Chapter Thirty
“Diantha.”
Lucian stopped himself from rushing to her and kissing her until she agreed. He had spent most of the night thinking about it—about why she was so angry, about what he could do to change her mind—but he hadn’t come up with anything yet.
The only thing he could do, he knew, was to come and ask her directly about it.
They were in the Courtenays’ breakfast room. It was past time for breakfast, and the table was cleared, except for the tea service, which Diantha had asked for when Lucian had arrived.
She looked as though she had spent a sleepless night as well: her eyes looked tired, and she seemed muted, not the constantly curious woman he’d grown to love.
“Lucian,”
she replied, putting a splash of milk in her tea. She put a splash in his tea as well as sugar.
The whole time, there was nothing but silence. A silence that felt gnawing and overwhelming, as though there were things being said but not spoken aloud.
He had no idea what those things were, just that they were important to comprehend.
“Davy is so pleased,”
she said, her words stilted. “I told him we would draft a contract so he can oversee the production.”
“I didn’t come here to talk about Davy,”
Lucian said.
She lifted her gaze to his. Her dark eyes were filled with an emotion he couldn’t identify. “Why did you come here, then? To try to persuade me to take your father’s Faustian bargain?”
Lucian shook his head. “I don’t know what a Faustian bargain is,”
he replied.
She hesitated, as though surprised. “It is where you trade something of importance to you—your integrity, your values—to acquire something you desire, such as wealth, fame, or knowledge.”
“I still don’t understand.”
Her nostrils flared in anger. “Your father wants us to trade what makes us us—our wishes to lead useful, productive lives without having to adhere to societal norms in exchange for his approbation. That might be what you want, but it is not what I want.”
Her color was high, and she took a deep breath before continuing. “Do you remember what I said the night we met?”
“?‘I wish to kiss you’?”
Her eyes narrowed. “No, not that. ‘I wish to do what I wish to do.’ That’s what I said then, and through spending time with you, I learned that that is what I am meant to do. Not exist only to serve some sort of external mandate on how I am supposed to live my life.”
“But if we get marri—”
“If we get married, how long will it be before your father disapproves of something we do? We’ll be dependent on him, like you are now.”
She shook her head. “I would far prefer to live my life with uncertainty than to be forced into something as bad—or even worse—than what I do now.”
Her eyes were pleading. “We talked about this. You told me you were willing to risk it, if we could be together.”
“But we would be together,”
he said. “I would be able to take care of you as you deserve to be taken care of. I don’t want you to ever regret marrying me. What if we can’t do what we hope to? Isn’t being secure the most important thing? If there’s a better way to manage it, shouldn’t we try?”
She gave him a cold stare. One he felt sliding through his ribs like a knife. “No. It is not.”
He felt the frustration in her tone, felt an echoing frustration inside of him. She was so determined to do precisely what she wanted she could not see that the safer course, the more traditional course, would guarantee they would have a future together.
He snorted at the realization. She was behaving as he used to, before her. Before, he did whatever he wanted when he wanted, no matter the consequences. No matter how much his father and brother might disapprove. Now, because of loving her, he wanted to do the safe thing. The correct thing.
“Why are you making that noise?”
she said, sounding defensive. “Do you think I’m wrong?”
Lucian paused a moment before replying, which only seemed to make her angrier. “I think that you’re missing the larger point, which is that if we have our parents’ approval, our lives will be much easier.”
“If I had wanted easy,”
she shot back, “I would have married someone long before this. I want you. But not the you who compromises to please his father. The you who will kiss me in a sarcophagus or tell me how he truly feels. You don’t want to be the second son of a duke all your life, Lucian. I know you.”
She rose, and he could see her hands shaking. “But I will not settle for the you who wants things to be easy. To be accepted. You’ve never cared about your father’s approval until now. Why the change?”
He rose also, his whole body shaking. With anger. With frustration. With sadness. “Because of you, Diantha. Because I love you too much to subject you to an uncertain future. Because it wouldn’t be fair to invite you into my chaos when I know you prefer order.”
“Because you made the decision by yourself, without asking me,”
she interrupted. Her eyes were full of tears. “Falling in love with me shouldn’t mean you change your whole self. The point of love is to accept someone as they are and work with them to be who both of you wish them to be. Not settle. Never settle, Lucian. I know I won’t.”
And with that, she left the room, leaving him alone.
Alone with his breaking heart and his lukewarm tea.
“We are only offering ten shares per person,”
Diantha warned. It was three months since the presentation, and the plans were well underway to start producing the life jackets. And with production came hungry investors, who wanted to be able to profit from the inevitable contract with Her Majesty’s Navy.
But Diantha would not allow any outsider to potentially have the right to dictate what the company did or made. What if someone wanted to cut costs by using cheaper fabric for the life jackets? And the life jackets didn’t work quite as well because of it? Or if they insisted on bypassing certain safety measures because those measures cost more to maintain?
She was also skittish about doing anything that might smack of Mr. Bishop’s borrowing-from-Peter-to-pay-Paul scheme. That gentleman himself had been sent to one of the duke’s farthest properties, forced to work under the duke’s strictest steward, who was immune to anybody’s charms and manners.
It wasn’t jail, as Bishop’s investors had wanted, but since the duke had repaid everyone they had all agreed—begrudgingly—that the punishment could be left up to the duke. Who hadn’t wanted the scandal if his relative went to prison, when he could just be sent to the most remote part of Northumberland, to the appropriately named Hell’s Bottom.
“I will take the shares,”
the man replied. “I’ve done business with your parents before, my lady, and I appreciate their enthusiasm.”
