* * *
"It is quite, quite intolerable." Diana bent her head forward so that Bridget could clasp her pearls at her neck— the pearls that Teddy had given her as a wedding gift, and the only expensive gift he had ever given her.
"He is probably embarrassed too, mum," Bridget said, patting her mistress's neck to indicate that the task was completed. "After all, he is the one that made the mistake about the rooms, not you."
"Embarrassed?He?"Diana gave her maid an incredulous look in the mirror. "He was quite delighted by my discomfiture. He bowed and raised one insolent eyebrow, and he dared to smile at me behind his eyes.'' She adjusted the pearls quite unnecessarily at her neck. She looked into the mirror with renewed indignation. "And he called me Diana."
"Oh, mum," Bridget said, shocked.
"He is enjoying the situation," Diana said, "I can tell. I know his type.Too handsome for his own good.Thinks that he is the answer to every woman's prayer.Thinks he has only to crook a finger to make a woman come running. Thinks he can make me flush and simper and flutter my eyelashes merely by raising that eyebrow. There should be a law that gentlemen can raise onlyboth eyebrows together ornone at all. There really should."
"He is a very handsome gent," Bridget conceded.
"That should not be allowed either," Diana said. "Gentlemen who are that handsome should not be allowed to run around free doing all sorts of damage to female hearts. Other female hearts, that is. It is a good thing that I spent a Season in London five years ago, Bridget, and know all about gentlemen like him. You can see now, perhaps, why it was I married the Reverend Ingram."
"He was an angel," Bridget said without hesitation.
Diana got to her feet and looked at herself full length in a pier glass. "Yes, he was," she said. "I felt quite comfortable with him, Bridget. He would not have raised an eyebrow and smiled behind his eyes at a lady whose bed he had climbed into by mistake one night. He would have done the gentlemanly thing and died of mortification."
"Yes, mum," Bridget said. "I think it very likely that I will come to blows with his man before many days have passed, I give you fair warning. Lifted his nose in the air when he saw me belowstairs, he did, as if I was a particularly grubby and ragged worm, mum. Nasty man!And I a lady's maid.I am not dirt under anyone's boots, I'm not."
"No, you certainly are not," Diana agreed, by now thoroughly out of sorts with the whole world. "And do you realize what this means, Bridget? It means that my brother-in-law, Lord Crensford, and Mr. Lester Houndsleigh were the imbeciles who almost upset us into the hedge. Why did I not suspect it when we were only ten miles from Rotherham Hall? I would wager a fortune his lordship was holding the ribbons. The Reverend used to tell me that the only time his brother was wild was when he was driving a sporting conveyance. But that was not wild. That was reckless. And he does not even know that he did it. Such drivers should be hanged, he told me. Well!'' She threw a world of scorn into the final syllable.
"You look lovely, mum," Bridget said, admiring the white silk of her lady's evening gown.
"Do I?" Diana frowned at her image. "I do not look too much like a young girl about to make her come-out? I want to look my best tonight, Bridget." She met her maid's eyes in the mirror and flushed slightly. ''It is the first time I have been in company, you know, since the Reverend's passing.''
"You look lovely, mum," Bridget repeated.
' 'Ijust wish I did not have to face that man,'' Diana said, turning decisively to the door. "It is most degrading.And a marquess, no less, Bridget.He could not even be a simple mister or perhaps a baronet. Oh, no, he has to be a marquess. I would have gone home this morning from the inn if I had only realized. Or if I had even suspected that he was to be a guest here. And how could I not have? However, I did not go home, and I must face him. And I shall do so without a blush or a tremor. I shall not give him the satisfaction of knowing that I even remember yesterday and last night. I shall stay far away from him for the three weeks. It should not be hard to do with eighteen guests expected and most of them here already, should it?"
"No, mum," Bridget said doubtfully.
Of course, Diana thought less than half an hour later, one had to remember that one was not quite in control of one's own destiny when one was in company with the Earl and Countess of Rotherham. Somehow, through absolutely no fault of her own, she found her hand on the Marquess of Kenwood's splendidly muscled arm as they all moved from the drawing room to the dining room. And the natural result of that, of course, was that she sat beside him at dinner.
To do him justice, she did not think that he had maneuvered for such a thing any more than she had. But the countess's bright blue and flashing presence had swept through the drawing room, and there they were, his arm extended to her, her hand resting on it.
* * *
An amazing woman, the countess! Diana only hoped that it had been a passing whim to pair her with the marquess for dinner. But she had a horrid, stomach-churning premonition. Her mother-in-law wanted to find her a new husband. The marquess was almost glaringly eligible in every imaginable way. She hoped she was wrong. Oh, please God she was wrong.
She knew she was not wrong.
She sat beside him at the table undergoing the utmost torture with every passing minute. Her right arm positively burned and sizzled with awareness, though six inches of air at least separated it from his. And the memories! Oh, the memories were quite intolerable and must be suppressed with all the ruthlessness of which she was capable. Those very masculine, though well manicured hands that held his knife and fork. Gracious heaven, they had been all over her.All over.
"I trust you have recovered from your indisposition, Diana," he said suddenly frombesideher, almost making her swallow a mouthful of fish unchewed. "The headache, was it? There is nothing like a relaxed home atmosphere to make one feel more the thing, is there?"
"I am feeling quite well, I thank you, my lord," she said as coolly as she was able. Not so easy a thing to accomplish when one had just looked up, startled, into a pair of very blue bedroom eyes. Gracious, he had no business looking at anyone that way. Not outside the bedroom, anyway.
"Traveling English roads and sleeping in English inns can be quite detrimental to the health, I understand," he said. If she could only be sure that that really was a tremor of amusement in his voice, she would be hard put to it not to smack his face hard."Or at least disturbing to one's emotional equilibrium."
Well! Bridget had thrown the barmaid out of his room. Why did that detail suddenly pop into her mind? He had thought her the barmaid and treated her accordingly. And he was not even ashamed now to know how that he had done all those dreadful things to a lady.
"I am sure I have the strength of body and mind to make a quick and thorough recovery, my lord," she told her fish with what she thought was quite laudable coolness.
"Tell me." His voice was pitched low beneath a burst of laughter that greeted one of Sir Joshua Knowles's stories. And the voice was as inappropriate outside a bedroom as his eyes had been a few moments before. "Did you think I was Teddy? I met him only three or four times, but I must have seriously underestimated him."
"No," she said indignantly, and wished and wished a moment later that she had not dignified his words with any response at all, "of course I did not think you were Teddy."
