Page 23 of To Love and to Loathe
“Lady Helen, I find myself restless,” he said suddenly, springing to his feet, nearly upsetting his own glass of wine. At the moment, it no longer held any appeal for him—he was too alarmed by the potential dangers attached to dulling one’s wits in the company of Lady Helen Courtenay. He had not forgotten that hand creeping up his thigh. He felt like a fussy virgin, but really, they were inpublic.
At apicnic.
In ameadow.
There were things that decent English people simply did not do.
Jeremy had not considered himself to be counted among the ranks of “decent English people,” but he was coming to realize that he had more scruples than he realized. Disturbingly sexual advances from eligible virgins appeared to be his limit.
Of course, had the eligible virgin been Diana, he doubted that he would have reacted with such horror. But Diana had not been an eligible virgin in a very long time. That was the reason he was able to anticipate another late-night visit to her bedchamber.
Shaking these thoughts away, he said, “Would you ladies care to accompany me on a walk?”
Lady Helen wrinkled her nose. “Exercise? My dear Lord Willingham, you must be joking.”
“For once, Lady Helen and I are in complete agreement,” Diana chimed in, helpful as ever. “Unnecessary movement is frightfully bourgeois, Willingham.”
In a moment of clarity, however, Jeremy realized that Diana was lying. Or notlying, precisely, but putting on the public persona of Diana, Lady Templeton, that he knew was only a small fraction of who she truly was. She had been playing the role for so long that it had become more and more difficult to distinguish between the public Diana and the private Diana, and he counted it as a small victory each time he was able to catch the deception.
He could, of course, say none of this aloud—it would have made him sound like a raving lunatic, or at the very least oddly fixated on his friend’s sister.
Which, of course, he was not.
He turned away from Lady Helen to face Diana instead. Offeringher his best courtly bow—the one he employed only on very select, important occasions, lest it send all the ladies in his presence into swooning fits—he extended a hand. “Will you walk with me anyway, Lady Templeton?”
Diana, of course, appeared to be in no danger of swooning. Instead, she looked mildly irritated. “Lady Helen does not wish to walk,” she said, giving him a mildly terrifying smile. “Why do you not remain here to keep her company?” She cast a look about them. “I had something I wished to speak to Violet about, anyway.”
“It can wait, I’m certain,” Jeremy insisted.
“But I know you would relish any opportunity to spend even a moment longer in Lady Helen’s company,” Diana said, her deranged smile widening even further. “I am certain the lady would be amenable to… to…”
She trailed off, clearly attempting to think of an activity that would meet with Lady Helen’s approval. Jeremy waited, amused; with a glance to the side, he saw that Lady Helen was watching Diana curiously as well. There was something shrewd in her gaze, he noticed with a slight pang of alarm; given Diana’s and his desire to keep their liaison a secret, he did not think anything that drew unnecessary attention to them was at all a good sign. And Lady Helen, at the moment, was definitely attentive.
His concerns were relegated to the back of his mind a moment later, however, when Diana burst out with: “Poetry!”
“Poetry,” Jeremy repeated, drawing the word out into more syllables than naturally inhabited the six letters.
“Lady Helen clearly has a poetic soul,” Diana said; it was a testament to how convincing she could be when she put her mind to it that, even now, clearly scrambling, putting in far from her bestperformance, she did not sound entirely absurd. Largely absurd, yes, but not entirely so.
“A poetic soul,” he said. He could not seem to help repeating everything she said, since at the moment he lacked the ability to form any sort of rational response to this claim.
“Of course,” she said. “Her appreciation of a soulful picnic clearly indicates the presence of deep… er—”
“Poetry?” he suggested.
“Feeling,” she said firmly. “In her—”
“Soul?” he asked.
“Heart,” she said.
“I must confess,” Lady Helen said, a startling reminder that they were not, in fact, alone on this blanket, “I have never heard myself described in quite such terms.”
“That is why you are fortunate to be in the company of the famously charming Marquess of Willingham, Lady Helen,” Diana said. Jeremy felt rather like a slightly bruised apple being shined up and turned just so to attract a willing buyer.
“Of course,” Lady Helen said slowly. Jeremy did not think he was imagining the note of doubt in her voice. “Nevertheless, I am perfectly content here on my blanket, and if Lord Willingham is so desperate to accompany you on a walk, Lady Templeton, it would seem churlish of you to deny him.” She flashed Diana a venomous smile; Jeremy could practically see Diana’s blood boiling—not to mention her contrary instincts flaring to life—but he intervened before she could work herself into too much of a temper.
“There you have it,” he said, turning to Diana in triumph. “I have been cruelly rejected by Lady Helen, but when faced with rejection from one quarter, I have turned to a likelier one in hopes of rescue.”