He chuckled. “Even about worms.” He handed her the money, which Drusilla counted and placed into a small tin box on the table. He tipped his hat toward them. “Good afternoon, ladies.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Felks,”
Diantha replied.
Their parents’ unusual collection of friends had been a surprising boon when planning how to fund the factory: the duke was willing to fund all of it, but Diantha did not want that, given everything. He, like everyone else, was only allowed ten shares. Mr. Walker had decreed investing here was nearly as good as alchemy, and other Courtenay friends had followed suit.
The ownership of the factory had to remain in trust between the two former partners since the court that had decreed they find a resolution had decided the best outcome was for neither of the two to have any say in the factory’s day-to-day business.
Diantha and her sister, therefore, spent most of their days at the factory now, planning the launch of the product and overseeing the workers. It kept her busy, which kept her from thinking about Lucian every single second of every day—more like every other second, which was a relief.
Lucian, as far as she knew, was in Scotland with his older brother. Perhaps wooing some Scottish lady who would meet with the duke’s approval? Diantha told herself she didn’t care what he did, but she also knew she lied.
It hurt. It hurt so much to think that he had known her so little as to believe she would be willing to compromise her future. Meanwhile, she had spent all her time with him trying to carve out what she wanted, not what anyone else did.
He’d tried to speak with her again after that disastrous first attempt, but it had just been more of the same: for some reason, he was determined to put her security ahead of their love, no matter what she said about that.
“You’re sighing again,”
Drusilla observed. “It’s not worth it, I promise.”
Diantha turned to regard her sister. Drusilla had changed in the past three months as well. She’d taken to work with alacrity, as though she had been trained for it, not raised in a chaotic aristocratic household. It seemed to Diantha that Drusilla, like her, had been looking for a purpose. Both had found it here, even if it wasn’t home and happiness.
She also noticed that Drusilla had struck up a friendship with one of Davy’s sailor friends, a midshipman with a rough beard and a gentle manner—when speaking with Drusilla.
She was envious of whatever her sister was doing, but she just couldn’t see herself being with anybody but Lucian. And he was being an ass, so he was out also.
“Diantha?”
Drusilla said, prodding her sister’s stomach.
“Stop that,”
Diantha said, laughing.
“How about you stop moping? Go balance some accounts. That always makes you happy.”
Diantha grimaced at her sister, but it wasn’t as though Drusilla was wrong. Diantha did like things to be orderly and tidy, and reconciling the factory’s monies did bring her an odd sort of pleasure. That was still true. Financial reconciliation was nothing to compare with . . . Stop that, she reminded herself. She hadn’t seen him in three months, and there was no hint that he would be returning to London anytime soon.
She would just have to do as she wished. With one major exception.
“Stop it,”
Lucian said, waving the crook toward the errant ewe.
His brother, John, had looked at him askance when he said he wanted to help with the sheep, but then John’s shepherd’s father had passed, and the shepherd found himself the sole caretaker for his father’s household and small business, which meant he’d have to quit the sheep-tending.
The duke had been pleased with Lucian’s work on securing the cloth needed to produce the life jackets and with the creative solution to well and truly punish Mr. Bishop. Lucian was well on his way to gaining his father’s approval, though he had to restrain himself anytime the duke mentioned the wayward, far too opinionated Lady Diantha.
Restrain himself from punching his father and from all the hurt. It took a month before he understood what she had been saying, and another month where he did his damnedest to figure out how to apologize.
But nothing seemed good enough. So he told his father he was going to visit his brother, and then left, refusing the offer of a carriage and taking the train north instead.
His father had been livid, demanding to know how Lucian could just pick up and leave when there was work to be done. In a way, it felt good to feel his father’s disdain: it meant he was doing the right thing.
He knew he was behaving in the old Lucian way—doing things heedless of consequences. But none of it brought him joy. Because now that he knew what it was to be responsible, to work together with someone for a greater good, everything else felt hollow. Meaningless.
But he also couldn’t live a lie.
“What do you have to say about it, then?”
he asked the wandering sheep he called Drusilla. He’d given all of them names—including Blackfoot, Curly Hair, Shammie, Julia, and Mr. Bishop, the aggressive ram who liked to headbutt him every morning.
He hadn’t named any of them Diantha, though. Even thinking of her name hurt.
“You think I should go back there and tell her she’s right? But how would she believe me? How would she know I don’t want any of that life after all?”
Living with John and his family was possibly the most boring thing Lucian had ever done.
And he had studied Greek.
There was no adventure, no surprises, no enthusiasm. John, his wife, and their children did the same thing every day. They were all perfectly pleasant to one another, thank goodness, but there was no spark of excitement. Nothing that would make one be glad to be alive.
The only excitement came when the duke’s weekly letter arrived. Each week, their father would lay out all the reasons John wasn’t performing as well as he could as the duke’s heir. Lucian had had no idea his perfect older brother wasn’t perfect in their father’s eyes.
It just proved that the duke would never be satisfied. That cursed comet had irrevocably altered a person who could have been merely dictatorial into a judgmental pedant.
Never satisfied.
“The only way I could prove it to her,”
Lucian mused, “would be to do something so reprehensible that my father would never forgive me.”
He peered at Drusilla, who was gazing back at him, a clump of grass in her mouth. “And that something reprehensible would be to marry the woman who refused to marry me, but I can’t do that unless she sees I have changed.” He tapped his jaw in thought. “I am going to have to think of something. I can’t walk around with this heartache for the rest of my life.”
Drusilla baaed, and Lucian smiled. “Precisely.”