Chapter 25 #2
“Georgina has gone to visit her parents for two days,” he said.
“I was meant to spend the afternoon pretending to enjoy my own company, but then I heard you had refused Emma’s invitation and had not been seen anywhere.
I thought that did not sound like you at all.
” His gaze searched her face. “Now I can see that I was right.”
Diana tried to smile, but her lips would not behave properly. The smile she managed felt fragile, poorly assembled, likely to collapse under the slightest strain.
“You have become absurdly observant.”
“I have always been observant where you are concerned.”
The words were gentle, spoken with the easy warmth of long friendship, yet something in them lingered longer than usual.
She only looked away, toward the fire that had burned low in the grate, and hated that the room still seemed touched by absence, as though every chamber in the house now held the outline of Alexander’s body, whether he stood in it or not.
Martin’s tone softened. “Diana.”
That did it.
He said her name like it came straight from him, unguarded, the sound of it rough with feeling. It held something real that made it clear he saw her as she was, not as a title or a role.
She clasped her hands more tightly before her, trying to still them. “I am perfectly well.”
“No, you are not.” The answer came so quickly, and with such unembarrassed certainty, that she looked up at him at once.
Martin’s expression had changed. The easy friendliness remained, but beneath it lay something steadier and far more serious.
“You can dismiss half of London with one cool glance when you choose,” he said quietly, his arms rising almost as if to embrace her, before falling back at his sides. “But you cannot look like this and expect me to believe you are well.”
Heat rose to Diana’s face at once, feeling too exposed, but still grateful for his attentiveness.
“And how,” she asked, trying to recover some portion of her dignity, “do I look?”
Martin’s eyes moved over her slowly, almost sad.
“You look,” he said at last, “like a woman who has been trying not to break and is beginning to lose the battle.”
The words entered her so cleanly that for a moment she could not breathe.
That was exactly it.
That was the hideous truth of it. She had been trying not to break. Over breakfast trays left untouched. Over corridors, carefully timed so as not to cross paths with her own husband.
Her throat tightened painfully.
Martin saw it at once. “Diana.”
She looked away from him again, and this time it was because she could no longer trust her face.
“Please do not,” she said, though even to her own ears the words sounded more like a plea than a command. “I have had enough of being looked at as though I am a creature to be pitied.”
“I am not pitying you.” His voice came gentler now, warmer.
She became aware of him standing only a short distance away, of the warmth of another human presence entering the cold, aching little world she had been inhabiting alone.
“What then?” she asked, still not looking at him.
“I am worried for you.”
That should not have hurt, but worry implied care, and care had become such a dangerous thing of late. Martin stood in her drawing room with honest concern in his voice, and all Diana could think was how terribly tired she was.
She let out a breath that shook at the edges. “You should not have come.”
“Perhaps not,” he said softly. “But I am very glad I did.”
That undid her more than any grand declaration might have done. The tears gathered fast, stinging, while she stood there with her pride screaming at her not to let him see her like this.
But Martin had known her too long. He had seen her through the cold politeness of her marriage, through the year of whispers, through evenings when she had smiled over wine while the ton speculated behind fans.
He was not a stranger. He was one of the very few people before whom she had never felt required to perform cleverness or composure unless she chose to.
When the first tear slipped free, she shut her eyes at once, angry with herself for it.
Martin moved then.
“Come here,” he murmured.
Diana ought to have refused. A married woman did not step into another man’s comfort, however old the friendship, however private the misery. Yet the thought of refusal required more strength than she possessed.
He drew her gently toward the sofa and sat beside her, when his hand closed around hers with brotherly warmth, and his thumb brushed once over her glove.
“I am sorry,” she whispered, ashamed the moment the words left her mouth.
“For what?”
“For being such poor company. For…” Her breath caught. “For this.”
“There is nothing here to apologize for.” His answer came firm, almost offended.
Diana laughed faintly through the tears, the sound small and broken. “You say that now. Wait until I begin truly behaving like a tragic heroine.”
