A Seductive Lady Rescued From Flames (Historical Regency Romance)

by Emily Honeyfield

  Rose shrugged. “Maybe. All I know is, you shouldn’t give up. He loves you. And besides, sitting there in the carriage on the way back to her estate? I felt this intense revolt. If that woman really is related to me before the month is over, I swear I will be destroyed.”

  “I suppose it isn’t really up to me whether or not that happens,” Diana allowed. “How can I possibly ask Ernest to take such an enormous risk and break his vow to your father? How can I ask him to disrespect your father’s memory? It makes me sick to my stomach, thinking about it. I know that Ernest sees your father’s death in his mind over and over again. It’s like he lingers with the ghost constantly…”

  Rose scoffed a bit, which was almost endearing, if shocking. “Diana, no. No, no. One cannot live eternally with ghosts.”

  “Oh, but you can,” Diana countered. “I live constantly with my sister. I speak with her at night, you know.”

  Diana realized she’d never told anyone this. All the blood drained from her face.

  But Rose didn’t act surprised. “I think of my mother constantly. You must understand that. I was the one to kill her, after all. I think of what she might have been to me, if I’d been allowed to grow up with her. How I would have fallen asleep in her arms at night. How I would have listened to her tell me the story of how she fell in love with my father. I yearn for those memories, Diana. We all have ghosts; even us very, very young women.”

  This stopped Diana in her tracks. Why should she give such power to Ernest’s ghosts, when she, Rose—everyone, perhaps even Grace herself—lingered with ghosts of their own? She bit hard on her bottom lip again, tasting a tiny bit of blood.

  “Father would want Ernest to be happy,” Rose continued, her nostrils flared. “Perhaps he doesn’t recognize that. Perhaps he knows only that you are off-limits of what Father knew at the time. But that’s the nature of death. We don’t get to find out what happens next. Ernest is simply too principled to realize that vows and rules are made under certain circumstances. If the circumstances prove to be unbearable, certainly it’s no great sin to follow your heart, instead.”

  Again, Diana beamed at her, although her heart continued to ache.

  Suddenly, Aunt Renata appeared in the doorway. She huffed at the girls, seemingly awash in her own personal story.

  “It seems that the maid went about her normal duties once more—all out forgetting the new rules regarding your father’s stomach issues. I had to instruct her on every single thing the doctor told us, all over again. I tried to train her to make notes, but she refused. She said she’s a professional. She’s been doing this her entire life. I told her, ‘Sweetheart! You’re only 22 years old. I can’t imagine your entire life has been long enough to learn anything.’”

  Diana and Rose exchanged a furtive glance. Both seemed to be thinking the same thing: that this was a hilarious side story, in terms of the greater picture at hand.

  “We might walk for a moment in the garden,” Diana offered. “If you don’t mind, Auntie.”

  Aunt Renata shrugged. Her mind was very clearly elsewhere. “Whatever you wish to do, girls. Please. Have your fun. I dare say that I’ll be in here, monitoring the maid until she cooperates with what I tell her is appropriate. Please, come back to lunch at an agreeable time. You have a bit under two hours.”

  “All we ever seem to do is sit to eat in this house,” Diana remarked, forcing a laugh. “I’m sure we’ll make it back in time.”

  Outside, Diana and Rose roamed through the rose garden. The flowers had sprung forth with all their grandeur for early-summer patterns—reds next to pinks next to yellows next to bright oranges. It was truly incredible, the way the gardener had plotted the land. Diana sat, mesmerized, cursing herself for not coming into the garden prior to this moment. This oasis had been awaiting her all this time, while she remained upstairs, awash in her waking nightmares.

  “What do you think will happen?” Rose asked then, snaking her fingers through Diana’s.

  “There’s no way to know,” Diana murmured. She ducked her head. “I don’t mean to sound… silly. Or idiotic. It’s just that, all my life, I’ve felt that things kind of happen to me. The death of my sister. The death of my mother. And now—the death of my love for Ernest.”

  “I told you. It’s not.”

  “Right. But whether or not it truly happens, it isn’t up to me. It’s up to whoever is in charge of all of this. God, or the sky above; I’m not sure.”

  Rose sighed. She paused at a rose and brought her thumb and forefinger over a delicate petal, tugging at it until it tore off. At first, Diana wanted to reprimand her. What kind of person tore apart a rose? But then she watched as Rose tucked the soft petal behind her ear.

  “Apparently, Mother told Father that she wanted me to be called that. Rose,” she said, her voice wistful. “I think it’s terribly romantic that my father took her word as she died. Calling me what she so wanted.”

  “But isn’t that precisely what Ernest is trying to do?” Diana wondered.

  Rose shrugged. “A name is one thing. A name is always linked to a past event. But a marriage? That’s a future.”

