“Lady Templeton!”

This, apparently, was a bridge too far. His grandmother’s tone was sufficiently arctic to quell even the boldest among them, and Diana fell silent, looking abashed as she sipped her tea. Jeremy was certain her expression was entirely feigned. He’d never seen Diana look abashed in the more than ten years of their acquaintance.

“Er,” Lady Emily said, clearly attempting to rescue what had become a near-unsalvageable situation. “It seems as though the rain might be letting up outdoors. Perhaps we could take a stroll about the gardens after tea?”

“A capital idea,” agreed Violet, who seemed to share Emily’s desire to escape their awkward teatime. “Fresh air, particularly fresh damp air, is so good for… for—” She broke off, clearly grasping wildly at straws. “The heart?” she offered weakly.

Audley cast an amused glance at his wife.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of such a thing, Lady James,” Lady Helen said with a sniff. “And besides, my slippers are certain to be ruined if I go traipsing about in all that mud.”

“Well, I did think a change in footwear might be needed first,” Violet said with as much patience as she seemed capable of mustering.

“I don’t know,” Lady Helen fretted. “I don’t know that I care to risk muddying any of my shoes—and what if I should slip and turn my ankle, and then I should be forced to remain here… well, indefinitely, really.” She cast a crafty look at Jeremy, who felt the blood drain from his face.

“Lady Helen, I should be happy to loan you a pair of my shoes,” Diana said sweetly. “We would all—Willingham in particular, I expect—be positively devastated by your absence from the party. It would be even more catastrophic than the sight of mud upon your lovely slippers.”

There was a scattered round of—rather halfhearted, it must be said—murmurs of assent from the group and thus it was settled: for now, tea; then, a walk. Jeremy eyed Diana suspiciously as she spread jam upon a scone in what seemed to him an unnecessarily self-satisfied manner. He had never in his life felt such a definite feeling of doom while watching someone prepare a scone.

She had a plan, he was certain.

And he was equally certain that he was not going to like it one bit.

Seventeen

Diana thought that it was a great shame she had been born female, for she would have made an admirable general. All the people around her were players on a chessboard, moving about the board according to her plans. She felt a nearly uncontrollable desire to cackle but refrained—not only would it alert her companions to her scheming, it would likely make her appear a madwoman.

Which, in all honesty, was how she was beginning to feel.

It was entirely Jeremy’s fault, of course—as always. He just made her so irritated that she was unable to resist poking at him in the hopes of provoking a reaction. She had to admit that the teatime battle of words had gotten a bit away from her—had she really discussed childbirth before the Dowager Marchioness of Willingham?—but all was back on course now, and Lady Helen was nothing more than a puppet dancing on Diana’s carefully hidden strings.

At the moment, her puppet was walking arm in arm with Jeremy, and Diana was already congratulating herself for this early success. Say what one might about the rules-obsessed world of the English upper class—and she had, on occasion, said quite a bit on this subject—but the rigid code of honor came in handy sometimes.

Such as, for example, when a lady tripped in walking boots that were at least two sizes too large for her, leaving a certain marquess no option but to lunge to her rescue before she toppled over into a nearby hydrangea bush.

And Lady Helen, being no fool, was certainly not going to let go of the arm of a marquess once she’d seized it. Diana wondered idly if Jeremy would have finger-shaped bruises all along his arm the next day.

Everything was, in other words, going just according to plan. Although plan might be an overgenerous term to employ for what was, she had to admit, a rather hastily cobbled together scheme. Hardly her finest work.

However, it would do in a pinch, and it was time to make her next move.

“Lord Willingham,” she called from where she walked behind the pair with Sophie, Violet and Emily just behind them. “Lady Helen appears to be limping.”

As a matter of fact, Lady Helen was walking strangely, but Diana was fairly certain that it was merely owing to the fact that her tiny feet were slipping around in the boots she’d borrowed from Diana. However, she was not about to let the truth get in the way of her matchmaking, the importance of which had been reinforced to Diana by a few unsettlingly perceptive looks from the dowager marchioness at teatime.

“I think perhaps she might appreciate a chance to rest,” Diana added, all solicitous concern.

Jeremy gave the lady on his arm a cursory glance before directing a sharp look at Diana. “Perhaps we should all pause for a moment to admire the natural beauty that surrounds us, then,” he offered blandly. Had Diana not been searching for it, she might have missed the challenging look in his eye.

It was a look that seemed to ask if she had forgotten with whom she was dealing—if she really thought he could be so easily trapped. She met his gaze with an entirely self-assured look of her own, refusing to break eye contact. She was not about to concede an inch to this man.