Diana’s glass paused midway to her lips as her brother-in-law fiddled with the footstool beneath her sister’s feet. “You do realize, Hugh, that women have successfully been having babies since the dawn of time? It doesn’t require this much constantdiligencefrom the father.” The way he carried on, anyone would think Minerva were made of glass.
“Not my woman and not my baby.” He grabbed another cushion to ensure her ankles were raised even though there was nothing whatsoever swollen about them while the eldest Merriwell smiled soppily back at him. “Both of whom deserve nothing but my constant diligence.” In case she strained herself reaching the six inches for it, he passed Minerva her tea. “Do you need anything else, my love?”
Diana groaned aloud. “She wants you to stop fussing, and if she doesn’t, she jolly well should, even if only for the rest of our sakes. It’s nauseating to watch.”
“Then wear a blindfold,” said Hugh, kissing his wife’s hand. “Or better still a bag. That way your cynical, embittered eyes will be spared the sight of two people hopelessly in love, and we shall allbe spared your constant disdain.” He wandered to the sideboard to pour himself a brandy. “All that frowning is giving you wrinkles. I swear I have never seen a young woman of three and twenty look so… old.”
“Looking old is the least of my worries as I shall likely go mad if I have to endure another four months of this!”
“Then rent yourself that little apartment you keep threatening in Cheapside.” Hugh’s playful gibe earned him a warning glare from her sister.
“Can you not encourage her, Hugh! She wants an excuse to leave, and I want her here with me.” Minerva smiled at her. “For as long as I can keep her.”
Diana smiled back despite her discomfort, which was not so much at Hugh’s comment but at her situation.
She was here for Minerva, who had begged her to stay at least until she found her feet as a countess in this strange new world they now lived in. She was also here for Vee, who needed the comfort of the familiar while she found her feet in society, too. Both her sisters were happy to adapt to the massive change life had thrown at them. Both welcomed it. That Diana didn’t made her the anomaly, but no matter how much she tried to fit in, this luxurious new world wasn’t hers. Inside, she would always be the scrappy forger’s daughter from Clerkenwell, more comfortable amongst the flotsam and jetsam than she ever would be here in Mayfair.
“I think his fussing is romantic.” Beside her, the youngest Merriwell sister, Vee—or Venus as she would rather die than be known—sighed, making Diana roll her eyes. “Well, it is romantic! And we should be so lucky to one day find a husband as devoted as Hugh.” For Vee, to have a happy life equaled having a husband tocare for her, while for Diana the opposite was the case. She much preferred to care for herself. The moment your life was in somebody else’s hands, it ceased to be your life and you ceased to be in control of it.
“That shouldn’t be a problem, dear.” As Hugh saluted the youngest with his glass, Olivia, his mother and now the self-appointed mother of all three sisters, patted Vee’s hand, ignoring Diana’s theatrical gagging noises. “With your pretty face and lovely disposition, the gentlemen will flock to you the moment we launch you into society.” A momentous event that Olivia had also decreed would happen next season before Vee turned nineteen. The impressionable and dewy-eyed Vee was, of course, delighted by the prospect. But she had always had an unshakable fairy-tale view of things even when there had been nothing about their life to make her believe in them.
Being older, Diana, like Minerva, had not had that luxury. While they did their best to shield their baby sister from the harsh realities of life, they had been left to deal with them. For Diana’s first seventeen years that had meant battling both poverty and the relentless chore of their feckless father. Then five more interminable, hopeless years of pitiful wages, hunger, and fear after he had gone. There had been a great deal of fear during those dark days. Rent collectors, usurers, unscrupulous employers, silver-tongued seducers, chancers, perverts, liars, swindlers, and downright scoundrels were all part of her day-to-day existence. All seeking to control her like a marionette because, without fail, all the predators crawled out of the woodwork when a down-at-heel young woman ventured into the streets alone.
If those dreadful experiences made her jaded and tough, thenDiana was grateful for them. The world ate naive young ladies for breakfast and spat out the bones—but a savvy one with claws it left well alone.
Olivia peered at Diana over her sherry, and Diana braced herself for the predictable daily diatribe that, although well meant, was unwelcome. “It is still not too late to launch youthisyear, Diana dear. You could still change your mind.” It was a constant source of bafflement to her that Diana had turned the opportunity down flat the moment it was tabled. “The season has barely started and there are still plenty of eligible fish swimming in the sea on the lookout for a beautiful bride. Hardly a surprise when this year’s crop of debutantes has been so insipid. There isn’t a single diamond amongst the lot of them—but there would be if you tossed your hat into the ring.”
