Edith nodded, lips tight. “I just hope matters work out as satisfactorily for Diana as they have for you and me.”
* * *
Diana’s facade crumbled after Madeline left her. She tried to be calm and controlled, but she had wept almost continually while she was in Yorkshire, and humiliating tears kept escaping on the journey home. As she had once told Gervase, she was a crier, not a thrower.
It would be easier if she could be angry, but she couldn’t. The declaration of love that she had wanted so much had made him utterly vulnerable to what he perceived as betrayal, and the horrible things he had said were products of his pain. Now she recognized that he would have better accepted her confession before he had opened himself up to her. It was easy to be wise when it was too late.
Grief threatened to swamp her again. Determined not to cry, she sat at her desk and looked at the letters that had come in her absence. There were bills for fabric and shoes, for Geoffrey’s school fees, a note from Francis Brandelin saying that he was going out of town but would call when he returned.
There was also a small package addressed in an unfamiliar hand. Thinking it some item she had ordered and forgotten, Diana unwrapped it absently, then stopped dead, fighting a shock wave of dizziness at the sight of the contents.
Inside the velvet-lined box were the rest of the pearls from the necklace Gervase had been giving to her, a pearl at a time. There was no note, no message of any kind, even an insulting one. She wondered if sending the pearls was a gesture of contempt or of indifference.
She didn’t want to think about it. Her hand trembling, she closed the box and set it to one side on the desk, then picked up the last letter. The paper was heavy and cream-colored, and the seal was St. Aubyn’s.
Heart hammering, she broke the seal, and was bitterly disappointed that the note was in a stranger’s hand, the same writing that had addressed the package of pearls. Gervase’s secretary, presumably. In the past, he had always written personally.
It was an invitation to a house party at Aubynwood, sent before Gervase had met her in Yorkshire, before he had said that he never wanted to see her again. It had been waiting here ever since, a bleak reminder of what might have been.
Diana started to crumple the invitation, then stopped. A house party meant a number of guests, probably government people, since he sometimes invited political associates to Aubynwood.
The gathering would begin at the end of the next week. She absently smoothed the heavy paper, thinking hard. By rights, she was the Viscountess St. Aubyn. Would Gervase throw her out of Aubynwood if she walked in? He might if he met her alone, but his sense of propriety made it unlikely that he would do so in front of other guests. If she arrived a day late, when others were already there . . .
She stared unseeing across the room, torn between temptation and terror. She was willing to fight for Gervase, to do everything possible to persuade him that her love was genuine, but to do so, she had to see him. She might never have another chance to get so close.
No conscious decision was necessary. Diana would go to Aubynwood.
Chapter Twenty-One
Knowing that her son needed attention from her to soften the impact of the fact that she was leaving again, Diana breakfasted with Geoffrey the next morning, then rode with him in the park.
He reveled in her company, chatting, telling her about the books he had read, and showing how much his riding had improved. On horseback, or rather ponyback, he was clearly his father’s son; even though he had been riding for less than a year, he had the natural grace of the born equestrian.
As the groom took charge of their mounts, Diana eyed Geoffrey covertly. She wondered what Gervase’s feelings were now that he knew the boy was his son. In spite of her husband’s denials, she was sure that he would accept the relationship once he had time to think the matter through. She had watched their growing acquaintance with trepidation and hope, wanting them to get on, fearing they would not.
The viscount had seemed fond of Geoffrey and the boy was his heir. Would he hold Diana’s imagined perfidy against his son? Knowing Gervase’s basic fairness, she didn’t think so, but his bitterness had been so great that she would not let her husband near Geoffrey until she was sure he would do nothing injurious. She was ambitious for her son, wanted him to have the title and wealth and power to which he was entitled, and which she knew he would carry well. But she would not let him become a pawn in a war between his parents; she would take him to the colonies and raise him alone before she would let that happen.
Usually Geoffrey groomed his pony himself, but today Diana told him to let the stableboy do it so they could talk. Looking at his mother askance, he dutifully accompanied her inside to the morning room. Stripping off her gloves and laying them aside, Diana said, “Next week I’m going away for another few days, Geoffrey. I’m sorry, but it can’t be avoided.”
He scowled. “Can I go with you?”
She shook her head. “No, I’m afraid not.” Not when anything might happen between his parents.
“Why not?”
How to answer that perennial child’s question? While Diana debated, Geoffrey continued pugnaciously. “You’re going to visit Lord St. Aubyn, aren’t you?”
She had guessed that Geoffrey’s hero worship of the viscount existed side by side with jealousy that the man had so much of his mother’s time, and that suspicion was confirmed by her son’s expression. Deciding to be casual, Diana took off her hat and jacket and sat down. “Yes, I am. I’m sorry I have to leave again so soon, but this trip is necessary.”
Her son’s carefully instilled manners were clearly at war with his desire to throw a tantrum. Diana extended a hand, wanting him to come sit with her so she could talk away some of his anger, but his head started tilting back in the first phase of convulsion.
He crashed to the floor, his body arching and his tongue protruding. Diana dropped by his side, feeling the terror that always possessed her when he had a seizure.
She was reaching out to brace his body when her hands froze in midair. She had seen many seizures in her life and this one looked wrong. The desperate gasping sounds and jerking motions were subtly different than usual. She grabbed his shoulders, half lifting him from the floor as she cried, “Geoffrey, are you pretending?”
The deep blue eyes that had been rolled back focused on her guiltily and his body flexed normally, without rigidity. More furious with her son than she had ever been in his life, Diana pulled him over her lap and administered several swift, hard slaps to his backside. She had never struck Geoffrey before, and he responded with a howl of hurt and outrage.
Within seconds they were in each other’s arms, both of them sobbing, Diana harder than her son. Rocking him back and forth, she whispered brokenly, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have hit you. But don’t ever do that again. Yell at me, throw things if you must, but don’t ever, ever pretend to have a seizure. You don’t know what that does to me. It’s . . . it’s not playing fair.”
