“No.” Diana wasn’t staying. And she was too tired and angry to deal with him at the moment. She needed to figure out an approach.
By the time Eliza arrived, Diana was ready to be done with the whole Brookhouse family. But she knew better than to act hastily in her present mood. So she merely asked her sister to remind Geoffrey about how he should handle the end of the dinner entertainment.
Eliza’s gaze narrowed on her. “You’ve been doing most of the discussions with His Grace today. What has changed?”
Diana cast her sister a weary smile and lied for all she was worth. “It’s nothing to do with him or his family. I merely have a horrendous headache. And I can’t take another moment of being around people. You understand.” She grabbed her sister’s hand. “But if you need me to stay, I will absolutely do that.”
“No, no, of course not.” Eliza cradled Diana’s hand in both of her own. “You have had a very long day—”
“So have you,” Diana said.
“But I haven’t been going neck or nothing for the last three weeks the way you have been. Go home. Besides, you know as well as I do that Verity and I have more than once asked to be allowed to slip off before the end of a social occasion. You never have. So I’m sure Verity would heartily agree it’s your turn.”
“Thank you, Eliza,” Diana said softly and kissed her cheek. “I won’t forget this.”
“I won’t let you,” Eliza said, then laughed. “Now, go on with you. I must find our grumpy client and make sure he does his duty by his sister.”
Eliza left, and Diana went to fetch her work bag, wherein lay the dress she’d worn earlier, her hussif, with its sewing implements, and assorted scraps of fabric for repairing Rosy’s gown and reticule. Diana had stashed the bag behind a sofa, knowing no one would notice it there. But just as she’d retrieved it, she heard a man clear his throat. When she whirled to see who it was, she found the duke himself in the doorway.
The sight of him briefly caught her off guard. Then she dropped into a deep curtsy. “Your Grace. Did you require something?”
He flinched. “Diana . . .” he said and came toward her.
She backed up a step.
That seemed to give him pause, for he stiffened. “I was told you needed to speak to me.”
“Not any longer. Not now that I know you deliberately misled me earlier, and let me believe a lie.” She picked up her bag and waited for him to step aside. “I suppose Eliza has already told you what to do for the remainder of the evening. If not, she will. For myself, I have naught to say to you, Your Grace, so if you could please stop blocking the doorway . . .”
He advanced into the room, but didn’t exactly move out of her way. “Forgive me, Diana. I didn’t mean to imply earlier that I was betrothed. I misspoke.”
“Misspoke.” She snorted. “After your sister expressed surprise when hearing of your fiancée, I gathered that you misspoke. So you aren’t officially engaged. Are you secretly engaged? Secretly married?”
“I can hardly keep an ordinary secret from my sister and mother. I certainly couldn’t keep that sort of secret.”
That opened the floodgates for some reason, and her hurt and mortification came pouring out. “I don’t know which is worse: fearing I was enjoying the attentions of a man who’s actually engaged to another or knowing that the selfsame man deliberately chose to let my misapprehension stand rather than admit the truth of why he doesn’t wish to involve himself with me.”
“The truth!” He turned to look out the door before closing it. “What truth would that be, pray tell?”
At the moment, she was too frustrated to care that her reputation would suffer if she were found alone with him in here with the door closed. “I have no idea. You didn’t say, remember? But I’ve considered a number of possibilities. Were you offended by my wanton behavior on the terrace, even though you were the one to instigate it? Did you think me too lofty to marry a man who once worked for a living? Did you perhaps find my red hair appalling?”
“None of those, good God!” he protested. “Wait, there are men who find your red hair appalling? What is wrong with them?”
“Do not change the subject!” she cried. “If none of those reasons is the correct one, perhaps you would have the decency to tell me what the correct one is. And why would you even assume I wanted to marry you when I have never said anything of the kind?”
“I was just . . . I didn’t consider . . .”
“No, you didn’t consider my feelings one whit. You could have just told me you weren’t interested in any sort of dalliance between the two of us.” She swallowed hard. “Trust me, that would have ended matters right there. You may not realize this, but I have never before muddied the waters with a client by changing our business arrangement into a personal one. If that made you uncomfortable, all you had to do was say so. Whatever you may think of me, I’m not the sort of woman to engage in underhanded tactics to entice a man into marriage.”
“I never thought you were. Our encounter caught me by surprise, that’s all. I’m not used to . . . dealing with women of the fashionable set, as you must have noticed by now.”
“Oh, I have definitely noticed that,” she said dryly. “Everyone around you has noticed that. The queen herself has probably noticed that. But I also took you for the honorable gentleman you claimed to be, not one who would let a woman assume she’s been dallying with the fiancé of another woman.”
“I know. You’re right. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“No, you shouldn’t have.”
He dragged his hand through his hair. He had a bad habit of mussing his hair, and she hated that she found it so endearing. “The thing is,” he said, “I can’t tell you why I’m not free to marry, beyond saying I’m drowning in responsibilities at present. Between learning the rules for ducal behavior, settling the properties of my late predecessor, trying to manage Stockdon and Sons and my current projects, and making sure Rosy and my mother end up in a good situation, I am at my wit’s end.”
“I have a similar set of weighty responsibilities,” she said. “Yet I did not imply I was ‘not free to marry.’ Indeed, have I once said anything about marriage to you at all?”
“No,” he said gruffly. “But most women—”
“Even you will agree I am not most women,” she said before he could say anything to make her even angrier at him than she already was. She would be sorely tempted to brain him with her bag if he did.
Not that it would do any good. He had much too thick a skull for anything to penetrate.
“And to think,” she said, as she walked past him toward the door, “I actually considered having you tutor me in the ways of passion, so I could decide whether I did wish to marry someday. Obviously, that would have been a huge mistake.” She opened the door and paused to look back at him. “I suppose I’ll have to find some other man to tutor me. Do let me know if you have anyone to recommend for the post.”
She had the enormous satisfaction of seeing his jaw drop before she marched off down the hall. So he’d thought to mislead her, had he? Well, he would never do that again. She would make sure of it.