“Several.”
“Grandmother—” Diana began quietly.
“They were beautiful,” Lady Salford insisted with cheerful certainty.
Alexander turned his attention toward Diana once more.
She was clearly attempting to appear modest, her gaze lowered, her posture carefully composed as though trying to diminish the entire subject. But the effort was not entirely successful.
There was a softness in her expression that had not been there earlier. A quiet contentment that revealed itself whenever Lady Salford spoke about their outing, as though the day had given her a simple pleasure she had not expected.
Alexander did not interrupt while Lady Salford continued speaking, yet his attention had shifted inward in a way he did not entirely expect. The details she offered—small, almost trivial things in the larger scale of a person’s life—settled into his mind with a strange clarity that he could not quite explain.
Pale blue muslin. Pastries. A ribbon. The information arranged itself quietly in his thoughts, each piece sliding into place with the same care he would apply to the terms of a contract or the conditions of an agreement. It struck him, faintly, that he was listening with far more concentration than such simple matters deserved.
But then again, perhaps they did deserve it.
Because every detail Lady Salford mentioned felt less like gossip and more like a glimpse into a part of Diana’s life he did not know. He had the distinct impression there were more details yet to come.
“And flowers,” Lady Salford added suddenly, as though recalling something she had nearly forgotten.
Alexander’s gaze lifted. “Flowers?”
“Yes,” she said brightly, clearly pleased with herself. “Pink magnolias.”
Beside him, Diana let out a soft laugh. “They were simply too beautiful to leave behind.”
The sound of it caught him off guard.
Her laughter was warm, lighter than the careful restraint she usually carried in his presence, and the quiet brightness of it stirred something unexpected inside his chest. It was a simple sound, and yet it seemed to alter the entire atmosphere of the room.
Alexander felt something warm shift beneath his ribs before he had quite realized it was happening.
Pink magnolias.
The words repeated themselves silently in his mind as he watched her, the image forming with surprising ease. It seemed so fitting somehow. Soft, elegant, quietly beautiful without demanding attention. Exactly the sort of thing he could imagine Diana choosing.
And yet what struck him far more than the flowers themselves was the simple realization that she enjoyed them at all. Until that moment, he had known almost nothing about the small things that brought her pleasure.
But here she was beside him, laughing softly over something as simple as flowers she had found in a shop window, and the sight of that quiet happiness stirred something deeply unexpected inside him.
He liked seeing her like this.
Watching her smile, hearing the lightness in her voice as she spoke with Lady Salford, he found himself thinking with sudden clarity that if pink magnolias were what pleased her, then he would gladly fill every room of Rosewood House with them, if it meant she would laugh like that again.
Dinner continued with easy conversation.
Lady Salford spoke far more than either of them for the remainder of the meal, recounting the events of their outing with cheerful enthusiasm and an occasional flourish of exaggeration that Diana attempted, with limited success, to interrupt. Every few minutes, Diana would murmur a quiet protest or attempt tocorrect some embellished detail, only for Lady Salford to wave the objection away with breezy confidence and continue her story.
Alexander listened with the calm attentiveness expected of him, nodding occasionally when Lady Salford directed a particular detail toward him. Yet much of his focus drifted elsewhere without him quite realizing it.
The way Diana’s eyes brightened when she laughed. The subtle movements of her hands as she spoke, graceful and expressive even when she was merely insisting that Lady Salford was exaggerating the entire afternoon. The warmth in her voice that had not been there the night before.
For days, he had been trying to understand her through fragments and impressions, through cautious conversations and guarded silences. Yet this version of Diana—relaxed, amused, faintly exasperated by his grandmother’s storytelling—felt like a glimpse into a part of her he had not yet been allowed to see.
And he found himself watching with quiet fascination.
At one point, Diana turned toward him unexpectedly, catching him in the act. “You are very quiet tonight.”
