The maid stared at him sharply, but continued her work, taking off layers of petticoats till Diana stood only in her shift, the fine fabric hardly hiding anything.
She was utterly magnificent, the cloth molded to her breasts, revealing the large rosy shadows of her nipples; then it fell straight till it clung to her hips, her thighs, revealing so many curves, but hiding just enough that his fingers itched to remove the offensive fabric.
“Why do we do anything?” Diana returned, looking away, lifting her arms above her head—dear God what that did for her breasts!—to let the maid place a red silk dress over her head.
When the gown slipped into place, bereft of corset and extra petticoats, but yet revealing much of the creamy upper swell of her breasts and clinging indecently to her curves, he remembered that here she was not Diana. She was Rouge.
“Rouge,” he tried out the name. Diana’s gaze flew back to his immediately, her mouth parted. He thought she looked rather…shocked. It reminded him of that tear, of that trick of the light. He shook his head. “I don’t think it fits you, Diana.”
She looked away again, and sat down on a plush stool. The maid began working on Diana’s hair, pinning the auburn strands up.
It was odd, watching this little ritual, clearly one that had transpired countless times in the past. The maid worked quickly, until all the hair was firmly where she wanted it. Then she took a length of gold tissue and began wrapping it around Diana’s head.
A turban. A shimmering gold turban that would completely cover her hair. So that was how she kept her identity secret.
In but a moment she was completely transformed. With a silk mask in place, all that was visible were her lips and chin, the long column of her neck—and every luscious curve of her body.
How did she ever fool anyone? Jason would know her anywhere, had the lines of her face memorized, the way her jaw curved toward her ear, the shape of the hollow between her shoulder blades.
“Would you like a mask, Jason?” Her husky voice cut into his thoughts and he realized she now stood, holding out a black strip of silk toward him. “I know how you care for your name. Our name.”
He stepped forward to take the cloth and in the motion, his hand brushed hers. The sensation was too intense and too brief. Grief welled up in him for what could have been.
But only in his own mind, he reminded himself.
Diana led him into the hall, where the sounds of laughter and passion rang noisily in contrast to the quiet of her private rooms.
They entered the drawing room, or what should have been the drawing room. Instead he had entered some Grecian god’s orgy atop Mount Olympus—nymphs, satyrs, grapes, ambrosia and all. There were beds where stately carpets and couches should have been. Jason had had his fair share of youthful indiscretions, but never before had he seen so many naked limbs entwined at once in one space.
She stepped back next to him, her hand coming to rest on his arm, her body pressing up next to his. He could smell her, every intoxicating scent that made up Diana. Her touch undid him, made him forget everything, everything but the feel of her body against his. Later, he thought he must have been possessed, that the devil had addled his brain, his wit, his soul, any part of him that might make sense. Then, in that moment, he grabbed her, turned her into his arms so that her body pressed up fully against him, so that her head was at just the right angle, so that he could just bend down.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Jason was kissing her. Diana knew it intellectually, although she could hardly feel it. From the moment he had pulled her into his arms, she had begun trembling. It was too much. Too much and too soon and yet everything she had wanted only two days earlier.
Then the warmth of his body permeated her skin, eased her fear, reminded her who this was. She ran into the kiss then, holding him, begging for everything with her lips, her tongue. She could almost taste her own desperation.
Then there was nothing. He was ripped out of her arms as if he had tasted that desperation himself. She stumbled back, refocusing, searching for him.
He was staggering now, twice his size, and she realized there was another man attached to him, wrestling him to the ground.
The most unbelievable thing—Sir Robert George attacking Jason, as if he held some grudge against the man, as if he wanted to tear him limb from limb.
“Stop it!” she cried out, stepping forward uselessly. There were others watching now. One of her Grecian boys grabbed Jason by the shoulders, but that just let Sir Robert take another free swing, striking him in the jaw.
“Sir Robert!” Diana shouted. This time she grabbed the man’s arm. He swiveled his head toward her. In all the times she had met Sir Robert he was lascivious, yes, but worldly, gentlemanly and polite. She had never seen him so out of control, such utter rage on his face.
But then he focused on her, his expression easing from rage to confusion. As his hands fell to his sides, the fists unclenching, that expression gave way to something else.
Diana didn’t wait to understand his sudden sanity.
“Charles, Douglas,” she called to the two footman who hovered nearby. “Escort Sir Robert off the premises.” She focused her steely gaze on him. “You are no longer welcome at Harridan House, sir. Please remove yourself.”
Sir Robert didn’t speak. He merely bowed, ever so slightly, and then brushing off the footmen, pivoted on his heel and left.
She looked back at Jason. His mask was long gone, his clothes completely disordered and his jaw a purpling mess.
“Sir,” she held out her hand, very aware of the large audience. “I apologize for the baronet. Come, let me tend to your wounds, and we’ll call a doctor.”
Chapter Thirty
The brawl had happened rather fast and now that it was over, with Diana towering over him, her hand stretched out, Jason wondered how it had even started. He knew Sir Robert by sight but he’d never so much as exchanged a greeting with the man.
