Chapter Two
“Say, who is that woman talking to a potted fern?”
Oliver Graham, third and youngest son of Viscount Hambleton, drained what was left in his glass of a middling-quality brandy. He’d been trying to ignore the three young dandies who were having a very loud, somewhat drunken conversation behind him, but that comment had piqued his interest.
He turned casually, his eyes sweeping past them and over the crowd, finding the object of the dandies’ discussion near the far wall. She had her back to him, gleaming wheat-gold curls artfully arranged at the back of her head, a few spilling down over the champagne hue of her gown. Even from this distance, he could see the gracefulness of her movements and the slide of satin over curves that would make any man with a pulse look twice.
Even if the fact that she did, indeed, appear to be talking to a potted fern did not.
This was absurd. Oliver had been in Brighton barely twenty-four hours, and this was not how he had envisioned spending his time. Wasting his time, in truth. There were things that legitimately required his attention, the least of which was finding Madelene. A dull fury rose, one that had been festering since he had stopped in London and discovered that his sister was not in Boston as he had believed. As he had been told. The story had been something that his parents used to explain away the fact that his sister had abruptly left London six years ago for whereabouts unknown.
Unknown, save for a single, unopened, unread letter she had sent the unforgiving viscount and viscountess a year after her departure, postmarked Brighton. A letter that confirmed Oliver’s worst suspicions and made his heart break and his anger ignite.
“That woman is the Duke of Riddington’s mistress,” one of the dandies behind him stage-whispered loud enough for half the room to hear.
This wasn’t absurd, it was intolerable. Nothing had changed in the dozen years he had been gone. It was still a never-ending agenda of balls and assemblies and musicales where the same small people gossiped about the same small things. He wasn’t sure how he’d managed to be persuaded to partake in it all tonight, but he blamed his bad judgment solely on his friend.
You should accept your invitation to the Montmartin ball , Maxwell Thorpe had suggested. You’ll see some old friends, he’d promised with a wink and a knowing look. That assurance had finally convinced Oliver to go, yet he had not seen anyone he even remotely recognized, much less knew. Something that didn’t come as any sort of shock, since he’d been away from England for well over a bloody decade.
“Not his mistress,” the second dandy was arguing behind him. “I heard she won’t have him.”
“But the scandal sheets said he’s already had her. In all sorts of—”
“You can’t believe everything you read,” the second dandy scoffed.
Dandy One snorted into his glass and promptly choked. “I’d have the duke,” he snickered when he’d recovered. “Wherever and whenever he wanted. If only for the wardrobe he’d buy me.”
“She’s only the daughter of a damn baron.” His friend giggled drunkenly. “Almost a nobody. You at least have the advantage of rank. Perhaps you should ask His Grace when he plans to give up on her and if he’d consider you.”
Oliver’s eyes swiveled back to the woman talking to the fern. Only now, she had moved and seemed to be conversing with the swath of silk hanging against the wall, her back still to them. The color of her hair was faintly familiar. Or maybe it was her height. Or— He stopped, discarding his conjectures and far-fetched ideas. He knew a blond-haired girl who was the daughter of a baron, but she didn’t possess curves like that. And she wouldn’t be talking to ferns. Or walls.
“If a woman like that turns down a damn duke, what chance do we have?” It was said morosely by the buck who had asked the original question. “Is she holding out for a bloody prince?”
“A woman who looks like that could. She’s already turned down two earls and a marquess since she was widowed. I hear the pot at White’s is up to two thousand pounds on who will bed her first.”
The seed of suspicion was starting to sprout despite the part of his brain that was telling him it was impossible. Well, unlikely at least, that his childhood friend would be here. A childhood friend who had written him hundreds and hundreds of letters and entertained him with stories from home during his absence. But she had said nothing about Brighton in her last one, after he had written to tell her he was coming back to England.
You’ll see some old friends, Thorpe had told him.
Oliver stared harder. It couldn’t be. And yet—
“But she was just talking to a plant,” one of the dandies tittered.
“No one said she was sane. One doesn’t have to be sane to be taken to bed and fu—”
“Excuse me.” Oliver shoved through the knot of dandies with more force than was necessary. There were numerous mutterings and exclamations, but Oliver ignored them, making his way across the room, heading for the blond vixen who had turned down a duke, two earls, and a marquess. A vixen who was still talking to a swath of crimson silk.
The fact that he knew nobody worked in his favor as he cut across the expanse, because no one stopped him to speak to him, and in fact, a few people stepped hastily out of his way. He made it past the looming pots with their wilting vegetation just as the fern whisperer turned away from the wall to face him.
And the ground shifted beneath him.
Or at least he thought it did, but the edges of his vision were a little bit fuzzy and the sound of the crowd behind him faded away to the point that he could hear only the pounding of his pulse in his ears.
