Amanda Scott Read Online Free PDF Page B

shall feed you whenever you choose to show your face abroad.”
    Diana smiled, her equilibrium restored. “You are a love, Lyddy,” she said impulsively. “I think the smartest thing my brother ever did was to entice you into our family.”
    “Pooh,” said Lydia. “If you think your doltish brother did the asking, then you still do not know me very well. He had some of the oddest notions of proper courting—all pomp and circumstance and stuffy proprieties. But I managed to turn all that to good account in the end, for very fortunately my grandpapa fell ill, so I was able to urge Ethelmoor to come up to scratch in case Grandpapa should cock up his toes and do us out of a timely wedding.”
    Diana shook her head. “And to think,” she said in righteous tones, “that you were taking me to task less than twenty minutes ago for my irreverent words regarding the late Marchioness of Marimorse.”
    “Ah, but Grandpapa recovered,” Lydia pointed out, “so it was not at all the same thing. And since I knew perfectly well that he was suffering from nothing more serious than a slight chill caught whilst wading up to his hips in an icy brook in order to catch the one that always gets away…well, there you are. Not the same thing at all.”
    “Sometimes,” Diana said awfully, as Lydia got to her feet and shook out her skirts, “I think you are a more unprincipled madcap that I am, Lyddy.”
    “No, do you?” replied Lydia demurely. “But how could I be, dearest, with a sturdy ten-year-old at Eton and a scrambling three-year-old in the nursery? I’ve no time for mischief, nor would you have time for it, my girl, if you and Andover would but begin your nursery.” Seeing the gathering frown on Diana’s face, she added quickly, “Never mind, my dear. ’Tis none of my affair, and I’ll indulge in no more lectures. I’ll see you to your bedchamber and then, just to show what a love I am, I’ll send Madi along to you the moment she’s put my things away.”
    Diana declined at first, insisting she had no need of a lady’s maid to see her to bed, but she gave in without much argument because she liked Madi and because it would give her a chance to practice her French. Madi was another of the numerous émigrés from war-torn France, but hers had not been the comfortable life of the Comte and Comtesse de Vieillard and their children. Her parents had fled the Terror when Madi, then Mademoiselle Madeleine de Flétan, had been but a child. Her father, a minor nobleman (but not minor enough to escape the attention of the Committee for Public Safety), had died before ever reaching safe harbor in England, and Madi’s mother had arrived with one small child and no money. Fortunately, however, she had managed to find a position as chambermaid in Lydia’s parents’ household, so Lydia had known Madi most of her life.
    When the plump Frenchwoman arrived to help Diana, that young lady greeted her in fluent, idiomatic French, and Madi, knowing well that Diana enjoyed practicing the skills learned from a doting French governess, made no attempt to turn the conversation to English, although she now considered herself every inch an English citizen.
    Once the maid had gone, Diana snuffed the remaining candle by the bed and snuggled down to sleep. But sleep eluded her. Whenever she closed her eyes, her mind filled with a vision of the Earl of Andover, large and furious, his eyes flashing, his voice aroar. She had half expected him to have arrived by now. Perhaps this time, however, he had chosen not to confront her. Perhaps this time she had outraged him beyond what he would tolerate.
    She could still see the expression on his face when he had caught her—no, not that—when he had walked into the Double Cube room so unexpectedly. He had said nothing at all at first, merely striding across the room to grab Rory with one iron hand before knocking him to the floor with the other. Then, hauling him to his feet again, he had ordered his