‘With disinterested disdain, I’ll wager,’ Alastair said, eager to encourage this diversion from the subject at hand.
‘Naturally. As if I would give someone as odious as that scandalmonger any inkling of my true feelings on the matter. But,’ she said, her gaze focusing back on his face, ‘I’m more concerned with your reaction.’
Alastair shrugged. ‘How should I react? Goodness, Jane, that attachment was dead and buried years ago.’
Her perceptive eyes searched his face. ‘Was it, Alastair?’
Damn it, he had to look away first, his face colouring. ‘Of course.’
‘You needn’t see her, or even acknowledge her existence. Her whole appearance here is most irregular—we only received word of the Duke’s passing two days ago! No one has any idea why she would leave Graveston Court so quickly after his death, or come to Bath, of all places. With, I understand, almost no servants or baggage. I highly doubt a woman as young and beautiful as Diana means to set up court as a dowager! If she’s angling to remarry, she won’t do her chances any good, flouting convention by appearing in public so scandalously soon after her husband’s death! Although if she did, I’d at least have the satisfaction of being able to cut her.’
‘That might not be feasible. Robbie has struck up a friendship with her son,’ he informed her, making himself say the word again without flinching. ‘He invited the boy to meet him again in the gardens tomorrow.’ Alastair smiled, hoping it didn’t appear as a grimace. ‘So I can take them both for cakes.’
If he hadn’t been still so unsettled himself, Alastair would have laughed at the look of horror that passed over his sister’s face as the difficulty of the situation registered.
‘I shall come up with some way to fob off Robbie,’ Jane said. ‘It’s unthinkable for you to be manoeuvred into associating with her.’
Recalling the strength of his nephew’s single-mindedness when fixed on an objective—so like his mama’s iron will—Alastair raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘If you can succeed in distracting the boy who chattered all the way home from the Gardens about his new friend, I’ll be surprised. Besides, if Diana goes about in Society, I’m bound to encounter her from time to time.’
‘You don’t mean you’ll chance seeing her again?’ his sister returned incredulously. ‘Oh, Alastair, don’t risk it!’
‘Risk? Come now, Jane, this all happened years ago. No need to enact a Cheltenham tragedy.’
Pressing her lips together, Jane shook her head, tears sheening her eyes. ‘I know you say you’re over her, and I only pray God it’s true. But I’ll never forget—no one who cares about you ever could—how absolutely and completely bouleversé you were. The wonderful poetry you wrote in homage to her wit, her beauty, her grace, her liveliness! The fact that you haven’t written a line since she jilted you.’
‘The army was hardly a place for producing boyish truck about eternal love,’ Alastair said, dismissing his former passion with practised scorn. Besides, poetry and his love for Diana had been so intimately intertwined, he’d not been able to continue one without the other. ‘One matures, Jane, and moves on.’
‘Does one? Have you? I’d be more inclined to believe it if you had ever shown any interest in another eligible woman. Do you truly believe all women to be perfidious? Or is it what I fear—that your poet’s soul, struck more deeply by emotion than an ordinary man’s, cannot imagine loving anyone but her?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said stiffly, compelled to deny her suspicion. ‘I told you, that childish infatuation was crushed by events years ago.’
‘I hope so! But even if, praise God, you are over her, I shall never forgive her for the agony and embarrassment she caused you. Nor can I forgive the fact that her betrayal turned a carefree, optimistic, joyous young man almost overnight into a bitter, angry recluse who shunned Society and did his utmost to get himself killed in battle.’
To his considerable alarm, Jane, normally the most stoic of sisters, burst into tears. Unsure what to do to stem the tide, he pulled her into a hug. ‘There, there, now, that’s a bit excessive, don’t you think? Are you increasing again? It’s not like you to be so missish.’
His bracing words had the desired effect, and she pushed him away. ‘Missish! How dare you accuse me of that! And, no, I’m not increasing. It’s beastly of you to take me to task when I’m simply concerned about you.’
‘You know I appreciate that concern,’ he said quietly.
She took an agitated turn about the room before coming back to face him. ‘Have you any idea what it was like for your friends, your family—witnessing the depths of your pain, fearing for your sanity, your very life? Hearing the stories that came back to us from the Peninsula? You volunteering to lead every “forlorn hope”, always throwing yourself into the worst of the battle, defying death, uncaring of whether or not you survived.’
‘But I did survive,’ he replied. Far too many worthy men had not, though, while he came through every battle untouched. ‘Angry Alastair’s luck’ the troops had called it. He’d discouraged the talk and turned away the eager volunteers for his command who listened to it since that famous luck never seemed to extend to the men around him.
‘Please tell me you will not see her,’ Jane said, pulling him back to the present.
‘I certainly won’t seek her out. But with Robbie having befriended her son, I imagine I won’t be able to avoid her entirely.’
‘I must think of some way to discourage the friendship. I really don’t want my son to take up with any offspring of hers. He’s probably as poisonous as she is!’
‘Come now, Jane, listen to yourself! You can’t seriously hold the poor child accountable for the failings of his mother,’ Alastair protested, uncomfortably aware that, initially, he’d done just that.
‘He’s the spawn of the devil, whatever you say,’ Jane flung back. ‘You don’t know all the things that have been said about her! I never mentioned her when I wrote you, feeling you’d been hurt enough, but there were always rumours swirling. How she defied the Duke in public, showing no deference to his friends or family. Turned her back on her own friends, too, once she became his Duchess—the few who remained after she jilted you. They say she became so unmanageable the Duke had to remove her to his country estate. I know she’s not been in London in all the years since my marriage. I’ve even heard that, as soon as the Duke fell seriously ill, she took herself off to Bath, refusing to nurse him or even to remain to see him properly buried!’
‘Enough, Jane. I’ve no interest in gossip, nor have I any intention of being more than politely civil to the woman, if and when the need arises. So you see, there’s nothing to upset yourself about.’
At that moment, a discreet knock sounded and the housekeeper appeared, bearing news of some minor disaster in the kitchen that required her mistress’s immediate attention. After giving his sister another quick hug, Alastair gently pushed her towards the door. ‘I’ll be fine. Go re-establish order in your domain.’
After Jane had followed the housekeeper out, Alastair walked back to his room, trapped by his still-unsettled thoughts. It was sad, really, that the girl he remembered being so vivacious, a magnet who drew people to her, had, if what Jane reported was true, ended up a recluse hidden away in the country, the subject of speculation and rumour.
Did she deserve it? Had she duped him, cleverly encouraging his infatuation so he might trumpet her beauty to the world in fulsome poetry, drawing to her the attention of wealthier, more