Diana held her smile. “I managed.”
She saw Alexander’s hand tightening.
“And now that he has returned fromeverywhere,” Lady Weatherford drawled, “has he begun to court you properly?”
Diana’s heart gave a sickening, heavy thud against her ribs. She felt the eyes of the circle tighten on her like a noose as the kiss he had given her upon his arrival flashed before her eyes.
Alexander did not hesitate. “I am attempting to repair certain oversights.”
“Indeed? How does a duke repair such… oversights?” Lady Weatherford pressed, eyes gleaming.
“With consistency,” he replied evenly. “And patience.”
She felt the words like fingers tracing her spine.
“And poetry?” Lady Markham chimed in eagerly. “Surely, he has at least attempted poetry. All men do, when sufficiently chastened.”
Diana shook her head at once. “No.”
Alexander glanced down at her, one brow lifting. “You appear certain.”
“I would recall the shock,” she said sweetly. “It would likely require medical intervention.”
The circle erupted in laughter.
“Then you must improve, Your Grace,” Lady Salford declared. “A wife cannot be expected to forgive without verse.”
He leaned slightly closer to Diana, lowering his voice just enough that the intimacy filled her lungs. “If I were to attempt a poem,” he murmured, “what would you require it to contain?”
Her stomach flipped traitorously at the nearness of him.
“Accuracy,” she replied, keeping her expression demure. “And brevity.”
The proximity made her acutely aware of his clean, musky scent. Her mind betrayed her with memories of his mouth on hers in his studio, his knee pressing against hers, the raw hunger that had flared in his eyes.
Diana felt Alexander’s hand tighten around hers, in that steady, proprietary way he had begun to use whenever the world pressed too close. His thumb brushed once over her knuckles, as if reminding her that she was not, in fact, alone at this moment, even if the question dragged the past up by its throat.
Lady Salford’s eyes gleamed. She looked delighted, as though she had been handed a particularly entertaining weapon.
“Oh, do not look as though you have caught him in a crime,” she said, addressing Lady Markham and the entire semicircle at once. “If my grandson were to abandon his wife, he would have done it with a flourish and a full explanation, and half of London would have heard him.”
A ripple of laughter went through the women, but Diana’s lungs felt tight. She could hear her own blood, the quickened pulse in her ears.
Alexander lifted his gaze to the dowager. His expression remained calm, his mouth composed, his green eyes giving away nothing at all, and yet Diana felt the minute shift of him beside her, the same coiled readiness she had noticed earlier when he had pulled her away from her aunt and uncle.
“And how did you pass the time without letters?” Lady Pennington asked Diana brightly. “Surely you were not idle.”
“I was never idle,” Diana replied evenly, grateful for the steadiness of her own voice. “Rosewood House required attention.”
“And companionship?” Lady Pennington asked slyly.
The word slid into the circle like a dropped pin. Diana felt Alexander’s hand shift fractionally higher at her waist, claiming space more decisively. A silent answer.
Before she could craft one of her own, another voice cut into the cluster, familiar and clear.
“Companionship was never lacking.”
The dowagers turned as one.
