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A child’s laugh outside attracted her attention, and she wandered to the open window. In the garden below, Laura presented the young Lady Hester Maria Catherine Vale to her grandfather.
Her heart brimming with poignant joy, Diana watched her father settle the usually rambunctious eighteen-month-old child on his lap. Hester was, without question, a hellion, and she caused endless chaos and trouble. But strangely when she was with John Dean, she transformed into a perfect angel. Now she sat with completely uncharacteristic stillness while her grandfather traced her face.
Diana heard the door open behind her but didn’t turn. The sudden charge in the air told her exactly who it was.
Strong arms circled her waist and drew her against a hard male body. “They’re kindred spirits, aren’t they?” Tarquin’s voice was a baritone rumble in her ear.
She relaxed back against him, glorying in the warm security of his embrace. When she’d married him, she’d loved him to distraction, but two years together had deepened and strengthened the bond between them until she felt they shared the same heartbeat.
“How I wish I had his magic with her.”
“You have plenty of magic for me.” Tarquin nuzzled her neck and desire sizzled through her. She’d wondered if time would temper her physical response to him. But she wanted him more with each passing day.
She placed her hands over his where they laced at her waist. “I should hope so.”
Not that it had been unalloyed tranquillity and joy since her wedding. Her father hadn’t immediately reconciled himself to her union with a man of Lord Ashcroft’s reputation. At first, his hostility and disappointment had been marked, for all that he’d accepted Tarquin’s offer to live with them. Lately, to her relief, she’d noticed a thawing in John Dean’s attitude, but a distance still extended between the men she loved. Perhaps it always would.
Her father had needed time to forgive her too, although these days, they regained much of their former ease. Hester helped. It was hard to be on one’s dignity in her vivid presence.
The sticklers in society treated the earl and his lowborn wife with disdain. Tongues still wagged about the Ashcrofts’ quick marriage and the untimely arrival of their first child. Wild stories about Tarquin’s dramatic appearance in the church at Marsham had circulated, and a large segment of the ton was convinced Burnley must be Hester’s father.
Diana hardly cared. A little ostracism was small price to pay for happiness. And she couldn’t help but be thankful that none of the gossip, however vicious, verged near what had actually happened between her and Tarquin and Burnley. That would ignite a scandal indeed.
“I just went through the post,” Tarquin murmured against her skin.
“Oh?” He found the spot on her neck that always drove her wild, and she couldn’t summon much interest in letters.
To her regret, he lifted his lips and rested his chin on her shoulder. “The new Marquess of Burnley is setting the ton on its ear. He chews tobacco, he wears moccasins to assemblies, and he refuses to allow people to address him by his title. He’s a backwoods democrat through and through.”
She laughed softly. “Oh, poor Burnley. He’ll be rolling in his grave.”
Or burning in hell. Tarquin didn’t need to say the words.
Burnley had died at Cranston Abbey a few months after Diana deserted him at the altar. He hadn’t lived to learn that his longed-for male heir was in fact a girl.
In her white-hot outrage after discovering how Burnley had ordered Tarquin beaten, she’d wanted him to atone painfully and publicly for what he’d done. But her husband, whose judgment she’d come increasingly to admire, had reminded her that people other than Burnley would suffer if details of their tangled past emerged.
She’d had to find satisfaction in the knowledge that Tarquin’s enemy spent his last days stewing on the collapse of all his wicked plots. For a man as addicted to power as Burnley, his impotence in every sense would sting worse than acid.
Tarquin’s arms tightened around her, drawing her closer into his big, powerful body. “I’m considering asking for the American’s support in Parliament.”
“He’s your cousin, I suppose.”
“He’ll never know.”
She and Tarquin had discussed ways to straighten the snarled threads of family history. In the end, it seemed best to leave well enough alone. He was Earl of Ashcroft for good or ill. Too late to go back on that, even if he could. But in an attempt at recompense, he’d gifted the eldest sons of the various branches of the Vale family with estates. Most of which the spendthrift fribbles were quickly driving into bankruptcy.
The best of it was that in the process, Tarquin finally made peace with his past. He’d even called Hester after his mother. Yet again, Diana marveled at his generous heart.
“Are you busy?”
A slow smile curved her lips. She knew where this was leading. “Not right now.”
“I think Laura and your father will be occupied for a while. Don’t you?”
Her smile broadened as she looked out on the sunlit landscape. “It’s likely. But I don’t want to take you away from anything important.”
She still loved to tease him. That hadn’t changed.