  “There you go again. Wise beyond your years.”

  The girls wandered toward the outer field, beyond the gardens. Their hands traced over the irons fences as they went, whacking at them and making them quake. Diana had a guess that neither her aunt or her father had been out this far, due to their fatigue and her father’s bad leg. It was untapped territory.

  The gardens sprung out farther, ending at the moor. Diana swallowed, gazing at the landscape ahead. The river snaked just beyond, perhaps fifty feet away. This was the river that had taken her sister’s life. Yet now, it seemed oddly tranquil, sweeping toward whatever destination the earth allowed. The water glittered turquoise beneath the blue sky.

  Rose clutched her hand. “I don’t know what all this will make you do, or even if it will make you do anything at all. If I was in your position, I would probably whack my brother over the head. But I’m not. So.”

  “You would never be in this position,” Diana pointed out. “You’d only be with someone who was angry and volatile and wild. Never willing to live only in a dead man’s will, rather than living for himself.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” Rose agreed. Her eyes glittered with hope. “I don’t know. I only know that everyone should be with the person they love. And for you and Ernest, it’s one another.”

  Diana brought her hands over her chest and inhaled, long and deep. She tried to shove her emotions away, but they attacked her like a wave once again. Rose’s hand wrapped over her shoulder, seemingly trying to keep her upright.

  “I don’t know how to find myself out of this,” Diana whispered.

  “But you will,” Rose affirmed.

  And for whatever reason, for perhaps the first time, Diana felt a flicker of hope.

  Back inside, Diana and Rose sat with her father and Aunt Renata for a meal that was approved for her father’s health. For the first time in ages, Diana actually ate what was served to her—and found herself frequently laughing at Rose’s jokes. It was clear the girl had no sense of boundaries, and this was a beautiful thing.

  Perhaps Diana could find it within herself to not be so afraid. Perhaps she could approach Ernest, with all the love in her heart, and tell him precisely what was on her mind. Perhaps she could be filled with this assurance from Rose and guide his hand.

  Otherwise, where would her life go? She would be cast toward a strange future. One in which she wasn’t with Ernest, and she was forced to—what? Become a single maid? Live alone?

  Or worse—find some sort of shadow of love with someone else, something that could never measure up?

  She walked Rose to the door after lunch and wrapped her arms around her as tightly as she could.

  “Every time we say goodbye, I fear that I’ll never see you again,” she murmured.

  Rose chuckled. “You and Ernest are certainly so dramatic, aren’t y
ou?”

  “Perhaps that comes with age,” Diana said thoughtfully, drawing back. “Perhaps you begin to realize just how important every passing moment is. You know you won’t get it back.”

  Chapter 21

  Ernest hadn’t let the house since the evening of the ball. He’d had a brief head cold, due to his idiocy, and had sat up in bed throughout most of the day after, sipping tea and staring out the window. When the headache dissipated, he felt no better.

  Rather, as the pain spread out from his neck, trickling away, he was left only with the silent horror of his own beating heart, the constant assurance that if he was ever going to be happy, he needed to act. And sitting around the house like this, stirring in his own thoughts, wasn’t good enough.

  The following day, just after breakfast, Rose left the estate without explaining her destination. Ernest half-questioned this, but soon let the burning intrigue fall away. He fell into his study and began to pace, knowing that this day—just a few after the ball—he had to make a dramatic choice. When the maid came to greet him and tell him it was time for dinner, he’d thought he’d only been in the study for perhaps an hour, rather than more than five.

  Time was slipping away.

  Finally, he dropped himself into his father’s chair and drew out a piece of paper. He stabbed the pen into a vat of ink and blinked down at the blank sheet, willing himself to make some sort of list. On the list, he would outline the possibilities of a future both with Diana and with Grace.

  He flashed out their names—Grace on the left and Diana on the right. Beneath Grace’s name, he wrote only the words, “Gossip. Father’s desire. Knows how to deal with people at societal gatherings.”

  He couldn’t think of a single other element of her personality that seemed even remarkable enough to write on this list—good or bad.

  Then, he turned toward Diana’s column. His heart felt heavy, dipping in his chest. He began to write—and write and write.

  She’s the only creature I’ve met with more bravery in her little finger than I have in my entire body. She looks at the world as an adventure, rather than something filled with rules and obligations that one must uphold. She feels love in every nook and cranny of her body, and it seems to be constantly flowing for me, against all odds. I’m clearly not worthy of her, despite my higher status. She’s already taught me more about emotion, about life, than I ever could have learned alone. Certainly, together, our life wouldn’t be without its own amount of peril. We’ve both seen such hardship, with our mothers gone, along with her sister and my father. But for this reason, I know we have the tools to assist one another, to find balance.

