He did not come the day after, or indeed that sennight. Serena ferried Diantha about to drawing rooms where she became acquainted with other young ladies as well as gentlemen whose flatteries made it clear that none of them had ever considered the merits of a rule like Number Six.
Kitty and her close friend, Lady Emily Vale, made her familiar with London’s marginally less social venues.
“I do not understand gentlemen,” Diantha said to a painting suspended from the museum wall depicting a grizzled old Venetian glass blower.
“Men are irrational.” Standing beside her, Lady Emily pronounced this statement as though it were the natural truth.
“C’est vrai!” Lady Emily’s companion, Madame Roche, sighed, swooping her black lace shawl about her shoulders and pursing red lips in a powdered face. “The gentlemen, they are not always speaking of the truth. It is tragique, some of the times.” She wandered away toward a painting of a winter landscape nearby that seemed to have interested Kitty.
Diantha studied Lady Emily, the clean edge of her profile, the clarity of her skin, the silvery gold locks contained haphazardly in plain pins. A self-proclaimed bluestocking and spinster at no more than three-and-twenty, Emily dressed with economy despite her parents’ dedication to high fashion, she required that others call her Cleopatra, and she went about with the most glamorous lady’s companion Diantha had ever seen.
“Do you really think men are irrational, Cleopatra?”
“I do. Most men are merely little boys in big bodies, prone to foolish games, overindulgence, and occasional cruelties toward friends and strangers alike.”
“Little boys . . .” Diantha drew in a long breath. “Do you recall the wedding of Lady Katherine and Lord Blackwood at Savege Park?”
Emily turned her emerald eyes from the painting. “Yes.” She had a way of looking at a person like she was thinking hard, always a small crease between her brows above the brim of her gold spectacles.
“The night of the wedding my stepsister held a ball. I wasn’t yet sixteen, but I dressed in my prettiest gown and went to the party. It was splendid, the music and ladies and gentleman all from town dancing so beautifully. No one took notice of me, of course, and eventually I went out onto the terrace.”
“I wish I had joined you. I don’t care for dancing, but Kitty is a particular friend, so I must have danced that night.”
“That night I wanted to dance more than I wanted to breathe.”
“Intriguing.”
Diantha smiled slightly. “The terrace was empty, so I danced by myself. Then a group of young men came outside and saw me. I’d known most of them for years—they were all local boys—so I asked if any of them would like to dance. I knew a lady mustn’t do such a forward thing, but I was so filled up with the music and thrill of the wedding day I didn’t care about the . . . rules.”
“Did any of them oblige you?”
“They said they would never wish to dance with me, even if there weren’t other girls around for miles. They said I looked like a sheep all white and spotty and round, and they made rude gestures. I shouldn’t have minded it, really.” Except that shortly before her mother left home, she’d called her round as a sheep. “But I cried, right there as they were laughing at me.”
“They were disgusting. I am astonished they were guests in Lady Savege’s home.”
Diantha shrugged. “They were normally all right. But that night they were quite drunk.”
“Miss Lucas, a man whose tongue goes astray when he is drunk is not a worthy man when he is sober. But it is true, strong spirits make idiots and cads of men.”
“All men?”
Lady Emily lifted her slender brows. “Know you an exception?”
“That night, when those boys said those horrible things . . .” Diantha twisted her fingers in the string of her reticule. “Mr. Yale rescued me. You are acquainted with him, I think.”
“Somewhat.”
“He was drunk that night too. But he helped me.” From the shadow of a tree beside the terrace where she hadn’t known he stood, he’d heard it all and come forward. “He told them to go away, and they did. Then he behaved with great gentlemanliness toward me.” He asked her to dance and became, irrevocably, her hero.
Lady Emily seemed to consider. “Perhaps a man must be cruel in his heart to be cruel when he has been drinking spirits.”
“Have you seen him?” She shouldn’t care. With Tracy’s pronouncement it didn’t matter anyway. But fear had begun to niggle at her, the specter of Mr. Eads never far from her thoughts. “Lately, that is. Here in town?”
“No. Have you?”
“I saw him several weeks ago. He assisted me with some trouble I was having. I had lost my maid on the road, and he helped me. He saw to the hiring of a traveling companion for me and escorted me to”—a magical place where she wished she were still, despite all—“my family.”
Lady Emily turned her attention to the painting. “I haven’t the least doubt of it, Miss Lucas. You see, several years ago he assisted me in a difficult situation as well. I was having trouble convincing my parents that I did not wish to marry where they chose. Mr. Yale pretended to court me so that the direction of their hopes would shift away from the other gentleman.”
“He did? And did you— Did you . . . ?”
“Did I what?”
Diantha could not ask what she wished. Emily was a noblewoman, four years her senior, and a bluestocking, after all. There was no telling if she still retained her virtue. Diantha certainly hadn’t been able to spend a handful of days with him without eagerly abandoning hers.
“What I mean to say is,” she managed, “you must have been pleased with the courtship—pretended or not—of such a gentleman.”
Emily’s emerald eyes took on a studying look. “My parents ceased insisting I marry their crony.”
“But didn’t they then want you to marry Mr. Yale?”
“Yes. But he charmed them so thoroughly they barely blamed him when his suit came to naught.”
“Oh. They blamed you.”
She smiled, but her gaze still seemed to consider Diantha carefully. Her hair sparkled in the sunlight streaming through the window. Lady Emily was wealthy, but she was not a sophisticate like her friend Kitty, nor a beauty. She nearly always had a book in hand, and even now carried a catalogue of the gallery exhibit. And Diantha had never heard her gossip, except now.
“Did he—” she ventured. “That is, I expect that he admired you greatly.”
“He was remarkably kind to me. But no, I do not believe he admired me in the manner you suggest. I think he felt responsible for me, although I never understood why, which of course brings us full circle to my original comment concerning the irrationality of the male sex.” She opened the catalogue. “Now, Miss Lucas, I have exhausted my patience for speaking about men today. I hope you won’t mind if we turn our conversation to a more edifying topic.”
Diantha knew already that she had been a responsibility to him. But here was proof. He rescued girls. As he had tried to tell her, it was simply what he did.
Wyn went to Yarmouth, traveling north and east as swiftly as the filly could bear. It was madness; he was remarkably unwell. Molly Cerwydn’s medicines continued to relieve some of his illness, but without the remedy of Diantha’s body there was only craving again. If Duncan Eads appeared on the road, he was done for.