Page 36 of To Love and to Loathe
“Why, Diana Templeton,” he said, placing a hand to his heart, “I never would have taken you for a revolutionary. Will you be handing out pamphlets next?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if you drove me to it,” she said sweetly. “The thought of a guillotine on your lawn does hold a certain appeal.”
He laughed at that, and Diana could not help but join in. The joke was undoubtedly in poor taste, given how recently English soldiers had spilled their blood to defeat Napoleon, and yet it was a relief to laugh with someone who shared her inappropriate sense of humor. Who did not chide her when she made an off-color joke, or expect her to be better and more ladylike than she actually was.
His laughter died after a moment, and he nudged her with his knee. “Move over,” he ordered, without a hint of the solicitousness any other gentleman would have employed with a lady whose bed he was hoping to visit. “If you won’t yield this hiding spot to its rightful owner, I shall have to join you.”
Diana knew, to the core of her being, that sharing a cozy, cushioned window seat on a rainy day with the Marquess of Willingham and his charming smile could only lead to trouble—and yet, she was already moving, scooting to the side so that he could fold himself up on the cushion next to her, twitching the drapes closed once again.
He looked considerably less comfortable than she did, which was unsurprising given that he had an advantage of approximately six inches of height on her—rather than tucking his legs underneath hisbody, as she had done, he folded his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them.
“How cozy,” she said dryly. He cast her a withering look. “If you are uncomfortable, my lord, I’m certain this old pile has a number of other corners in which you might hide.” She batted her eyelashes.
He scowled. “I’ll have you know, this window seat is perfectly comfortable when only occupied by one person.”
She smiled flirtatiously, because she seemed unable to help herself when she was in his presence. “I’d imagine there’s a way for it to be perfectly comfortable for two as well.”
He arched a brow. “Was that an invitation?”
“I think not.”
They lapsed into silence for a moment; for her part, Diana felt the weight of the previous evening upon her, and could not help wondering if he was thinking of it, too.
“What is this room?” she asked, partly to break the silence and partly out of genuine curiosity. She leaned her head back against the cool glass of the window.
“A sitting room,” Jeremy said at once, and she rolled her eyes, waving a hand in wordless indication that he should elaborate. He was silent for long enough that she cut a curious sideways glance at him. He was frowning slightly, staring with unusual intensity at the heavy fabric of the drapes that shielded them from view, creating their own private corner, hidden away from the rest of the world. His handsome face held none of its usual bored amusement, and there was a faint line between his brows. It smoothed after a moment, but she noticed a crease that remained even after the frown had vanished, indicating that such an expression was not uncommon on his face. And yet, Diana had rarely ever seen him frown. Was this another of his private faces, then?
“It was my mother’s favorite sitting room,” he said at last, and Diana, without thinking, reached out to place a hand on his knee. He glanced down as she did so, and she nearly snatched her hand back again, but some vein of—courage? Stubbornness?—within her prevented her from doing so. After another moment, he continued speaking. “She designed everything about this room—chose the wallpaper and which artwork should be displayed. Which furniture would be in here—much of it from her own childhood home. Every single book on these shelves was one that she had read and enjoyed, often many times before. She was a great reader, apparently,” he added softly.
“She died when you were quite young?” Diana asked—she knew the marchioness had caught a chill and fever one winter and never recovered, but she’d never heard Willingham discuss his mother before.
“When I was six,” he confirmed. “I can’t remember her very well—I don’t think she and my father were terribly happy in their marriage, but my memories of her with David and me always involve laughter.” Diana thought that that was a lovely way to be remembered—she’d been so young when her own parents died that she barely remembered them at all, though she did have one vague memory of crying over a skinned knee and being pressed in a warm embrace.
“Does anyone use the room now?” she asked, seeking to distract herself from her melancholy thoughts. “It’s perfectly maintained, but it feels… abandoned,” she said, for lack of a better word, still unable to explain the feeling the room gave her.
“No,” he said, still in that soft, serious voice so unlike his usual laughter-filled tone. “My father had everything covered in sheets after my mother died—said there was no point in paying servants to clean a room no one used.” His tone was mild, but Diana could hear the bitterness underneath. “My brother had it opened back up again, aftermy father’s death,” he continued. “He never used it, I don’t think, but he had servants come in and clean, made sure everything was in immaculate condition, should it ever be wanted. I’ve often wondered if he was preserving it for his wife.”
Diana held her breath, scarcely daring to breathe, lest she break this spell. After their conversation the previous night, she didn’t want to push him too much on the subject of his brother, but she found herself curious.
“Did your brother have an… attachment, then?” she asked hesitantly. She had never heard the previous Marquess of Willingham’s name mentioned in connection with any lady in particular, unlike that of West, whose aborted courtship of Sophie she assumed to be another casualty of that blasted curricle accident.
“Not that I’m aware of, no,” Jeremy said with a shrug. “He had a mistress at the time of his death—I know, because I paid her off rather handsomely once he died. He hadn’t thought to make any provision for her himself, of course—he was only twenty-four. Why would he think about dying?” There was a faint note of bitterness to the words.
Diana decided to press her luck. “When you speak of your brother, you seem… angry,” she said hesitantly, after trying and failing to come up with a better adjective.
Jeremy recoiled as if he’d been physically struck. “I’m not angry,” he said, an unmistakable note of defensiveness in his voice. “It’s hardly his fault that he died.”
“No one forced him to get in that curricle that day,” Diana said, and nearly wished the words unsaid a moment later, when something raw and dark flashed through his eyes. “I don’t mean to say that youblamehim, just—”
“In any case,” Jeremy said loudly, drowning her out entirely, “I thinkit was more of a hypothetical future wife who might use the room.” Diana opened her mouth, then closed it again; if he didn’t wish to discuss this subject, who was she to press him on the matter? After a moment, seeing that she was going to allow him to return to the original subject of conversation, he gave her a crooked sideways grin that almost,almostfooled her into forgetting the pained expression on his face moments before. “Gentlemen aren’t opposed to the idea of wives intheory, you see. Just so long as the theoretical wife never seems any closer than a decade in the future.”
“Does that mean,theoretically, that had I extended the time frame of my wager with you, you might not have been so quick to take it?”
“My dear Lady Templeton,” he said, “since spiting you is one of my life’s great pleasures, you could have bet me that I’d be married within the nexttwentyyears and I’d still have remained a bachelor, just for the satisfaction of thwarting you.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re a marquess, you know,” she said. “Youwillneed to sire heirs at some point.”
He widened his eyes in mock horror. “Are you implying that, at the ripe old age of eight-and-forty, I will be unable to, shall we say, rise to the occasion? I might as well kill myself now, if that’s the fate that awaits me.”
