Before Jeremy could object—to multiple parts of this accusation, in fact—Audley was striding toward his wife, leaning over her to murmur in her ear. Whatever he said made her color slightly, and she cast a flirtatious look up at him through her lashes. She mouthed something at him and he planted a completely inappropriate kiss upon her neck before retreating. Violet, Jeremy noticed, watched him go, and there was something about this entire exchange that caused a pang within him that was as foreign as it was unexpected. It was clearly a sign that he needed a good romp in bed—something he had been tantalizingly close to achieving the day before, until he was so rudely interrupted.

Truth be told, when he had asked Diana to… well, to reassure him, he’d envisioned one evening of passion, after which she’d fall into raptures at his feet, declaring him to be God’s gift to womankind. The fact that this scenario was not remotely consistent with anything of the real flesh-and-blood Diana was immaterial. A man had to have his dreams.

However, after his discussion with her yesterday, he was beginning to have his doubts. Because, in truth, the assessment of him she had offered was not entirely off the mark. He was a marquess, after all, and before he’d become that, he’d been a marquess’s son. While he made a point of not taking advantage of desperate women—nor ones who relied on him for employment—the fact still remained that there was not a woman of his acquaintance that he did not enjoy an advantage over. Even a duchess only held her title by virtue of her marriage—it was nothing she possessed in her own right.

And, without making any pretense at false modesty, Jeremy knew that he was something of a catch. It had, at some point, become a challenge to himself over the years—what had started as youthful lust and exuberance had become something more. No sooner had he finished with a woman than he’d set his eyes on the next conquest—whom could he tempt next? A duchess? A Russian princess? The latest star of the stage?

Yes, yes, and yes, for the record.

And while he made certain that the ladies fully understood their arrangement before he so much as laid a finger on them—while he compensated them handsomely for their company (even the ones who had no need for his funds were the recipients of lavish gifts)—the fact still remained that he was one of the most powerful men in England. And they, regardless of their status, wealth, or beauty, were women.

And it was possible—just oh so slightly possible—that Diana might have a point. That he might not have been the recipient of any sort of honest opinion from the women he’d been with in the past. And while that stung his pride rather more than he wanted to admit, he would have been a fool twice over to ignore this chance to correct course.

With this thought in mind, he was half a second away from luring Diana out of the room on some invented pretext when she glanced up and, in a display of surprise that was so wide-eyed Jeremy was certain it had to be false, said in a simper, “Lady Helen! There you are!”

With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that told him nothing good could come of this development, Jeremy turned. Lady Helen was indeed standing in the doorway of the drawing room, accompanied by—God preserve him—his grandmother. The dowager marchioness, unsurprisingly, had a vaguely pained expression on her face that Jeremy would have found amusing had he not been so certain that his life was going to decrease in quality quite drastically over the next thirty seconds.

“Lord Willingham!” Lady Helen said in the sort of tone that, in Jeremy’s opinion, should only have been directed at puppies and children below the age of intelligent speech. “How positively delightful to see you. Your grandmother mentioned that we might order some tea and have a cozy chat in the drawing room, and I’d no notion that you’d be here as well! I thought you would have joined the other gentlemen in more… manly pursuits.”

“But my presence here is no doubt unsurprising,” Audley said solemnly, with only the slightest twitch at the corner of his mouth betraying his amusement. “Manly pursuits don’t really seem like something I’d be involved in, eh?”

Lady Helen produced a fan from some hidden fold of her skirts—Jeremy wasn’t quite certain how she managed the trick—and fluttered it before her face as she let out a shrill giggle. “Oh, Lord James, how you do tease me! I of course knew that you would not be able to tear yourself away from the presence of your beautiful wife, as you have seemed so devoted to her of late. No one could expect you to be more than a few feet from her side, ready to spring into action should she take a chill or experience a moment of faintness.”

Violet, who seemed to be trying very hard not to laugh, said, “It’s true that I have been feeling somewhat unwell of late, James. Your presence is much appreciated.” She coughed delicately into a handkerchief. Her husband seemed torn between the desire to roll his eyes and the desire to burst out laughing.

Lady Helen cast one last misty-eyed look at Violet and James, who were locked in some sort of silent conversation, and redirected her focus, alarmingly, to Jeremy.

“Lord Willingham, will you be joining us for tea?”

“Do say you will, Jeremy,” his grandmother said briskly, seizing his arm in an iron grip and giving him a look that, coming from another woman, he would have characterized as… desperate.

Lady Helen Courtenay apparently had unanticipated skills, if she was able to provoke that reaction in the Dowager Marchioness of Willingham.