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Thinking of Mr. Hill reminded her of her larger mission.
She had clearly failed. Now all she could hope was to extricate herself with a minimum of damage and start working on the idea of a less honorable honorable man. Or perhaps just a less honorable man, period.
“Were we at my country house, Galecroft,” Lord Marsden said, “I could show you a memorial to my brothers. Their graves are there, of course, but there are also trees planted in their honor, and a section of the gardens Mother had ripped out and replanted solely with white hydrangeas. And, of course, there are more portraits at Galecroft. Another locket. The one she wears there contains locks of their hair. That”—he slapped the drawer containing the locket rather forcefully—“was merely her ‘city locket.’ It goes better with the gowns she wears here. Allegedly.” He slammed the door of the wardrobe, and soon they were on the move, back down the stairs.
She had no earthly idea what to say. She’d wondered, a moment ago, if Lord Marsden was a closet eccentric. Perhaps he was a misanthrope. The notion was upsetting. She had clearly made a grave error, with her wild proposal, but it would pain her to learn that the earnest Simon Courteney, Earl of Marsden, champion of so many causes, including, it would seem, the rights of ladies, was secretly a cynic.
He came to a halt back in the foyer. Instinctively, she looked up again, almost feeling she’d imagined the rifle-wielding angels. But no, there they were.
“Ah, yes. How could I forget?” One could not mistake the bitterness in his tone. “Another likeness of my brothers. You will, I trust, be familiar with the usual renderings of angels. They may be holding spears, or bows and arrows?”
“Indeed. Or harps.” She paused, trying to think of gentler depictions of the Heavenly host. “Or flowers.”
“My brothers were avid hunters, so my mother had them immortalized thusly.”
How odd. But also how sad. Diantha might not know this version of Lord Marsden, she might have grossly misjudged him, but she understood what he was trying to tell her. She was inclined to face it head-on, to name it.
She looked him in the eye and said, “Earlier, when I said you didn’t know what it was like to feel alone, I was wrong. This is the message your tour is meant to impart.”
Something in his countenance relaxed a tad, and he gave a curt nod. “I will fetch your coat from the library.”
She’d been going to say more, to apologize for the assumption, for coming here at all, but it seemed she was being dismissed.
He was back a few seconds later, helping her into her coat, and as he handed over her bonnet, he fingered the ribbon on it. It was a pretty ribbon, one of her favorites, but of course, he didn’t know that. Perhaps it reminded him of someone.
“How are you getting home?” He corrected himself. “How are you getting back to Berkeley Square?”
She appreciated the revision, for it signaled that he understood that Lord Harcourt’s home wasn’t her home.
Diantha had no home.
“I am walking.”
“No, you are not.” He sounded very irritated.
“It is not far.”
“Be that as it may, I cannot allow it.”
“You cannot allow it?” She took umbrage. “With due respect, Lord Marsden, I am not a sheltered girl.”
He gazed at her for a long time, his face so composed, so impassive, that she wondered if she had imagined the entire interlude wherein he marched her around his house and into his mother’s bedchamber and shouted at paintings. He looked now very like the Lord Marsden she knew, the one she had expected to encounter, the calm one who said it was impossible to shock him.
“Very well, then. Good night, Miss Brown.”
She was shocked—by his easy agreement, by the way he performed a stiff bow and let her walk out of his house.
Outside, she gulped the cool night air, taking some consolation that although her errand had been an utter failure, at least she was outside. She and Thea used to sit in the garden at night and try to see the stars. She tilted her head back. There wasn’t much to see, city and cloud conspiring against her.
She was halfway home when she realized Lord Marsden was following her. Sensing a presence, she glanced over her shoulder, catching him ducking into a shop doorway. She was fairly certain he saw her seeing him, but he said nothing, so neither did she.
She spent the rest of the walk making a mental inventory of gentlemen with whom she was acquainted who were less honorable than Lord Marsden. She didn’t know many gentlemen, so it was a very short list, but on it was just the man she needed.
5
The Gentlemen’s Cave
September 8, 1823
