Anticipation, excitement and eagerness boiled in his blood, and only by reminding himself that two young innocents and their virginal nursemaid sat mere feet away, was he able to restrain his mind from picturing himself possessing her.
He’d do it, then. Unless Diana sent a note rescinding her acceptance, he would go through with it.
After sending her son and the maid home in a sedan chair, Alastair hurried the now-sleepy Robbie up to the heights of the Crescent. As soon as he’d dispatched the boy back to the nursery, he descended the stairs at a run, bent on finding the most exclusive leasing office he could.
It was imperative to find just the right property for their rendezvous—in a location elegant enough for the purpose, but well-enough hidden that the ever-vigilant Jane was unlikely to discover it.
* * *
An hour later, the bargain concluded, he was escorted out by the beaming proprietor, whom he’d paid double his usual fee for his silence and to obtain possession of the property immediately. Holding the key to a fine townhouse in Green Park Buildings, a respectable address but one well to the west of the most fashionable streets, Alastair set off back to the Crescent.
He’d wait one night, to see if a note arrived from Diana, reneging on her initial acceptance. If he did not hear from her by tomorrow, he’d send her a note, arranging to meet after supper that night.
Excitement shivered and danced in his blood, sparkled in his mind. He couldn’t remember ever being this consumed by anticipation.
An exalted state that was sure to end in disillusion, once he became better acquainted with the real Diana. Which was exactly what he wanted.
The sooner the affair began, the sooner it would be over—and he would be free of her at last.
* * *
In the evening of the following day, Diana sat at her dressing table, a note in hand. As she glanced at her name inscribed in Alastair’s bold script, another memory pierced her chest like an arrow.
How many times during their courtship had she opened just such a note, finding within a beautiful verse in honour of her? Praising her wit, her virtue, her loveliness.
How unworthy of them she’d felt.
How unworthy of them she’d proved.
This current missive could hardly be more different. Instead of elegantly penned lines of clever metaphors, similes, and alliteration, there wasn’t even a complete sentence. Merely an address and a time—this evening, nine o’clock.
Despite her hard-won self-control, uneasiness and something more, something dangerously like anticipation, stirred within her. Stifling it, she debated again, as she had off and on since receiving the summons this morning, whether or not to dispatch a last-minute refusal of his shocking offer.
It was risky, allowing him to be near her. Graveston had possessed the power to restrict her activities and movements, to hurt her physically, but had never been able to touch her soul—a failure that had maddened him and represented her only victory in their battlefield sham of a marriage. Alastair Ransleigh would never touch her in anger...but it was the touch of tenderness, the touch of a man she’d once desired above all else, that threatened her in a way the Duke had never managed, despite his relentless cruelty.
She’d certainly have to be on guard, lest he get close enough to threaten her emotional reserve. Still... Once, she’d been so happy with Alastair. Might giving herself to him bring her a glimpse of that long-vanished happiness?
But then, she was reading much too much into this. The insulting nature of Alastair’s offer was proof he despised her.
Would it have made any difference, had she explained just how the Duke intended to destroy him? Probably not, she concluded. He hadn’t even believed the Duke’s threat of debtors’ prison for Papa, and what the Duke had promised for Alastair had been far more outrageous.
No, there wasn’t any question of warmth or affection between them. She’d humiliated him before all of Society, abused his trust, and like any man, he wanted retribution. She was fair enough to think he deserved it.
Not that yielding her body would prove much of a humiliation for her, not after years of submission to a man who believed he had the right to use her whenever and however he pleased. Whatever his reasons for proposing the liaison, giving herself up to Alastair would be an improvement over the subjugation of her marriage. Alastair, at least, she’d always admired and respected.
In any event, the arrangement probably wouldn’t last long. Once Ransleigh had his fill of her, he’d cast her aside, leaving her free to...do what with the rest of her life?
Frowning, she dropped the note on the dressing table and rose to take a restless turn about the room. Alastair Ransleigh’s sudden reappearance had distracted her from focusing on how to deal with Lord Blankford, a matter of far more importance.
There was a chance Blankford might simply ignore her and Mannington. With a sigh, she quickly dismissed that foolish hope. Her husband’s eldest son had been raised to believe that a duke’s desires were paramount, and that he could manipulate, reward or smite all lesser beings with impunity. It was highly unlikely, given how closely the character of the heir mirrored that of the sire, that the injury he believed she’d committed against him and his mother would go unpunished.
At the very least, he would try to take Mannington away from her. Even if he didn’t have evil designs upon the child, she wouldn’t allow a dog, much less a little boy, to grow up under the influence of such a man. She might not, up until now, have proved herself much of a mother, but she would do everything in her power to prevent her innocent son’s character from being distorted by the same despicable standards held by his father and elder brother.
Even as she thought it, she shook her head. How could she, whom her husband had methodically isolated from any friends and family, prevail against one of the highest-ranked men in England?
Putting aside, for the moment, that unanswerable question, then what? Even if she managed to protect her son from Blankford, Mannington needed more than rescue from evil influences to grow into the confident, compassionate, honourable man she’d like him to be.
She first needed to re-establish some sort of normal, motherly link with the boy—something she’d been forced to avoid while Graveston lived. Now that she need no longer fear showing him affection, how was she to retrieve, from the abyss into which she’d buried it, the natural bond between a mother and her child? That she’d hated the man who sired him was not Mannington’s fault. Like every child, to grow and thrive he needed love—of which, until now, he’d received precious little.
For the first time in many years, she allowed herself to think about her own childhood—a time so idyllic and distant that it seemed to belong to another person, or another life. Despite losing his wife in childbirth at an early age, Papa had managed to submerge his own grief and create a home filled with love, security, joy and laughter. How had he done so?
Settling back on the dressing-table bench, she stared at her image in the mirror, digging through the bits of memory.
They’d certainly not had the material advantages available to a duke. As a younger son from a minor branch of a prominent family, no objection had been posed to Papa pursuing a career as an Oxford tutor, nor of his marrying for love a gentleman’s daughter of great beauty and small dowry. After Mama’s death, they’d taken rooms close to the university, where he might more easily mentor his students and pursue his own botanical studies. As both Mama and Papa had no other close kin, it had always been just the two of them.
She’d learned her letters at his knee, studied her lessons in his office, painted and played piano for him in the adjacent studio. Picnics beside the river turned into treasure hunts, often enlivened by games of hide-and-seek, as she helped Papa search for rare plants. Every day ended with him reading to her, or telling her a bedtime story. Later, as his eyesight began to fail and his health grew more frail, she had read to him.