Still, it was a desperate time. Scones could wait; arranging her companions like pieces on a chessboard could not.

She turned at the sound of footsteps—she’d been disappointed twice already, once by West and Audley, deep in conversation, and once by Emily and Belfry, suspiciously silent as they passed Diana—but the third time was indeed the charm, for it was Lady Helen now approaching.

Diana straightened and plastered on her best, sunniest smile. “Lady Helen!” she called brightly, waving—waving? O, the depths to which she had fallen in her quest to avoid emotional entanglement. But still, needs must—so energetically that Lady Helen stopped in her tracks, glancing over her shoulder as if to assure herself that these attentions were, in fact, directed at her.

“Lady Templeton,” she said, a note of suspicion in her voice confirming that however irritating she might be, stupid she was not. “I was just on my way to tea.”

“As am I,” Diana agreed. “But I thought you and I might have a word first?” She phrased it as a question, even as she took Lady Helen’s elbow in a firm grip and began to steer her toward the library.

“There,” she said cheerfully, closing the door behind her. Lady Helen stood behind her, looking distinctly ruffled, clearly about to object, so Diana barreled on before she could do so.

“I could not help noticing that some degree of feeling seemed to be emerging between yourself and Lord Willingham,” Diana said, strolling idly to a wall to examine a map of Elderwild and the surrounding countryside.

“Of course you could not,” Lady Helen said stiffly. “The deep emotion already present between us indicates two souls so wholly in communion, so perfectly in tune with one another, that it is as the relation between a great composer and his prized violin.”

“Mmmm,” Diana murmured as she contemplated gagging into the decorative urn on a nearby end table. “I could hardly have said it better myself.”

“It is as you said this afternoon, Lady Templeton: I have a poetic soul,” Lady Helen said smugly. Diana, with great effort, resisted rolling her eyes.

“I could not agree more,” she said, then tried a different tack. “Still, the Marquess of Willingham is notoriously marriage-shy, as I’m certain you are aware. His reputation—well, it is perhaps best not spoken of.”

“Yet do not they always say that reformed rakes make the best husbands?” Lady Helen asked brightly. “I am certain that he will be suitably tame once the noose is around his neck.”

Diana paused at this; given Lady Helen’s apparent eagerness to be wed, it was somewhat surprising that she seemed to view herself as the hangman and her future husband as her victim.

“My concern was more in regard to your ability to catch him,” she said after a moment, determinedly maintaining her light tone. “Men like Willingham… well, they’re not easy to snare. They have an eye out for all of the normal sorts of tricks. I was thinking perhaps you might like some advice, from someone who is a bit more intimately acquainted with him?”

Lady Helen’s gaze sharpened on Diana at last; she had been idly glancing around the room, her arms crossed over her chest, as though this conversation were not of terribly great interest to her, but it seemed that Diana finally had her attention.

“Yes,” she said slowly, drawing the word out. “I have been wondering just how intimately it is that you are acquainted with Lord Willingham.”

Diana considered pretending not to take her meaning but wasn’t sure she could manage it convincingly—after all, a doe-eyed innocent she was not. Instead, she decided to laugh it off.

“Willingham and I?” she asked, injecting just the right note of incredulity into her voice. “You must be joking, Lady Helen. The man and I can barely exchange three sentences without quarreling.”

“I’ve noticed that,” Lady Helen agreed. “But it does nothing to dissuade me from my suspicions.”

“Why on earth would I be here, offering to help you woo him, if I had designs on him for myself?” Diana asked airily, posing a question that some small internal part of her would also very much have liked the answer to, but which she had no notion of indulging.

“I don’t know,” Lady Helen admitted, frustrated. “It’s all very odd.”

“I’m offering to give you advice in pursuit of the gentleman you wish to wed, and you’re too busy asking me questions to let me assist you.”

Lady Helen laughed haughtily. “Lady Templeton, you cannot possibly imagine that I need help snaring Lord Willingham? I am the daughter and sister of an earl; I’m pleasing to look upon; I play the pianoforte exceedingly well. I am exactly the sort of lady a marquess should choose for a wife, once he decided to take one.”

“It’s the ‘deciding to take one’ bit that I think will be likely to give you trouble,” Diana replied. “Willingham seems entirely disinterested in the matrimony—not one month ago, in fact, he was willing to wager a substantial sum that he will not be married in the next twelvemonth.”

Lady Helen took two steps toward Diana. “I like a challenge,” she said, her eyes locking onto Diana’s own. “And even if I didn’t—even if I did need help—I can assure you I’d not beg the assistance of a widow with a reputation of her own.” Diana felt as though she’d been slapped; she nearly took a step backward.