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Her fine brows slowly rose when he still did not move after about a minute. “Are you going to come in?”
“When I have admired you more,” he murmured, deciding to lean against the doorframe and fold his arms against his chest. Her cheeks blushed brightly, and her blue eyes sparkled.
Diana laughed, the sound soft and musical, and it stuck a joyous chord in his heart. “Have you had enough now?” she asked after a while.
“I can never have enough.” He walked into the room, toward the empty chair beside her bed. Lowering himself onto the chair, he reached for her hand and raised it to his lips, kissing her soft skin and relishing her floral scent.
At the Saville garden party, she had told him that she did not want him, and he understood a part of it after overhearing her exchange with her aunt and cousin. There was a great chance they were the reason she had made that declaration to him. Now, as he looked at her, he found nothing that suggested she did not want him. In fact, her fingers curled around his, and her eyes darkened slightly with desire.
However, there was more, and he wanted to ask her about it. “How do you feel?”
“I am much better. I mostly only feel the ache in my foot when I move it,” she replied.
His smile slowly broadened. “That makes me very happy.” He watched her for another moment before he decided to say what had been sitting on his mind for hours. “I do not think you should return to your aunt’s house.”
“Yes, I do not believe it is wise to go back, but I cannot stay here.”
“You can,” he said gently before glancing at his housekeeper. “If you are concerned about your reputation, Emma and Mrs. Ross will be here.”
Her slight smile revealed her reluctance, and Matthew decided that they would discuss the issue when she had recovered. “How long have they been cruel to you?” he asked instead, seeking to know more about what motivated her actions since he met her.
“Since I started living with them,” she replied quietly. “I have thought of running away several times but I had nowhere to go.”
Matthew kissed her fingers again and held her hand between his warm ones. “Your parents should never have left you in your aunt’s care. Have you ever written to them? Apprised them of your situation?”
Diana glanced down at the book on her lap and sighed, then shook her head. “I wrote to them every month but they never replied. They write to my aunt but never to me.”
The veins in his neck began to pulse, and his gut clenched with the bile that was churning within. “Do you know why?” he asked as calmly as he could.
“Yes.” Diana tried to smile but she could not hide her pain from him. He could see every bit of it, and it wrenched his heart. “They wanted a son,” she began to explain. “I was told that my father was quite troubled when I was born because he thought my mother would have a son. She never did, and he began to resent her, which led to her resenting me.” Her voice was so small and vulnerable. “I remember an event when I was eight. My governess took me to Hyde Park. She saw her friend and got distracted conversing with her, leaving me by myself.”
Her eyes clouded with the memory, and her mouth turned down at the corners. Her sorrow seeped into him, and he felt the impact of her words before she even spoke them.
“I saw a pretty duckling and followed it into the serpentine.” She looked toward the ceiling and sighed. “I knew how to swim but at that moment, I found myself powerless in the water.” Matthew squeezed her hand, his jaw tight. “My governess was able to save me, but I had already taken in a lot of water. I fell ill. The fever lasted for more than a week, I was told, and in that time, neither my mother nor my father came to my chambers to see me. They thought I was going to die and they stayed away, having already accepted a fate that was not mine.”
“Holy Christ!” Matthew swore. “How could they?” Matthew had grown up alone, with a depressed father, but he had friends that were brothers to him. He could not imagine the pain and neglect Diana had to endure.
“They still did not come after I recovered, and I had to find them to show them that I was still alive.” She allowed a pained chuckle. “I was such a stupid child, Matthew. I could see that they did not want me, yet every morning, I would leave the nursery and go to the breakfast room, curtsy before them, and smile. My father would barely look at me, and my mother would wave a dismissive hand and tell a servant to take me away.”
His blood boiled, and he hated her parents for their heartlessness and disregard. She was worthy of love, every child was, yet she suffered. “You were not stupid, Diana,” he said softly, lightly brushing the back of her hand with his thumb. “You wanted their love and asked for it.”
“But I could have saved myself some heartache if I remained in the nursery and stopped begging to be loved.” She sighed again and shook her head. “I debuted at seventeen, and that was when they gave me some attention. My father spent quite a fortune so I could dress in the latest fashion and quickly find a husband, while my mother took me to balls and pretended to adore me. He was confident I would make a match because he is a viscount.”
“He’s a viscount?” Matthew asked, surprised. He was yet to receive the information he had requested about her but he did not think he needed it anymore. It might not tell him anything that she had not already revealed, though.
“Yes,” she answered. “He is Viscount Edgington, and the title is more important to him than anything.”
“That is why he made you pay for not being his heir?” Matthew growled, one of his hands tightening into a fist.
A tiny, rueful smile touched the corners of her mouth. “I suppose fate is showing him his errors.”
“He does not seem to see it.”
“No, he does not,” she agreed.
Matthew wanted to draw her into his arms to console her but Mrs. Ross’s presence was preventing him from doing that. Being chaperoned was honorable but he wanted to comfort her, show her the love she had been denied her entire life.
“I am glad you are no longer with them because they could not see the goodness and beauty in your heart.” He smiled at her. “You have me, Emma, and Albert now.”
