Chapter Twenty-Seven
“You’re absolutely certain?”
Diantha asked, for perhaps the thousandth time.
It was the day after their final system-cleanse, which hadn’t proven to be system-cleansing at all.
“I am,”
Lucian replied, squeezing her hand.
They were in the British Museum, again, but this time it wasn’t for nefarious purposes; if anything, it was for farious purposes. If there was such a word.
“You know your father will—”
Diantha began.
“He will.”
Lucian’s expression grew stubborn. “It doesn’t matter. I’ve never had reason enough to go against him directly, but if true love isn’t the reason, I don’t know what is. I’m decided. The worst that happens is he will disown me—we will still have each other. That is all I need for my future.”
He met her gaze, giving her a reassuring smile.
It made her heart feel full to bursting, even though she had so many questions buzzing inside her head. How would they live? Where would they live? Would he never see his father again? What would their future be?
“Stop worrying,”
he said. He squeezed her hand again. “You and I both know the presentation is going to be a success, even if our parents don’t agree to the life jackets being manufactured in their particular factory. We’ll just take the idea and go somewhere else. Shammie’s family, being in the shipping business, would doubtless be interested. He mentioned at their wedding that he wanted to give me work. It would be so simple for me to accept his offer and bring the idea to him.”
“Oh,”
Diantha said, delighted, “so you have planned for the future.”
He grinned down at her. “My wedding gift to you, my love. You’ve wrought changes in me, Diantha. And I hope I have wrought the same in you.”
He flicked her nose. “Admit it. You wouldn’t be nearly as adventurous as you are if I hadn’t been such an amazing kisser in that Chamber of Horrors.”
“We didn’t kiss in the Chamber of Horrors,”
Diantha pointed out.
“No, I meant the room with your mother’s shawl. I still have nightmares about it,”
he said with a shudder.
She laughed, nudging his shoulder as they walked, then grew solemn again. “I just don’t want you to regret it. My parents will likely be fine with it, no matter what happens. Before, I just wanted to make certain they wouldn’t need my help anymore, and I could just live my life. But at some point, I just have to accept that I can’t fix everything. Although, making the factory a success would go a long way toward helping their future.”
She paused, then spoke in a quieter tone. “And ours.”
“That’s why we have to hope both your parents and mine will see reason when it comes to our solution.”
“And why we can’t tell them anything about us, about this, before things are settled.”
It terrified her, in fact. The thought that any one of their parents could somehow quash their love, make it impossible for them to see one another again.
But that would not happen. He’d promised.
“Where do you want to live?” he asked.
They were strolling through the rooms with the armor again, not really paying attention to the exhibits, though a few of the more unusual ones caught Diantha’s eye.
“I want to live near the sea,”
she said. “Not just because that is likely to be relevant to what we do, but also because there’s just something so freeing about living near the water. You can dip your toes in anytime you wish to, and things are always appearing onshore unexpectedly.”
“You have changed,”
Lucian said, sounding impressed. “Drusilla will be so proud.”
“She will,”
Diantha agreed. “She has already told me how much she admires what we did the other night—”
“You told her?”
He sounded both impressed and aghast.
“No, no, not the specifics,”
Diantha said, her cheeks coloring. “Just the general sneaking-a-man-up-to-my-room kind of thing. She is all for us, by the way. She literally said that I needed to find someone to make me less boring.”
She glanced over at him. “Apparently that is you.”
“I do like Drusilla.”
“Me too,”
Diantha said at last. Finding love with him was an unexpected joy, but being able to connect with her sister made the whole thing even sweeter.
“So somewhere near the water,”
Lucian said, ticking off the idea on his finger. “And I know I want to be somewhere where my being a duke’s son isn’t important.”
“So . . . on the moon?”
she asked, only half-kidding.
He grunted. “There has to be some place where that isn’t important. We could go to America, for example. They have water there.”
“Even if you’re working for Shammie?”
she said. “Won’t he want you closer to home?”
The thought of picking up and heading for an entirely new continent made her anxious. However, the whole point of having fallen in love with him, being with him, was not to be anxious about change and surprise anymore but to welcome it, in fact. Because when she’d allowed herself to adventure—even though she’d thought it was only for one night—it had resulted in him.
