Diana wanted a child.
And he was to bed her for five hundred guineas and for a well-deserved reputation as England's greatest libertine. Well deserved indeed!
He could not do it. It was as simple as that. He had known it there at the castle as he held her in his arms, his head bent back against the stone pillar, his body aching and aching for her.
He could not do it. She had done nothing to deserve him and the kind of destruction he could bring into her life.
And so he had spent two days avoiding her. He teased her lightly whenever he could not do so, but he succeeded in not being alone with her at all. It was not difficult to do. She was avoiding him too. He suspected that she was shaken by her surrender at the castle. She would not be pleased with herself. She knew what he was, though she only thought she knew—she did not know the half of it. And yet she had surrendered. She would, of course, avoid him for the rest of their stay at Rotherham Hall.
The Marquess of Kenwood shook his head, realized that he had been staring for several minutes at his shoes in the mirror, and turned to leave his dressing room. It was time to go and enjoyhimself.
* * *
Diana was enjoying herself, as she had been doing all day. She had spent an hour of the morning alone with the earl and countess, Clarence, Claudia, Ernest, and the children. It was wonderful to have a houseful of family members, the countess declared, but at least a small part of dear Rotherham's birthday must be reserved for just the immediate family.
It had felt good to be considered part of that immediate family still, even though Teddy had been gone for more man a year. She had sat beside her father-in-law for a while, her hand in his, and had hidden her face against his shoulder when Clarence had commented on how strange it still seemed not to have Teddy with them. The countess had dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief and blown her nose and
said how blessed they were to have had him for so long, and how happy they must be that he had made dear Diana a part of their family circle too.
"And you always will be, dearest," she had said, crossing the room to kiss Diana on the cheek, ''even after you marry again, as you must do soon. And when you do, then your husband will become part of our family too, just like another son."
Diana rested her cheek against the earl's broad shoulder. But it had been a happy sort of sadness, she thought, frowning over the paradox.
And the rest of the day had been happy. She had helped the countess and Claudia and Lady Knowles with the flower arrangements in the dining room and ballroom. And she had washed her hair and generally lazed in the heat of her room until it was time to dress for dinner. She had been led in to dinner by Mr. Fleming, who had grown up with Teddy and been his close friend. He was a cheerful and talkative companion.
And when the ball began, she promised so many dances to so many different gentlemen that she wished she had a card at her wrist, just as if she were at a formal London ball, so that she would not forget.
It had been a happy day, and would be a happy evening. She had scarcely seen the Marquess of Kenwood all day, and had not exchanged a word with him. He had made no move to sit beside her at dinner. And he had not been among the group of gentlemen who had solicited her hand for a dance as soon as they entered the ballroom.
He must have decided to leave her alone. He must have decided that she had meant it when she had said they would never come together. He had turned his mind elsewhere. He had led Lady Huntingdon in to dinner, and danced the opening set with her. And a very beautiful couple they made too.
She was happy about the situation. She had recovered completely from her madness of a few days before, when she had started to like him, to enjoy his company, even perhaps to fall a little bit in love with him. And it certainly had been madness, when she considered what had almost happened at the castle. And when she recalled what she had known of him before that and what she had learned since.
There had, of course, been that rather disturbing conversation they had had in the courtyard. But she kept her mind closed to it. It did not fit into anything else she knew or had heard about the Marquess of Kenwood. It was best not to think of it.
And she must not recall that she had talked freely to him about her childless state, about her longing to have a child of her own. However had she come to confide such thoughts to him? She had never spoken about the matter with Teddy, even when month after month for the first two years she had shed tears in private. And she had only spoken of it once with her mother, at the end of the first year.
Why had she not flushed with mortification when the marquess had asked her right out why she had no children? Why had she not told him it was none of his concern?
But she would not think of it. She smiled at her father-in-law, with whom she was dancing a gavotte.
"All the ladies want to dance with you, Papa," she said. "I hope you will not collapse with exhaustion."
"Never!" he said. "I have not been this sought-after since I was a young sprig of a bachelor, Diana, and all the mamas knew that I would be an earl one day. Ah, those were the days."
"I would not let Mama hear you say that if I were you," she said.
"I only meant, my dear,"hesaid, "that I would have all the pleasure of meeting her and courting her again. A little slip of a thing she was in those days. I could have spanned her waist with my two hands."
"And I daresay you did, too, on more than one occasion," she said with a laugh.
She was not really looking forward to the next set. She was to dance it with Mr. Peabody. She had not spoken much with him since the afternoon of the picnic. She guessed that he looked back on their encounter with some embarrassment. She had been somewhat surprised when he asked her for a set of dances. She hoped that he was not about to renew his addresses.
''You must come and sit beside me until your next partner comes to claim you," the earl said when the music drew to a close. "I must catch my breath, Diana. I see that my dear countess is leading Jack this way."
Diana looked up in some dismay. She had noticed that the two of them were dancing the previous set. She schooled her features into the coolness she had perfected during her Season in London.
"How perfectly splendid the music is," the countess said, her arm firmly holding Lord Kenwood's.
