‘Please, Mama, may I go for cakes?’ the boy asked her as Alastair battled the effect. ‘My new friend, Robbie, invited me.’
‘Another time, perhaps. Come along, now.’ She crooked a finger, beckoning to the lad, her glance passing from the boy to Robbie to Alastair. After meeting his eyes for an instant, without a flicker of recognition, she gave him a slight nod, then turned away and began walking off.
Sighing, the boy looked back at Robbie. ‘Will you come again tomorrow? Maybe I can go then.’
‘Yes, I’ll come,’ Robbie replied as the child trotted after his mother. Grabbing the arm of the boy’s maid, who was tucking a ball away in her apron, his nephew asked, ‘You’ll bring him, won’t you?’
The girl smiled at Robbie. ‘If I can, young master. Though little notice as Her Grace takes of the poor boy, don’t see that it would make a ha’penny’s difference to her whether he was in the house or not. I’d better get on.’ Gently extricating her hand from Robbie’s grip, she hurried off after her charge.
Alastair checked the immediate impulse to follow her, announce himself to Diana, and force a reaction. Surely he hadn’t changed that much from the eager young dreamer who’d thrown heart and soul at her feet, vowing to love her for ever! As she had vowed back to him, barely a week before she gave her hand to an older, wealthier man of high rank.
Had he been merely a convenient dupe, his open devotion a goad to prod a more prestigious suitor into coming up to snuff? He’d never known.
Sudden fury coursed through him again that the sight of her, the mere sound of her voice, could churn up an anguish he’d thought finally buried. Ah, how he hated her! Or more precisely, hated what she could still do to him.
Since the night she’d betrayed him, he’d had scores of women and years of soldiering. He’d thrown himself into the most desperate part of the battle, determined to burn the memory of loving her out of his brain.
While she seemed, now as then, entirely indifferent.
Mechanically he gave his nephew a hand, walking beside him while the lad chattered on about his friend and his pony and the fine set of lead soldiers waiting for them in the nursery, where they could replay all the battles in which Uncle Alastair had fought. It required nearly the whole of the steep uphill walk from Sidney Gardens across the river back to his sister’s townhouse in the Royal Crescent for him to finally banish Diana’s image.
Damn, but she’d been even lovelier than he remembered.
* * *
Sending Robbie up to the nursery with a promise to join him later for an engagement with lead soldiers, Alastair turned over his hat and cane to his sister’s butler. He’d placed boot on step to follow his nephew up the stairs when Simms halted him.
‘Lady Guildford requested that you join her in the morning room immediately upon your return, Mr Ransleigh, if that is possible.’
Alastair paused, debating. He’d hoped, before meeting his all-too-perceptive sister, to return to the solitude of the pretty guest chamber to which he’d been shown upon his arrival early this morning, where he might finish piecing back together the shards of composure shattered by his unexpected encounter with Diana. But failing to respond to Jane’s summons might elicit just the sort of heightened interest that he wished to avoid.
With a sigh, he nodded. ‘Very well. You needn’t announce me; I’ll find my way in.’
Moments later he stepped into a back parlour flooded with mid-morning sunlight. ‘Alastair!’ his sister exclaimed with delight, jumping up from the sofa to meet him for a hug. ‘I’m sorry I was so occupied when you arrived this morning! Though if I’d had any inkling you were coming, I would have had all in readiness,’ she added, a tinge of reproof in her tone.
‘Do you mean to scold me for showing up unannounced, as Mama always does?’ he teased.
‘Of course not! I assume you’re not here for some assignation, else you’d not come to stay with me.’
‘Assignation?’ he said with a laugh. ‘You’ll make me blush, sister mine! And what would a proper matron like you know about assignations?’
‘Nothing whatever, of course, other that you’re rumoured to have many of them,’ Jane retorted, her face flushing.
‘You shouldn’t listen to gossip,’ Alastair said loftily. ‘But let me assure you, if I did have an “‘assignation” in mind, I’d choose a more convenient and discreet location than Bath to set up a mistress.’
‘It pains me that you’ve become so cynical. If only you’d become acquainted with any of the lovely, accomplished and well-bred girls I’ve suggested, you’d find that not all women are interested only in title and position.’
‘Of course not. You married Viscount Guildford out of overwhelming passion, the kind you’d have me write about,’ he said sardonically.
Her flush deepened. ‘Just because a match is suitable, doesn’t mean there can’t be love involved.’
‘Oh, I’m a great believer in love! Indulge in it as often as I can. But I could hardly make one of your exemplary virgins my mistress,’ he said, then held up a hand as Jane’s eyes widened and she began to sputter a reply. ‘Pax, Jane! Let’s not brangle. I came to see you and Robbie, of course, and I do hope I’m welcome.’
‘Always!’ she said with a sigh, to his relief letting the uncomfortable topic go. He loved his sister and his mother dearly, but the succession of women with whom he’d been involved since his break with Diana—with their attempted claims on his time, his purse or his name—had only strengthened his decision never again to offer his heart or hand.
Jane looped her arm with his, leading him to a seat beside her on the sofa. ‘Of course you may come and go as you wish! But if the ladies in your life would prefer to prepare a proper welcome and perhaps cosset you a bit, you must forgive us. We waited too many long anxious years while you were in the army, not sure you would ever make it back.’
‘But I did, and I wager you find me as annoying as ever,’ Alastair pronounced, dropping a kiss on the top of her head. ‘So, was it my unannounced visit that I’ve been summoned to answer for? I thought, with Guildford off in London toiling away for some Parliamentary committee, you’d be delighted to have me break the tedium of marking time in Bath while your papa-in-law takes the waters. How is the Earl, by the way?’
‘Better. I do think the waters are helping his dyspepsia. And I can’t complain about being in Bath. It may not be the premier resort it once was, before Prinny made Brighton more fashionable, but it still offers a quite tolerable number of diversions.’
‘So which of my misdeeds required this urgent meeting?’
To his surprise, despite his teasing tone, his sister’s face instantly sobered. ‘Nothing you’ve done, as well you know, but I do need to make you aware of a...complication, one of some import. I’m not sure exactly how to begin...’
Brow creased, Jane gazed warily at his face, and instinctively he stiffened. ‘Yes?’
‘It’s...’
Though Alastair would have sworn he neither moved a millimetre nor altered his expression in the slightest, Jane’s eyes widened and she gasped. ‘You’ve already seen her! You have, haven’t you?’
Damn and blast! He was likely now in for the very sort of inquisition he’d heartily wished to avoid. ‘If you mean Diana—the Duchess of Graveston, that is—yes, I have. At any rate, I believe it was her, though we didn’t speak, so I’m not completely sure. It has been years, after all,’ he added, trying for his calmest, most uninterested tone. ‘A lady who looked like I remember her came to Sidney Gardens when I went after Robbie, to fetch her s-son.’ Inwardly cursing that he’d stumbled over the word, Alastair cleared his throat.
Distress