Miranda Jarrett - Seduction of an English Beauty

Now that was true enough, thought Edward, his resentment bubbling beneath the conversation. Uncle Henry had more money than Croesus to squander on bits of broken ancient crockery, yet still he made Edward grovel and beg for every favor. But with twenty thousand a year, Edward would never have to ask for anything again, either from his uncle or his mother. He’d be his own man. Why, Mother would even have to bow down to his wife because she’d be a higher rank. Hah, how he’d like to see that!

He rubbed his hand across his mouth, imagining every detail. His wife, Lady Diana Warwick. His children, with a duke for a grandfather. His pockets, filled with guineas. How could he ask for more?

“God helps those who help themselves, Edward,” Uncle Henry was droning on, as pompously as if he were standing in his pulpit. “Remember that, and how you must always take whatever—”

“Consider it done, Uncle,” Edward said with more determination than he’d ever felt in his life. “By the time we leave Rome, I assure you, Lady Diana Farren will be my wife.”

“Is that how you wish the curl to fall, my lady?” Diana’s maid Deborah stepped back, comb in hand, to let Diana study her reflection in the looking glass at her dressing table. “Because you must wear your hat with the widest brim against the sun, my lady, very little of your hair shall show beyond that single curl.”

Diana sighed unhappily, touching the silvery-blond lovelock that hung across her shoulder. Deborah was right. Traipsing through yet another pile of ruins offered little inspiration for dressing with elegance. It was more important to dress sensibly, to hide one’s skin from the burning Roman sun while still keeping as cool as was possible in the wicked heat.

But in Diana’s eyes, the sensible dress was ugly and uncomfortable. And how was she supposed to beguile Lord Edward while bundled up in scarves, hat and gloves from her head to the tip of her dreadful, sturdy walking shoe? Swaddled away like this, how could she possibly inspire him to be more romantic, more passionate, more able to make her forget the stranger she’d kissed last night?

“It’s well enough, Deborah,” she finally said, reaching for her wide-brimmed leghorn hat from the dressing table. “I don’t even know if his lordship will notice.”

“Oh, my lady, what a thing to say!” Deborah clucked her tongue, taking the hat from Diana’s hand and pinning it into place on her piled hair. “’Course his lordship notices you. Any gentleman worth his salt notices as soon as he sets his eyes upon you, my lady, and that’s the good Lord’s honest truth.”

Any gentleman worth his salt. The stranger had noticed her from a distance, and for only a handful of moments, yet that had been enough that he’d followed her for the chance of seeing her again and then—

No . She closed her eyes, her conscience at war with her memory. She must not think of that man; not with interest, regret, longing or even curiosity. She must purge him from her thoughts forever, and forget how his kiss, his touch, his—

“Ah, my lady, look what just arrived for you!”

Diana opened her eyes just as Miss Wood handed her a bouquet of flowers. Late red roses, some kind of wild daisies, mixed with curling grasses and other local flowers she didn’t recognize, framed with lace and tied up with an extravagant bow of black and white ribbons. There was an effortless art to how the bouquet had been gathered, the costly roses combined with weedy wildflowers into a beautiful design that was unlike any bouquet she’d ever received before.

“Oh, Miss Wood, how lovely!” she cried, cradling the flowers in her hands. “Who sent them?”

Miss Wood was smiling so broadly that her eyes were nearly hidden by her round cheeks. “I should venture after last night that it was Lord Edward, my lady.”

“But there’s no card or note,” Diana said, searching through the leaves. “Did the servant tell you nothing?”

“They were brought not by a proper servant, but by a scruffy small beggar-boy, doubtless in the employ of the flower-seller,” Miss Wood said. “But they must be from Lord Edward. Who else could it be here in Rome?”

Diana didn’t answer, holding the flowers close to her face to hide her confusion. Who else, indeed? But how could a man who’d spoken so disparagingly of the “dangling moon” be inventive—and romantic—enough to combine these flowers in this way?

What if the stranger had sent them to her? She wouldn’t even have recognized his name. But as she breathed deeply of the bouquet’s scent, fresh and wild and still redolent of the fields outside the city, she knew—she knew —that the flowers had come from him.

“There now, my lady, didn’t I tell you?” Deborah asked, thrusting one final pin into the crown of her straw hat. “And you thought his lordship hadn’t noticed you!”

“Of course he noticed, Deborah,” Miss Wood said. “Now that you’re done here, would you fetch a pitcher or vase to put the flowers in?”

The maid dipped her curtsey, and, as she left, Miss Wood settled herself in the chair across from Diana. She was already dressed for going out, in the same practical gray linsey-woolsey gown and jacket and flat-brimmed hat that she would have worn whether striding about the grounds of Aston Hall or the Forum here in Rome. If anyone exemplified Sensible, it was Miss Wood.

She folded her gloved hands in her lap and beamed at Diana. “It would seem you’ve made a genuine conquest, my lady. Ah, the look in Lord Edward’s eyes when you returned to the carriage last night! He is besotted, Lady Diana, completely besotted.”

“Yes, Miss Wood.” Diana tried to smile in return. She and Edward had barely spoken on the walk back to the carriage, each of them lost in their own thoughts. She’d no experience beyond this with a gentleman who might wish to ask for her hand, but if in fact Edward were besotted with her, then he’d a mighty peculiar way of showing it. “He is a fine gentleman.”

“He is more than merely fine, Lady Diana,” Miss Wood said. “Last night while you and Lord Edward were inside the Coliseum, Reverend Lord Patterson told me a great deal about his nephew. Lord Edward is a younger son, which is unfortunate, his brother having already inherited the family’s title. But he does have a small income through his mother, the Dowager Marchioness of Calvert, and Reverend Patterson says Lord Edward is very devoted to her—a model son. It was her notion that Lord Edward come with his uncle here to Rome to continue his education. He’d never dreamed he would meet a lady such as yourself.”

“No, I don’t believe he did.” Diana looked down at the flowers, tracing the petals of one daisy with her finger and remembering how vastly more interesting the stranger’s conversation had been than Lord Edward’s. One had spoken with too much relish of the violence that had once filled the Coliseum, while the other had expressed a rare empathy for the same wild beasts who’d lost their lives entertaining the Caesars. “In fact I rather doubt Lord Edward has the imagination to dream at all.”

“Oh, that cannot be true, my lady!” Miss Brown exclaimed. “Whatever gave you such an idea?”

“He did himself,” Diana said promptly. “He perceives everything in Rome to be inferior to what he judges it should be. He seems incapable of accepting that there might be another way of doing or seeing things besides his own.”

“And you in turn should not be so quick to judge him, my lady,” scolded Miss Wood gently. “Come, come, Lady Diana! He is an educated gentleman, and his opinions are informed by deeper studies than you, my lady, shall ever be inclined to make.”

Diana sighed, and glanced up at her over the flowers in her lap. “You rather sound as if you’re taking Lord Edward’s side over mine.”