Joan Wolf (17 page)

“Come along,” I said. “I’ll explain everything. But not here.” Diccon gave Martin and then Burford a look that probably kept them awake for weeks and then he turned and followed me across the floor and out the French doors to the terrace. Everyone pretended not to watch us go.

The terrace had steps leading down into a small garden, and we walked as far away from the house as we could go before stopping.

“All right,” he said then. The moon illuminated the blackness of his hair; his eyes were shadowed and dark. “Let’s hear it.”

“You cannot blame Martin for marrying Lady Barbara,” I said reasonably. “You had well over a year to make her an offer and you did not.”

He spoke very slowly and clearly. “Barbara is a bloody bore and she sits a horse like a sack of potatoes.”

“I agree completely, Diccon. But Martin thinks she’s wonderful and she loves him back, you see, but her papa wanted her to marry
you.
So Martin and I decided to make her so jealous she would agree to elope with him.”

There was a long, rather unnerving silence. “Are you telling me that all the time you and he were billing and cooing like two doves in a nest, you were only
pretending?”

I swallowed. “Er, well, yes.”

There was another silence. “Then I see I wasted my time in coming here.” His voice sounded very cool, very distant, but I was watching his hands.

“Diccon,” I asked softly,
“why
did you come?”

Silence.

I stepped closer to him. “I don’t love Martin,” I said. “And I turned down Lord Henry and Lord Stowe. There is only one man in the world for me. Surely you know that.”

“Valentine.” Astonishingly, he sounded uncertain.

I looked up at him in the moonlight. “Am I wrong?” I asked. “Don’t you care?”

“Valentine,” he said again. “Christ, Valentine.” And he bent his head and kissed me.

He had kissed me once before, a gentle and tender kiss, the sort of kiss one uses to reassure a frightened child. This kiss was quite relentlessly adult, and it left me breathless and trembling. It also seemed to convince him of my own feelings.

“I didn’t know,” he said after a bit. “You ran away from me, refused to marry me.”

“But that was because you felt you
had to
marry me. I loved you far too much to do that to you.”

“I didn’t know. I didn’t understand. I still thought of you as a child, I suppose.”

We had found a bench to sit down on. Or at least Diccon was sitting on the bench. I was sitting on his lap.

“When did you change your mind?” I asked curiously.

He kissed my hair.’ ‘I missed you like hell after you’d gone. I made everyone’s life miserable at Carlton. Finally, Ned said that you were in London and recommended that I go and see how you were doing. I think he knew what was wrong with me better than I did.”

Darling, darling Mr. Fitzallan.

“So I followed his advice.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “Christ, were they glad to see me go at home!”

I chuckled and kissed the line of his jaw. “Go on.”

The smile completely left his voice. “I was so unforgivably vain, Valentine. I thought I would see you, and perhaps, if we still got along as we used to, I would ask you to marry me again.” A note of savage mockery crept into his voice. “You had hero-worshiped me; I knew that. I hadn’t counted on your growing out of such a childish emotion. I just assumed you would still think me as wonderful as you used to.”

I kissed the other side of his jaw.

“It didn’t take me long to realize that you were not the boy-child I remembered. You were a woman—the woman I wanted. But by then I didn’t think you wanted me. God, how I longed to put a bullet through Wakefield!”

“Poor Martin,” I murmured. “You were so nasty to him.”

“I was the pattern of chivalry compared to what I wanted to do to him!”

I kissed his ear. “I had no idea you were jealous.”

“I was nearly out of my mind with jealousy. And not just of Wakefield. It’s finally what drove me out of London.”

“How could
you—you,
of all people—have been so unperceptive?” I kissed his other ear.

“But you are enough, don’t you see,” Diccon said through his teeth, “to drive a man mad!”

Five minutes later he unceremoniously pushed me off his lap and stood up. “If we don’t get out of here very shortly,” he said, “I won’t answer for the consequences.” He sounded almost as shaken as I felt.

I smoothed my dress with trembling hands. The roses had all fallen out of my hair and I tried to pin them back in again.