With difficulty, Jason stood, clutching at his right side, where the other man had managed to land a particularly powerful punch. The room spun dizzily and while he steadied himself, dozens of faces crossed his view.
“Lucy,” Diana snapped when they entered her suite, “we need ice if there is any left, and bandages perhaps.”
“What happened?” the maid asked. Jason collapsed onto the chaise longue, resting his head on the rolled velvet back, hardly listening to Diana’s brief explanation.
Then the door shut and the room was silent but for Diana’s soft sigh and his own labored breath.
“I’m so very sorry, Jason.”
“I can’t imagine what you have to apologize for,” Jason said, groaning as pain stabbed through his chin at the movement. George had managed to connect a right hook to his face rather successfully. Jason wondered if he’d managed to hurt the other man at all in return. Barely parting his lips, he continued. “What would make a man act that way?”
“Jealousy, I suppose,” Diana mused. “I can’t think of any other reason. But it’s so odd. I know he’s always wished to bed me but he never had any right, any hint that I would ever let him touch me.”
The reminder that Diana had other men, that just two nights ago she had slept with Ashburton, hurt worse than his wounds. What was he still doing here? He should have left already. He should have never come.
“Is it always this way for you, Diana?” he asked, ignoring the pain. “Is it always one man or another?”
Then he wished he could take the words back, because she looked so stricken, so hurt. He was as bad as George, using his words to hit instead of fists.
“In many ways it was,” Diana admitted finally. “Before that night at Vauxhall. Indeed, even that night.”
Damn it to hell, he was a fool! Brazenly she even admitted it, and he was worried he had hurt her feelings.
“But I thought,” Diana continued, “I thought perhaps things could be different. When we were in Brighton.”
“You just
couldn’t help yourself,” Jason said, bitterly, closing his eyes.
“No! That’s not it!”
Arrested, Jason lifted his head and looked at her again.
“How can I explain to you?” She started pacing, her arms wrapped around herself. “I didn’t want it.”
“He raped you?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know,” Diana said finally, resting against the edge of the bed. She seemed to have gotten smaller, curled into herself.
“Which one is it?” Jason pressed.
“I was dreaming. I was dreaming of you and us and then when I woke up he was inside me.” Diana pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, looking toward the wall. “I couldn’t help it, Jason, my body responded, but I had no choice. He just…kept going until finally he fell asleep on top of me. I think it was the opium.”
Then Jason felt pinned by her gaze, by her wide green eyes, so dark yet so light, pleading with him to understand.
Finally, Jason thought he did.
“So you left Brighton,” he filled in for her, “because you couldn’t stay there after that.”
“I knew,” Diana blinked rapidly. “I knew it was over between us, between you and me. I thought you’d never know, I’d never have to admit what had happened.”
“Oh, Diana.”
“I was right, wasn’t I?” she asked. “It’s over?”
For a moment he just stared at her, wondering if it could be any other way.
“You said you’d always tell me the truth,” she stated flatly, prodding him.
He nodded slowly and met her gaze. It was over between them.
“It’s not that I think you did anything wrong.” Jason struggled to find the words. “Indeed, I’m sorry. I’m very sorry for you—”
“Oh, don’t be that!” she interrupted. “I don’t need any pity.”
“I just…this life,” he shrugged helplessly, and then winced again at the pain in his, well, all the pains in his bruised body. “It isn’t for me. I can’t…”
He stood up. Crossed the room till he was next to her.
Somehow he found the presence to lift her hand and press his lips to it.
“I’m sorry, Diana, I’d better go.”
Chapter Thirty-One
I’ m sorry, Diana.”
How many times had he apologized? Apologized because of what he was going to do: walk away.
He was gone. She’d watched him leave, let him leave, and then she’d fallen asleep at Harridan House as if staying there could keep reality from settling in. But the following day, when Lucy, in clearing up the mystery of Sir Robert’s episode abruptly gave her leave, Diana began to feel completely abandoned.
She had few true, close friends. In fact, she had even less than she had thought. She could hardly turn to Earnestina, although she often had when life with her late husband had been too dark. In those last months of his life, Tina had been the dearest of friends and endlessly supportive.
Now, Diana yearned for Maggie but was loath to interrupt the newly wedded bliss that her cousin was sharing with her husband at Oakley’s country estate.
Diana’s footman announced that Lord Ashburton was there to see her. He’d come all the way from Brighton to offer assistance in her “emergency.”
“I’m not at home,” Diana insisted, not even trying to keep her voice down, though Ashburton waited in the foyer beyond.
She’d have to see him eventually. If she ever wished to mix in society again, that was. Just not yet, not now.
She didn’t wait to hear him complain that he knew she was here. She left the parlor through the servants’ door, surprising her staff as she traversed the narrow hallway to the back stairs so she could reach her room undetected and in peace.
She could not remain in London. She could not stay always wondering whom she would run into, or who would call upon her.
Where could she go?
Chapter Thirty-Two
Jason returned to Brighton. He was no longer angry. How could he be, after what Diana had revealed? He could hardly feel, actually.
