by Joan Wolf
She looked up into the crystal blue eyes of her lover. “I love you, too,” she said. “Alex. I love you, too.”
It had been a long time since Diana had let herself remember that scene. It hurt to remember it. She had gone home so happy, thinking that nothing could ever separate them. She had dreamed of marrying Alex, of living with him at Standish Court, of riding horses and having babies. He would always be there to protect her. She would never feel vulnerable and lonely again.
The very next day, Lord Standish had told his son that if he wanted to go into the army so much, then the earl would buy him his colors.
Diana closed her eyes and flung her arm across her eyes. She would never forget that meeting with Alex. It was scalded into her mind, soul and heart.
He had come to the cottage to see her. Diana and her mother had been out in the vegetable garden and Diana had taken Alex into the small parlor when he said he wanted to speak to her. She had smiled at him radiantly, but the smile he gave her in return was not the wholehearted one she had expected.
“Is something the matter?” she asked.
He sat next to her on the old leather sofa. “My father has changed his mind about the army. He told me this morning that he would buy me a commission.”
Diana had stared at him, not fully comprehending what this meant. “Did he?” she said.
“It’s my dream come true,” he continued. “All my life I have wanted to be a soldier. You know that. And now my father will buy me a commission under Wellington.” The blue eyes that were looking at her held a mixture of pleading and guilt. “After yesterday, I know my first responsibility is to you. But…”
Diana had felt a chill settle over her. “But what?” she had said.
He had set his jaw. “I’ll stay if you want me to stay.”
“But you want to go.”
A muscle jumped in his jaw. “It wouldn’t be forever, Dee. It would only be for a few years. I’m my father’s heir. I know I have to come back to Standish Court and learn to take over. I plan on doing that. I want to do that. But our country is at war and, for a little time, I would like to help.”
“You mean you prefer the army over me,” she accused.
“It’s not forever!” he repeated. “I’m only nineteen years old, Dee. You’re only seventeen. We can get married when I come home. You will only have to wait a few years. I promise you.”
“What if I don’t want to wait?”
The muscle jumped in his jaw once more. “Then I’ll stay.”
“How kind of you,” she said.
He reached over and took her hands. “I love you. I will never love any woman but you. You’re part of me. We have a whole lifetime to be together. Can’t we wait for just a few years?”
“Did it ever occur to you, Alex, that soldiers get killed in war? Do you have some invincible shield that is going to protect you from the enemies’ bullets? My father was killed in battle. What makes you think you won’t be?”
“I won’t be killed,” he said confidently. “I won’t be killed because I know I have to come home to you.”
She had stared at him and seen all her dreams going up in flames. He didn’t love her, not the way she loved him. He wanted to leave her, just the way her father had.
She said, “Go, if that’s the way you feel. But don’t expect me to be waiting when you get home.”
“Don’t say that!” He looked appalled. “After all we’ve been to each other, how can you say that, Dee?”
“It’s your choice, not mine,” she said. “You can’t have both. It’s the army or me.”
A flush of angry color had come into his face. “I may not have a choice,” he said. “After yesterday, you may be with child. If that’s the case, we’ll have to be married right away.”
“And you’d stay?”
“Yes.” The telltale muscle jumped once more.
“Well, you can stop holding your breath,” she said. “I know I’m not with child. It was the wrong time in my cycle.”
He couldn’t hide the relief in his eyes.
Fury washed over her. “Go, if that’s what you want,” she said. She stood up. “I certainly don’t want to stand in the way of your dream.”
“I can’t go if you feel like this,” he said miserably, standing also.
“I can’t help the way I feel, Alex. But one thing I can tell you. I don’t want to marry a man who feels he has sacrificed his dream for me. Such a situation would hardly make for a happy marriage, would it? So if you want to go, then go. I release you from any responsibility you may feel for me. I shall go on perfectly well without you.”
He looked down at her. “I have loved you all my life,” he said quietly.
