“She stopped eating. I suppose we all should have seen that coming. She saw no reason to fill her body with any sort of fuel, as she no longer saw a reason to proceed with her life. The doctor came and told us that she had a deep, wretched heartbreak, one that might debilitate her for the rest of her life. And he also told us that if she didn’t start eating, she would ultimately pass on. ”
“Of course, that forced Father and I into overdrive. We couldn’t possibly lose Mother, too. We tried everything. I learned to cook some of Mother’s favourite foods, hoping that, coming from me alone, she would attempt to eat them. We went into the city and purchased expensive cakes, beautiful ones from the finest vendors, and placed them in front of her. When I was younger, she’d had quite the sweet tooth, so much so that her dessert was ordinarily gone before the rest of us were halfway finished. Yet after Margery passed, Mother didn’t have an eye for anything.
“And if I’m being honest, fully and completely honest, Mother no longer had an eye for me, either,” Diana confessed. “She tried her hardest to smile when I came into the room. But it seemed that she’d linked me so completely with my sister that she no longer had any use for me alone. Plus, there was the issue that she still partially blamed me for what had happened.”
“That must have been entirely too painful to bear,” Ernest remarked.
Diana sniffed. “It’s really difficult to speak about. I'm terribly sorry if I’m not getting it right. But Ernest, if you’re going to feel anything for me, you have to see it. You have to know it. Even if… even if we can never be together. For reasons I cannot fully articulate, I need you to know.”
Ernest again stretched out his arms. Diana fell into them, dropping her nose against his. She swallowed hard, seeming to try to restructure her thoughts.
“After that, Aunt Renata moved in with us. She tried her hand at being my mother, but it never really took. My father took me into his study and told me that under no circumstances was I ever to go into the woods alone. In fact, I’d felt a bit like a prisoner in that house, until it burned. Even now, it’s incredible to me that I was able to sneak from the party. Father ordinarily has such a strong eye on me. He knows my every move. I wouldn’t be surprised if he knows about my feelings for you; it seems he can read me like a book.”
Ernest had half a mind to inform her what had gone on between him and her father on the carriage ride from the estate, but he kept his lips closed. It seemed this would only complicate things more than necessary.
Diana brought her hands to Ernest’s cheeks and gazed directly into his eyes. She looked at him with greater power than any woman or man had ever looked at him. “I’m frightened, Ernest. I’m frightened that life will never be what I want it to be. I’m frightened that I still remember all the hopes and dreams I had as a child. It’s too stark, remembering those and also knowing that I will never receive them. Margery and my mother will never come back. Perhaps, in a sense, I should have perished in that fire, if only to make the madness and the pain end forever. I want… I want to be free. I want to be free to explore the woods, to climb trees, to swim in the river. I want to be free to love nature and love who it is I’m in love with. But here, even in your arms, I’m trapped. I cannot do anything I wish.”
Ernest stroked her curls. The heaviness of her words fit over his heart like a stone. “I understand, Diana,” he murmured. “Perhaps I understand better than most, for I, too, feel entirely trapped. I feel chained by society’s expectations of me. I feel chained by Grace’s words. As you know, I do not wish to marry her. I do not wish to awake to her wretched gossip every morning, to watch her with my children, to know that she has such darkness to her, adding it to my bloodline.
“In essence, I know I do not even wish to govern my father’s kingdom in the same way he did. But I cannot comprehend a way to change it. I’m so frightened to break any rule,” Ernest whispered. His lips quivered, hungry to kiss Diana. “If I could have one-half of the bravery that you have, then I know that I would be able to do it all. Look at you, out here on your own next to the very river that took your sister’s life. It’s as though you no longer see the things that frighten you. You simply ride toward them, unencumbered…”
Diana’s eyes grew enormous in the midst of this speech. Her lips glowed. She stirred against him, drawing one leg on either side of his waist. It was as though they were two pieces of a puzzle, two necessary halves of a whole.
It was no longer possible to resist. Ernest tugged Diana to him, drawing his thick lips hungrily over hers. She shivered, wrapping her thin arms around his neck. Her lips parted, allowing his tongue to skate across hers. Warm, nourishing, beautiful, he inhaled the scent of her perfume—a mix of flowers and the natural world around them. HIs member pulsed beneath her, striding up between her legs.
“I cannot resist you,” he murmured between kisses. “I tried all week to avoid you. Yet my eyes always found you. It’s as though there’s a magnet between us, always drawing us tighter and firmer together.”
