“I was not allowed to run in the gardens the way I had with my father,” Diana said. “I was told that such behavior was unladylike. I was discouraged from reading the books my mother had once chosen for me because they were considered… frivolous. Every hour of the day was carefully arranged so that I might become precisely the sort of young woman they believed society would admire.”
Her hands folded slightly tighter in her lap.
“When my debut approached, their attention became even more intense. Suitors began to appear, as they do during every season, and I remember thinking that perhaps things would finally change. Many of them were kind men. Gentlemen who spoke with warmth and treated me with genuine interest.”
She looked up briefly then, meeting Alexander’s gaze for the first time since she had begun speaking. “My aunt and uncle refused them all.”
Alexander’s jaw tightened. “Every single one?”
Diana nodded.
“They dismissed each gentleman who showed the slightest interest in me. Some were respectable landowners. Others were younger sons of established families with perfectly respectable prospects. But none of them satisfied my uncle’s expectations.”
“And what expectations were those?” Alexander asked quietly, though he suspected he already knew.
“Wealth,” she replied simply. “Title. Influence. The greater the advantage the match would bring to the Cliffhall name, the more interested they became.”
Alexander exhaled slowly through his nose. “So they waited.”
“Yes.”
“And eventually,” he said carefully, “they decided upon the Duke of Rosewood.”
Diana gave a faint, almost rueful nod. “They approved of this match very quickly.”
“And you?” Alexander asked.
“I knew nothing of their reasoning at the time,” she admitted. “To me, it was simply another arrangement presented as the most sensible course of action.”
The quiet acceptance in her tone unsettled him more than anger might have.
For several seconds, he said nothing at all, though the anger had begun to rise steadily beneath his ribs. The thought of that small girl who had once run freely through gardens being placed into the care of people who saw her only as an asset to be managed stirred something deeply protective within him.
When he finally spoke again, his voice carried a quiet edge. “I should have been far less polite with them.”
Diana looked up at him, the faintest trace of warmth returning to her expression. “They are not worth your anger.”
Perhaps not.But the image of a frightened nine-year-old girl standing alone in a new household while strangers decided the course of her future remained vivid in his mind.
Alexander moved closer and crouched slightly beside her chair so that he was no longer looking down at her.
“They will not trouble you again,” he said quietly.
Diana studied him for a long moment.
Then she smiled.
And in that moment, Alexander realized with startling clarity that protecting that smile had already become one of the most important things in his life.
CHAPTER 20
“Allow me,” Alexander said as he stepped down from the carriage and turned at once to offer Diana his hand, his gaze lingering on her a fraction longer than necessary. “I would not have it said that I escorted my wife into the theatre only to abandon her to the mercy of London steps and inattentive footmen.”
Diana’s laugh reached him before her gloved fingers did, soft and warm in the crisp evening air, and the sound struck him with the same force it always did.
“How very noble of you, Your Grace,” she said as she placed her hand in his. “Though I suspect the steps are far less dangerous than you imply.”
“On the contrary,” he replied, closing his hand around hers as he steadied her descent, his voice lowering slightly, “I have seen ladies undone by far less.”
