Which was exactly how he had liked it. He had spent many years creating the reputation he now had—he couldn’t reasonably complain that the results of these efforts were exactly as he had intended. Even if, sometimes, he wondered if there was anyone who saw beneath it.

Next to Penvale, Violet and Audley were sitting perhaps closer together than was strictly necessary at the breakfast table. Violet was speaking rapidly, as usual, about something Jeremy couldn’t hear, and Audley was watching her as though she’d hung the moon. Jeremy was pleased that these two had reconciled their marital differences, but he did feel they took things a bit far, at times. Last night at dinner, Jeremy had observed Audley miss his mouth with his fork. Twice.

Belfry was in deep discussion with Henry Langely, another of Jeremy’s Oxford friends. Langely was a decent sort—second son of an earl, rather bookish. He and Jeremy didn’t run in precisely the same circles these days—Langely had never been known as a womanizer, having had the same mistress for years now. As such, Jeremy couldn’t imagine what on earth he and Belfry had to talk about. Belfry’s reputation was even less savory than his own—thumbing one’s nose at one’s aristocratic father and being disinherited before going on to found a semirespectable theater did tend to have a damaging effect on one’s reputation.

It was all the more intriguing, then, that Belfry was here, trailing around after Lady Emily, of all people. Jeremy was hardly a matchmaker—indeed, he shuddered at the very thought—but he could not help wondering what precisely Belfry’s aim was where Emily was concerned. There was the obvious fact that Emily was almost ludicrously beautiful, but he’d never gotten the impression that Belfry struggled to find female companionship. Whatever Belfry’s interest was, he had little doubt that Diana would sniff it out before too long; she and Violet were taking quite an interest in the proceedings between Emily and Belfry, and he could hardly blame them, given that the alternative was Emily’s continued courtship by Oswald Cartham.

Cartham was a seedy sort, born in America to a younger son of an aristocratic family; he’d returned to England in his teens and had remained ever since, operating a legendary gaming hell and, from all Jeremy had heard, keeping more than a few aristocrats in his pocket by virtue of a combination of gambling debts and blackmail. Belfry was a bit scandalous, but by comparison with Cartham, he represented the height of respectability.

Jeremy had little time to contemplate this, however, because his attention was drawn to his grandmother, who had just entered the room.

“Ah, Lady Templeton,” she said, sounding as pleased to see Diana as if she’d last seen her twelve months ago, rather than twelve hours. “I do hope that seat next to you is being saved for me, because I have been so wishing to have a cozy little chat with you.”

Diana’s face, Jeremy was amused to note, bore a look of barely concealed alarm; she was as aware as he was that “cozy little chats” with the dowager marchioness frequently led to ladies shutting themselves up in their rooms in tears. He was certain Diana could bear his grandmother’s sharp tongue with equanimity; the two ladies were not dissimilar. He wondered if Diana would be something like his grandmother when she achieved a lofty age.

What a terrifying thought.

* * *

For her part, Diana was feeling rather cheerful this morning. She’d lain awake far too long last night, reliving Willingham’s kiss, and had awoken this morning still focused on the remembered pressure of his mouth on her own. Clearly, she and Willingham should have done this years ago—the attraction that crackled between them wasn’t going to vanish on its own, and she was pleased they’d finally decided to take the sensible step toward becoming lovers. They’d have a nice romp or two in bed, and then they’d be ready to move on.

By the time she arrived at the breakfast table, Willingham was already there, but fully ensnared in the clutches of Lady Helen Courtenay. As Diana filled her plate at the sideboard, she caught snatches of their conversation—though “conversation” might have been an overly generous term to describe what sounded more like a lengthy monologue on Lady Helen’s part, with occasional pauses for Willingham’s wordless murmurings of assent.

“… so pleased you included me in your invitation,” she was saying, as Diana placed a plump piece of spice cake on her plate. “Rothsmere is always so maddeningly close-lipped about what you gentlemen get up to, and I, of course, am simply desperate to learn all of your scandalous little secrets.” The titter that emerged from her mouth at this juncture was a sound that Diana was reasonably certain would haunt her nightmares for years to come.

She made her way to the far end of the table, but Lady Helen’s shrill voice carried, so that over the course of the next ten minutes, Diana became intimately familiar with the lady’s opinion on fichus—she would not have thought a scrap of lace at the neckline to be worthy of such strong emotion, but according to Lady Helen, they were a last bastion of moral authority before the wastelands of sin—as well as strawberries (delicious), raspberries (disgusting), and musicales (delightful, though Diana disagreed).

On the one hand, it was torturous to listen to; on the other, it made for a nice distraction from the uncomfortably fluttery feelings in her abdomen whenever she thought of Willingham’s kiss, or recalled the memory of his blue eyes so intent and focused on her own.