When the Duke Found Love (20 page)

“But I like this hat of Lady Diana’s,” he said, walking slowly around her stool and gazing at her hat like a connoisseur with a fine work of art. “The color, the ribbons, all those—those flowery things on the top. This hat
amuses
me.”

Diana watched him warily from beneath her hat’s brim. “Charlotte’s right, Sheffield. Lady Enid won’t want to copy me. It’s insulting to her to think she would. We’re very different ladies.”

“Indeed you are,” he said. “But I haven’t forgotten that hat, not since I saw it first in the park.”

Diana gulped. No one else knew they’d met that first time in the park. Charlotte was already raising her brows with interest.

“You’re mistaken, Sheffield,” Diana said quickly. “I’ve worn this hat but once before, and then only in the company of Lord Crump.”

“Did you,” he said with mild surprise. “Did Crump like it as much as I?”

“No, he didn’t,” she admitted. “I do not believe he liked it at all.”

“Well, then, there you are,” he said expansively, claiming the empty stool beside hers. “Everything is explained.”

Nothing was explained as far as Diana was concerned. She was sure there was some deeper purpose to Sheffield’s insistence regarding her hat. He didn’t do or say anything without purpose, and she wondered when this particular purpose was going to appear.

“Might we fashion another hat for you for Lady Enid, sir?” Mrs. Hartley said, refusing to abandon the chase. “If not identical to Lady Diana’s hat, then in the same spirit and whimsy?”

“I suppose that is the best path to take, Mrs. Hartley,” Sheffield said with a certain resignation. “Not the same hat, but similar. Lady Diana shall advise me.”

“I shall?” Diana said, startled. Now that Charlotte’s hat was completed with its new plume, Diana had thought they’d leave and she’d be done with Sheffield. She certainly hadn’t planned on lingering to advise him on anything.

“Yes,” he said, smiling, and confident that she’d agree. “You’ll understand the proper names for all these fripperies.”

Diana began to tell him no, that she’d no desire to help him choose a hat for Lady Enid, who wouldn’t really care one way or the other, but Charlotte leaned forward before she could.

“What a splendid idea, Sheffield,” she said, beaming at him past Diana. “I’m weary of you two being prickly with each other, and so is the rest of the family. If you can manage to be agreeable together here, then we’ll all be grateful.”

“Oh, we will, Charlotte,” Sheffield said. “Lady Diana and I can promise you that. You have my word of honor.”

He winked at Charlotte slyly, which made her laugh. Shaking her head, she turned away, back to her friend and Mrs. Hartley, while Diana was left with Sheffield. He’d rested his elbow on the counter and leaned his jaw against his hand, the better to focus entirely on her.

She wished he wouldn’t do that. She really wished he wouldn’t.

“Do you truly want to give Lady Enid a hat?” she asked, lowering her voice so no one else would overhear. “It seems a rather curious gift from a gentleman. Or are you here only to provoke me?”

He sighed. “I’ve given her a book written by an ancient Greek, which pleased her, and I’ve given her a ring, which was also well received. I do not see why a hat cannot be next.”

He hadn’t answered the question about provoking, but then he didn’t need to. He
was
being provoking, without even trying—if sitting here close beside her, looking vastly more beautiful than any man had a right to, could possibly define provoking.

She tried concentrating on his ear—an ordinary male ear, really—in an attempt to calm herself.

“Lady Enid and I may have only the briefest acquaintance, Sheffield,” she said, “but she strikes me as an eminently practical lady, and I am quite certain she’d never step from her house in a hat as frivolous as mine.”

He smiled, drawing her attention helplessly away from his ear to his face. “You see, that is why I require your advice. As a lady, you are naturally more astute about other ladies than I shall ever be.”

If even half of what she’d heard of him was correct, he knew far more about far more ladies than she ever could—not that she’d remind him of it here.

“Very well, then,” she said instead. “I’ll attempt to please Lady Enid’s taste, though mind you, I’ll offer no assurances.”

She turned to Mrs. Hartley’s assistant, who had been waiting patiently behind the counter through all of this. “I would like to see a hat with a moderate brim, of the finest Milano straw.”

The assistant nodded and brought out several choices. Diana chose the most conservative of the three, then asked to see purple silk ribbons.

