After she had bathed and eaten, the three women gathered in Maddy’s sitting room. Over endless cups of tea laced with brandy, Diana described her past in a long monologue, from her childhood in Scotland to her bizarre forced marriage, including how her father had abandoned her to her husband’s nonexistent care, and ending with the disastrous confrontation with Gervase.
When she ran out of words, Madeline exhaled with sympathetic wonder. “I knew you were a woman of mystery, but this is much more than I bargained for. May I ask questions?”
Diana sighed. She was curled up in the corner of a sofa, wrapped in a shaggy Highland blanket as much for emotional comfort as for protection against the cool evening. “Ask whatever you like. I’ve always had trouble talking about what affects me deeply, but not talking has caused worse trouble.”
“What happened to your mother?”
The teacup Diana was sipping from clicked sharply against her teeth. Setting it down carefully, she said, “She killed herself when I was eleven.”
“Oh, my dear girl,” Madeline breathed, then changed the subject. “It’s hard to believe your father would just abandon you in the inn the day after your marriage.”
“If you knew my father, you would know it was quite in character. He was convinced that all women were evil, especially his daughter.” Diana’s deep blue eyes looked black. “The sooner he got rid of me, the better for his own immortal soul.”
A thought had occurred to Maddy during the younger woman’s story. She hesitated, wondering if it was appropriate, before deciding to speak. “Is it possible your father was . . . unnaturally attracted to you? And he loathed himself for such feelings, and you for being the source of them?”
Diana caught her breath, her face stricken. “That . . . would explain a great deal. He used to glare as if he hated me. And the way he carried on about how men lusted after me! It made no sense. I suppose I was a pretty child, but not so mature as to attract attention from most men.
“He used to pray over me all night, both of us shivering on our knees as he asked God to purify my evil nature. Other times he tried beating the ungodliness out of me.” Shuddering, she pulled her blanket around her shoulders.
“I’m sorry, my dear. Perhaps I shouldn’t have spoken.”
“No, I’m glad that you did,” Diana said wanly. “As revolting as the idea is, at least it is a reason. My father always seemed like . . . like a force of nature, mysterious and implacable. I would rather think there were reasons for the way he despised me, things that weren’t my fault.”
“Ishestill alive?” Edith asked.
Diana shrugged. “I have no idea. There has been not one word of contact between us since he left me at the inn.”
Madeline was amazed that a man, a clergyman no less, could have so thoroughly dispossessed his daughter. Truly he must have been mad. Turning to something she had always wondered about, she asked, “How did you and Edith meet? You’ve never mentioned that.”
“My younger sister Jane and her husband own the inn where the marriage took place,” Edith answered in her broad Yorkshire accent. “I had married a drunken bully. Both my boys were grown and gone, one to the army, one to America. Jane thought I should leave my husband before he killed me, but I didn’t know how, or where to go.”
She absently traced the livid scar along her left cheek. “I suppose I could have gone to Jane, but I had no money for the journey. More than that, I had no will left after twenty-five years of bullying.”
Madeline studied Edith with new insight. She knew about the older woman’s sons, who wrote their mother regularly, but not about the husband. It appeared that Edith had developed her quiet, rock-ribbed strength in a hard school.
Diana took up the story. “Jane decided that if Edith had someone to take care of, it would give her an incentive to leave her ghastly husband. I had just turned sixteen and was pregnant and terrified, but after I contacted Gervase’s lawyer, I had money. Jane personally escorted me down to Yorkshire, introduced me to Edith, and helped us find High Tor Cottage. We both wanted to be as far from other people, especially men, as possible. And Edith has been taking care of me ever since.”
She smiled affectionately at the woman who had helped her survive the most difficult time of her life.
Edith chuckled warmly. “It’s worked both ways, lass.”
“After all that has happened to you, why did you want to come to London and become a courtesan?” Madeline asked. “A nunnery would appear more likely!”
Diana topped up the tea in their cups. “I know it must seem strange, but it felt so strongly like the right thing to do,” she replied. “Despite what my father and . . . my husband had done to me, I knew not all men were like that. In the village where I grew up, there were happy marriages, and men who knew how to be kind. Since I had a husband, I couldn’t marry, but . . . I wanted to find a man of my own, someone to love me.”
Lost in thought, she sipped her tea, then added wryly, “I must admit that I liked what you said about beauty giving a woman power over men. I thought it would be nice to have power for a change, to have the choice to give or withhold.”
“I also said that it was dangerous,” Madeline reminded her.
“I know,” Diana whispered, her eyes closed against sudden tears. “I had no idea what I was doing. I guess I am not the stuff of which sirens are made.”
“No, my dear, you are not. You are the stuff of loving wives and mothers and friends.”
Madeline had meant the words as comfort, but they nearly fractured Diana’s control. Burrowing her head into the blanket, she said brokenly, “What am I going to do? He hates me. He said he doesn’t ever want to see me again.”
There was silence until Edith said, “You’re our expert on men, Maddy. What do you think?”
Madeline sat next to Diana and put her arm around the younger woman’s shoulders. “St. Aubyn may hate you in some ways, but his feelings are surely far more complicated than that. Love, hate, desire, anger—all those intense emotions must be mixed together in his mind. It would be far harder to win him back if he were indifferent to you.”
