“Not only ladies. All women. Rule Number Two makes that clear: ‘A gentleman must treat a lady with utmost respect, consideration, and reverence, whether she is common or highborn, antidote or beauty, poor as a pauper or wealthy as a princess.’ ” She dropped her hands to her lap, a smile of pure impenitence shaping her luscious lips. “So you mustn’t go flattering Mrs. Polley emptily.”
“I shall endeavor not to.”
“Of course you will. And she will berate you for it. Now here, I like Rule Number One the best: ‘If a lady is kind of heart, generous and virtuous, a gentleman should acquiesce to her every request. He should deny her nothing.’ ” Her shoulders dipped. “But of course you follow this rule even for ladies who do not possess all these virtues, so you are an even more impressive gentleman than the rules require. Really, these might have been written with you in mind.” Her voice had grown softer, less animated. “Down to a one.”
The pit of his stomach burned. “What of the rule that requires a gentleman to ravish an innocent girl while he is in his cups?”
“No. That one is not on this list.” Her blue eyes turned up, glimmering with hope. “But we could add it.”
Wyn stood and left the library.
He did not remember that entire night at the inn in Knighton. He remembered touching her, but not how it felt to have her body in his hands. Amid the black of memory, he only recalled his inability to use her as he had intended in his blind desire. The thought of it now made him sick—the only night of his life of which he did not recall every single moment. That alone had made him suffer through fevered torture over the past sennight without complaint.
Now he found himself on the threshold of his great-aunt’s chambers. Dust lay thick on the floor, Diantha’s footprints crossing to the dressing table. Ever curious and full of adventure, she had come exploring.
He took up the bottle of perfume, cut crystal of the deepest violet that shone even in the dimness like a jewel. He had purchased it in Vienna. He’d traveled there supposedly in search of another missing noble girl, assigned to it by the director, given his orders by Colin, sent on his way this time without Leam, his partner, who had by then wearied of the work. But he’d known they were preparing him for something more, that this assignment was not like those that had preceded it. The girl was not truly the reason they’d sent him abroad. The real quarry, it turned out, was him.
There in the secret back chambers of the Congress of Vienna, the men who ruled Britain examined him. Impressed, they courted him. His skills were too valuable to waste on runaways, they said. Britain’s safety lay in its interests abroad. The director would release him and he would come to work for them. His future was golden. The boy who’d been beaten again and again for the aptitude of his mind was now, as a man, to be rewarded for it.
For three months in Vienna he got drunk on it, drunk on the praise of powerful men, the finest tobacco, aged liquor, women of aristocratic blood that undressed like any other women but seemed more enticing for being forbidden. While they offered their bodies to him, their husbands spoke loftily of ideals, of victories, and of the people around the world that would come to serve Britain. But all the while the Welsh blood in him—the blood that had fought for hundreds of years to remain free of English kings—kept telling him that the promises of these powerful men sparkled like diamonds but tasted like sewage.
He escaped, departing after the New Year and returning to England on the pretext that his great-aunt was ill, only to discover that to be the truth.
He remained with her as she returned to health, and all the while she exhorted him not to fear the pride of which his father and brothers had always accused him. He should be proud; he had accomplished everything he’d ever set out to accomplish by the strength of his arms and his natural intelligence. She told him to make the choice that best suited his heart.
He agreed to work for them. The Duke of Yarmouth gave him his first assignment: find a traitor and assassinate her.
But she hadn’t been a traitor after all. She’d been barely more than a girl, begging him to believe her story. Begging him for help.
He unstoppered the bottle and the scent rose to him. Closing his eyes, he saw his great-aunt’s sober eyes so like his mother’s, gray and wise and kind. But not always serious. She had taught him how to laugh. She had taught him many things, but the laughter he’d nearly forgotten. He had forgotten it until he encountered a determined young lady who was loyal and steadfast and strong, yet who loved to laugh, who knew how to delight, who sought happiness in every nook and crevice of the life she’d been dealt. She had shown him a sort of bravery he’d also forgotten.
He set down the perfume and returned to the library. She stood by the window looking out onto the dusk, still as a sylph poised upon her toes to spring into the air, but listening for him; she turned immediately.
“When I encountered Mr. Eads, I dropped the bucket of apples I collected,” she said. “In the excitement of seeing him off with his horse I forgot about it. But now it is becoming too dark to retrieve it. I spent most of the day looking forward to apple tarts, and I’ll admit I am disappointed over this turn of events.”
Her blue eyes sparkled in the fading light, quietly wise. She was no more an innocent girl than he was still the boy whose father had punished him out of spite. Rather, she was a determined woman with a goal and, with few words—carefully chosen to deflect the truth of what lay between them—she was telling him that she would not allow him to deter her from that goal, even now.
“Tomorrow we will walk to the grove and you shall make another attempt at it,” he said. “One final activity here upon the eve of our departure.”
Only the slightest beat of lashes revealed her surprise. She turned her face askance and peered at him from the corner of her eye. “And I would like to learn how to milk the cow.”
“Would you?”
Her lips twitched. Then she smiled fully, and he felt that smile in every corner of his body. He was, quite possibly, the greatest fool alive.
Kitty Blackwood could not arrive soon enough. If she did not appear and take Diantha away he would surely do something unwise and not in either of their best interests. Something quite thoroughly ungentlemanlike.
And this time nothing would stop him.
Chapter 18
“My gown is growing mold.” She held it up to the morning light peeking through the window.
“All that rain.” Mrs. Polley took up Diantha’s other gown. “And this one a shambles with no iron to be found.”
“Perhaps the mold can be washed out.” Diantha scrubbed at the misty smear on the hem of the pin-striped muslin, but it clung. The green gown truly was a shambles, torn at the hem and horrendously crumpled from when she’d followed Mr. Eads over the stile.
She sighed. She’d wanted to look especially like a lady today. Perhaps even as elegant as the lady whose house they camped in now. “We haven’t yet looked in the attic!”
“I’ll not go prying into other folks’ closets.”
“Mrs. Polley, you knocked a stranger over the head with a cheese crock yet you will not peek into an attic now in search of an iron?”
“It was a shame to ruin that crockery.” Mrs. Polley shook her head. “If I’d had a flatiron I would’ve used it on him instead.”
Diantha stifled a giggle and went into the corridor to the attic door. Wyn had taken Galahad out for a ride, and Owen was collecting eggs. Her feet were cold, but she could wander about in her shift and petticoat without concern for propriety. Wyn had already seen her naked breasts, of course, but he didn’t remember it so he may as well not have.