  Ernest fell back in his chair, oddly breathless. He reread what he’d written, almost surprised that he’d been able to be so frank on the page. He’d thought he’d done an all right job of shoving all these thoughts down into the belly of his own mind. But here they were. He was an open wound. He was constantly bleeding.

  But this knowledge of his inner mind hardly changed a thing.

  Again, the maid appeared at the door. She announced that she would be saving the dinner for the evening, and that he could enter the kitchen at any time and find his portion.

  “Did Rose eat?” Ernest asked.

  “Of course she did,” said the maid, half-rolling her eyes. “The girl never misses a meal. You know that.”

  “So she returned back from wherever it was she’d gone?”

  “She’s in the parlour now, working on some stitching. Although I dare say she won’t be there for long. She can’t sit still for more than an hour at a time, as you know.”

  Ernest gave the maid a sad smile. “She’s terribly eager for life, isn’t she?”

  The maid seemed not to have a reason to answer. She ducked back into the hallway, snipping the door closed. Again, Ernest’s eyes grazed over what he’d written. But seconds later, he burst up from his chair and began his now-familiar pacing. His fingers rippled through his black curls, yanking at them. The pain ricocheted through his frame.

  When he reached the edge of the room, his eyes happened to glance over the enormous bookshelves, which his father had had installed in the study something like 35 years before. Many of the books hadn’t been moved from their position throughout that time. Although his father had been a voracious reader, there simply wasn’t enough time in the day to return to old literature, not when there was so much new to learn.

  His father had collected old philosophical textbooks, books about mathematics, about traveling the world, about the economics between the lower and the upper class (something that probably hadn’t changed a great deal, despite the age of the book). Ernest’s fingers toyed with the spines of the volumes, feeling their stiffness. As he grazed down the line, the books grew less dense and less educational, and more fictional, more playful. He grinned, remembering some of the stories his father had told him about these very novels—men embarking on ships to go on grand adventures, women playing pranks on their husbands to garner more power in the relationship. It had been such a pleasure to fall into those worlds as a child. He wished only for that kind of escape again.

  At the far end of the shelf, the books shrank down, becoming about six inches high. They didn’t have any sort of title on the spine. Ernest yanked the first one out, causing a bunch of dust to kick out. He coughed, then blinked through the relative smog to find that the tiny volume had only year dates on it: 1782 - 1785.

  Strange. Ernest had actually been born in the year 1786, which meant that these dates aligned with the years directly prior this birth. Slowly, he slipped the book the rest of the way out of the shelf and blinked down at it before flipping to the first page.

  The Diary of Lord Bannerman

  Ernest’s heart thumped wildly. He had never known his father to keep a journal. And, if he reasoned correctly, these journals put his father at approximately Ernest’s current age. This meant he would be peering into the soul of a much younger man, the man who’d fathered him initially—the man who’d only just been granted the title of earl.

  For whatever reason, Ernest had the strangest inclination to slip the volume back onto the shelf and rush away from it. It felt oddly like holding fire. But he forced himself to turn back to the desk and sit in his father’s chair. He couldn’t shake the feeling that the chair knew the book, that his father had perched on this very seat and written out these diary entries, day in and day out, perhaps until life grew too chaotic for him to verbalize his own thoughts.

  The first diary entry was dated May 12, 1782.

  I never thought I’d meet anyone like this before. And it is with this frenetic emotion that I greet this journal, knowing that all things will eventually end or dissipate or die out—and I wish only to record the snapshot of these feelings before they fade away.

  Perhaps that’s cynical of me. In fact, I know it is. For the moment I laid eyes upon this woman, I felt a stabbing knowledge that whatever it is most people feel for the others in their life, it is just a pale shadow compared to what I feel for her.

  She’s a dream. She’s a beauty. I spotted her at the ball—laughing with another young woman who, again, paled in comparison. I couldn’t stop staring. My good friend Randall spotted it immediately and told me to go speak with her. After all, with father now gone, and me with this newfound title of ‘earl,’ it’s essential that I find a bride.

  I’ve never been particularly enamoured with the idea that I was always going to have power. My father tried to instil this fact in me for years on end, and yet I always rebuked it, telling him that it mattered little to me.

  Now, though, here I am. The earl. People look at me like I’m going to guide them toward some sort of salvation. And yet, the only thing I know for sure is that I don’t know anything at all.

  Ernest leaned back, frowning at his father’s words. They seemed to reflect exactly the chaos that lurked within his own mind. He’d never envisioned that his father might have had the same feelings about the position that Erne
st did. He’d always seen him as such a strong, confident man, a man who hadn’t a single doubt. When he’d told Ernest that he was to marry Grace and extend the family line in this manner, his gaze hadn’t wavered.