When the Duke Found Love (13 page)

“A duel!” Diana said, impressed. Though she’d heard of hot-tempered gentlemen who challenged one another, duels weren’t as common among the English aristocracy as they were among the French. His Majesty did not approve of his noblemen killing one another, and discouraged it as best he could. Long ago, March had been forced to fight one to defend Charlotte’s honor, but the circumstances had been considered justified, and besides, no one had been killed. But imagining Sheffield having to avoid an irate French husband with a sword in his hand added an extra bit of excitement to his character.

It also, unfortunately, explained why Diana had found him so appealing. She’d always had a weakness for charming, handsome rogues, and worse, she was in turn the sort of lady that charming, handsome rogues tended to pursue. The more she learned of Sheffield, the more she realized how precisely those three words defined him.

“March says the king himself insisted on Sheffield breaking off with the woman and returning to London,” Charlotte continued. “That’s why he’s marrying Lady Enid, you see, as a way of proving he’s changed. If anyone can reform a rascal like Sheffield, it will be a clever, sober lady such as Lady Enid. From the look of them together, he does seem to find her intriguing. Oh, here’s Lord Crump at last, and just in time for the play, too.”

Quickly Diana turned, her smile ready as he entered the box. He bowed and greeted everyone else first—proper since everyone else was of higher rank, but not exactly displaying the eagerness that Diana had hoped for. Still, she greeted him warmly when he finally sat beside her.

“Good evening, my lord,” she said, fluttering her fan with nervous intensity. “I’m so vastly glad to see you! I’d begun to fear you would not be able to join us.”

“Good evening to you, Lady Diana,” he said with his usual dry, dutiful manner. “I am fortunate to be here at all. The streets around Drury Lane are so congested that it makes passage an absolute trial. I cannot tell you how long it took my carriage to travel here from Westminster.”

“Westminster, my lord?” Mama had always advised that the surest way to make a gentleman believe you were witty and wise at conversation was to ask him about his own interests. “What manner of business kept you in your office so late? Is there a ship new arrived from the Indies that takes your attention, or—”

“Oh, nothing that need concern you,” he said lightly. “Suffice that it kept me there so long that the streets between there and Drury Lane were nearly impassable. One more reason for a sane man never to bother with the playhouse.”

This was hardly an auspicious beginning, but Diana remembered her new resolution, and persevered.

“But tonight’s play will feature the celebrated Mr. Garrick,” she said. “I vow he is so accomplished that he can bring me to tears.”

“Then you must be of a most tender nature, Lady Diana,” he said severely, making it clear that he found tenderness a grievous fault, not a virtue. “To be moved to tears by the false emotions of an actor! You would do well to direct those inclinations toward charitable work rather than the idle amusements of the playhouse.”

Diana’s smile faded. Everyone she knew enjoyed the playhouse. How could he not?

“But surely one cannot be somber all the time, my lord,” she insisted. “Laughter and pleasure are not bad things. After a day’s labor on behalf of the country, don’t you wish the amusing respite of a play?”

He glanced at her sideways with patent disbelief. “I find such satisfaction in my work that I require no respite,” he said. “Certainly not the kind that comes from the playhouse. It’s not that I disapprove, as a Puritan would. Rather, it would seem to be a sorry waste of the precious hours in every day.”

Diana’s fan stilled as she fought the urge to strike him with it. “Laughter is not a waste, my lord.”

He paused, and finally smiled indulgently. “Indeed, Lady Diana,” he said. “But then, you are still young.”

She bit back the obvious conclusion: that if she was young, then he was a dry old stick. She intended to be laughing still when she was as old as Aunt Sophronia, or even older, and how she longed to tell him so! Instead she lowered her fan to her lap, turning so that the candlelight from around the stage would shine on her bosom to best effect. If she could not beguile him by discussing Mr. Garrick’s magnificence or the play they were to see, then the cherry-colored silk and her breasts would surely succeed. She’d never met a gentleman who could withstand such an onslaught.

But though Lord Crump kept the same indulgent, thin-lipped smile on his face, his glance didn’t waver or dip below her face. Not so much as a single stolen glance, not even when Diana heaved a purposeful, monumental sigh that threatened to raise her breasts free of her stays.

