It was extremely satisfying to shut the door on Willingham’s horrified face.

Six

It was with some relief that Diana reentered the drawing room before dinner that evening to find Violet and Audley fully clothed and deep in conversation on opposite sides of the room. Giving the settee a sympathetic pat on her way across the room, in light of the activities the piece of furniture must have borne witness to that afternoon, she made her way toward Violet, who was chatting animatedly with a familiar-looking golden head.

“Emily! You’ve arrived!” The head turned, revealing the almost impossibly lovely face of her friend. “My brilliant scheme worked, I see?” Diana added, crossing the drawing room in great eager steps.

She seized Emily’s hands, looking her friend up and down. Emily looked… tired. She was as beautiful as ever, her hair neatly dressed, her trim figure garbed entirely appropriately in a simple white evening gown. But there were dark smudges beneath her eyes that Diana had never seen there before, and a faint crease in her brow that implied repeated furrowing of it. Diana wondered how many events she had recently attended with Mr. Cartham—and how many quarrels she’d had with her parents on the subject.

“Even my mother is powerless in the face of the Dowager Marchioness of Willingham,” Emily said with a smile.

“As are we all,” Diana agreed. She turned as she spoke, scanning the room for the lady’s white hair. This was more difficult than it sounded, because the dowager marchioness was barely five feet tall, and did have a tendency to get rather lost in a crowd. So, instead of looking, she stopped and listened.

And, sure enough, a moment later she heard the sound of the dowager marchioness’s voice, far louder than was proper for a lady of good breeding—but then, such considerations had never stopped the woman from behaving exactly as she wished. Which was precisely why Diana adored her.

She, Violet, and Emily approached the group of people clustered nearby and found the dowager marchioness holding court before half a dozen amused gentlemen, including James’s brother West and several friends of Willingham’s from his Oxford days, regaling them with the tale of her husband’s rather infamous demise.

“… and then the fool tossed the empty wine bottle to me as if I were his groom,” she said, every word infused with just the right degree of disdain, “flung himself into the saddle, and took off at full speed toward the gate in question. I could see from fifty yards away that he didn’t stand a chance of making it, and sure enough, the horse—sensible creature—shied just enough to fling him off into the shrubbery.” She sighed, accepting a glass of sherry from one of her many admirers. “Broke his neck instantly, of course,” she said matter-of-factly, as though she were describing the death of a particularly unbeloved family dog, rather than that of her own husband. “And the worst bit was that because he landed in the bushes, the brambles scratched his face something awful, so he looked positively dreadful in his coffin. His good looks were really all he had in his favor, and even those abandoned him in death.”

“A lesson for us all, really,” came Willingham’s voice from just behind Diana, and she started—so absorbed had she been in the story, she hadn’t heard him approach. His eyes were dancing as he surveyed his grandmother. “And how lucky my dear grandfather is to be survived by a wife who describes him in such devoted tones.”

The dowager marchioness snorted, taking a sip of sherry. “Don’t be absurd, Jeremy. The man was a nuisance who nearly bankrupted this estate—though your own dear father did plenty of work in that regard, too, so there’s enough blame to go around, I daresay—and who no doubt has a litter of bastards running around the nearby countryside like so many unwanted puppies.”

At this, West choked on his claret; behind Diana, Emily seemed to be choking on air.

Willingham moved past Diana to press a kiss to his grandmother’s cheek that somehow managed to be both affectionate and sarcastic. Diana wished she could learn the trick of that, as those were the exact set of contrasting sentiments that she wished her own kisses to convey to him.

“You made it safely, I see, and even managed to extract Lady Emily from her mother’s clutches without injury,” he added.

“Yes, well, it was a very near thing, I don’t mind telling you.” The group surrounding them had begun to break up at the conclusion of her tale; Diana watched as West crossed the room to join Audley, who was deep in conversation with Sophie, who had arrived an hour or two before. Given Sophie’s romantic history—both her affair with Willingham this summer, and her near-engagement to West years ago—Diana found her presence at Elderwild highly intriguing, and it was with no small degree of interest that she watched West bow over her hand, saying something to her as he straightened that made Sophie’s mouth quirk in a sort of half smile that seemed inexplicably intimate.

Belatedly realizing that she was neglecting the conversation at hand, however, Diana rededicated her attention to her companions, who now had been reduced to just the dowager marchioness, Willingham, Violet, and Emily. The dowager marchioness gave Emily an approving look. “That young lady is not half so tiresome as most ladies her age. And what’s more, she knows how to shut her mouth and allow a feeble elderly woman some much-needed rest.”

Emily smiled her prim, proper smile. “That’s very kind of you, my lady, though not entirely how I remember it.” She paused, then added, “I do think I was above-average reticent, but only because you spent most of our journey explaining to me all the qualities necessary in a future husband.”