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For his part, Gerald Carshin was congratulating himself on his astuteness. He had been hanging out for a rich wife for nearly ten years, and his golden youth was beginning, however slightly, to tarnish. Even he saw that. His sunny hair remained thick—automatically he touched its fashionable perfection—and his blue eyes had lost none of their dancing charm, but he had started to notice alarming signs of thickness in his slim waist and a hint of sag in his smooth cheeks. At thirty, it was high time he wed, and he had cleverly unearthed an absolute peach of an heiress in the nick of time.
Carshin’s eyes passed admiringly over Diana’s slender rounded form, which was more revealed than hidden by the thin nightdress and coverlet. Her curves were his now; he breathed a little faster thinking of last night. And her face was equally exquisite. Like him, she was blond, but her hair was a deep rich gold, almost bronze, and her eyes were the color of aged sherry, with glints of the same gold in their depths. She wasn’t the least fashionable, of course. Her tartar of a father had never allowed her to crop her hair or buy modish gowns. Yet the waves of shining curls that fell nearly to Diana’s waist convinced Gerald that there was some substance in the old man’s strictures. It had taken his breath away last night when Diana had unpinned her fusty knot and shaken her hair loose.
“Your tea is getting cold,” Carshin said indulgently. “I thought you were hungry.”
Self-consciously Diana began to eat. She had never breakfasted with a man sitting on her bed—or, indeed, in bed at all until today. But of course, having Gerald there was wonderful, she told herself quickly. Everything about her life would be different and splendid now. “Are they getting the carriage ready?” she asked, needing to break the charged silence. “I can dress in a minute.”
“There’s no hurry.” His hand smoothed her fall of hair, then moved to cup a breast and fondle it. “We needn’t leave at once.” But as he bent to kiss Diana’s bare neck, he felt her stiffen. She won’t really relax till the knot’s tied, he thought, drawing back. A pity she’s so young. “Still, when you’ve finished your tea, you should get up,” he added.
Diana nodded, relieved, yet puzzled by her hesitant reaction to Gerald’s touch. This was the happiest day of her life, she repeated to herself.
Gerald moved to an armchair by the window. “Once we’re married, we’ll go straight to London. The season will be starting soon, and I…wemust find a suitable house and furnish it.” Gerald pictured himself set up in his own house, giving card parties and taking a box at the opera. How the ton would stare! He would finally have his revenge on the damned high sticklers who cut him.
“Oh, yes,” agreed Diana, her breakfast forgotten. “I can hardly wait to see all the fashionable people and go to balls.”
Gerald scrutinized her, the visions he had conjured up altering slightly. Diana would of necessity accompany him. “We must get you some clothes first, and do something about your hair.” She put a stricken hand to it. “It’s lovely, but not quite the thing, you know.”
“No.” Diana looked worried. “You will tell me how I should go on, and what I am to wear, won’t you?”
“Naturally.” Gerald seemed to expand in the chair. “We shall be all the crack, you and I. Everyone will invite us.”
Diana sighed with pleasure at the thought. All her life she had longed for gaiety and crowds of chattering friends rather than the bleak, dingy walls of her father’s house. Now, because of Gerald, she would have them.
“You must write at once to your trustees and tell them you are married,” he added, still lost in a happy dream. “We shall have to draw quite a large sum to get settled in town.”
“My trustees?” Diana’s brown eyes grew puzzled.
“Yes. You told me their names, but I’ve forgotten. The banker and the solicitor in charge of your mother’s fortune—yours, I should say, now. You come into it when you marry, remember.”
“Not unless I am of age,” she corrected him.
Gerald went very still. “What?”
“Papa made her put that in. Mr. Merton at the bank told me so. Mama would have left me her money outright, but Papa insisted upon conditions. It is just like him. The money was to be mine when I married, unless I should do so before I came of age. Otherwise, I must wait until I am five-and-twenty. Isn’t that infamous?”
Carshin’s pale face had gone ashen. “But you are not eighteen for…”
“Four months,” she finished. Sensing his consternation, she added, “Is something wrong?”
His expression was intent, but he was not looking at her. “We must simply wait to be married,” he murmured. “We cannot go to London, of course. We shall have to live very quietly in the country, and—”
“Wait!” Diana was aghast. “Gerald, you promised me we should be married at once. Indeed, I never could have”—she choked on the word “eloped”—“left home otherwise.”
Meeting her eyes, Gerald saw unshakable determination, and the collapse of all his careful plans. One thing his rather unconventional life had taught him was to read others’ intentions. Diana would not be swayed by argument, however logical.
Why had she withheld this crucial piece of information? he wondered. This was all her fault. In fact, she had neatly trapped him into compromising her. But if she thought that the proprieties weighed with him, she was mistaken. The chit deserved whatever she got.
He looked up, and met her worried gaze. The naked appeal in her dark eyes stopped the flood of recrimination on his tongue, but it did not change his mind. Hunching a shoulder defensively, he rose. “I should see about the horses. You had better get dressed.”
“Yes, I will,” replied Diana eagerly, relief making her weak. “I won’t be a minute.”
Gerald nodded curtly, and went out.
But when Diana descended the narrow stair a half hour later, her small valise in her hand, there was no sign of Gerald Carshin. There were only a truculent innkeeper proffering a bill, two sniggering postboys, and a round-eyed chambermaid wiping her hands in her apron.
Diana refused to believe Gerald was gone. Even when it was pointed out that a horse was missing from the stable, along with the gentleman’s valise from the hired chaise, Diana shook her head stubbornly. She sat down in the private parlor to await Gerald’s return, concentrating all her faculties on appearing unconcerned. But as the minutes ticked past, her certainty slowly ebbed, and after a while she was trembling under the realization that she had been abandoned far from her home.
Papa had been right. He had said that Gerald wanted nothing but her money. She had thought that his willingness to marry her at seventeen proved otherwise, but she saw now that this wasn’t so. Gerald had simply not understood. Hadn’t shetoldhim all the terms of her mother’s will? She thought she had, but her memory of their early meetings was blurred by a romantically golden haze.