“We’ll emulate Cousin Martin and get a special license,” Diccon said.

“All right.” I was afraid the roses were crooked, but to be truthful, I didn’t much care.

“How pleased Robert and Georgie will be.” The amused note in his voice told me he had regained his composure.

We started to walk toward the house. “What will Mr. Fitzallan say?”

“I don’t think he’ll be surprised at all. Ned knows me pretty well.”

As we walked in the French doors of the ballroom, the orchestra stopped playing. It seemed as if a thousand eyes turned immediately toward us.

“Valentine!” said Grandmama. She looked at my hair and frowned direly.

“How nice to see you, Lady Ardsley,” Diccon said. He gave her his best smile. “Valentine and I are going to be married.”

It was just like him to inform her like that. It probably never crossed his mind to ask.

Grandmama, I am sorry to say, looked absolutely delighted. “Married!” she echoed. She looked at me. “To Lord Leyburn!”

“The one and only,” I said dryly, and next to me Diccon chuckled.

“Oh, my dear child.” Grandmama kissed me. “I always knew you would make a brilliant marriage.” She beamed at Diccon.

“Martin!” she called imperiously, and my cousin, accompanied by his bride, came over to join us. Both newlyweds looked nervously at Diccon.

“Lord Leyburn and Valentine are going to be married,” Grandmama informed them smugly.

“By Jove!” Martin looked thunderstruck.

“I’m so sorry your grandfather wasn’t well enough to accompany us this evening,” Grandmama said to me regretfully.

“We are going to get a special license,” Diccon told Grandmama. “It seems quite the thing these days.” It bothered him not at all that every eye in the room was on him.

Grandmama stiffened her back. “I have my heart set on Valentine’s being married from Ardsley Church.”

“She can be married from anywhere you like, Lady Ardsley,” Diccon said pleasantly, “but she is going to be married next week.”

Grandmama looked terribly upset, and Barbara and Martin exchanged speaking looks. I realized, with a sudden jolt, what they were thinking.

Poor Grandmama. And I rather felt as if I owed her a wedding. I put my hand on her arm.

“Two months,” I said. “We will be married in two months. And you may make all the arrangements, Grandmama.” I looked at Diccon. “Everyone will be counting on their fingers if we get married immediately,” I said.

He frowned. “Dammit, it’s your virtue I’m concerned about. Do you expect me to keep my hands off you for two more months?”

I thought of our recent interlude in the garden and saw his point. Grandmama and Barbara looked scandalized. Martin grinned.

“You’ll have to go home to Yorkshire for a while,” I said.

“What!”

“Yes.” I smiled at him. “It’s the only way, Diccon.”

“Christ, what do I care what everyone thinks?”

He didn’t care at all, of course. Neither did I, actually, but poor Grandmama did. And she had been terribly good to me.

“Two months,” I said inexorably, stepped on his toe, and looked meaningfully at Grandmama.

“Oh, all right,” he gave in. “I’ll paint the bedroom for you.”

I opened my mouth to answer and noticed that everyone in the vicinity had their ears tilted our way.

“That will be just lovely,” I said sweetly. “Why don’t we go into the supper room and get something to eat? I’m starving.”

“You should be. You look as if you’ve just been through a famine.” Diccon frowned at me. “Haven’t you been eating?”

“No. I’ve been pining. But now I’m hungry.” I put my hand on his arm. “Come along, Diccon.”

As we moved off together, I heard Martin say to my grandmother, “Val will keep him in order, ma’am. There’s nothing that girl is afraid of.”

Diccon heard him too and gave me a long, dark look that set my pulses racing. He bent his head toward mine. “Are you going to keep me in order, Valentine?” I gazed up at him and felt weak in the knees.

“No,” I said very softly. “I’m going to love you.”

“But not for two months?”

I sighed. “But not for two months.”

He smiled at me, very faintly. “Come along,” he said, “and I’ll stuff you full of lobster patties. I never have liked skinny women.”

Copyright © 1984 by Joan Wolf

Originally published by Signet (ISBN 0451157168)

Electronically published in 2009 by Belgrave House/Regency

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This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.