When the Duke Found Love (33 page)

One chance, one chance … 

But was there anything more difficult than watching Diana with Crump as she curtseyed gracefully before him, displaying that dizzying expanse of creamy white breast as she did?

Yet Crump’s face remained as impassive as ever. He didn’t so much as offer Diana his hand to lift her up, merely flicking his fingers instead to signify she might rise. She did, and while the others smiled their approval, she leaned close to Crump, her hand on his black sleeve, and brushed her lips against his pockmarked cheek with the shyest of kisses. As pretty a gesture as this was by a bride to her groom, for Sheffield it was purest torment, and he couldn’t help imagining her kissing him instead, the feather-light touch of her fingers on his arm, the softness of her lips against his cheek, the heady scent of her perfume as she leaned close.

No man outside of his grave could withstand such attention without reacting, and Crump didn’t, either.

He sneezed.

He sneezed, and sneezed again, waving his hand to make Diana step back. He sneezed so loudly he seemed to explode with the force of it, groping blindly for his handkerchief. At last he covered most of his face with a small cloud of white linen, wheezing and gasping as his eyes turned red and bulged from his head.

“What is wrong, Crump?” asked March with concern. “What can we do to ease you?”

Crump shook his head and sneezed again, his wig slipping askew from the violence of it. At Brecon’s beckoning, a footman hurried forward with an armchair, and Crump sank into it.

“I’ll send for a physician, Lord Crump,” Charlotte said, her worried voice rising over his sneezing.

He shook his head, wheezing. “Not—not necessary,” he gasped. “Will—will pass.”

March rested his hand on his shoulder. “No need to be courageous about this, Crump,” he said. “A good physician can—”

“I—I beg you not,” Crump implored. “It—it is passing already.”

Indeed, as he sat in the chair, he did seem to be improving, his sneezes subsiding, while everyone watched and waited around him.

“Cats,” he finally managed to say. “Forgive me, Your Grace, but is there a cat somewhere in this house?”

“I have a cat,” Diana said, stepping forward. “Her name is Fig, and she is my dearest pet.”

He held up his hand to keep her at a distance. “I cannot tolerate cats,” he said. “They are the devil’s own creatures, and as poison to me. Your cat must be sent away at once.”

“No!” exclaimed Diana. “I love Fig! She is coming with me tomorrow. I already have her basket prepared for traveling.”

“If you bring that cat, Lady Diana, I shall myself wring its neck and fling its body from the carriage,” Crump declared, his red-rimmed eyes so determined that there was no doubt he’d do exactly as he said. “Unless you wish to become a widow as soon as you are a wife, you will never bring a cat near me, nor suffer one to soil your person with its vile scent.”

“How dare you even speak such cruelty!” cried Diana furiously. “Fig is like a child to me, my lord, and impossibly dear, and for you to say you would willfully harm her—”

“Hush, Diana, hush,” Lady Hervey said, stepping between Diana and Lord Crump. “You can’t expect his lordship to risk his own health for the sake of your pet. After you are wed, Fig can continue to live here at Marchbourne House, and you may visit her whenever you are in town.”

“She may do no such thing, Lady Hervey,” Crump said, displaying more emotion than he ever had before. “I will not permit my wife to have any contact with cats, or let herself be tainted by them.”

“You cannot keep me from Fig,” Diana declared, anger ringing in her voice, “and if you try, then I—”

“You will come with me, if you please, Diana,” Charlotte said, grabbing her by the arm to pull her back. “Mama, may I ask you to lead everyone to the table? Diana and I shall join you shortly.”

Unceremoniously Charlotte hauled Diana from the room, while Lady Hervey assumed the role of hostess and saw that March took Aunt Sophronia in to dinner with the rest following. It was rare to have more gentlemen than ladies, gentlemen usually being at a premium at London’s dining tables, but because both Charlotte and Diana were absent, Sheffield found himself not only left to walk with Brecon’s sons but seated with them, too. He suspected Charlotte had not entirely followed protocol with her chairs—he was, after all, a duke, and entitled to sit as close to the head of the table as possible—and had instead placed Diana and Crump side by side, as the guests of honor, and banished Sheffield to the distant end with the young gentlemen. It rather reminded him—and not in an agreeable way, either—of being twelve and at the children’s dining table again. At least he could feel Fantôme beneath the table, settling familiarly at his feet to offer canine solace; not exactly what he wished, but better than nothing.