“Perhaps it will only make us more miserable, this kissing,” Diana moaned. Tears glittered down her cheeks. “Perhaps we’re writing our own death sentence…”
“And yet, you’ve only just cited this as the thing you want the most,” Ernest whispered.
Diana’s hands flew toward Ernest’s cravat, unknotting it quickly. It seemed they felt trapped between life and death, between nature and society’s order—and out there, without the limitations of rules, they saw no reason to quit. With a final tug, she removed the cravat and drew her lips hungrily over his neck, kissing him almost violently. Ernest tore his hand across her shoulder, removing the ripped dress. Her breast spilled out beautifully—so supple and glowing, with a thick, dark nipple, so hard to the touch, in the centre.
Ernest brought his lips over her breast, drawing his tongue across her nipple and then sucking it. A moan rippled through Diana’s frame, cutting out into the forest air. Her hand cupped his head, drawing him tighter against her. And as his tongue wrapped around and around the nipple, Diana reached for her skirts, beginning to tug them up.
The beautiful motion of this felt like a stab wound through Ernest’s heart. He stopped her hand, gazing at her, breathless.
“What is it, my darling?” she asked him.
“Diana, I cannot marry you. I simply cannot…”
The words felt so stark and idiotic in the midst of this beautiful lovemaking.
For a moment, Diana didn’t speak. She drew her teeth over her lower lip, studying his face. “I have only one question, Lord Bannerman. Do you love me?”
Ernest’s heart fluttered into his throat. He had no answer but the truth.
“Diana, I do. I love you. You’re the only woman I have ever loved, and you’re the only woman I will ever love. I know this better than any fact. Every waking moment, I spend thinking about you, craving you.”
The words felt more final than any marriage proposal, than any marriage vow. Ernest felt them as though he’d read them in an enormous, ancient text. They mattered. They mattered so completely.
There wasn’t time for another pause. Both recognized that perhaps this was their final chance, their only moment to seal the nature of their love in a beautiful moment. Both knew they could return to these images in later life—when they were old and grey and sad and suited up in whatever life had given them.
Diana’s hand slipped across Ernest’s stomach, over his rippling abs. Her fingers slid into his pants, yanking them down to reveal his member. Her sigh was sharp, heavy with need. And as she slipped over him, his eyes closed, casting him into darkness.
Filled with an impossible rage and desire, Ernest stood up, filling Diana fully, and stretched her out in the beautiful green grass of the yonder clearing. He made love to her with a sweetness and an intensity that made her little moans sweep through the trees, filling the air along with the bird tweets and the rushing wind.
It was never clear to either of them how long they made lo
ve that evening. It could have been hours or only minutes. But there was such a truth to it, with both of their bodies opening up like perfect flowers. Diana’s breasts bounced up toward her throat, the nipples pointing up at him. And when Ernest slowed, feeling on the brink of falling into the impossibility of orgasm, he gazed down at her, at her shining eyes and perfect little nose and red cheeks—and knew that this was the happiest moment of his life.
When it was finished, when their bodies were glossy with sweat and Ernest’s fingers held the sweet smell of Diana’s womanhood, they held one another tightly, unable to part. Ernest felt Diana’s heartbeat surging within her, making all her body parts quiver.
“I’ll never love anyone else,” Ernest repeated now, hoping that saying it again would make it so. “And if we cannot be married by law, then perhaps we can be married in spirit.”
Diana’s smile was crooked and sad. “I know you must honour your father. You do this in much the same way I honour my mother and sister. We have only our ghosts. And one day, I will be your ghost, too.”
“I hate thinking of you as just another ghost,” Ernest murmured.
“But that’s what I will be.”
“I worry that you’ll despise me. I worry that the moment you hear that I actually marry Grace, you’ll swear off my name forever,” Ernest admitted.
Diana laughed, although it wasn’t a happy one. “At least I can take comfort in one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I can take comfort in the fact that you’re completely miserable without me. Isn’t that what any jilted lover wishes for?”
Ernest chuckled. He dropped his head against her chest once more, inhaling a final time. This felt like an ending—a beautiful one, no less stunning and sad than any orange and pink sunset.
“You don’t know how much you’ve changed my life, Diana,” he said. “There’s no possible way for me to return to my old, boring, lacklustre rituals. I will know always what is possible. And perhaps that is the greatest curse of all.”
Chapter 17
Diana helped Ernest slip back into his shirt, batting her eyelashes quickly in attempt to stop weeping. The endless weeping and enamoured “I love you”s were beginning to make her feel as though she was at the bottom of a pit, peering up at the beautiful life she might have been able to have, if only she and Ernest were brave enough to take it. It was too ridiculous, too heavy to bear.
