A letter arrived within the hour.
It bore Emma’s hand, neat and graceful. Diana nearly tore the seal open with gratitude, because Emma was warmth, the sort of friend who asked questions with love and sat with one’s sorrows without trying to arrange them into something tidier than they were.
But as soon as Diana read the invitation—a small tea party with only Emma and Georgina—she knew she could not go. Emma had clearly sensed that something was wrong and wanted to draw her out gently, but the thought of sitting beneath their kindness and answering questions, or worse, avoiding them, felt unbearable.
She pulled a fresh sheet of paper toward her and wrote back at once.
Dearest Emma, I fear I am a poor creature indeed today and must beg to be excused, as I am feeling rather under theweather. Pray forgive me, and believe that I shall make amends as soon as I am able.
She sealed the note before she could change her mind and handed it to a footman.
This was humiliation mixed with desire, resentment poisoned by longing, rage threaded through with that most degrading of all truths: if Alexander were to appear in the doorway at that very instant and speak to her not as the man who had consumed her, some weak, broken, romantic part of her would still turn toward him.
That was the wound beneath all the others.
“Good heavens,” said a voice from the doorway, sharp with disbelief and unwanted familiarity. “Have you taken to receiving callers while looking as though the house has just informed you of a death?”
Diana turned.
Her aunt stood there in plum silk and offended importance, her gloved hands clasped too tightly around her reticule. Lady Cliffhall had the gift of entering any room as though it existed primarily to affirm her own importance. Today was no exception.
Diana closed her eyes briefly.Of all days.
“Aunt,” she said, every syllable pressed flat. “I do not recall sending for you.”
“No,” Lady Cliffhall replied, sweeping fully into the room without waiting to be invited, “which is precisely why I came. One cannot depend upon you to be sensible. You have been absent from two engagements, and your note to Mrs. Pembroke was worded so vaguely that she sent to ask whether you had taken ill in earnest or merely grown temperamental.”
Diana felt something cold beginning to rise through her grief. “The entire city must be relieved to know you have undertaken the duty of monitoring my disposition.”
Her aunt stared at her. “There is no need for insolence. I came because your uncle and I are worried. The last time we visited, things were quite…strained.”
“Strained,” The word made Diana laugh softly, and this time there was enough bitterness in it to startle even herself. “Then what should I call the years of coercion, humiliation, abandonment, and interference at your hands?”
Lady Cliffhall stiffened. “I shall pretend not to have heard that.”
“I’d like to pretend you have been affectionate towards me, but that is not the truth, is it?”
“Diana—”
“No.” She turned fully then, and something in her face must have altered, because her aunt actually fell silent. “No, Aunt. Not today. I have spent too many years listening while other people decided what my life ought to be. You will not do it to me today.”
Color rose in the older woman’s cheeks. “Your life, as you call it, was arranged for your benefit. You were a girl with no fortune of her own beyond what your name could secure. We made a brilliant match for you.”
“You sold me.”
The room went still.
Lady Cliffhall recoiled as though struck. “How dare you?”
“How dare I?” Diana’s voice shook now from the violence of finally saying aloud what had sat like a stone in her chest for years. “How dare I speak plainly of the thing you and Uncle did with such polished ease? You measured me, displayed me, rejected every decent man whose chief fault was that he might actually have chosen me for myself rather than for advantage, and then handed me to a duke as though my life were no more than a negotiation to be concluded over brandy.”
Her aunt’s mouth parted. “We did what was necessary.”
“For whom?”
“For you.”
“No.” Diana stepped closer. She was feverish now, full of barely held tears. “For yourselves. For your ambitions. For the delight of being connected to a greater rank than your own. You never once asked whether I wanted him. Whether I was frightened. Whether I was lonely. Whether I was happy.”