“Aside from the inescapable fact that I can think of nothing worse”—because, frankly, she found the whole flimsy concept of the debutante ridiculous and would rather flail her flesh with brambles than parade herself for auction—“I fail to understand how you can believe it is still possible to launch a person into society this season when they have been immersed in it completely since the start of the last. I have accompanied you to every ball, Olivia. Been present at every single tedious soiree you have dragged me to.”
Hugh’s mother was unfazed by that irrefutable logic. “Because being part of society and being launched into it are two entirely different things, dear. The first is merely a presence—the second adeclaration.”
“Of what?” Too late, Diana realized she had walked into a trap.
“Of marriageability, dear. And if you don’t mind me saying, and as much as I disagree with my idiot son’s cruel gibe about yournonexistent wrinkles, if you leave it much longer, you are in grave danger of being seen an old maid. Then no decent gentleman will want you.”
“And that would be a bad thing because?” It all sounded rather perfect to her. Thanks to Minerva’s unexpected but advantageous marriage to the Earl of Fareham, which had moved the Merriwell sisters from their depressing two rooms in Clerkenwell to this palatial house, Diana had more freedom and independence than she had ever had. Hot on the heels of their elevation in status, she had been promoted from a lowly pieceworker and poorly paid copy editor atThe London Tribuneto a fully fledged and permanent salaried reporter. A lifelong dream and a huge personal achievement that far surpassed all the trappings of wealth surrounding her now. With her own income and a blossoming career, she was at last the mistress of her own destiny, did things that truly mattered, and thanked her lucky stars for that precious, hard-won freedom daily. In fact, the only conceivable way she would surrender any of it was if they pried it from her cold, dead fingers. Her cold, dead, resoundingly independent old maid’s fingers.
Olivia’s instant grin was full of mischief. “Because if the decent gentlemen are swarming around you, it allows theindecent oneyou have always had your eye on to cease dragging his feet indefinitely.”
Like traitors, her sisters, Hugh, and even Olivia’s sensible American second husband, Jeremiah, who had thus far hidden behind his newspaper, all laughed because like her petite and dogged matchmaker, they all believed she harbored a tendre for Lord Bellingham. Worse, they used every possible opportunity to tell her that the charming rogue harbored one for her right back.
As Diana silently seethed, refusing to dignify that flagrant nonsense with a response, Olivia winked and toasted her with her glass. “Rampant jealousy is a great aphrodisiac… not that I suspect the pair of you will need one when you eventually stop fighting the obvious attraction.”
The absolute last thing she ever wanted was an aphrodisiac!
If her limited experience of that side of things had taught her anything, it was that she was one of those women who was ambivalent to the appeal of men. “Never mind that I would rather shave my head with a cheese grater.” It was Lord Bellingham’s flagrant attractiveness that made him so very unattractive. He was handsome and charming and knew it and used both mercilessly to get his wicked way. The list of his conquests was as long as her arm, and it would be a cold day in hell before she counted herself amongst them. Even a blithering idiot understood that future dukes from the highest echelons of society and forger’s daughters from the very dregs of it did not even breathe the same air, let alone speak the same language.
“My lord…” The butler, Payne, suddenly appeared on the Persian rug as if he had been conjured out of thin air. “Lord Bellingham has arrived and wonders if you are at home?”
“Speak of the devil and he doth appear.” Olivia wiggled her eyebrows as Diana shot her daggers. “Of course we are at home, Payne! We arealwaysat home to Lord Bellingham.”
The butler returned with the man himself in tow, still wearing his greatcoat and clutching his hat, a hopeful sign his visit was to be blissfully fleeting.
“My apologies for interrupting your evening.” He smiled at the room in general in his customary laid-back manner, but to Dianathere was something off about it. Almost as if the casualness he usually wore like his subtle cologne was forced, which was odd. As, too, was his appearance. The Giles she knew was the picture of sartorial elegance who wouldn’t be seen dead in public at this time of the night without a proper tailcoat, daring evening waistcoat, and intricately tied cravat. Not only was he clearly dressed for a morning walk, he was too windswept for Giles, and while he was doing a very good impression of a man comfortable in his own skin, his fingers were too agitated as they twisted the brim of his hat. “I wondered if I could steal Hugh away for a few minutes for a quick word?”
“Of course.” His friend was up like a shot and by his expression, Hugh, too, thought something was amiss. “Let’s go to my study—”
“Is it a dire emergency? Will everything go to hell in a handcart unless you talk this instant? We are about to go in to dinner,” said Olivia, as if any deviation from that plan was entirely unacceptable. “Why don’t you join us, Giles? Only Cook has made a cheese soufflé to start and, as I am sure a man of your refinement will know, soufflés can be very temperamental beasts.”
