Page 47 of Five Nights to Claim His Duchess

“Then she will learn otherwise.”

Diana closed her eyes. “I cannot thank you enough for bringing her to me. I do not think I ever shall be able to.”

He kissed the top of her head and he tipped her face up with two fingers. Her heart turned over like a struck coin.

“It is my honor to please my wife,” he said. “And where the child is concerned, you will tell me what she wants. Do you understand me?”

Diana lifted her head to thank him.

He kissed her. It was unhurried, one hand coming up beneath her jaw. He caught her lower lip between his teeth as he drew back and let it go slowly; she made a sound she was not at all proud of.

“Duchess.” His thumb moved across the place he had bitten. “No more thanking me. If you must repay me, repay me in this coin.”

The carriage was slowing down.

Diana sat up and put both hands to her hair and inhaled.

Diana felt eyes on her the moment she came through the door.

It was not that the room went quiet, the orchestra sawed on and four hundred people went on talking. It was that a great many of them began talking about something else.

She saw fans come up. She saw two heads bend together by the pillar and one of them tip, very slightly, toward her.

“Your Grace,” she said, low, on his arm. “Am I imagining it, or is there a great deal of attention upon me?”

“What have you to fear?” said Valentine, without looking down. “I am here.”

And that settled her entirely.

“Diana!”

Henrietta came through the crowd. She stopped short before the Duke and dropped a curtsy, and then turned and began upon a second one⁠—

“Do not you dare,” said Diana, and caught her by both arms. “I am your cousin, and if you curtsy to me I shall put a frog in your reticule.”

Henrietta abandoned the curtsy and flung both arms round her instead.

“Oh, Diana. Oh, I am so happy I could burst. We are not going. We are not going to the country. Papa has it all settled, the debts and the rest of it, and he has been singing since Thursday, which I promise you is worse than the debts.” She drew back, and her eyes were shining and wet at once. “How am I ever to thank you?”

Diana blinked.

“Thank me?”

“Well — yes.” Henrietta’s brows came together. “You asked His Grace to make the introductions. To the Manchester gentlemen. Did you not?”

Diana turned her head and looked at her husband.

The Duke of Rosewood examined the middle distance and shrugged one shoulder, as at a matter of no interest whatever.

“Ah — there she is! There is my niece!”

Her uncle came at her with both hands out and his face scarlet with heat and happiness. Edmund Fernside was a shorter, rounder, altogether kinder-looking edition of her father, and he had been drinking his own champagne with enthusiasm.

“Your Grace.” He bowed. “Your Grace, you are very welcome, very welcome indeed.” And then he turned to Diana and all the merriment went out of his face at once. “And you, my poor child. You poor child. We have every one of us sinned against you, and I not the least of them.”

“Uncle—”

“Married off in a week, and not a soul lifted a finger⁠—”