Chapter Seven
When they alighted from the hack onto Holborn Street, Ian didn’t offer Diana his arm. He knew she would have refused it.
His heart was still racing from the altercation at the Swan’s Nest, but he was as practiced as she was in blockading his feelings, and he would be damned before he revealed how much uncovering her lies had riled him.
“This way,” he said roughly. He positioned her on the inside of the path while he walked on the perimeter of the street.
Despite his anger, he couldn’t quash the urge to put himself between her and any threat.
It gave him a satisfying sense of purpose that eased the tension gathering between his shoulder blades.
He led them down a back lane to another street behind the row of townhomes and paused at the back gate. “Come through here. There could be reporters out front.”
They crossed the paved back garden, and he unlocked the kitchen door. It was dark inside and the fires were cold. He’d given the cook-maid a day out because of the wedding celebration.
“Sir?” Ian’s valet emerged from the hall with a lamp. His eyes flicked to Diana momentarily before returning to Ian. “May I be of service?”
“Hepburn,” Ian greeted him. “We could do with some hot water. And light supper provisions.” Neither of them had eaten a thing all day.
“Of course, sir.” Hepburn hesitated. “I was sorry to hear about the wedding being postponed. Mrs. Turner sent a note and advised you shouldn’t return to the house because of the press.”
“If there are any skulking out front, I’ll need to change.” Diana directed her order to Hepburn. “Could you assist me, please?”
“It would be my pleasure, miss. I’m sure we can find something that will suit. If you’d follow me.”
Ian didn’t object. If journalists were circling, Diana needed to shed the gown. And the emeralds.
He couldn’t have dreamed up an easier way to get his hands on them. Given the revelations of the day, and everything he knew Diana to be capable of, he found the happenstance far too convenient. And more than a little alarming.
He trudged up the stairs and into his study, where he poured himself a large draft of whisky. The front bell rang and to his immense displeasure, Hepburn announced, “Mr. Eden to see you, sir.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” Ian grumbled.
“Stop telling me that every time I call. One of these days, I’m going to think you mean it.” Henry refused Ian’s gesture of a whisky. “The aborted wedding is all over the evening papers. I thought you might require a hand.”
“Please tell me none of those rags say anything about Polly Wren, the mother of Jared’s son.”
When Ian related what they’d found in Soho, Henry’s jaw dangled open. He agreed to take Polly’s case but cautioned it would be difficult.
“The papers mention nothing about an affair,” Henry said. “They do go into excellent detail on Diana’s bridal gown. And jewelry.”
He paused before adding, “If you’re still determined to leave with the emeralds, all of this will make your departure plans sticky.”
Ian’s stomach clenched. For years, he’d planted false clues and trails to suggest they’d lost the emeralds after his father’s death. It was a delaying tactic, until he knew solidly that he could play the dangerous competition for them and win.
He had to approach the players with the necklace before things escalated. He couldn’t risk them coming anywhere near everything and everyone he’d devoted his life to safeguarding.
Footsteps echoed from above, and Henry peered at the ceiling. “Diana’s here?”
“Momentarily. And before you ask, I don’t need any help getting her out of London.”
“You’re going with her.”
“Of course not.”
Henry tilted his head thoughtfully. “You could.”
His tone implied, You should.
Ian stopped short of reminding Henry that the war he was about to battle to win the necklace meant he could never be with Diana. His role in the scheme she’d designed to avoid marrying Jared was quickly ending. And he needed to make his own fast retreat.
Henry cast his eyes upstairs again. “Every day for the past eight years, I think about what would have happened if, instead of telling Beatrix to leave England, I had offered to go with her.”
“You can’t play that game.” Ian placed a firm hand on Henry’s shoulder. “If you had, you might be at the bottom of the ocean too, old man. And then where would we all be?”
Henry gave a self-deprecating grunt on his way out the door.
Ian forced himself to partake of the tray of light sandwiches, cheese, and fruit Hepburn had left so his thoughts wouldn’t fixate on the ghosts from the past. Or his fears about the future.
“May I have one of those?”
He looked up from brooding over his plate and whisky to find Diana standing by the settee, dressed in his clothes. Hepburn had altered Ian’s shirt and waistcoat to fit her. Beneath the shirt, she wore a pair of fencing breeches.
