“We can’t all be wrong, now, can we?” Dalton tugged his forelock with mock insolence. “Merry Christmas, miss.”
“And to you, too, Dalton.” She retrieved the expensive bottle of cognac she had bought him at Fortnum’s from beneath the deskand handed it to him with a smile. “I got you a little something as a thank-you for all you have done. I hear it puts hairs on your chest.” Amongst other memories best not revisited—although she did with alarming regularity anyway beyond all the unsubtle, long-distance matchmaking she was subjected to on a daily basis.
Two months had done nothing to dim her memory of that kiss, and with every passing day she missed Giles’s irritating presence in her life a little bit more. As much as she didn’t want to make Dalton right, she didn’t want to miss him, no matter how many times she tried to explain away her uncharacteristic behavior that night, or her strange feelings for a man she certainly didn’t want to have such feelings for. The implausible and disconcerting fact remained—that kiss had affected her exponentially, and something had shifted within her. Something she had not realized was there in the first place to shift.
Thankfully, with Giles two hundred miles away in Shropshire and unlikely to return for the foreseeable, there was still time to shift it all back to where it belonged before it did any long-term harm.
When she next faced him, she was determined to be completely over it. Her feet firmly planted back on stable ground and her usually sensible, independent, and level head no longer taking random and unwelcome flights of romantic fancy in the clouds. She would leave that nonsense to Vee, for pity’s sake, or Minerva, or now even Dalton apparently, because it wasn’t for her.
As if she really wanted a man! Or needed the burdensome complication of a man in her life, when her career was going so well and she was finally happy with her lot. Finally free to make all her own decisions without the threat of disappointment, danger, or poverty forcing her hand elsewhere. Most men were unreliable and selfish creatures who almost always took more than they gave. One delightful, surprising, but drunken kiss didn’t change that. Stone-cold sober and it likely wouldn’t have felt delightful at all, hence she had vowed never to allow another drop of brandy to cross her wayward lips again. Especially around Giles. Flippant, philandering Giles. The only rogue she knew whose scandalous behavior didn’t just feature occasionally in the gossip columns—it was a weekly fixture!
Or had been before he left for Shropshire. Before she had discovered there was so much more to the charming wretch than met her jaded eyes. Before he had plucked at her toughened heartstrings. Before he had mined under her defenses and entrusted her with his deepest, darkest secret. Before she had learned he wasn’t a duke at all.
Beforeshehad kissedhim.
“You bought me the good stuff.” Dalton smiled at her gift. “It wasn’t necessary, miss, but is most appreciated.”
“You deserve it. Much to my chagrin, you have proved to be a useful bane to my existence.”
“I suppose I shall see you the day after Christmas?”
There was no point in telling him to take more time off from his sentry duty, because he wouldn’t. “Yes indeed, Dalton. Bright and early on Tuesday please. Coleridge isn’t going to catch himself, and thanks to this”—she tapped the top of the toxic Smith’s Herbal Restorative—“the pair of us now need to do some serious digging in the filthiest part of the docks with all haste to finally see him brought to justice.”
“I shall be sure to bring my shovel, miss. Alongside my pistol.”He winked, looking as disreputable as any ne’er-do-well, and limped away, leaving Diana to ponder.
Except it wasn’t the dangerous little bottle that occupied her mind, or the investigation into Coleridge; it was Giles again. All alone for Christmas with only the portraits of his ancestors, his estate burdens, and his rattling skeletons for company.
Giles paused on the top of High Holborn, still unsure of his next destination after three interminable days of travel. The sensible option was his bachelor house on Tavistock Square because it was dark, he was disheveled and starving, and after too many hours on horseback, he was frozen solid. His greatcoat hung heavy with the frigid night mist, and his cheeks burned with the cold. But instead, it was Berkeley Square that called to his heart like a siren’s song. Or rather it was the minx that lived there who called to his soul.