Martin’s hand tightened around hers. “Then I shall endure it bravely.”
She did laugh then, if only a little, and hated that the small sound came wrapped in tears.
She pressed a hand to her eyes, willing herself back toward restraint, but the pressure of the past week had lodged too deeply. Her chest hurt. Her head hurt. Even her skin felt too tender, too aware, as though every memory of Alexander had become a bruise pressed just beneath it.
Martin sat beside her in patient silence for a few moments, waiting her out, and in that silence she became horribly conscious of how starved she had become for simple gentleness that did not come sharpened by conflict.
“I thought,” she said at last, not intending the words and yet unable to stop them once they began, “that I had grown rather accomplished at enduring disappointment.”
Martin turned slightly toward her. “Diana—”
“No, let me say it. Please.” She swallowed hard. “I thought I knew exactly what sort of marriage I had. It was a poor one, a humiliating one, but at least it was clear. Then everything changed, and I…” Her voice trembled, and she hated it. “I allowed myself to be a fool.”
He was very still beside her. “You are not a fool.”
“I am. A spectacular one.” She stared down at her lap, at the uselessness of her own hands. “Do you know what is worse? That for a little while I believed…” She stopped, because she could not bear to say it plainly.
Martin’s voice dropped. “Believed what?”
That he wanted me. That he might choose me. That perhaps I am a little more than an asset after all.
Diana’s face burned. She could not say any of it aloud, not even to a friend.
She only shook her head, and another tear escaped despite her best efforts.
Martin cursed softly under his breath, not at her, but for her. “He has hurt you more deeply than I imagined.”
The tenderness in his tone made her chest crumple inward.
“Yes,” she whispered.
For a moment, neither of them moved. The room seemed hushed around their quiet misery, the late afternoon light softening at the windows.
Martin’s hand remained around hers, steady and warm, and Diana became aware that she had not felt truly comforted in so long that the sensation itself seemed foreign.
“You cannot remain in this room and think until you make yourself ill,” he said at last.
She gave a watery little laugh. “I suspect I have already accomplished that.”
“I am serious.” He leaned back slightly, just enough to look at her properly, his expression now gentle but resolved. “Come with me.”
She blinked. “What?”
“Out. For air.” His mouth softened at one corner in a poor imitation of lightness. “I promise not to abduct you. At least not before the third mile.”
Under any ordinary circumstance, she would have refused at once. A married duchess did not simply disappear into a friend’s carriage because she had been crying in her drawing room. Propriety did not bend merely because one’s heart had been trampled.
Yet the prospect of remaining here, in Rosewood House, with every room carrying some memory of Alexander and every silence asking her to endure one more evening of absence, was suddenly unbearable.
Still, hesitation caught at her. “I should not.”
“Why?”
Because I am weak today. Because if I leave this house at all, some disloyal part of me will still wonder whether Alexander notices my absence. The thought sickened her.
Martin saw her hesitation and softened further.
“Diana,” he said quietly, “I am not asking for anything difficult. Only an hour. Fresh air. No questions, if you prefer. You need not even speak if you do not wish to. But do not punish yourself by staying here and drowning in your own thoughts when you need not do it alone.”
That word touched the deepest ache in her.
She had been alone on her wedding day and the long months that followed. And now here was Martin, kind Martin, patient Martin, offering nothing more scandalous than escape from her own misery for a little while.
She looked at him then and saw only concern, only warmth, only a friend who did not know what else to do with her pain except try to carry some part of it.
Diana exhaled slowly.
“All right,” she said at last, and the word came weak but honest. “Only for a little while.”
Relief moved visibly through him. “Good.”
He rose at once, then bent to offer her his hand.
She stared at it for one moment longer than necessary, aware of how strange it felt to accept support from one man while Alexander still haunted her skin and blood like a fever she could not break.
But the room was pressing in again, and she could not bear one more minute within it.
So, she placed her hand in Martin’s and let him draw her to her feet.