Page 66 of To Marry and to Meddle
Diana turned back to look at the fabric samples laid out before her. “Yes,” she said thoughtfully. “I do believe you are correct.” She chuckled a bit ghoulishly. “He’s going to look simplyawful.”
“Diana,” Violet said carefully. “You do realize it is going to be his wedding day, too? Would you not have Jeremy enjoy the experience, rather than have half the guests staring at him in horror, wondering if he’s temporarily lost his eyesight?”
“No,” Diana said cheerfully. “That, in fact, sounds like the perfect wedding day to me.”
“You’ll be the one who has to look at it, not him,” Emily pointed out, attempting to appeal to Diana’s practical side. “So aren’t you in actuality punishing yourself?”
“Oh, I assure you, the sight of him in this waistcoat will be anything but a punishment,” Diana said, clutching the fabric samples to her impressive bosom with an expression of starry-eyed glee upon her face. “It will, in fact, be a miracle if I can make it through the entire ceremony without bursting into hysterical laughter—but then, I suppose that was always going to be the case,” she added practically, and Emily couldn’t argue with this; Diana wasn’t really the teary, sentimental sort, even when it came to her own nuptials.
They were sitting in the solarium at Diana’s house—which would remain her house for only a little bit longer and would soon be occupied by her late husband’s nephew, the current Viscount Templeton. Part of her extensive wardrobe, in fact, had already been relocated to Lord Willingham’s house in Fitzroy Square, though Diana herself would not take up residence there until the wedding night.
They were due to visit Lord Willingham there in a little under an hour, in fact; Diana wanted to go room by room, noting down the changes she wished to make—Lord Willingham had apparently given her more or less free rein, since, as Diana put it, “gentlemen wouldn’t know how to decorate a house if their very lives depended on it”—and had enlisted Violet and Emily as accomplices. For now, however, they were sitting in the solarium, drinking cups of tea and watching Diana scrutinize fabric samples with an unholy amount of glee.
Emily thought, not for the first time, that Lord Willingham really ought to be applauded for his courage—it was not just anyone who could face marriage to Diana.
“The yellow will certainly be themosthorrifying,” Diana said,casting aside the samples and sinking elegantly back down onto her settee. “I’ll send that one off to his tailor at once.”
“That poor man,” Emily murmured, sipping at her tea, and Diana shot a grin at her as she lifted her own teacup.
“Speaking of poor men,” she said, lowering it a moment later, “how isyourhusband, Emily?”
Emily worked to keep her usual, carefully neutral expression upon her face.
“Perfectly well, I believe,” she said calmly. “He is at the Belfry this afternoon, watching a rehearsal.”
“Hmm,” Diana said, still watching her closely. “He continues to spend an awful lot of time there, then?”
“He does own it,” Emily pointed out. “I should think it rather strange if he didn’t.”
“On the contrary,” Diana said. “I believe it would be far less strange if he put up the financial investment and then left everything else to his manager—that’s how I understand these sorts of arrangements normally work. And yet Belfry seems peculiarly invested in the workings of his theater.”
“You know that he has ambitions for it,” Emily said, lowering her teacup. “I personally find it rather refreshing to find a gentleman of his background who is not content to merely rest on his family fortune and while away his days at the card tables, or at the horse races.” She blinked, realizing that might sound like a more pointed barb than she had intended. “I do not refer to Lord Willingham or Lord James, of course.”
Violet waved a dismissive hand. “I’m sure James would agree with you—have you never heard him moan about the gentlemen he used to meet with at Tattersall’s, when he was still running his father’s stables?Utterly tedious—with minds only for horseflesh and nothing else, he used to say.” She reached over to touch Emily’s arm gently. “I think it admirable that Belfry should care so much about his theater.”
“So long as it does not come at the cost of caring aboutyou,” Diana said pointedly. “You are quite recently married. I do not like that he should be away from home so often.”
“We do not have that sort of marriage,” Emily reminded her, gazing into her teacup and feeling unaccountably glum as she uttered the words, which were, after all, nothing more or less than the truth. She looked up to see Violet and Diana both staring at her, wearing identical incredulous expressions.
“What?” she asked, a bit defensively.
“Emily,” Violet said, adopting what Emily recognized at once as her Attempting To Reason With Someone Unreasonable tone, and which she felt somewhat resentful at having to be on the receiving end of, for once. It was a bit galling to be condescended to by someone who had just a few months earlier been pretending to have an inconsistently symptomatic mortal illness.
“Are either of you actuallyenjoyingyour arrangement, at the moment?”
Emily frowned.
“What do you mean?”
“Well,” Violet said slowly, “do you think you would be happier in your marriage if, instead of attempting to craft yourself into the perfect model of respectability that will earn the approval of all of the same ladies you’ve been trying to impress your entire life, you instead just did as you pleased and enjoyed yourself and your dashing husband?”
“It’s not a matter of what makes me happy,” Emily said. “We hadan agreement, and I won’t go back on my end of the bargain. We aren’t like you and Lord James, or Diana and Lord Willingham.”
“Do mine ears detect the sound of my own name?” came the voice of the very man in question. Lord Willingham entered the room, offering the ladies a rather exaggerated courtly bow and a roguish grin.
“What are you doing here?” Diana asked, standing to greet him.
“Standing, my cherished ruby?” he asked her, feigning astonishment, even as he snaked an arm around her waist to pull her close. “Are you feeling at all well?”