She was gazing up at him, her unmistakeable cerulean-blue eyes wide and not a little startled. Yet her eyes were all that was unmistakable, because the woman who stood before him in a Brighton ballroom looked nothing at all like the girl who had waved goodbye to him on the London docks. That Diana, who had hugged him and wished him well over a dozen years ago, had had bony elbows that stuck out in all directions, just like the wheat-colored curls she’d tried to tame into braids. That Diana had had eyes a little too big for her face, a dress a little too big for her body, and a wide, ready grin that told him she didn’t really care.
The woman staring up at him was a stranger. A beautiful, breathtaking, incandescent stranger. Her body had matured from awkward angles into tantalizing curves, and each and every one was displayed in an elegant embroidered gown that fit her to perfection. Her arresting eyes were set into a fair complexion, her cheeks a pretty pink, her unruly curls now glossy waves that fell softly around her face before being caught at the nape of her neck. This stranger who stood before him was the very definition of the classic, demure beauty that this society admired and went to preposterous lengths to achieve.
And then she grinned at him and became simply Diana once more.
“Oliver,” she half shrieked, half gasped before she launched herself into his arms.
“Dee.” He caught her easily, thinking that this was the first time he’d really felt like he was home since he’d stepped foot on England’s shores again. He tightened his arms around her and breathed in, the scent of orange blossoms and woman filling his nose. Joy bubbled up, pure and effervescent and instant, catching him off guard.
“I can’t believe it’s really you. I can’t believe you’re here,” she said against his neck.
Here being the grand country ballroom of the Marquess and Marchioness of Montmartin. Where he was embracing her in a scandalous fashion in public. Not that he should be embracing her in a scandalous fashion anywhere else, for that matter. He pulled back, hating the loss of her touch. It was all he could do not to reach out and clasp her hand in his. “I’m sorry. I might have just put you in an awkward—”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “No one pays much attention to the wallflowers and the widows.”
Oliver didn’t bother to correct her.
“Besides,” she added, smoothing his rumpled cravat back into place, “I don’t know many people here anyway.”
“Is that why you were talking to a fern?” he teased, feeling happier and lighter than he could remember feeling in a long time.
If he hadn’t been watching so carefully, he might have missed the way she stiffened slightly. And then she laughed, the corners of her eyes crinkling, and he wondered if perhaps he’d imagined it. “There is something to be said for a conversation partner that doesn’t ever argue.”
He smiled back, trying to reconcile the fact that he hadn’t seen her in a dozen years, and yet the awkwardness that he might have expected was completely absent. Perhaps because he had heard her voice every week in the letters she had unfailingly sent him. Perhaps this was merely a continuation of a conversation that had last ended across an ocean.
“Well, then,” he said, “maybe I should go. I can’t guarantee myself to be so agreeable as a fern.”
She shook her head. “Two minutes. Meet me out front by the fountain in two minutes.”
“Sounds mysterious.”
“Not mysterious,” she assured him. “Just selfish. I haven’t found you after this long just to lose you again. I’m not letting you out of my sight, and I don’t want to share you.”
Oliver knew that those words were spoken out of friendship, yet a peculiar warmth and longing curled through his chest. A feeling akin to the way he would feel if a lover had spoken them.
She hesitated. “Unless, of course, you wish to stay?”
“God, no. When I saw you, I was contemplating striking up a conversation with the fellow over by the dais.”
Diana shot him a questioning look.
“You know, the one with the orange and black striped outfit?” Oliver prompted. “He looks like he’s enjoying himself as much as I.”
Diana laughed again, and Oliver grinned in response. And wondered how he had lasted as long as he had without hearing that infectious laugh.
“I need to speak to the aunt of a friend before I go.” She ducked past him, heading toward the tall doors looming on the far end of the room. “Two minutes,” she called happily over her shoulder once more.
He watched her go, his grin fading as he fought the urge to bolt after her. Because that was what a lovesick puppy would do, not a man who had just reconnected with a dear friend after a dozen years and had been asked to wait one hundred and twenty seconds longer. But now that he had found her again, he didn’t want to let her go, even for a minute. He wanted to keep her close. Pull her back into his arms and—
Oliver stopped himself. He had clearly been on his own for too long. That urge, no doubt, was simply a side effect of the plaguing loneliness that he had never truly shed in all his travels, but that had evaporated instantly in her presence. He had so many questions for her. So much he wanted to talk about. Things that had been kept from him, things he hadn’t discovered until he’d arrived home. Like, what had happened to his sister? What was going on with Diana that had landed her in the betting books at White’s?
And of course, where was his intended bride, who had seemingly dropped off the face of the earth?
He shifted, a feeling of restlessness crawling through him. He’d come back to England knowing that it was well past the time he finally honored a promise he’d made long ago. Well past the time he finally made good on the agreed-upon arrangement between families that would neatly unite position and wealth.
Except, his dutiful messages to his intended’s home that he’d sent as soon as he’d arrived in London had gone unanswered. He’d shown up at her door, only to be advised by a stoic butler that the family was summering in Bath. He’d sent messages there, but thus far, they’d gone unanswered too.
Oliver shifted again, trying not to remember how Diana had felt in his arms, or the joy and sense of home that had overtaken him. Such thoughts were not those of an honorable man.
He was getting married.
And not to Diana Thompson.