‘I was flattered, of course, although I had many admire
rs.’ She simpered and Dita folded her hands together firmly—the urge to slap was tremendous. ‘Perhaps I was too kind and he misunderstood.’
Dita said nothing, thinking back. She had no memory of Alistair mooning about, love-struck, but then she had only been sixteen and she never saw him at dances or parties. But he had seemed different, somehow. That fizzing excitement, the way he was almost flirtatious. Had that been it? He had been in love and she had sensed it. Perhaps that had awakened her own new feelings for him.
‘Then another man declared himself and I was …’ she sighed ‘… swept away. He was older, more sophisticated, titled.’
The realisation of what Imogen was saying hit Dita like a blow. ‘You are saying that Lord Iwerne courted you at the same time as his son? It wasn’t after Alistair left home that he paid his addresses?’
‘No.’ Imogen produced a scrap of lace and dabbed her eyes. ‘It was dreadful. My lord found me alone and his passions overcame him. He held me to him, showered kisses on my face, declared his undying devotion—and Alistair walked in.’ She went extremely pink.
‘He was doing rather more than rain kisses on your face, was he not?’ Dita said with sudden conviction. ‘He was making love to you. Where?’
‘In the library,’ Imogen whispered.
So that was it. He found his father and the woman he loved in an act of betrayal and he walked out, furiously angry, and got drunk. And then I found him. And when she had given herself to him the disgust he must have felt with Imogen, with women in general and with himself, had swept over him. He had thrown her out of his room and the next day he had left.
Of course he had. How could he live in the same house as his father when he had seduced the woman Alistair loved? How could he accept Imogen as his stepmother after that betrayal? He had been in an impossible situation. Any other man he could have punched, or called out, but this was his father.
‘So he left and made a new life for himself abroad,’ Dita said, thinking out loud. ‘And now he is back.’ How hideously embarrassing for both of them. ‘But I am sure with tact on both sides you can put it behind you.’
‘But he still loves me,’ Imogen said. Dita stared at her. Impossible. ‘He desires me,’ the young widow whispered. ‘I am afraid to be in the house with him, that is why I must take refuge in the Dower House. I told him, it is wrong, sinful. I am his father’s widow. But—’
‘That,’ Dita said with conviction, ‘is nonsense. Of course he no longer loves you. Or desires you.’ Her certainty wavered a little there—Imogen was very lovely. No, surely Alistair had better taste now he was an experienced man.
‘Oh!’ Imogen glared at her. ‘I see what it is—you want him yourself and cannot face the fact that he is besotted with me. Well, you beware, Lady Perdita, he is dangerous.’ She sprang to her feet and swept off along the terrace, silken skirts swishing.
Dita sat and stared after her. ‘Dangerous? No, but you are,’ she murmured. After a few minutes she got up and made her way back to the drawing room. ‘Lady Iwerne was a little tired and went to lie down,’ she said. Alistair looked at her, questions in his eyes, but she produced a bright smile, incapable of thinking what to do about this revelation.
Alistair was charming to all three of them, saw them to the door, waved them off, but Dita had the impression that his gaze rested on her with speculation.
‘What on earth did that woman want with you?’ her mother demanded, the moment the carriage door was closed.
‘Oh, to poke at me and be catty,’ Dita said. ‘She is bored, I have no doubt—I do not grudge her the amusement.’ She fiddled with the pearls for a while, then asked, ‘Will she be moving into the Dower House?’
‘I imagine so. Alistair said something about having it renovated,’ Lady Wycombe said.
That sounded likely. A planned renovation for the Dowager to move into before Alistair came home with a bride was only to be expected. Surely, if Imogen felt threatened in any way, she would have fled there immediately. No, for some reason she was feeling the need to attack Alistair and he ought to know what she was saying.
Inwardly Dita quailed at the thought of discussing that day when he had made love to her, but if Imogen spread this vicious nonsense some of the mud might stick. How could she? she railed inwardly, more furious the more she thought about it. How she must have changed—or had Alistair been blinded by love, all those years ago? She would have to think how to tell him, but she must do it tomorrow. It would be a sleepless night.
Chapter Seventeen
Please meet me at the hollow oak by the pond, the note read in Dita’s impatient black hand. Ten o’clock this morning. It is very important. D.
Alistair studied it while he drank coffee. That could only be the old tree that he and her brothers had used as a shelter when they fished in the horse pond as children. Dita would tag along, too, but it was one of the few occupations that would drive her away with boredom after half an hour.
What did she want that was so urgent and that could not be discussed in the house? Had she thought better of her situation—or realised how determined he was—and had decided to accept him?
He suspected not. Dita was stubborn. No doubt a frustrating encounter lay ahead, but it would get him out of the house with its increasingly poisonous atmosphere. Alistair found himself longing for the moment when he could, with a clear conscience, leave the estate and go up to London.
He strolled down to the stables and spent an hour with Tregowan, looking over his father’s horses, but he found he was too restless to concentrate.
Was Dita unhappy? He missed her, he found, more every day. There was no one to wake him up with tart observations over breakfast, no one to make him laugh or to freeze him with a sharp look from green eyes. No one to stir his blood as only Dita stirred it. Green-eyed hornet, he had thought her that evening in Calcutta. She would certainly sting when he finally had her trapped.
Alistair shifted restlessly, changed his position leaning against the mounting block, and considered how long it would be before he could go to London and set up a mistress. It would be a short-term arrangement until he took Dita as his wife; he despised men who took marriage vows and then immediately broke them.
‘I’ll take the grey hunter out now, Tregowan.’ It was early, not half past nine, but he’d gallop the fidgets out before he met her.