The absence of her restrictive, heavy skirts allowed her to move nimbly across the room. An untamed possessiveness stirred in his gut as he admired how very right she looked wearing his clothes.
She gestured to his whisky, and he finally tore his gaze away long enough to pour her a drink.
When he handed her the glass, he noted her breeches were too closely fitted to be his. They were precisely tailored to Diana’s measurements and tucked neatly into a pair of sturdy short boots. “Were you wearing the boots and the breeches beneath your dress?”
“Of course.” She flapped a hand to suggest the question, and not her attire, was the ridiculous thing. “I’m afraid you’ve had to sacrifice these.”
As she casually stroked his shirt and waistcoat, he became painfully aware of the fit of his own trousers.
“It’s no matter,” he said roughly.
“You will make out better in the trade. My dress cost enough to fund a coup in several countries.”
Neither of them said a word about the emeralds, which weren’t visible beneath the open collar of her shirt.
Diana perused the half-empty bookshelves bordering the fireplace with some interest before she sat down primly on one of the well-worn leather club chairs. “Who does this house belong to?”
“Why don’t you think it belongs to me?”
When she arched her brow, he was sorely tempted to do something foolish involving his mouth and hers.
She peered at the books. “Freddie Sterling used to live here. You acquired it from him?”
He respected the careful way she positioned that question. “Lord Sterling was living far beyond his means, which he thought he’d rectify by staking this place in a game of vingt-et-un.”
Ian omitted telling her that Freddie Sterling was on a list of men who’d danced with Diana and tried to assume liberties.
Sterling had once grazed his hands over Diana’s bottom before she’d seamlessly made him stumble onto his face on the dance floor.
Ian had vindictively waited for Sterling to sink himself into debt before luring him into a game he had no chance of ever winning.
“Poor Freddie.” Her tone was full of mock sorrow. “He should have known better than to play with the Devil of the Docklands.”
“Don’t call me that.”
His voice was low, suddenly grave.
Diana went very still.
They both stared at each other, daring the other to speak first, until Hepburn arrived with a delivery of letters.
“It’s from Mrs. Turner.” Ian sliced his letter-opener through the seal and scanned the note. “Jared woke briefly, was ill, then returned to his stupor.”
“I suppose that’s good news?”
“The doctor says it’s small progress. Turner says the journalists are still staked outside the house.”
Diana hummed as she read her own letter. “Amelia reports they’re at Rives House as well. She told Mrs. Turner that I’m staying with her to avoid them.”
“What is Miss Hunter’s involvement in all of this?”
She kept her eyes on the note and sipped her whisky quietly.
Her silence needled him; she’d chosen reticence rather than overtly lie to him again. “Exactly how long have you been planning all this?”
“That’s not the question you want answered,” she replied carefully. “You want to know why events unfolded as they did.”
He hated she knew this about him.
“Don’t deny your hand.” If she’d been a man, he would have accused her of behaving unsportsmanlike. “You orchestrated every piece of what happened today.”
“I’m neither that talented nor that spiteful.”
“So when you found out about Jared’s transgressions, you didn’t set out to ruin him completely?”
Diana slammed the whisky glass on the table and rose to her feet with such swiftness she vibrated. “We both know that the one person responsible for Jared’s ruination is Jared. You’ve spent most of your life cleaning up after him. To what end?”
As Ian closed the distance between them, he caught the whisper of violets mixed with the scent of the soap Hepburn used to launder his shirt. It roused hot and forbidden imaginings of how else their scents and their bodies could combine.
“Why does it matter to you what I do?” he demanded.
She leaned closer, and his body followed, pulled by some outside unequal force toward her.
“You matter, Ian,” she said softly.
His heart soared for a brief, jubilant moment.
Before he realized she’d stopped short of saying he mattered to her.
Ian backed away and poured himself another drink. “I never thought you’d go through with marrying Jared. At first, it seemed like a dare. Or a threat. Because of what happened that night you made the promise to my father, and what I said after the attack.”
He swallowed. “I hurt you worse than those miscreants tried to. And it wouldn’t be far-fetched to believe you needed to hurt me back.”
An interval elapsed where the only sound in the room was an intermittent pop from the coals tumbling in the fireplace.
Eventually, Diana murmured, “That night… It wasn’t what you thought, what everyone thought.”
“A dying man made a last request for you to marry his son.”