And yet, just as her mother and sister were never coming back—it was the truth.
Ernest and Diana stood, both seemingly unsure of what to say. Ernest slipped his hand over hers, giving her a final, knowing look before guiding her out of the forest. Diana’s heart pounded with ferocity, as though it was preparing to give out for good. Her feet padded lightly behind Ernest’s larger ones, following in the footsteps that sponged themselves into the mud and moss below.
In the back of her mind, she wondered what would happen when they reappeared at the garden party. Wouldn't the entire party recognize that they’d been gone for a long period of time? Would her father scold her that night, telling her that she’d driven outside the bounds of society and shamed herself, along with the family?
The last dregs of sunlight scattered through the trees, burning toward them as they exited the forest. Rose appeared on the outskirts, scuttling her hands across her chest with panic. When she finally spotted Ernest and Diana, she burst forward, tugging at her hair. Diana had never seen her so panicked.
“What has gotten into you?” Rose cried, her voice slightly hushed to ensure the garden party couldn't hear.
Ernest paused a few feet before her. Diana was surprised that he still held her hand. Rose’s eyes skated down toward that handholding, along with the state of Diana’s dress. Slowly, her face took on an expression of understanding. Her lower lips bubbled.
“You can’t understand how worried I’ve been,” she admonished. “Just waiting here, watching—praying that Grace wouldn’t come out here asking questions! You know she sees everything, don’t you?”
Ernest shrugged slightly. Diana felt far too fatigued to answer.
“And now, look at the states of you.” Rose shuffled forward, drawing her hand across Diana’s curls, attempting to tame them. “You look as though you’ve been climbing trees and tumbling through underbrush. How can you expect to… I mean, what are we going to tell the others?”
“I suppose I don’t care what we tell them,” Ernest finally confessed, his voice booming. “Grace already understands. It’s why she’s trapped me, why she’s forcing Diana and her family out of our home. I don’t suppose that any damage I do will alter her strategy. She has me trapped.”
Rose’s eyes bulged with understanding. She pressed her hand against her chest. “Quite a scandal,” she murmured.
Diana supposed this was one of the first scandals that Rose had ever seen up close. Catching a woman and man only minutes after they’d sealed their love in the woods, surrounded by nature, was certainly no small thing—especially when that man, her brother, was engaged to marry another.
“But you must keep our secret, Rose,” Diana murmured, surprising herself with her own urgency.
Rose nodded. “I’ve wanted nothing more than this since you came into our home, Diana. That is—after you awoke from your coma, of course.” She sniffed, glancing toward her brother. “I know there’s no happy ending for either of you, and I regret that totally. But you must understand that your secret will go with me to my grave.”
Ernest shifted. “I’d love for you never to mention your grave again, Sister.”
Rose giggled. “So sensitive right now, both of you are.” She flung back and wrapped her arm around Diana’s, forcing Diana to drop her hand from Ernest’s. Her hand felt empty and clammy and cold.
Ernest led the charge back to the garden party. Rose and Diana fell into step once more, with Rose consistently squeezing Diana’s arm, her eyes demanding her attention. Diana knew that Rose would press her for details later—asking what on earth she planned to do to rid both Rose and Ernest of the wretched Grace Bragg.
But the truth was, there wasn’t anything to do but move forward, alone.
The thought of this felt like a shadow passing over her heart.
The garden party had begun to sojourn into the parlour, as the late-spring air had turned chilly. Diana, Rose, and Ernest dripped into the house with the last of the partygoers. Diana watched in amazement as one of Grace’s uncles rapped Ernest on the back, crying out, “It sure will be lovely having you in the family properly. Only a few more weeks, my boy. I’m sorry—my lord. Such a funny thing, when men younger than you take on fresh titles. I give you nothing but my complete allegiance, earl.”
Diana shivered against Rose. Suddenly, reality felt like a smack across her cheek. Their family—not her family.
Someday, this would all be a nightmare.
Rose squeezed her arm hard as they entered the parlour. Grace cackled in the corner, alongside her cousin Penelope. Her eyes swung up toward Diana, pegging her. Diana wondered how much Grace suspected about their absence.
“There you are!” Grace said, tittering. “I thought surely you’d been lost in the woods.”
At this, Lord Harrington nearly burst up from his chair. The weakness of his legs held him back. His cheeks bulged out as he said, “I’m sorry, but what are you saying? Diana… were you in the woods?”
“No, Father…” Diana began.
A Seductive Lady Rescued From Flames (Historical Regency Romance) Page 16