Matters failed to improve as Aunt Sophronia launched into an unstoppable discourse on the superiority of her dogs over both her late husbands. It lasted through the first remove, giving Sheffield plenty of time to worry that Diana would not return. How would he be able to persuade her to marry him if he didn’t see her again?

But as the fish was being brought, she and Charlotte at last reappeared. Charlotte was overly cheerful, while Diana was glowering and clearly still murderous. Sheffield was delighted. When Diana was in a temper and spitting sparks, he found her to be wildly attractive—he’d only to remember her in the pond—and having her still unhappy with Crump would help his own cause.

And unhappy with Crump she was. She took her chair beside her intended without once meeting his eye, nor did she do more than answer his questions with a single curt word.

Sheffield drank his wine, and watched, and waited. Who would have guessed that homely small cat could be of such assistance to him?

“You reek of laundering soap, Diana,” Aunt Sophronia announced to the rest of the table. “Is that what Charlotte had to use to make you agreeable to his lordship? Scrubbed you down with lye, did she?”

“Aunt Sophronia, please,” murmured Charlotte. “The matter has been addressed and resolved, and need not be discussed further.”

“What hasn’t been resolved is Diana’s poor little pet,” Aunt Sophronia said, holding her wineglass up to the nearest footman to refill. “What manner of gentleman is so overnice and dainty that he can’t bear his wife keeping a pet or two?”

“Aunt Sophronia, no more,” Lady Hervey said, more sternly than Charlotte. “We’re here to celebrate the wedding of Diana to Lord Crump, and to welcome him into our family.”

Aunt Sophronia grumbled to herself, and whatever she said further did not reach Sheffield’s ears. But it was soon clear that what she’d said had left its mark. The conversation for the rest of the meal was dull and forced, with difficult silences that seemed to stretch to an eternity that not even the ever-witty Brecon could fill.

By the time Charlotte rose to signal the end of the meal, the relief was palpable. In honor of the evening, a small group of musicians and singers had been hired to perform love songs in Italian. It was a charming entertainment before a wedding, but especially welcome this night because the music would fill the long, difficult silences, making conversation unnecessary.

Now Sheffield was perfectly content to be among the young gentlemen straggling on their way from the dining table to the music room. It was easy enough to stop one of the footmen in the hall before he joined the others, and easy, too, to take a seat at the back of the drawing room, near the second door. Fantôme squeezed beneath his chair, curling inside the imagined security of the four legs, and promptly fell into a wheezing sleep. Finally everyone else was settled, too, and as attentive as they’d ever be, and the musicians began.

Over and over Sheffield glanced at his watch, praying that the servant wouldn’t forget his little errand. The task would be minor enough to the footman (especially considering the half crown that Sheffield had given him), but it would mean everything to Sheffield.

He checked his watch again, sighed, and shifted restlessly in his chair. Beside him, Harry had fallen asleep behind his tinted spectacles and was snoring gently. Sheffield couldn’t blame him. Any other night, and the warbling singer would have reduced him to somnolent bliss, too.

Finally the door to the front of the room eased open, and the footman he’d bribed slipped through it, a salver in his hand and the note that Sheffield had given him on it. With the practiced discretion of a ducal household, he made his way to Diana, and held the salver and the note to her.

From where Sheffield sat, he could not see Diana’s face, or even if she’d opened the note. His heart racing, he willed her to follow the instructions he’d written:

My own Sultana,

I beg you come speak with me now in the garden near the pond. Your happiness & mine depend upon it. Tell any who may ask that you’ve been summoned by your maidservant, & pray do not fail me, else you will wound my heart to the quick.

When I see you leave, I shall follow, and join you.

