“I don’t know. Right now, though, I don’t want to think about it,” Owen whispered, taking her face in his hands and gently wiping away her tears before placing sweet kisses to the tops of her cheeks and her forehead. “All I want to think about is here.”
The sweetness of his words made Diana reach up to him even more, clinging around his neck as he bent towards her, kissing her lips to distract her from what Gilbert had said and done. As Diana kissed him, she invented a new world in her head, one where she wasn’t married to Gilbert but to Owen instead and could live a life with such sweetness and tenderness. If only that imagined world could be her reality.
***
Diana came to a stumbling stop on the landing as she saw someone stepping out of Gilbert’s bedchamber, only it wasn’t Gilbert. It was Jessie. She waved one last time to Gilbert inside before closing the door and turning around to see Diana watching her.
“This is not even subtle anymore,” Diana said, hurrying off to the staircase as quickly as she could. She heard footsteps following her, aware that Jessie had been spurred on by the meeting and was following her all the way down the staircase. “Leave me be, Jessie, please,” Diana said as she reached the bottom step. “If you wish to flaunt your affair with my husband, that is your own business.”
“It is not an affair. It is love,” Jessie said, her tone pleading and desperate as she followed Diana into the study.
“Some love. There were many like you before,” Diana muttered, throwing caution to the wind. What did it matter about being meek and mild in front of Jessie anymore? She did not want her happiness to be torn apart by a woman threatening to get her thrown out of her house.
“Stop saying such things,” Jessie said, closing the door behind them so that they were alone. “I know who he really is. You cannot make up such lies about him.”
“How do you know if it’s a lie or true? Did you not see the maids who disappeared from this house? Hmm?” Diana asked, turning around and placing her hands on her hips. “Did you never wonder what happened to them?”
“The duke explained all their dismissals. One was a thief.”
“What did she steal?” Diana asked.
“She …” Jessie faltered; clearly Gilbert had not stretched his lies this far as Jessie had nothing else to say. “I do not need to know what she stole. I believe him. He is a good man, and that’s all that matters.”
“A good man? You think him so?” Diana reached for the long sleeves of her gown and pulled them up from her wrists until they were scrunched around her elbows, then she lifted her forearms for Jessie to see. “He did this. Would a good man do such a thing?”
Jessie backed up at the sight of the bruises, but the pain there quickly changed to anger, her nostrils practically flaring and her cheeks turning red.
“He is a good man! If only you had never married him. Everything would have been as it was. He could have married me.” Jessie placed her hands to her chest.
“Good Lord, Jessie, did he ever say he wished to marry you?”
“He implied it.”
“Did he ever say it? There is a big difference.” Yet Diana’s words only made Jessie’s temper worse. She stepped forward towards Diana, her cheeks turning even redder.
“I know what he thinks because he loves me. He wished to marry me, not you.”
Diana backed away, hating the sight of both the anger and the jealousy in Jessie’s eyes.
“I wouldn’t have married him if I could have helped it,” Diana muttered the words, yet Jessie heard it anyway.
“What do you mean?” she asked, the heat of her argument faltering.
“I married him because my father ordered it. You can have Gilbert for all I care, Jessie. You can have your affair, but it will not help either of us. Pretty soon, you’ll end up like the other women he keeps in that house of his.”
“It can’t be true. It can’t be.” Distractedly, Jessie turned round and reached into a pocket in her apron, pulling out a slip of paper. Diana recognized it instantly. It was the address of the house Mrs Jarvis had written down.
“But … Owen said you had burned it?” Diana lifted a hand and pointed to it. Jessie pressed the parchment to her chest, keeping it safe.
“You called him Owen.”
“What would be the point in denying it?” Diana said, holding out her hands in despair. “You know of it regardless.” Jessie’s lips opened and closed for a minute, though, something odd playing on her features. “What is it?” Diana asked.
“I cannot call him Gilbert.” Her quiet words made Diana back up even further.
“You have shared his bed, and yet he still insists you address him as Your Grace?” Diana scoffed at the idea. “Good God, he is worse than I even thought.” She turned away and rested her hands on the writing desk, only to discover that her papers were no longer there. Strewn across the surface were Gilbert’s papers instead.
“Do not speak of him that way. He … he has his reasons. I am sure of it.” Jessie’s blind belief in Gilbert’s devotion barely broke through Diana’s concentration.
