To his chagrin, Lyonel found himself worrying about her. Her lips had been nearly blue when they'd reached London. He winced at the ache in his groin and forced any more worries about her from his mind. He didn't visit Lois that evening.
He brooded.
"Most odd," Titwiller said to Kenworthy, casting his eyes upward, ostensibly at the earl's bedchamber.
"None of your affair," said Kenworthy. "Leave his lordship be."
But Kenworthy himself wondered and worried. His lordship was behaving most peculiarly. Yes, indeed. He knew, knew in his innermost thoughts, that his lordship was thinking about that Miss Savarol. He had taken her to Richmond today, Kenworthy had gotten that much from his lordship's groom, Teddy. What the devil had happened?
Lucia didn't screech at the sight of her bedraggled guest. She stared. She happened to be walking down the corridor when Diana was opening the door of her bedchamber.
Diana didn't want to see or talk to anyone. She wanted to dry herself, hide, and plot Lyon's downfall.
"My dear," Lucia finally managed, "whatever happened?"
The truth, at least some of it, Diana decided. "I fell into a stream near Richmond."
"I see," said Lucia, who didn't see anything. "I shall have Betsy fetch you hot water for a nice bath. Quickly, child, get out of those wet clothes. Where is Lyonel?"
Diana tensed from head to toe. "I haven't the faintest idea."
"He is not waiting downstairs?"
"Perhaps he is lying dead this moment, run over by a carriage. Or shot dead by a person he has hurt."
"Diana!"
Diana shivered, and Lucia quickly said, "Go, child. We will speak of this later."
She immediately sent Jamison with a message to Lyonel.
There was a reply, a very short note that said only, "Speak to Diana. Certainly she will tell you a tale."
But Diana told no tale, no matter how Lucia prodded. She was to humiliated. That evening she and Lucia attended a ball at Lady Marchpane's.
Although the evening was warm, the ballroom stifling, Diana was chilled. She dismissed the weakness.
She danced and flirted, and each compliment from a gentleman was balm to her miserable soul.
Lyonel strolled in with the Earl of March near eleven o'clock. His first view of Diana made him grind his teeth. She was laughing like a damned coquette at a doubtless inane comment from Sir Harvey Plummer.
"Lovely girl," said Julian St. Clair, Earl of March, following Lyonel's grim look. "Why don't you introduce me?"
"I will kill her first," Lyonel said.
The Earl of March merely chuckled. "She is very lively, is she not?" he asked, his look goading in the extreme.
"She is a miserable thorn in my hide," said Lyonel. "Come, let us have some of Lady Marchpane's dreadful champagne punch."
"As you like, old man," said the earl. "I do believe old Plummer just kissed the young lady's wrist. Can't imagine why she would allow that. Perhaps you should speak to her, Lyon."
Lyon wasn't a fool. He knew that Julian was well aware of Diana's name and her relationship to him and to Lucia. He said nothing, refusing the earl's dangling bait.
The earl found himself grinning not a half-hour later when he saw Lyon intercept Diana Savarol. His friend was furious, no doubt about that. Interesting, the earl thought. Yes, indeed, very interesting.
8
If fortune turns against you, even jelly breaks your tooth.