“But you love your dream more,” she returned. “So follow it.”
“It will only be for a few years,” he repeated. “Then we can be married.”
“Don’t count on it,” she said cruelly.
He had looked down into her eyes and drawn a deep, steadying breath. “I’ll stay,” he said. “I can’t leave you like this.”
“But you want to go,” she said. And that, of course, was what she couldn’t forgive. “And if you want to go, then I want you to go, as well. Go and fulfill your dream. I will pray for your safety.”
Hope had glimmered in the crystalline blue of his eyes. “Do you mean that?”
“Yes, I do.”
“And we will be married when I come home. I will be my own man by then. I will be able to marry whoever I want.”
They both heard the front door open. Her mother was back from the garden. When she had reached the parlor door, Diana said, “Alex is going into the army, Mama. Lord Standish has offered to buy him a commission.”
Mrs. Sherwood raised her eyebrows. “That must have made you very happy, Alex. When are you leaving?”
“I’m to go to London tomorrow. I have to get outfitted for a uniform. Then I will join the army in Portugal.”
Mrs. Sherwood came into the room. “Congratulations,” she said. “I know this has long been a dream of yours, Alex. I remember how you always loved to listen to all of my husband’s letters.”
He smiled. “Yes. I remember that, too.”
Then Alex had asked Diana to walk out to his horse with him. She had made an excuse and he had left the house alone. That had been her last sight of him before he had come home to Standish Court a month ago.
Diana lay in her bed, her arm across her forehead, tears sliding down her cheeks. Years had passed, yet the heartbreak was as fresh and real as it had been on that day he walked away from her. Every time she looked at him, she remembered that moment. She would never be able to forget. Never.
Seventeen
At the next two balls that Diana attended, Lord Rumford asked her to dance twice and he asked Jessica Longwood only once. The clubs began to take bets as to which girl Rumford would propose to. The odds tended to lean toward Diana.
Then Rumford took Jessica driving in the park, and the odds began to shift back in her favor.
Lord Longwood was very insistent that his daughter attach the Earl of Rumford.
“I am trying the best that I can, Papa!” she cried to her father when he called her into the library of their London town house to question her. “I agree with everything that he says and I smile all the time. I couldn’t possibly be more encouraging!”
“Damn this Sherwood girl,” he said, scowling heavily. “Everything was going just fine until she arrived on the scene.”
“It isn’t fair,” Jessica sulked. “I had him caught, Papa. I know I had. And then he came to London and saw her. I can’t compete with the way she looks. There isn’t a girl in London who can. It just isn’t fair.”
“She may be a good-looker, but she’s a nobody. I had someone look into her background for me. She grew up at Standish Court all right, but she didn’t live in the house with the family. She and her mother live in a cottage on the estate. They are nothing more than pensioners of the Standishes. T
he father was a mere colonel who was killed at Corunna. She’s trying to pass herself off as a Standish, but she’s far from that. Once I circulate this information, I think we might see Rumford come to his senses. He has enough awareness of who he is and what is owed to his position to marry a girl like that.”
“Lady Standish is sponsoring her, though,” Jessica said doubtfully. “And she has the entrée to Almack’s. She can’t be all that badly born.”
“Compared to you, she is. Remind Rumford of that when you get the chance, eh?”
Jessica sighed. “I’ll try, Papa. I’ll try.”
Lady Moulton, Lord Rumford’s sister, heard the gossip about Diana and taxed her brother about it.
“They are saying that the Sherwoods are poor relations of Lady Standish and that they live in a cottage at Standish Court. The father was just the younger son of some country squire, although the mother is apparently a cousin of Lady Standish. But that family is nothing to boast about. Amelia Standish’s father gambled them into ruin.”
“Where is all this gossip coming from?” Lord Rumford asked quietly. He and his sister were sitting at Lady Moulton’s breakfast table—Rumford had responded to her urgent request to visit him immediately.