—The one who loves you above all others

He saw her bow her head, turning slightly away from Crump. She was reading his note; she was keeping its contents secret. Sheffield held his breath, daring to hope.

She leaned toward Crump, whispering something, then rose and left the room. No one turned to watch or tried to stop her. Instead everyone kept their well-bred attention on the singer.

Somehow Sheffield kept from shouting with joy, from leaping about like a madman. Somehow he kept his seat as he silently counted the sixty seconds that make up a minute, then rose and walked slowly toward the second door. To his dismay, Geoff looked up as he passed, and caught his sleeve to stop him.

“Where are you going?” he whispered, more mouthing the words than speaking them.

“To piss,” Sheffield whispered back, the all-purpose excuse of every man.

Geoff nodded sagely, then closed his eyes and tipped his head to one side over his folded hands to mimic sleeping, his critique of the singer. Sheffield hurried away before Geoff could think of any other great cleverness to pass the time, or, worse, decided to join him.

By the time he’d reached the garden door, his thoughts were racing through every dismal possibility, trying to guard himself against disappointment.

She would not be there.

She would not listen.

She would send him away.

She would refuse outright.

She would declare her love for Crump and her dislike for him. She would—

But then she
was
there, standing in the opening beneath the trees like a spun-silver fairy in the moonlight, reflected in the pond’s inky surface.

She waited for him to join her, her hands clasped tightly at her waist.

“Diana,” he said. “You came.”

“Only because you called me Sultana.” She tossed her head to one side, flipping the single long lovelock back over her shoulder. “I can’t stay long.”

“No,” he said, wondering what had become of the elegant speech he’d been practicing all day long. “No.”

“Speak, Sheffield,” she said impatiently, “else I’ll toss you into the pond for your impertinence.”

“I’m not impertinent,” he said. “Not about this, anyway.”

He dropped to his knees before her, remembering at least that much of his rehearsal. The dew had already fallen and the grass was wet, instantly soaking through the knees of his breeches, but it would all be worth it if only she’d say yes.

But he’d have to ask first, and he could think of not a single thing to say. Every last word and syllable had vanished, leaving him to stare up at her with a head as empty and bereft of intelligence as a summer melon.

“Sheffield,” she asked finally, “are you drunk?”

He fumbled in his waistcoat for his mother’s ring. Damnation, his fingers were shaking, even as he held the ring up to her. The emerald seemed to glow in his hand, magical in the moonlight, and he remembered his father and mother and how happy and in love they’d been.

And at last the words came, or at least all the words that mattered.

“I love you, Diana,” he said, “and I’ll never love any other woman as much as I love you. Marry me, and be my love, my wife, my duchess.”

She stared at him, her hands still clasped, but her eyes were enormous. “You are serious?”

He nodded. “And my sultana. I forgot that before. Marry me, Diana, and be my sultana.”

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

In an evening marked by grim reality, Diana did not trust any of this to be real. How could it be?

To have the ever-witty and charming Duke of Sheffield, surely the most resolute bachelor she’d ever known and the one (the only one, fortunately) who’d impulsively, wondrously ruined her, kneeling on the grass before her and fumbling and mumbling through a proposal of marriage: could there be anything more unreal than that?

“Are you sure you are not drunk, Sheffield?” she asked. “Even a little?”

“Not at all,” he said, almost sheepish. “This would, be vastly easier if I were.”

It wasn’t easy for her, either. Not the loving part, for that had been easy from the first. She knew she loved him, loved him with every scrap of her being. She always would love him, too, no matter how she tried to love anyone else. But did he truly love her in return, enough to be her only love, her husband, her duke, the father of her children? Perhaps even her sultan? It was an enormous obligation to expect of any man, and Sheffield was hardly any ordinary man.

“You are not marrying me because of—of what we did?” she asked carefully, needing to be certain. “I would never want you to wed be because you felt you must.”

“Do you mean if there should be a child?” he asked. “No. And if I marry you now, before you know, then there must never be any doubt in your heart—though it would kill me to see a child of ours raised by Crump. I wish to marry you because I love you, and for no other reason than that.”