“To match the amethyst in her betrothal ring,” she explained to Sheffield. “To show that you remembered it. Isn’t purple also the color of fidelity? Lady Lattimore will take notice of that, even if Lady Enid doesn’t.”

“You are a genius, Lady Diana,” he murmured, paying absolutely no attention to the ribbons. “What would I do without you?”

“You’d probably be charged a good deal more for your ignorance,” Diana said wryly. She swiftly selected a dark purple silk moiré that was neither too wide nor too narrow, and requested that it be used for the ties as well as for the edging that bordered and bound the brim. Next she chose several small clusters of silk violets as trimmings, to be sprinkled with hand-sewn glass beads like dewdrops.

“I want this hat dressed with elegant taste,” she explained to the assistant. “Nothing gaudy or coarse, to be sure. The lady for whom it is intended wishes to present a handsome appearance without being a slave to fashion.”

“Yes, my lady, we can make it so,” the assistant said. “Will you return for it tomorrow, my lady, or shall I have it sent?”

“We’ll wait,” Sheffield said. “I wish Lady Diana to approve the finished hat before it is sent.”

“Forgive me, Your Grace, but that could take several hours,” the assistant said anxiously. “A hat is not like a gown. Only one milliner may work on it at a time, and to maintain the quality—”

“Why don’t you pin things in place and then show it to me?” Diana suggested. “I’ll be able to judge well enough from that to assure His Grace.”

The assistant made a quick curtsey before she left and took the hat to the workroom upstairs to be dressed.

“I cannot wait until it’s finished,” Diana said, coiling one of the ribbons left on the counter around her fingers to give herself something to do that wasn’t staring at Sheffield. “When Charlotte leaves, I must go with her in her carriage.”

“You could come with me in mine,” he said. “I wouldn’t object.”

She frowned at him. “I could not,” she said firmly. “That would not be proper, as you know perfectly, perfectly well.”

He sighed, and shook his head. “True enough. You might be tempted to throw yourself upon me and kiss me again.”

“Hush!” she whispered fiercely, glancing around to make sure no one else had heard him. “What has possessed you to speak so?”

“No one is paying any attention to us at all,” he said. “Look around you. They’re all far too engrossed in the breathless pursuit of beribboned folly to listen to our tedious conversation.”

He was right, blast him. Once the sensation of the arrival of the Duke of Sheffield had faded, the women had returned intently to their own business and conversations, and while the shop remained crowded, she and Sheffield might have been alone in an empty field for all that anyone else was eavesdropping. Absently she released the end of the ribbon wrapped around her finger and watched it spiral wildly free before it dropped to the counter.

That was what she must do as well: stay tightly wrapped and not slip, not even for a moment, or she, too, would unravel and fall.

“No one will listen so long as you do nothing foolish to draw attention to yourself,” she warned, shifting back on her stool as far from him as she dared. Because they were in a crowded shop, he was sitting much closer to her than he ever would in a drawing room, his knees touching her skirts. No one else thought anything of it, but she was almost painfully aware of his proximity, the peril of all that potent maleness simmering beside her. “You must not draw attention to me, either.”

“Oh, I won’t,” he assured her. “I’ve given my word to your sister that I would be on my best behavior, and I couldn’t possibly break my word to March’s wife.”

The way he was smiling did not put her at ease. She’d forgotten (or tried to forget) his eyes, their grey-blue color made the more striking by his dark lashes. Whenever he smiled, the warmth showed in his eyes, too, and made it almost impossible not to smile in return.

“If you vex Charlotte,” she warned, “then they’ll all know. March, and Mama, and Aunt Sophronia, and Brecon, too. She’d probably even let Hawke and my other sister Lizzie know, clear in Naples, so they could be unhappy, too. You know how such things happen in families.”

“I don’t, actually,” he said. “I have no brothers or sisters, and both my parents are dead. Except for Brecon, I’ve been my own family for so long that I have no grounds for knowledge.”

She could tell he was trying to keep his voice light, to match the rest of their bantering conversation, but he couldn’t quite do it. His smile had faded and his eyes had become less teasing, and she sensed that, despite making a jest of it, he would much prefer to have a family than not.

