If Diana knew the true state Jared was in, she might call off the entire thing, and that brought a host of uncertainties that made Ian’s head throb. Their engagementhad tormented him for eight years. The wedding had to happen today. So he could move on with his life.
He swallowed the lump that rose in his throat and said, “I’ll tell her.”
A maid greeted Ian’s knock with a stricken expression.
She ducked her head as he walked into the room, and directed her agitation at a vase of flowers that rested on the floor at the edge of the room, as though someone had placed them in a sort of quarantine.
“Good morning, Mr. Holt.” Amelia Hunter’s soft voice was a contrast to her statuesque height. Diana’s friend and bridesmaid wore a subdued frock the color of milky tea. Ian would have sworn it was the same shade as the beige damask wallpaper.
“Mind the flowers,” she cautioned.
“What’s wrong with them?” Ian asked.
“They’re nefarious.”
The voice that haunted his dreams and nightmares directed his attention to the window.
Diana sat on a small stool at a dressing table. A stray beam of watery sunlight gilded her from the crown of her chestnut hair to the hem of her multi-tiered white silk gown.
Her hair appeared darker pinned up in its elaborate coiffure. When they’d run along the shore together as children, it used to tumble down her back, glittering gold and copper. Like pennies in a fountain.
Ian silently pleaded to a pantheon of divinities that she would remain seated. The moment she stood and he took in the full depth of her in her wedding costume, she’d steal his last remaining breath.
Then again, she could wear a sackcloth, and she’d stun the hell out of him.
“Nefarious…flowers,” Ian intoned. His tongue dragged as if it were moored to the bottom of his mouth with treacle.
The maid wrung her hands. “White oleander with yellow roses!”
“You think someone tried to poison Miss Rives?”
“Only if they expected me to eat them.” In the mirror, Diana raised an elegant eyebrow, which Ian knew rationally was not a gesture of seduction.
His body didn’t understand the difference. A familiar tightness gathered south of his waist, and heat rose along his neck.
“In the language of flowers, this arrangement relays a message to beware of betrayal,” Miss Hunter offered rationally. “The card was addressed to Diana, but there was no signature.”
“It must be from some seedy journalist,” Diana said. “They love to manufacture a scandal.”
Ian swallowed a growl.
“We’ll get rid of them.” Miss Hunter nodded to the maid to retrieve the vase. “Be back in a moment.”
When the door had closed behind them, and Diana turned to him, a small frisson hit the room.
Neither of them acted surprised. It often happened in the rare circumstances they found themselves alone together. And being alone with Diana was something of a terror, because unlike the rest of their mutual acquaintances, Ian knew the danger she could render.
She radiated with a restrained feminine power, but when he regarded her sitting there alone, a slight pain bloomed beneath his ribs. She’d no sisters, no aunts or female cousins to help with her preparations for the day that would transform her life. Even her dearest childhood friend had been lost to a watery grave a week after the announcement of Diana’s engagement to Jared.
As she rose from the stool, Ian couldn’t resist staring at the way the silk folds of her dress hugged the curves of her body. The journalists they despised would pay a fortune to see it; she was the most drawn woman in London. She’d spent the lastyear in mourning for her father, but the scandal sheets couldn’t resist sketching her on the few occasions she’d ventured out in society. They never quite captured the color of her eyes—green like a Chinese jade statue—nor could they depict the precise way her bow-shaped mouth dipped with her true smile.
His eyes clapped on the fortune of emeralds and diamonds resting on her collarbone and he was grateful for the sharp and necessary reminder of what was at stake if the wedding didn’t take place.
“Now that the threatening petals are gone, are you going to tell me why you’re here?” she asked.
“Jared is ill,” he said bluntly. “He overindulged last evening.”
“Given it was his stag party, I expected him to.”