“I heard it last night from Maria Lewis,” she said. “I don’t know who she got it from, but it’s all over town.
Lord Rumford had refused breakfast, having already eaten at home, but he had been sipping a cup of coffee. Now he pushed it away. “It seems to me that someone has gone to a lot of trouble to delve into Miss Sherwood’s background. She hasn’t mis-represented herself as far as I am concerned. All the ton knew that she hadn’t any money. And she is obviously a valued member of the Standish family, wherever she may have lived on their estate. Lord Standish would certainly not be paying for her come-out if the case was otherwise. This whole whisper campaign sounds dirty to me.”
Lady Moulton frowned as she looked at her brother. “You can marry whoever you want to, Edward. I just don’t want to see you bowled over by a pretty face.”
“Miss Sherwood is more than a pretty face. She is a well-read young woman and she is extremely knowledgeable about horses. She has the best seat I have ever seen on a woman. I like her, Regina. She’s fresh and vibrant and she makes me feel young again. It’s a good feeling. I haven’t felt that way in a long, long time.”
Lady Moulton reached across the table and put her hand over her brother’s. “All I want is for you to be happy, Edward. God knows, you deserve some happiness in your life. And if you feel that this girl can make you happy, then I am with you. But take your time. Don’t jump too soon. You thought you would probably marry the Longwood girl this winter. This is a very sudden change of heart.”
He sighed. “I know. I can’t explain it. It’s just…when I saw her, every other woman went out of my mind. I feel badly about Miss Longwood. I know I raised expectations in that quarter. But…”
“I think you need some time to get to know Miss Sherwood better. What if I invited the Sherwoods and Standishes to visit me at Chisworth next week for a few days? We can make a small house party of it—invite a few other people, so it doesn’t look too obvious that we are singling out Miss Sherwood. What do you think?”
He nodded slowly. “I think that’s a very good idea, Regina. I appreciate your thinking of it. It would be nice to have a chance to spend more time with Miss Sherwood than one can cram in at a ball or in a brief drive through the park.”
She patted his hand then withdrew her own.
“Good,” she said. “I’ll send out the invitations.”
Alex was furious when he heard the gossip about Diana. He gave the man who inquired about her a blistering set-down, then stood up in the club room at Brooks and announced to everyone there that Diana Sherwood was the cousin of the Earl of Standish and was perfectly entitled by reason of her birth to marry anyone she wished in English society.
He went home fuming and discovered that Lady Standish and Sally and Mrs. Sherwood had gone out and Diana was alone in her bedroom. He took the stairs two at a time and knocked on her closed door with authority.
There was no answer.
“Dee!” he called. “It’s me. I’m coming in.”
He pushed the door open and saw her curled up in one of the chairs in front of the fireplace with Freddie snuggled against her. She looked very pale and the great brown eyes that met his were filled with distress.
“Damn,” he said. “You’ve heard.”
“If you mean I’ve heard that I’m nothing but a pensioner of yours, then, yes I have,” she said. Her voice sounded steady, but he could hear the under-tone. He knew her very well.
“It’s all nonsense,” he said. He crossed the room and sat down in the other chair, facing her. The day was damp and there was a fire in the fireplace. “I told them all at Brooks that you were fit to marry anyone you chose, no matter how high his position may be in society.”
“Oh God,” she said. “Did you really say that?”
“I did. When that whiney little Staley asked me about you, I just saw red. Who the hell turned up the information that you lived in a cottage?”
“I don’t know. But maybe it’s good that it came out, Alex. I know you and Cousin Amelia have been trying to make it sound as if I grew up in the house with you, but that was really misrepresenting me. If someone wants to marry me, he should know the whole truth.”
Her eyes looked so large and dark in her pale face. There was a vulnerable look about her mouth that made him want to kiss it. A treacherous thought flickered through his mind. If no one wants to marry her, perhaps she will marry me.