“I suppose he might,”
Lucian said, clearly dismissing the thought as a concern. “But I think it will be particularly adventurous to uproot ourselves and go somewhere no one knows us. Where we can just be two people in love.”
“Love won’t pay the bills,”
Diantha observed.
“No, but Mr. Wilkins’s great idea will.”
He squeezed her hand again. “Trust me, Diantha. It will be fine.”
Lucian found it hard, if not nearly impossible, not to shout about her, about their love, from the rooftops. But to do so would be to jeopardize their future, and he supposed he should learn how to control his impulses one of these years, so he might as well begin with this very important task.
But she was so lovely, and so right, and so smart, and so perfect he didn’t know how everyone else didn’t see it.
Thank goodness they had the presentation to plan for. Otherwise they would not have had an excuse to be together, and that might very well have driven him mad.
Sometimes he wondered if she was as in love with him as he with her, but the very fact that she was willing to upend her planned life told him she was.
“We’ll need to adjust the figures here,”
she said, interrupting his thoughts.
They were in the salon again, this time with Wilkins and his brother Davy, the rigger, who had finally gotten over his nervousness at being in Lucian’s company and was laying out the plans for his life jacket.
“Cork has been inexpensive lately, but there is no guarantee that will continue,”
she added, scratching at the column of numbers.
“And the fabric too, my lady,”
Davy said. “They’ve been bringing it in from all over the world, which makes it cheaper, but eventually someone’s going to figure out how to throttle the supply, and it’ll all cost more.”
Diantha gave Davy a look that made Lucian want to sock him in the nose. Not rational, but he wanted all of her admiring glances for him.
“That is very shrewd of you, Mr. Wilkins.”
She glanced over at Lucian. “You should ask your Shammie if he needs someone to analyze shipping trends.”
“Let’s get our life jacket idea off the ground before we go handing out jobs,”
Lucian said, trying not to sound aggrieved.
“Of course, my lord,”
she said in a placating tone.
“What if they don’t believe it?”
Davy said.
“Believe what?”
Lucian asked.
“That this will save lives. That it’ll keep a sailor afloat even when he’s dizzy or has even fainted.”
“Well, we can’t very well knock someone out near a convenient pool to test it,”
Diantha said dryly. “Although . . .”
she added, giving him a sly glance.
“No, but we can do our demonstration near the water. Davy, you can wear the thing during the presentation, can’t you?”
“I can,”
Davy replied.
“We could have the presentation on one of Shammie’s family’s ships, couldn’t we, my lord?”
Her hopeful gaze made him melt all over again.
How was it possible he’d gone all this time without knowing what true love was?
Oh, but if he had known, then he wouldn’t be here with her now. He’d be with somebody else, someone who wasn’t as clever or witty or organized as she.
“I will ask,”
he said and was rewarded by her grateful look.
“And now all that’s left is for us to calculate how many we can reasonably manufacture in the first year,”
she said. She looked at Lucian again. “You’ll have to ask Shammie soon. The presentation is scheduled for a week from now. My parents are leaving on some sort of monkish introspection journey, so they won’t be available afterward.”
Monkish introspection? No, he really didn’t want to know. His future in-laws were even more impulsive than he was, and that was saying something.
“You’re certain they’ll like the idea?”
Davy said, sounding nervous.
Lucian and Diantha exchanged glances. “Absolutely,”
Lucian said. “My father wants to resolve this situation as soon as possible, and if he can save good British lives in the process, then that is even better.”
“And my parents just like clever inventions,”
Diantha said with a shrug.
Davy’s expression eased, and Lucian felt his excitement build. Soon, perhaps as soon as directly after the presentation, he and Diantha could be on their way to their own future, one they’d designed together. One that meant neither one of them had to compromise their beliefs about themselves and each other. One that meant they were entirely responsible for themselves.
It would be perfect. It would be everything he’d never known he’d wanted.
In only a week. Seven days until he could finally break free of everything and be with the woman he loved.
“Your grace,”
Diantha said as the duke entered the captain’s quarters.
Lucian had been able to secure one of Shammie’s family’s ships for the presentation, which meant that Shammie, Julia, and their families were in attendance as well.
