Page 70 of To Love and to Loathe
Even as the thought flitted across his mind, he saw Diana herself murmur something in Violet’s ear and begin to make her way to the corner of the room. His eyes followed her movements without any conscious thought on his part; after a moment, his grandmother noticed his attention was fixed elsewhere and glanced over her shoulder.
“Ah,” she said, in a tone of great smugness.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Jeremy asked grumpily, tearing his eyes from Diana with great difficulty to focus once more on the dowager marchioness, who was regarding him with a mixture of exasperation, amusement, and what he very much feared was pity.
“Why don’t you go after her?” she asked.
“I’m fairly certain my company wouldn’t be welcome at present,” Jeremy said, his mind once again returning to the evening before. God, how he’d bungled things.
“Well, you can’t hope to remedy things without speaking to her, can you?” his grandmother asked practically. “And youdowish to do so, I take it?”
Jeremy opened his mouth to deny this—to offer some carefree, blatantly untrue remark about it not much mattering to him one way or the other. To insist that Diana was simply a woman he enjoyed bantering with, flirting with, and nothing more—but all at once, he didn’t have the energy. What was the point in lying any longer? He wanted her quite desperately, and just yesterday had been prepared to go to somewhat alarming lengths to keep her. Why bother denying that fact?
“I do,” he acknowledged, and his grandmother’s face lit up with glee. He frowned at her, something niggling at his mind. “I thought you wanted me to marry Lady Helen, though.” His frown deepened. “You mentioned her as a marriage prospect more than once.” He didn’tknow why he ever bothered to attempt to keep pace with the motivations of women; doing so seemed to be a nearly impossible task.
His grandmother snorted. “Of course I didn’t. What sort of a fool do you take me for? But if that horrid creature’s attempts to seduce you made you realize Lady Templeton was right there under your nose, well, who was I to resist suggesting the idea to you? Though,” she added, her gaze flicking across the room to where Lady Helen was in conversation with Rothsmere, “I must say, she’s barely looked your way all night. I’m beginning to wonder if she won’t be at all heartbroken if she finds out your affections are otherwise engaged.”
“I believe you are entirely correct,” Jeremy said, deciding it wisest to leave it at that. He glanced over his grandmother’s shoulder and saw that Diana had vanished. He had to make things more right between them, even if she wouldn’t forgive him for the night before. He had to at least try.
“I must ask you to excuse me,” he said shortly, and his grandmother waved him off cheerfully, not displaying the slightest hint of surprise at his unusual behavior. He gave a short bow and crossed the room to slip out the door. He looked left and right down the hallway; seeing the train of Diana’s dress vanishing around a corner to the left, he set off in pursuit. Rounding the corner, he saw Diana pause as she walked past an open doorway, then duck inside.
Jeremy paused in the doorway, watching her. Of course she’d stop in this room. It was the portrait gallery.
She moved slowly from painting to painting, standing very close to each one, only a few inches separating the tip of her nose from the brushstrokes on the canvas. After scrutinizing a work at close proximity, she stepped back, taking in the whole scene, then moved back farther still, as if to see what impression it made from a distance.
He stood there watching her for a couple of minutes before the sudden stiffening of her shoulders indicated her awareness of his presence. She did not turn to look at him, but he pushed himself upright from where he’d been leaning with one shoulder propped in the doorway and walked slowly toward her. She kept her gaze firmly fixed on the painting before her—a Rubens, if he wasn’t mistaken—and remained silent even as he drew up alongside her.
“I want my paintings to make people feel the way this makes me feel,” she said at last, her gaze still fixed on the canvas, which depicted a hunt scene, bold strokes of white and gray creating an overcast sky through which an eerie light filtered down on the scene below. Though Diana spoke quietly, the room was silent around them and every word was crisp and clear.
“And how does it make you feel?”
“Alive,” she said without hesitation. “The way he’s made the sky balance out the landscape below—the use of light—it feels so vivid and real. I want everything I paint to feel like this.” She inhaled sharply and turned to him. She opened her mouth to speak, but her gaze caught and fixed on something behind him and she moved past him, drawing up before a small painting on the opposite wall. Most of the paintings in this room were either works by masters—like the Rubens she’d been admiring—that spoke to the Overingtons’ power and wealth in possessing them, or stiff, formal portraits of family members of various generations.
The painting Diana was examining with great interest was a portrait, but there was nothing stiff or formal about it. It depicted two young boys sitting side by side atop a blanket in the grass. Sunshine beat down upon them, making their identical mops of golden hair gleam in the light. One boy appeared to be about seven or eight, theother a couple of years younger; the elder boy had his arm slung casually around the younger boy’s shoulders, and they wore the bright, happy smiles of childhood.
“You and David,” Diana said softly; it wasn’t a question.
“Painted by my mother,” he said, moving to stand next to her. “The summer before she died.”
“I’d forgotten how much the two of you resembled each other,” she said, her eyes still fixed on the artwork before her.
“Yes. I—” He hesitated, then nodded at the portrait next to it, which was significantly larger and in a gilt frame. “It was traditional for the heir to be painted on his eighteenth birthday—that’s David’s portrait just there.” He looked at both versions of his brother—the child David, with his arm around Jeremy, and David at eighteen, handsome and proud. The sight of his brother caused a pang of sorrow, but it was made more tolerable by Diana’s presence at his side. “I’ve never been painted since I inherited the title. The idea of the two portraits hanging there, side by side, with us looking so much alike, I just didn’t think—” He broke off, because he had the most curious feeling that if he continued speaking he would begin to weep. He took a deep breath. “I didn’t think I could bear it. A constant reminder that I was here, with the title that should be his, doing the job that should be his, all because he was a bloody idiot who couldn’t say no to a challenge.” His voice darkened with anger, but he didn’t try to suppress it—not here, not with her. For so long, he had been berating himself—not good enough, not deserving enough, to hold his brother’s title. Because if he was angry at himself, then he couldn’t be angry at David.
It was she who had made him realize this—that he could be angry with his brother and not love him any less. She who had givenhim this gift. He loved her—for this, and for so much else. And now, he knew, she loved him, too. Was he really going to throw that all away?
Diana turned to face him slowly, her eyes wide. He stared back at her, not understanding the cause of her expression, until she said, “You’ve not been painted since David’s death?”
“No,” he said, “not until…”Not until you.He didn’t finish the sentence, but the words hung there in the air, understood by them both.
“Jeremy,” she said, her gaze on him intent, “why did you follow me?”
It was a typically Diana sort of question. Nothing coy or timid about it—simple and straightforward and to the point, as though she valued her own time too much to waste it on niceties.
“Because…” He trailed off. Because he missed her. Because he wanted her. Because he’d ruined everything.
“Because I love you,” he said, the words coming out of him in a rush. “Because you were brave yesterday, and I was an ass, and you deserve better. Because I was afraid to tell you how I felt, I was afraid I couldn’t be the person you think you see in me—but you deserve someone who isn’t afraid. Because I’ve spent the past six years trying not to think about David, about all the ways that I’m not measuring up to him, about all the ways I’m still angry with him—and you’ve made me realize it’s all right. I feel like… likeJeremyagain when I’m around you. And it feels like that’s enough.”
He didn’t know quite how it happened, but a moment later, Diana was in his arms—or he was in hers—and his cheek was pressed against her hair and her arms were tight around his waist and one of them was trembling and he had an awful feeling that it wasn’t her.
