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She shook her head and dismounted. She’d much rather have this conversation in private, without maids and manservants listening in. But how to get Lord Stanton out here? She secured her horse and then began walking about the grand building. It shared no walls with another residence and wasn’t fenced in, making it quite easy to circle the home. From the back lawn—a rarity for London—Dinah spotted two windows with candlelight spilling from them. As she watched, a tall figure, clearly a man, paced from one window to the next, turned, and paced back again.
It had to be Lord Stanton. Who else would be up pacing this time of night before tomorrow’s wedding?
Dinah searched about herself and found a few small pebbles. Backing up, she threw the first one at the window. This always seemed to work in love stories—which theirs was most decidedly not—but perhaps it might work now, all the same. Dinah threw a second and then a third and finally the silhouette paused his walking and neared the window.
When he didn’t open it right away, Dinah grumbled under her breath and then threw a fourth pebble. It hit directly below the window instead of the glass itself, but it must have made a loud enough noise for the window opened and Lord Stanton stuck his head out.
“It’s me,” Dinah called up. There was a good chance the grounds were too dark for him to see her. Would he recognize her voice? They had hardly said more than half a dozen sentences the night they were caught together and nothing at all since.
“Miss Dinah?”
Ah good, he did recognize her.
Then again, who else would she be?
“We need to speak,” she called up.
“What the blazes are you doing here? Suppose someone saw you.”
“What would they do? Force us to wed?” She didn’t even try to laugh at her own words.
The window shut and the form of Lord Stanton moved quickly away and deeper into the room until she could no longer see him.
Was he coming down to let her in? Or simply washing his hands of her and leaving her to the darkness of the night?
Several minutes passed, and finally, a back door not far from where Dinah stood opened.
“What were you thinking?” Lord Stanton’s characteristically deep, hard voice came from the shadow of the barely open door. “You cannot be out in the middle of the night alone.”
Dinah hurried toward him. “Let me in quickly, and no one will be the wiser.”
She heard him harrumph, but he stepped away from the door and let her pass. His hair was still long about his face, but he was clean-shaven now.
“I found I could not sleep until I spoke with you,” she said after the door was shut behind her. The space around her was too dark for her to see much of anything. Lord Stanton held a candle which lighted his face, a small bit of the wall behind him, and the floor beneath their feet, but that was it. They could be in a kitchen, a corridor, or even a fine parlor and she wouldn’t know.
“And that was reason enough to show up in the middle of the night? You have to think things through—one cannot simply act upon impulses.”
“Acting on myimpulsesis exactly what saved Adele’s life.”
“And forced us to become engaged.”
“No, I’m fairly sure we’re engaged because you insisted on seeing me all the way to the door. If you hadn’t been so bent on sticking to the plan and simply allowed me to walk the last dozen paces alone, we wouldn’t be in this situation at all.”
His jaw tightened, and Dinah was forced to again acknowledge that he did have fine features, even if those fine features were looking at her as though Lord Stanton wished her ill with every ounce of his being.
“You said I was good at kissing,” he spoke through clamped teeth.
Whether that statement was true or not was clearly something Dinah would never find out. “I had to throw him off the truth. It was the first thing that came to mind.”
“It certainly wasn’t the first thing that came to my mind.”
He didn’t have to make it sound as though kissing her would bethatawful. “Nevertheless”—the sooner she spoke the words she hasd come to say, the better—“it is our current predicament I wish to speak to you about.”
“Oh?” Far from offering her a seat, he simply rested back, leaning against the wall behind him.
She, it seemed, would be left standing in the middle of whatever space they happened to be in.
“Yes.” Dinah lifted her chin. He didn’t intimidate her, and it would be well for him to realize as much. “I have come to tell you that you are free to cry off if you so wish it.”
