Page 33 of Five Nights to Claim His Duchess

Diana looked up.

Her cousin’s whole face had transformed. It was the most delighted, most scandalized expression Diana had ever seen on a human being.

“You did it with him. The thing that happens on wedding nights. I hear it makes married folks softer with each other.”

“Hen!” Diana’s head whipped round to the door. “Be proper, for heaven’s sake. Someone will hear you and we shall be in the most fearful trouble⁠—”

“No, we shan’t.” Henrietta was serene. “Who exactly is going to scold you? You are the lady of this house. Have you forgotten?”

Diana opened her mouth and shut it. Hen was right, and she laughed with her hand over her eyes.

“I keep forgetting,” she admitted.

“I am so glad.” Henrietta’s voice had gone soft and quite serious. She reached over and took Diana’s hand again. “Truly, dearest. I have been sick with it since the wedding. I have thought of nothing else, and he has turned out to be quite different from what they said, and now you may have a family of your own. After everything. You of all people deserve it.”

Diana’s smile stayed exactly where it was.

Something in her chest went down like a stone in a well.

A family. Which meant a child. Which meant the thing she had never told a living soul except the man who had made a bargain out of it. Not Hen, not anyone. She does not know. How could she know? She has just wished me the kindest thing she can think of, and I cannot tell her that the wish is the thing I am most afraid of in all the world.

“Of course,” Diana said.

And could I? Could I truly make a family with him? The thought sat there and would not be answered.

Henrietta’s eyes had begun to sparkle again. “Now. What exactly did you⁠—”

“What of you?”

“Diana—”

“No, truly.” She turned it firmly. “You have said nothing of yourself. How are your mother and father?”

And she watched her cousin’s whole face come down.

“Ah,” said Henrietta.

She set down her cup.

“We may have to leave London.”

Diana went still. “What?”

“Papa’s arrangements with your father.” Henrietta’s chin was up, but her voice had gone flat and careful, the way it did when she was refusing to cry. “They have had business together for years. And a fortnight ago Uncle Levi pulled out of all of it. Every arrangement. No warning, no letter, nothing. When Papa went round to the house to ask why, he was not received. He has gone three times now. He is not received.” She looked at the window. “It has done for us rather thoroughly. We are in debt. Papa has not said how much and I have not asked, because I do not think I want to know the answer.”

Octavia.

The name arrived in Diana’s mind with the finality of a key turning. Of course. Of course it is her. Levi has not made a single decision since she came. She has been cutting him off from everyone who has known him longer than she has—his own daughters and now his brother. There is no one left in that house to tell him he is being robbed.

“Hen.” Her voice would not come out right. “I am so sorry. I am so terribly sorry⁠—”

“Do not.” Henrietta squeezed her hand hard. “Do not you dare apologize for anyone.”

She let out a breath and made herself smile, and it was almost successful. “And I am tired of London, if I am honest with you. I am tired of being paraded about a ballroom at two-and-twenty like a horse at Tattersall’s. The country might suit me very well. Fewer people. More books.”

“Hen—”

“But I shall not go yet.” Her cousin’s eyes came up, and there was nothing light in them at all. “Not while Bella is in that house. Betsy is good, but Betsy is one woman, and she has her work besides. So I shall keep calling. I shall be perfectly charming to that creature, and I shall drink her tea. I shall keep my eyes open, and if anything happens in that house you shall know of it inside the hour. I promise you that.”