He wanted to see his daughter. The one bright, innocent thing in his world.
But when he arrived back at the Air Street rooms, the first person he saw was Lizzie.
“What happened, Jas?” she asked. “Your jaw is purple!”
He simply looked at her. Wasn’t the story there on his face for anyone to read? Apparently, some version of it was, because Daniel pulled his wife away.
“He’s only just arrived, my love, give the man some space.”
Yet, the following afternoon, it was Daniel who clapped him on the arm.
“What’s this I just heard of a brawl with Sir Robert George? In Harridan House of all places! Whatever were you doing there? Well, never mind the last, but what do you have against the man?”
“That’s the tattle today, is it?” Jason shrugged. “It’s rather what does he have against me? He came at me out of nowhere and for no apparent reason. Come, Throck,” he used the old schoolboy nickname, “in all the years we’ve been friends, have you ever known me to pick a fight?”
Much later that evening, after allowing his friends to drag him out to the theater, Jason realized he shouldn’t have spoken quite so quickly.
In the lobby of the year-old building, he saw Lord Ashburton with Lord Bourke at his side.
For the first time in days, a different emotion struck Jason. Fury boiled in his veins and he crossed the room before his mind caught up to his actions.
“You damn bastard,” Jason bit out. He grabbed the other man by his cravat and slammed a fist into his cheek before Ashburton had a chance to register anything other than surprise on his face. Ashburton stumbled back, amid the gasping crowd of onlookers who parted ranks to let him fall.
“What the hell, Blount?” Lord Bourke cried, taking a step toward Ashburton, but Jason was already on top of the viscount, his fist drawn back.
Ashburton blocked the coming blow with his forearm, and Jason felt the following thrust of the man’s fist into his side.
“Jealousy, is that what this is about?” Ashburton drawled, his bruised face a twisted sneer.
“You’re a pig, Ashburton.” Jason punctuated his words by driving his palm into the man’s chin, forcing his head down against the wooden parquet floor.
“Get off of him!” He heard the cries of onlookers but ignored them. It only barely entered his consciousness that someone was calling his name.
Then Ashburton surged against him, his legs entangling with Jason’s until Jason found himself on his back looking up at the son of a bitch.
“You must not take rejection well,” Ashburton sneered. A drop of blood hung off of his chin for a long moment before it finally fell onto Jason’s coat.
“She didn’t want you,” Jason growled, despite the fact that Ashburton was choking him now and it was getting increasingly difficult to put voice to the words. “And I’m going to teach you that when a lady says no, she means it.”
There was a ringing in Jason’s ears and a fog shadowing the corners of his vision, but he thought he could just make out the sentence formed on Ashburton’s cracked lips.
“She did not say no.”
Then Ashburton was off of him, stumbling back as he stood, shrugging off the help of others.
Jason lunged up from the ground, focusing on his object despite the creeping blackness and threw himself at Ashburton with all the fury and despair he felt, for himself, for Diana, for everything the man’s casual violence had destroyed.
Jason never made his target. He found his arms held back and looking to his right he saw Throckmorton.
“Let me go, Daniel,” Jason warned.
“No.” Throckmorton held his right arm firmly, even after Jason managed to free his left from the other man who had restrained him. “We’re at the theater, my friend. This isn’t done. We’re going home. Now.”
Jason looked back toward Ashburton, but the man had moved on. Instead he saw Lizzie, sta
ring at him in shock.
The fight left Jason as quickly as it had entered. His shoulders slumped.
“All right,” he said to Daniel. “All right.”
The three of them sat tensely in the carriage for the ride home. The silence so thick, Jason could almost taste it. That and the nauseating metallic of his own blood.
“Well, if the brawl at that club didn’t cause a scandal, this certainly will,” Lizzie said finally. “I suppose I’ll have to collect on that wager I’ve won. Where is Ogden Seymour now, do you know?”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Out of the not particularly companionable silence, Mary finally spoke.
“You’ve done quite well for yourself, Diana.”
Diana winced as her needle slipped and stabbed her index finger. She glanced at her stepmother, who sat in the rocker, creating neat seams as if she were a machine designed to do so.
“I suppose I have,” Diana muttered. She knew what was coming next. Mary seemed capable of conversing on only a few subjects.
“I suppose you must think us very poor society here.”
“Not really,” Diana answered, knowing by now that her response was useless. “I did spend my first seventeen years here. It’s hard to ever forget the tranquility of life.”
What Diana didn’t add was that she had not found that tranquility in fleeing to Devon, to the modest cottage near Exeter where her father still lived.
It had been two months and in that time, Diana had come to understand that trying to run away to her childhood, to a time before, was impossible. After all, her father’s life had not stood still. He was remarried to a young wife, with a babe and another on the way. Although he no longer practiced medicine, between his arthritic hands he held his young son and bounced the child on his knee.
Perhaps if Mary weren’t here…but she was, and the older woman appeared to feel threatened by Diana’s presence, as if Diana were challenging Mary’s place as woman of the house.
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