To himself he knew his early return to town had absolutely nothing to do with Olivia’s posted invitation demanding he spend Christmas with them. No matter how convenient that excuse was, his return had everything to do with his visceral need to see Diana. The last nine weeks had felt an eternity, but he had tried to ignore that to focus on the enormous task at hand, reminding himself hourly he owed it to Harpenden’s tenants to fix the estate before it was taken away from him.
To that end, he had sent his apologies a fortnight ago after deciding a visit wasn’t wise. He was still trying to sort out his former steward’s chaotic papers, urgent works had barely begun on the most dilapidated tenant cottages, and overall, despite excruciatingly long days of work, he felt as if he had barely scratched the surface of his ever-growing list of things to do. Christmas in London with Diana was an indulgence he could not afford. At the time he declined the invitation, he had also reasoned their kiss was still too fresh in his mind and he needed a bit longer to get over it before he dared face her again. He was in no position to kiss her, no matter how much he wanted her. A week later, after he had reasoned that he likely would never get over that kiss and reminded himself he had hired good people who would continue doing what he paid them for whether he was there or not, he changed his mind and left Shropshire that same day in case he changed it again.
He tried not to contemplate why.
Self-indulgent introspection served no purpose and changed nothing about his situation. Whatever his intense feelings for Diana, he had no right feeling them when he could offer her nothing beyond uncertainty, scandal, and ruination.
That depressing fact hadn’t deterred him from coming, though, and his lack of resolve and willpower shamed him almost as much as the prospect of seeing her again excited him. The proverbial rock and a hard place: entirely selfish and completely impossible. The situation so blasted unfair it made his blood boil.
As misery swamped him, he turned his horse toward Bloomsbury and not Mayfair.
Better to face her in the morning. To retire for the night to regroup, recharge, reset his usually pragmatic head, and resist what his exhausted heart desperately wanted but knew it couldn’t have. Besides, if he turned up in the crumpled clothes he had worn for days, they would all know why, and he might just as well carry a placard announcing he had feelings for her. Feelings it wouldn’t be fairto indulge even if she was open to indulging them—which knowing the pithy, determined-to-remain-a-spinster-forever-because-I-am-wedded-to-my-freedoms Diana, she wasn’t. She hadn’t been able to look at him as he waved them all off on his driveway the morning after their kiss. He still had no clue whether that had been because of embarrassment, uncertainty, or downright mortification at what they had done. But it did not bode well for her reciprocating his feelings.
Which, all things considered, was categorically for the best.
Giles knew that without a shadow of a doubt, and accepted it, but still it made him sad. So sad and depressed, he trudged his weary horse home to Bloomsbury with as much enthusiasm as Atlas with the entire world on his shoulders.
His quiet house did nothing to improve his mood. As the staff weren’t expecting him, the lamps and fires in the main rooms weren’t lit, and because Dalton was apparently missing in action and gone who knew where, the panicked young maid who had opened the door to him organized a tray of cold cuts to be brought to his bedchamber while he waited for another maid and a footman to draw his bath. To depress him further, there were no biscuits to be had for love or money as it was the cook’s afternoon off so there wouldn’t be any till tomorrow. The entire tray was savory.
Even so, Giles made short work of it in silence and was in the process of stripping off his shirt when his truanting butler-cum-valet finally reappeared.
“Where the blazes have you been, you slacker? And more importantly, why weren’t you here as a good butler should greet his weary master after he’s endured a long and arduous journey halfway down the country?” If one discounted the vixen who had consumed him for months, he had missed his irascible mangled right hand, too. “It is what I pay you for, after all.”
“I would have been here if you’d have told me you were coming.” Entirely unrepentant, Dalton shrugged as he gathered up Giles’s discarded clothes. “I do have better things to do with my time than hang around the front door on the off chance you might walk through it.”
“An outrageous deflection to cover up for your shirking.”
“I’ve been working, not shirking.”