“I’m sorry, Sheffield,” she said softly, unable to imagine her own life without her sisters or mother, and she longed to place her hand on his arm, or make some other little gesture of comfort. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” he asked, instantly retreating from the confidence. “It’s not your fault. It’s simply how things are.”

“It is,” she said, “but you needn’t be so—so fateful about it. My father died before I was born, yet I will always regret not having him in my life, to love and guide me as a father should.”

He was watching her closely, carefully, as if waiting for her to say something that would wound. “You have your sisters and mother still.”

“I do, and now you have us Wylders for family as well.” Why should he be so defensive? She knew better than to pity men, but she hadn’t thought there’d be harm or shame in saying she was sorry. She’d simply shown sympathy for his lack of family, that was all. “Whether you wish it or not, you’re bound to us now, too, through Charlotte and Lizzie.”

“So I have noticed.” He relaxed, his charming smile once again firmly in place. “I dally in France for a few years, and when I return, there are Wylders sprouting everywhere, like mushrooms after a rainy night.”

“Mushrooms?” she repeated, laughing in spite of herself. While it was not very flattering to be compared to a mushroom, his observation was so outlandish that she couldn’t help but be amused, imagining her mother and her sisters with pale, spreading mushroom hats on their heads. “Is that how you think of us?”

“In a way,” he said, clearly teasing now. “It’s rather apt, considering how quickly your sisters have sprouted on our family tree, and adding children willy-nilly, too. Worst of all, once you marry, we’ll have Crump there, too, bobbing away like a sour apple from one of the farthest branches. Faith, to think I’d ever be related to that man, however distantly!”

Now Diana was the one who grew guarded, wishing for all the world that Sheffield had not introduced Lord Crump into what had been a wonderfully silly conversation.

“You will be linked to His Lordship only by marriage,” she said, “and most distantly at that. And where is the shame in being connected to such a good and honorable gentleman?”

“Because he hated your hat,” Sheffield said. “That’s reason enough.”

Her hands flew up to her hat, as if to protect every silk flower and bow from disparaging men, especially in a milliner’s shop.

“His lordship did not exactly say he hated my hat,” she said. “Rather he asked if I liked it, and I said I did, and then he said he liked it, too.”

“Which is to say he hated it,” Sheffield said with relish. “Despised it outright, and wished it straight to the devil, never to be seen on your head again.”

Diana gasped, her eyes wide.

“Do not put words into his lordship’s mouth!” she exclaimed, doubting that Lord Crump ever wished so much as a flea straight to the devil. “I don’t recall you praising my hat, either.”

His gaze rose at once from her face to the hat. “But I do like it. I like it very much. Why else would I have wanted its twin made for Lady Enid?”

“Why indeed?” Perplexed, she lowered her voice and leaned closer to him, so close that likely the most exuberant bows on the hat in question were somewhere over his own head. “Pray recall who I am, Sheffield, and, more important, what I know. Why
would
you insist on giving Lady Enid such a hat—or any hat, for that matter—when in truth she won’t give a fig about any of your gifts unless they come from—from another?”

He frowned and did not answer beyond heaving a monumental sigh. Then he shook his head and stared down at the counter, lightly drumming his fingers on the polished wood.

It all seemed overly dramatic to Diana. “So is it another secret, Sheffield? A secret so heinous you cannot share it?”

He raised only his glance to look at her, leaving his face turned down in a doleful manner.

“It’s not a secret,” he said. “It’s more of a confession.”

“A confession?” she said uneasily. She could scarcely imagine the kinds of confessions Sheffield might make. “Are you certain Mrs. Hartley’s shop is the best place for confessing?”

“You asked earlier if I meant to provoke you,” he said, “and I did. I called at Marchbourne House, and when the footman told me you and Charlotte were here, I followed.”

“You asked for me?” she repeated, startled. The footman naturally would have told Mama, and Mama would have not been pleased to hear of it.

“I asked for Charlotte,” he said. “I guessed you’d be together, and you were. The hat is no more than an excuse, a reason for me to enter this shop. There seemed no other way to see you, considering how you’ve been avoiding me these last days.”

“I haven’t been avoiding you,” she said. “That is, I have been going about my own life, without thought of you one way or the other.”