“Thus, her infatuation with Edgeworth,” Chaswick murmured.
“Yes. But with my cousin that didn’t seem to matter.” Violet turned to Greys. “Ever since you took her driving, both Lady Chaswick and I have been hopeful.” She winced, though, and then shook her head mournfully. “But to have spoken so dreadfully regarding her mother? Even if it was true. I doubt you could have said anything worse.”
“He could not have,” Chaswick added.
“It was nothing she didn’t know already.” Greys made one last attempt to defend his rationale.
But Chaswick just groaned.
And Violet shook her head, gravely disappointed.
“I thought she knew. She told me your father made no provisions for them upon his death,” Greys added.
“And you would use this information to convince her?”
“I didn’t think she’d require so much convincing,” Greys said.
“All women need some convincing,” Violet smiled sadly. “Even when they are already convinced.
Dash it all.
“Is it possible an oversight was made with your father’s estate?” Greys directed his question to Chaswick.
“To not have added them to the will?” The baron rubbed the twin lines between his eyes. “I suppose. But what does that have to do with your proposal?”
It didn’t. But Grays had an idea.
“Greys,” Violet was staring at him much as a governess would while explaining an elementary concept to one of her students. “Diana has never, in all her life, known the sense of belonging we have. The single constant in her life was her mother. If she believed for an instant her mother and father’s relationship was based on nothing more than a tawdry transaction, she could never have set foot in any of those ballrooms. When you called her mother… that word. You might as well have demolished her very foundation. Did you think you could shame her into marrying you?”
His cousin’s admonishment poured over him like a dunking in the North Sea. What had he done? He’d hurt Diana… He’d hurt his sweet, brave, Diana… The woman who freely admitted to missing him.
The woman who’d come to him, who’d made love with him, providing him with something he’d never imagined himself knowing. Joy? Freedom?
Love?
He’d hurt her.
He rubbed a hand down his face for what felt like the ten-thousandth time that day.
“I need to fix this,” he said.