Nothing.

Almost as if in sympathy, the orchestra began to play, signaling the beginning of the performance.

“Here’s the play at last, Lady Diana,” he said. “I trust it will bring you the diversion and amusement you seek.”

She forced herself to smile and tried to forget her frustration as she turned to watch the play, called
The Enchanter: Love and Magic
. She couldn’t help but think how she’d need a sizable portion of magic before she’d ever coax Lore Crump to love. She certainly was no enchanter, at least not where he was concerned, and her frustration simmered, making it impossible to concentrate.

Late in the first act, she heard a shuffling beside her. Lord Crump had taken several letters—business letters filled with numbers and accounts, from what she could see—from inside his coat and was actually
reading
them during the play, tipping them toward the stage so he would have sufficient light.

“Cannot that wait until later, my lord?” she whispered. “Is it so very urgent that you won’t put them aside to enjoy the play?”

He stared at her, clearly startled that she’d dare question him. He blinked, then smiled a little shamefacedly and tucked the letters back into his pocket. He clasped his hands in his lap and dutifully turned toward the stage.

Daring greatly, Diana reached out and rested her hand on his forearm. She’d hoped he’d take her hand in his, or at least cover hers. Instead he glanced down at her hand as if it were some exotic winged insect that had inexplicably landed there. He unclasped his fingers and clumsily patted her hand—one, two, three times—with more obligation than affection or real regard. Then he clasped his hands together again and stared once again at the stage.

It wasn’t exactly that he’d rebuffed her, or that he was by design being cruel or mean-spirited. Rather, it was that Lord Crump simply did not know what to do with her, or likely any woman, for that matter. In a way, that ambivalence was the most hurtful reason of all.

Slowly Diana withdrew her hand from his sleeve and bowed her head with frustration. How could she be more attentive, more agreeable, more wifely, to a man who seemed to take no notice of her?

Charlotte sensed there was something amiss, even if Lord Crump did not. As soon as the applause had died down for the conclusion of the act, she leaned across Diana to address him directly.

“Dear Lord Crump,” she said, “March and I are going to walk about during intermission. There may perhaps even be ices. Would you and Lady Diana care to join us?”

No one refused Charlotte, not even Lord Crump.

“Very well, Your Grace,” he said, unfolding from his chair. He stepped into the aisle and offered his hand to Diana. “If you please, Lady Diana.”

“Thank you, my lord,” Diana said, flashing a quick smile of gratitude to Charlotte as she took his hand. At least now he couldn’t drop her hand; he’d have to keep it until they returned to their seats. “You are most kind.”

Many others from the boxes had likewise chosen to stroll between the acts, and the corridor was already filled with people—or, rather, filled with gentlemen, ladies, and the ladies’ wide hooped skirts, which made each lady occupy the space of three. The doors to the boxes had been thrown open and hooked, not just permitting the occupants to leave with ease but also letting friends visit, making the boxes serve as temporary reception rooms.

“Faith, what a crush,” Charlotte said over her shoulder. She was holding tight to March, not only because he was a tall man but because the crowd bowed and parted for him as soon as he was recognized. Diana also held tight to Lord Crump, though she kept close to Charlotte and March as well. A marquis might be a peer, but there was nothing like a duke to clear a useful path.

“How much farther must we go, Lady Diana?” Lord Crump asked, raising his voice. “Could we not have sent a lackey for these ices you desire?”

“I suppose we could have, my lord, yes,” Diana said. From his pained expression, she knew she could add strolling the corridors during intermission to the ever-growing list of things he did not enjoy doing. “But if we’d stayed in our seats, then no one would see us, or we them.”

There was little doubt they were being seen now—or rather, she was. Lord Crump might have said nothing about her bright silk gown, but the gaze of every other gentleman in the theater seemed to find her, and stay there, too. She supposed the attention was flattering, but in truth she would have traded all that random admiration for a single compliment from the man she was to marry.

“We’re almost to the counters with the ices and wines, my lord,” she said. “Then we can—oh!”

Without warning, Charlotte and March had stopped in front of them, and Diana, having turned to speak with Lord Crump, barely avoided crashing into her sister from behind.

