Page 52 of Five Nights to Claim His Duchess

Levi turned.

He looked at his wife. “Octavia.”

“It is not what it sounds,” she said quickly. “My lord, I was worried for her — only worried, I never meant it to travel, I never meant⁠—”

“Then you did say it?”

“I—” Her chin trembled, beautifully, exactly. “I do not recall the particulars. I have so many calls upon me, so many parties, one cannot possibly account for every word said over tea⁠—”

“You recalled it well enough a moment past,” said Henrietta, “to call it worry rather than a lie.”

Octavia’s eyes filled.

Diana watched them fill and thought, with a coldness that surprised her by how little it cost: I know exactly how long that takes you now. I have watched you do it enough times to count the seconds.

“Papa.” She said it quietly, and it was the first word she had spoken since they came into the room, and every eye in it came to her at once. “I do not ask you to punish her. I do not even ask you to believe me over her, though I notice you have not yet troubled to try either way. I ask only this. Look at me, and tell me plainly whether you believe I seduced a man I had never once laid eyes upon before the morning of my own wedding — a wedding you yourself announced to me, in a ballroom, without my knowledge or my consent, not six weeks past. You know precisely how it happened.”

Levi opened his mouth.

He looked at his daughter. He looked, for a long moment, genuinely at war with himself in a way Diana had not seen on his face since before her mother died.

“Of course I do not believe it,” he said, low. “Diana⁠—”

“Then say so.”

“I—” He glanced, helplessly, at his wife. “Octavia has been under a great strain, with the house, and the accounts, and I am sure she never intended⁠—”

“Say it to me, Papa. Not to her. Look at me and say it.”

He could not manage it. Diana watched him try, and fail, and his eyes went sideways to Octavia’s wet, stricken face, and something in Diana’s chest that had been holding on by main strength for eight years simply let go.

It did not hurt nearly as much as she had always feared it would.

“I understand,” she said quietly. “I believe I have understood for some while, if I am honest, and only now find I have stopped hoping otherwise. You need not trouble yourself to choose between us any longer, Papa. I shall not make you do it again.”

“Diana—”

“I do not say it in anger.” And she found, saying it, that this was entirely true. “I have not the energy left for anger tonight. I say it because it is kinder to us both to stop pretending there is a decision still to be made. There is not. You made it a long while ago, and you have gone on making it every day since, and I am only now catching up to the fact of it.”

Nobody in the room spoke.

“Come, my lord.” Octavia’s hand tightened on her husband’s arm; her voice had gone brisk and practical with the swiftness of a woman who knows when a scene has run its course. “I think we had best go home. It has been a very trying evening for everyone.”

Levi looked once more at his daughter and Diana watched him decide not to fight for the harder thing. He allowed himself to be led toward the door.

“Your Grace.” He paused before Valentine, and made a stiff bow. “I am sorry for the trouble this evening has caused you.”

“It has caused me none whatsoever,” said Valentine. “It is not my trouble.”

Levi had nothing to answer that with. He went out, and his wife went with him, and the door shut softly behind the pair of them, and that.

Diana thought, watching it close — was very likely the whole of the scandal London would ever know of. A viscount and his lady, called away early from a ball. Nothing more remarkable than that.

“As for you two,” said Phillip, turning to the women still huddled by the window, “I believe you were on your way out already. Allow me to hasten it.”

“Your Grace—” the elder began.

“Go,” said Diana, not unkindly. “And carry no more tales that are not yours to carry.”