his pillow, his brown eyes still blurry with sleep. Today he looked as though he had been up for hours. His cheeks were ruddy as if from wind and a pair of riding gloves dangled from one hand.
More unusual, his dark eyes were not vacant and sleepy, but bright and alert and narrowing with concern. His long stride brought him to her side in seconds.
“What is it?” He pried her shoulders from the wall and led her to a leather chair in his study. “Tell me what’s happened.”
Diana tilted the back of her head against the chair and squeezed her eyes tight.
What happened had nothing to do with Thaddeus. What she intended to do—or not do—with her future affected her cousin very much.
He had taken every possible step to give her the best chance on the marriage mart. Dragged her to every possible beau monde soirée, even roped a duke into the impossible mission of marrying off his ward.
Diana had spent the past five years thwarting her cousin’s efforts. She’d been afraid if she told him the truth—that she never planned to take a husband—that her presence would no longer be welcome.
Thaddeus had agreed to be his orphaned cousin’s temporary guardian. He had not enlisted himself as permanent provider to a poor relation who chose to remain a dependent spinster on purpose.
She had accused Colehaven of not listening to her, of not recognizing her perspective nor respecting her wishes.
But she hadn’t even given her cousin the courtesy of an explanation, preferring to let him try so earnestly to give her opportunities for something she didn’t even want, rather than be brave enough to sit down and tell him the truth.
It was past time.
Diana opened her eyes. “Colehaven asked me to marry him.”
“Congratulations, cousin.” Thaddeus’s shoulders relaxed in obvious relief.
“I declined.”
There. The topic was broached. Now he would know just what kind of ward he had.
Thad’s brow furrowed. “You dislike Colehaven?”
Diana shook her head. She loved Cole. But it wasn’t enough.
“If your sights are set higher than a duke,” Thaddeus said slowly, “you should know that only leaves foreign princes and the Regent himself, who I’m afraid is already taken.”
Diana dropped her face in her hands. Her cousin was so deucedkind. She hated to shatter his good opinion of her.
She forced herself to look up anyway.
“I can’t marry him,” she said miserably. “Or anyone proper.I’mnot proper, and I don’t intend to change my ways. A duchess is important amongst the ton, but I’d rather be important to everyday people. To make a real difference. I’ve been slipping out in the mornings, dressed as something I’m not, in order to—”
