Page 6 of To Love and to Loathe
Willingham seemed not to realize that he was treading on dangerous ground. “Well, yes,” he said blithely, shooting a flattering smile at her. It was an attractive smile, there was no doubt, but at the moment it left Diana entirely cold. “You’re a widow, with a certain reputation…” He trailed off, clearly intelligent enough to realize that he would gain no favor by further elaborating upon that point.
Ah, yes. Herreputation. Diana was no fool, and was, of course, aware of the whispers about her among theton. She had, in truth, done much to cultivate such rumors—she had flirted and batted her eyelashes and worn revealing gowns because she liked the feeling of power it gave her. She was a woman in a society that thought women were helpless and weak, and she had spent her entire life subject to the whims of men. Now, at last, she was subject to no one’s whims but her own—she was a widow with a title and a healthy bank account, and she was young and beautiful and she knew it. Why shouldn’t she flirt—and more?
But it was the “and more” that was the sticking point. Because, in truth, her reputation was entirely founded on rumors rather than action. She had married, at eighteen, a man old enough to be her father, who had consummated their marriage for legality’s sake and then taken little interest in matters of the bedchamber from that point on. He had also, rather expediently, made her a widow.
And so here Diana was, young, full of certain… urges, with a reputation that preceded her and, in truth, no idea how to seduce a man.Or, rather, she thought she could seduce him quite easily, but she’d not much of an idea of precisely what to do with him once she’d lured him to her bedchamber. She had experience with the act in its most basic iteration, of course, and had a fair understanding of what brought her pleasure, but she lacked… finesse. And, as she was not a person who liked to admit to weakness, this bothered her.
With Willingham, at the moment, it seemed that little effort would have to be expended in the seduction. He was directing his charm at her so forcefully that she was surprised her legs hadn’t fallen open of their own accord. However, her momentary return to sanity had been enough to allow her to reclaim her naturally suspicious nature, and it was a wary glance she now leveled at the man beside her on the settee. Willingham was charming and flirtatious, it was true, but he was laying it on too thick.
She smelled a rat.
“Do remove yourself from my settee, Willingham,” she said briskly, proceeding to rearrange her skirts with such gusto that the man had no choice but to retreat to an armchair to avoid the risk of suffocation by muslin. “And tell me what your true plan is here. I’ve been out of mourning for positively ages and you’ve never so much as quirked a brow in my direction until now.”
Willingham sank into the armchair and crossed one leg elegantly over the opposite knee, his fingers drumming against the arms. All traces of flirtation had vanished as quickly as they had arrived, though Diana was distressed to note that she found him all the more appealing for their absence. He sighed heavily. “I should have known better than to try my usual tricks with you.”
“Yes, you should have,” Diana said severely. “Now explain.”
“I recently had a somewhat traumatizing experience.” Willingham’seyes turned round and soulful. Diana, unmoved, waved her hand for him to continue. “I was in a… shall we say,privatesituation with a lady of my acquaintance, and at the end of the proceedings, I felt obliged to tell her that I thought it time our liaison came to an end.”
Diana raised a hand to stop him. “Just to be clear, do you mean to tell me that you rejected your loverafteryou bedded her?”
Willingham blinked. “Well… yes,” he said, as though this should be obvious. “It would have rather spoiled the mood if I’d done so beforehand.”
“But you could have just told her and then left!”
“But I wanted to have one last time with her to remember,” Willingham said, his eyes misting nostalgically.
“But the timepriorto that would have been the last time for you to remember.”
“But I didn’tknowthen that it would be the last time. I hadn’t quite made my mind up, you see,” Willingham said, as though attempting to force a toddler to see reason. “But by the evening in question, I had decided, and so I wanted one last memory before it was all spoiled.”
Diana stared at him in disbelief. “But don’t you think it would all have been a bitlessspoiled if you’d ended things in a gentlemanly fashion?”
Willingham sighed. “Well, as it turns out, you may be correct in this case. She was… somewhat perturbed, let us say, when I told her. I had to dress in rather a hurry to make it out of there before she woke the whole house with the insults she was flinging at me.”
“You told her whilst you werestill in bed?” Diana had never considered herself to be someone with an overly strong moral compass—anyone who, at eighteen, forms a mental list of eligible mates and sets about seducing one with cold-blooded calculation cannot reasonablyclaim such an honor—but even she, it seemed, had her limits. “Willingham, I daresay you deserved every insult she threw at you, and quite a few she didn’t.”
“I admit it might not have been my best decision-making,” Willingham said, leaning forward to brace his elbows upon his knees. “I’d had a few drinks too many that evening, I should add—liquid courage and all that, eh?”
“So let me be certain I understand this,” Diana said, provoked to the unthinkable—standing!—as she spoke. “You appeared at the home of your paramour, foxed. You took the lady to bed. Then, whilst lying in her warm embrace, you ended your liaison.” She had begun to pace as she listed his offenses. “And then you fled whilst she gave you the set-down you so richly deserved?”
Willingham considered. “That is about the shape of it, yes.” His eyes tracked her movements back and forth across the drawing room. “Are you quite well?” he asked, genuine concern evident in his voice. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you pace before.”
“It’s been a very trying month,” Diana snapped, her footsteps continuing unabated. “First Violet spends weeks wheezing into a handkerchief, all to lure back a man who was already in love with her, and now you appear in my drawing room, panting all over my hand and describing your bad behavior in such detail that I feel compelled to slap you just on principle.”
“Please don’t,” Willingham said, raising his hands defensively. “Last night’s brandy is still sloshing about in there and I don’t think my poor head can take much more abuse.”
“Well,Icannot take much more of this!” Diana waved a hand expansively about the room. “Why must all my friends insist on behaving like utter fools? Next thing will be Emily eloping withthat odious Mr. Cartham of hers, and I don’t know what I shall do then!” Her friend Lady Emily Turner had been persistently courted by the owner of a gaming hell to whom her father owed a rather large debt. Thus far, Emily had succeeded in keeping a proposal at bay—and had, with Diana’s encouragement, been escorted by Lord Julian Belfry to a handful of recenttonevents. Belfry was handsome, wealthy, and had enough seedy connections that Diana suspected he would be more than a match for Cartham, should Belfry decide to court Emily in earnest. But with the way things were going lately, Diana had no doubt that disaster among their set lurked just around the corner.
“If we can return to the matter at hand,” Willingham said, rising and placing himself directly in her path, forcing her to halt abruptly. “I’ve not told you the worst bit.”
Diana threw her hands up. “Whatelsecould you possibly have done to make this worse? Shot the poor lady’s husband in a duel?”
“ThatI am innocent of,” Willingham said, sounding rather proud of himself. “I managed to escape the home before that admirable gentleman returned, sparing the lady in question that bother, at least.”
Diana, who knew well the way that servants gossiped, wasn’t certain that Willingham should breathe a sigh of relief just yet, but she held her tongue, curious to hear what his true complaint was.
“The lady… well…” Willingham looked, Diana thought, truly uncomfortable, for possibly the first time in her lengthy acquaintance with him. She leaned forward eagerly, curious in spite of herself. “She critiqued my performance in the bedroom,” Willingham said all at once, the words emerging in such a rush that it took Diana’s brain several long moments to piece together the meaning of what he had said. While she was puzzling this out, Willingham himself began to pace,and after a moment he continued to speak, her lack of a reply clearly making him all the more uncomfortable.
