“But surely picnics are an exception,” Diana pressed. Jeremy leaned closer—good lord, had she just literally batted her eyelashes? “All that fresh air does make one so frightfully thirsty. I’m sure your mama would not object.”

“Well,” Lady Helen said uncertainly, casting a glance toward her brother.

“I don’t think there’s any need to ask for Rothsmere’s permission. Willingham,” Diana added, in an entirely different tone of voice, “refill her glass.”

He supposed he should count himself lucky that she hadn’t snapped her fingers at him as she issued the order. He also supposed that he should have his head examined, because the sound of her voice shifting from artificial sugary sweetness to a tone of sharp command was far more appealing than it should have been.

He had clearly been too long absent from a woman’s bed—an entire fortnight, he realized, after a bit of mental calculation. It was the longest period of abstinence he had endured since his brother’s death. Obviously the state was dangerous for him.

This summer had been a bit of an anomaly for him, in terms of his romantic activities. His affair with Lady Fitzwilliam Bridewell—Sophie—had occupied much of the early half of the summer; he’d quite enjoyed their time together, even if he was fairly certain she was still in love with Audley’s brother. He had no proof—and nothing the lady had ever said to him had ever hinted at this—but he’d not been able to escape the niggling suspicion that Sophie was using him to get West’s attention. This suspicion had not been at all alleviated when Sophie had—somewhat to his surprise—accepted his invitation to join the house party. They’d parted on amicable terms, to be certain, but he still had expected her to send a note making her excuses once their liaison had ended. And yet, here she was, seated on a blanket with Violet and Audley, chatting merrily and—to his eye, at least—being rather pointed in the way she did not cast so much as a single glance over her shoulder at West.

Jeremy supposed he ought to have been offended by the notion of being used as a pawn in someone else’s romantic scheming, but he’d been unable to work himself into much of a lather. If women with golden hair and wide brown eyes and surprisingly adventurous tastes in the bedchamber wished to use him to spite or entice former lovers—well, who was he to object?

The affair had run its course, ending amicably, and then nearly immediately afterward he had tumbled into bed with Lady John Marksdale, a very young, very bored lady with a very elderly, very inattentive husband. And that particular liaison, as he had already—humiliatingly—been forced to explain to Diana, had ended in a fashion that had been just traumatizing enough to dampen his enthusiasm for the chase.

Or, as it happened, the chase after anyone other than the hazel-eyed harpy smirking at him from the other side of the blanket.

While he had been contemplating this, his hand had been blindly following orders, refilling Lady Helen’s glass and then his own. Whatever plan Diana had, he was certain he did not wish to be entirely sober as it played out.

Diana, however, seemed satisfied with the lay of the land at the moment, sipping contentedly from her own wineglass as she surveyed him with amused eyes. The sunlight brought out the green flecks in her eyes, and he wondered idly if the enticing row of freckles upon her nose would be darker by the time they returned to the house.

Lost in an enjoyable, wine-fueled fantasy of tasting every single one of those freckles, he at first failed to notice the hand slowly creeping up his thigh. Eventually, however, reason returned, in time for him to grasp Lady Helen’s hand before it compromised his nonexistent virtue entirely.

He smiled at her as best he could, though he rather thought his grin might lack some of the sparkle of his usual smile—he was incapable of performing to his highest standards under such stressful circumstances, after all. He had never known that a girl nearly a decade his junior—and approximately half his size—could be so intimidating. The female sex truly did not receive enough credit.

“Why, Lord Willingham,” she said in a breathy tone that Jeremy supposed was meant to be alluring, but which had the perverse effect of making him feel mildly nauseated instead, “did your heart suddenly feel an overpowering desire to beat in rhythm with my own?”

“Er,” Jeremy said intelligently. Across the blanket, out of the corner of his eye, he could see Diana trying not to laugh. It appeared to be a losing battle. He gathered as many of his wits about him as he could manage and said, somewhat more coherently, “I don’t take your meaning, Lady Helen.”

Her limpid blue eyes widened and the blond ringlets framing her face bobbed as she shook her head. “But surely you feel it?” she whispered, and Jeremy realized he was leaning forward slightly to catch her words—which, doubtless, had been her plan all along. “The way, with our palms pressed together, you can feel your own pulse throbbing against my own?”

A few feet away, Diana choked on her wine; Jeremy spared an uncharitable thought to hope that she would spray it all over her bodice, if only so that he might have the pleasure of watching her attempt to mop it up.

At the moment, however, such pleasurable possibilities had to be set aside in the face of the sticky situation in which he now found himself: with Lady Helen Courtenay’s hand clutched in his own and the word throbbing hanging in the air between them.

It was, all in all, thoroughly disturbing.