Chapter 24
Chaswick’s face hovered over him, scowling.What the devil?
“Diana explained to me that you had just proposed. But you’ll pardon me if I’m not inclined to believe nothing untoward happened.” Chase did not look happy.
Greys pulled his brows together as he took in his surroundings.
How had he come to be lying on rocky ground, staring up at the moon—he glanced down—wearing one of his favorite jackets, no less?
“What happened?” Ah yes. It was the ache in his jaw that reminded him of his catastrophic proposal.
“I take it she said no?” Chaswick assisted Grey to a sitting position. “And proposal or not, I’ll not apologize for the facer. It’s long past due where she’s concerned.”
As Greys waited for the earth to stop spinning, he did his best to comprehend how his offer had gone so terribly wrong.
“What on earth did you say to her?” Violet lowered herself to her haunches beside him. “She was livid, Greys.”
He rubbed the back of his neck and glanced over to Chaswick.
“Who is with her now?” Greys winced. “She shouldn’t be alone.”
“Bethany and her sister are with her.” Chaswick jerked him onto his feet. “In all honesty, I admit I didn’t expect her to accept you the first time around, but I thought she’d accept your offer with a little persuading.” Chaswick glanced in the direction of the path. “But you seem to be working backward.”
Violet brushed at the dirt on Greys’ coat. “She said you were dead to her. That must have been quite the proposal, cousin. Tell me exactly what you said to her.”
“I merely stated a few truths,” he murmured, less confident than he’d initially been to have done so.
“Truths, ” his cousin spoke the word as though it tasted bitter in her mouth. And then she met his stare with more starch than even the loftiest of sponsors at Almacks. “What truths exactly are you referring to?” And then she closed her eyes. “Truths about her mother?”
“These aren’t truths you ought to hear.” Greys ran a hand through his hair.
“Because they will shock my sensibilities or because you’re afraid I’ll tell you you’ve made a colossal mistake?” Violet’s mouth pinched shut.
“So you will speak them to my sister but not in front of your cousin?” Chaswick demanded.
Greys could not tell her brother and his cousin that Diana had been willing to be his lover, but not his wife. So instead, he only reiterated some of what he’d told her. And by the expression on their faces, he’d gone about this all wrong.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Chase tugged at the back of his neck. “You certainly fuc—er,muckedthat up. Pardon my language, Miss Faraday.”
“You were correct the first time,” Violet addressed Chaswick. “My cousin dropped onto one knee and then called your sister’s mother a whore.”
“I thought we’d been through this.” Chaswick was shaking his head.
Greys disagreed. They hadn’t been through this at all. They’d discussed Diana’s untamed nature as well as her extraordinary potential, but they’d not once discussed what Greys ought to do if she refused him.
He simply hadn’t considered that as a possible outcome.
“She doesn’t want to be my wife,” Greys said. “Your sister believes that marrying me would be a fate worse than death.”
“Where would she get an idea like that?” Chaswick asked.
“From her mother, of course,” Violet answered. “Remember, both of your sisters required a good deal of convincing to come out at all…”
“But that was just nerves.” Chaswick looked confused. “Wasn’t it?”
It was Violet who seemed to have the answer.
“Diana doesn’t want to be thewife,” she said. “All her life, her mother competed with the baroness for her father’s attention, for his time. And her mother’s friends lived parallel lives. Not until Bethany convinced Diana that titled gentlemen weren’t likely to notice her did she agree to coming out at all. A title, in Diana’s mind, is worse than the pox.” She met Greys eyes. “Sorry, Greystone.”