Diantha and her family had arrived just a few minutes earlier, a miracle given that her father had insisted on changing his clothing no fewer than three times before venturing out. Apparently wearing a white shirt with a dark suit was far too frivolous.
Before this, Diantha would have said her parents’ medieval Scottish period was her least favorite—there were only so many naes one could hear or so much haggis one could eat before one wanted to be wrapped up in a tartan and flung into some loch or another.
But this austere period was the worst. There was no joy, no bright colors, nothing to distract from the never-ending seriousness.
Why had her father spent the past twenty-five years decrying the duke’s severity only to try to outdo him at this time?
The only positive to all of it was that the house was quiet, but that just meant it gave Diantha more room to think. Would the duke and her parents agree to the solution she and Lucian had come up with? Would Mr. Bishop find a way to ruin everything by mentioning some picayune comment that he hadn’t bothered to say before when he’d seen the dry run of the presentation?
Would Lucian be happy when he wasn’t handed everything he’d ever wanted on a suitably ducal platter? A second-son ducal platter, but a ducal platter, nonetheless.
And what about her?
“Lady Diantha.”
She startled, realizing the duke was speaking.
She should not be obsessing about her future with his son when he was in the room and likely to address her.
“Yes, I am sorry, your grace.”
She gave him an expectant look.
“Your father was just saying that he has renounced his previous frivolity. And that the change is due to you.”
Oh, dear lord no. She wasn’t that bad, was she?
A glance over at a smirking Drusilla told her she was.
“Well, my parents are reasonable, sensible people,”
in an opposite-world kind of way, “and so I suppose this recent change is just what makes sense.”
That sentence did not make sense, but the duke didn’t seem to notice, judging by his satisfied smile.
“I did not think we could come to a resolution on this matter.”
He turned to Lucian. “Which is why I thought my son—”
he said the words with disdain “—would be the proper person to handle it all.”
Her fury at the duke threatened to upend her pleasant expression. Don’t tell him what you think, don’t tell him what you think.
“Lord Lucian has been an excellent partner in this endeavor,”
she said at last, trying not to grit her teeth.
“That must be due to your influence as well, my lady,”
the duke replied with a bow.
“Well,”
Diantha said, turning to the assembled group, “I believe we should start the presentation. Mr. Wilkins, if you please?”
Davy stepped forward while Lucian tacked up papers on the area where the captain’s maps usually were. Mr. Bishop stood nearby, looking as though he was trying to make himself look more important by being involved, but there was nothing for him to do.
“Good afternoon,”
Davy said, his voice quavering just a little. He embarked on an explanation of what the life jackets could do, and how they were made, and then he invited them out onto the deck as he donned the jacket.
“Push me in,”
he told Lucian.
“What?”
Lucian asked. “I thought—”
“Push me in,”
Davy repeated.
Lucian shrugged, then picked Davy up and tossed him overboard.
Everyone shrieked and gasped, rushing to the side of the boat, leaning over to see.
For a heart-stopping moment, they couldn’t see anything, just water.
Then Davy’s head popped up, and he grinned before speaking. “And we believe,”
Davy called, bobbing in the water, “that in a year’s time, we can have produced enough of these lifesaving jackets to outfit forty ships.”
The crew let ropes down, and Davy hauled himself back up onto the deck, his clothes dripping, a wide smile on his face.
There was silence, and then Diantha’s father spoke. “I think there is nothing more admirable than saving sailors’ lives,”
he declaimed, as though he was giving a sermon.
The duke pursed his lips in thought as Diantha held her breath. “I have to agree with the earl,”
he said at last.
Diantha exhaled, and she met Lucian’s gaze, feeling his relief nearly as much as her own.
The rest of the meeting involved them reviewing the numbers, which Diantha had reviewed nearly a dozen times already. She and Lucian had thought of everything, from how many workers would be needed to what type of jobs they would each perform to how long it would take for the manufacturing to be up and running.
It had been an exhausting but worthwhile task.
“It is decided, then,”
the earl said, clapping his hands together. “We have spent enough time socializing. My wife and I need to return to our studies.”
Diantha gave Drusilla a quizzical look, but her sister only shrugged. At least they weren’t leaving to embark on more culinary adventures or distribute bank notes at the park.