“Sheffield, here you are,” Charlotte exclaimed. “And Lady Enid! How much I’ve heard of you, my dear. Diana, here, it’s Lady Enid, ready for us to welcome her to the family.”

Diana squeezed forward, still holding Lord Crump’s hand. Because of the crowd around them, they all stood unavoidably close together in a small circle, or at least as close as the ladies’ gowns would permit. As Diana soon realized while Charlotte made the introductions, it had been one thing to watch Sheffield with Lady Enid at a distance, but quite another to have them standing only a few feet away. Lady Enid wasn’t nearly as plain as she’d seemed from a distance, or perhaps it was simply her glowing happiness that made her round face more appealing. Of course she’d be happy. She’d Sheffield beside her.

There was no denying he was the most devastatingly handsome man in the theater, or at least he was in Diana’s eyes. Devastating: yes, that was the inexplicable yet undeniable effect he now had upon her. It didn’t matter that he was standing with his betrothed and she with hers, or that the last time she’d seen him she’d wanted to throttle him for pulling her into the pond.

When he laughed at something that Charlotte said, tipping his head back so his dark hair slipped over his forehead, all she could think of was how silky that hair had felt beneath her fingers when she’d kissed him. She looked at his elegant dark silk coat, embroidered with swirling silver vines along the edges and spangled here and there with blue-gray stones that exactly matched his eyes, and thought not of the coat but of how well it fit him, how broad his shoulders were and how narrow his waist and hips, how strong and leanly muscled he was beneath that silk coat, and how wonderful he’d been to lean against in the moonlight.

All these shameful notions raced through Diana’s head in the handful of moments that presentations and greetings took. She prayed that no one—least of all Lord Crump—would observe her fluster, and to control it she ordered herself to think only stern, somber, non-devastating thoughts, such as the sermon she’d heard at church last Sunday.

But then Sheffield smiled directly at her, and his gaze at once dipped to her breasts. Manfully, he forced himself to look again at her face, but only for a moment, and (perhaps this was the truly manful part) then back his gaze dropped. She felt her cheeks grow hot, her heart beat faster, and a part of her deep inside turn soft and melt like wax in the sun. He couldn’t help it, and neither could she.

But Sheffield, blast him, didn’t seem to care about hiding it.

“I trust you are recovered from your maritime exercises, Lady Diana?” he asked, his voice studiously bland but his eyes full of spark. “When last I saw you, you’d taken on water and were listing badly.”

“And you, Your Grace, had sunk straight to the bottom, an unsalvageable wreck,” she answered succinctly, refusing to let such a comment go unanswered. “You were a woeful sight indeed.”

“Sadly true, Lady Diana, sadly true.” He sighed dramatically and shook his head, then let his gaze once again wander to her breasts. “Ah, if only I’d been able to continue to battle, and not been forced to strike my flag before your broadsides!”

“Whatever are you saying, Sheffield?” asked Lady Enid, clearly confused as she looked from Sheffield to Diana and back again. “You’re speaking complete nonsense.”

“Oh, Lady Enid,” Charlotte said quickly. “You must pay them no attention. My children were playing with toy boats in our pond yesterday, and Sheffield and my sister joined them. This is doubtless no more than a reference to the children’s games.”

Charlotte smiled, eager to dismiss the conversation as child’s play, though the glance she shot at Diana should have been warning enough. Diana understood entirely; she’d lived her whole life as the target of warning glances from her older sister.

But understanding was not the same as obeying, especially not when Sheffield wasn’t about to stop, either.

“Scuppered, Lady Diana,” he said with relish. “That’s what I saw in that pond. Bows up, and scuppered.”

Diana grinned wickedly, unable to let him have the last word. She’d forgotten so entirely about everyone else that they might as well have been alone in the corridor.

“Aye, aye, if you must, admiral,” she said. “But I’d rather that than being run aground and dismasted.”

Sheffield laughed, but no one else did, and too late Diana realized had badly she’d just erred. Making bawdy sailor jests in company was not acceptable, and it didn’t take long for Lord Crump to speak.

“You astound me, Lady Diana,” he said. “I’d no notion you were so familiar with the language of common seamen.”