He was instantly ashamed of himself. “We only did what we thought would make things easier for you,” he said.
“I know. And I appreciate that. Truly I do. But…I’m not of the same station as you and Sally and it’s folly to pretend that I am.”
“Dee, your father was a gentleman. His family has held the same land in this country since the Domesday Book was written, for God’s sake. Your mother is a Parry, just like my mother. You may not be noble, but you are gently born. You are good enough to marry a duke if you want to!” He paused, then added quietly, “At one time you thought you were good enough to marry me.”
“That was different,” she said.
“How so?”
She shook her head. “You and me—we neither of us ever thought about things like birth or money. We just thought about ourselves. But people in London think about birth and money, Alex. They think about it a lot.”
We just thought about ourselves. The words stabbed like a sword in Alex’s heart. That’s exactly how it had been once, and he desperately wanted it to be that way again. But she was thinking of marrying another man, and here he was, reassuring her that she could.
He said slowly. “Any man who thinks you are not good enough to marry him is a nincompoop and not worthy of you. And that is the truth.”
She buried her face in Freddie’s fur. There was silence in the room for a minute and then she raised her head. “Thank you, Alex,” she said. Her voice trembled slightly.
He smiled at her. “There’s no one else like you, Dee. You know that. Don’t let yourself be cast down by ugly rumors. You have always been able to throw your heart over a fence. You need to keep on doing that.”
She took a deep breath and nodded. “But what if Rumford doesn’t ask me to dance tonight, Alex? I will be so humiliated.”
“That won’t happen,” he said positively.
“Why not?”
“Because the man is mad for you,” he said crisply and got to his feet. “Surely you know the signs by now. You’ve had men running after you for years, or so Sally tells me.”
She bit her lip. “Yes, but…”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. He went to the door. “Rumford will ask you to dance.”
He opened the door and went out into the hallway.
Rumford will ask her to dance or I’ll pummel him into a
coma, he thought as he walked toward the staircase. Despair washed over him suddenly, chasing away all the anger he had felt.
God. How did I come to this? What am I going to do.
The Standishes and Sherwoods went to Almack’s that evening for the weekly assembly dance. Lord Rumford was not there when they arrived, and Diana felt her stomach tighten. Had he stayed away because he didn’t want to see her?
Lord Dorset came over to greet Sally immediately and ask her to dance. The two of them went out onto the dance floor and for a few horrible moments, Diana was alone with her mother and Lady Standish. Alex had been detained at the door by someone he knew from the Horse Guards, so he wasn’t there to rescue her.
Then Mr. Dunster appeared at her side, smiling and asking her to dance.
Thank God, Diana thought. Matthew Dunster had always danced with her, and she had driven out with him once or twice. The earl’s younger son needed to marry for money, but that hadn’t stopped him from enjoying Diana’s company, and she was immensely grateful to him for standing by her now. As they went out onto the floor, she thought she could feel the eyes of the whole room trained on her.
“Thank you,” she said quietly to Mr. Dunster as they stood together waiting for the music to start.
“Someone is spreading nasty rumors about you, Miss Sherwood,” he replied.
“So I have heard. I can’t imagine why anyone would bother.”
He shrugged. “People in this town need gossip like they need air. But I would hate to think that you were upset by it. Don’t be. Standish and his mother are standing by you, and that is what will count with the ton.”
“I hope so,” Diana murmured. “I never tried to misrepresent myself. Everyone knows that I have no money.”
He replied with a rueful smile, “That is true. If you had money, I would have asked you to marry me weeks ago.”
She returned his smile. “Thank you for the compliment—I think.”
The orchestra played the opening bars of the dance tune, and Diana and Mr. Dunster faced each other and prepared to bow.
An hour later, Diana excused herself from Lady Standish’s side and went to the ladies’ retiring room. There was one other person there, standing in front of a mirror and adjusting her hair. It was Jessica Longwood.