Devilish Page 0,43
as to make a good start on your journey tomorrow."
"On the contrary," said Madame de Couriac with a smug smile. "We are spending some days here."
"Well we must continue on tomorrow," Diana said.
"And thus we must retire, dear lady?" the marquess asked, making it sound wicked.
She glared at him, but had to abandon the struggle. If he was determined on folly, there was nothing she could do. "I must," she said frostily, and inclined her head to them all. "Good night."
They all rose, but as she left she was sure they would immediately sit again, though she couldn't imagine why Monsieur de Couriac wouldn't take the excuse to drag his wife away. Perhaps, she suddenly thought, they planned one of those menage a trois events she had read about. Bizarre, but what did she really know of such matters?
Closing the door of her room with a sharp snap, she acknowledged that a good part of her ill-feeling was jealousy. She was jealous of Madame de Couriac for the pleasures of the coming night, but also of her freedom to seduce a man who took her fancy.
Oh, what folly, she thought, unpinning her cap and pulling out the pins that confined her curls. The lady had a husband, and therefore should not be free at all.
Thoroughly disgruntled, she went to the window to look down on the street. It was quiet now that the sun was setting, except for the occasional rattle of a late coach seeking a change before pushing on to York or Doncaster. She was tempted to go out to enjoy some fresh air and exercise, but she would only be an object of curiosity. Everyone here must know that the Countess of Arradale was resting at the Swan, and with the great Marquess of Rothgar, no less!
She remembered her few hours of freedom last year when she'd played the part of Rosa's spotty serving maid. There had been heady pleasure in being ignored and unremarkable. That maid could be out there now, chatting to other servants, eating a bun with sticky fingers, perhaps even flirting a bit...
She eyed Clara, who was much of a size, but then put the idea aside. It wouldn't do. Without the face paint, servant's clothes were pointless.
The marquess could go out, of course. He'd be recognized, but he wouldn't care. She couldn't put her finger on why it was different for a lady but she knew it was.
There was the simple danger of abduction. The new laws made abduction into marriage less likely, but the laws that gave a husband control over his wife's property meant it was always a risk. Of course, any man who tried that with her would regret it, but how to show that so a fortune hunter would never even consider it?
She was a woman, and therefore - the world assumed - weak and vulnerable. With a wry smile she contemplated walking around with a pistol strapped to her waist. And a knife or two...
She might even have done it except that now she couldn't afford extra notoriety. She had to be a perfect, vulnerable lady or risk being clapped into a madhouse.
Oh God. She rested her face in her hands. During her recent inquiries she'd visited the asylum in York. It was a well-run place, but hell on earth, with screams and cries, inmates with blank faces or manic laughter, and others who appeared normal until they started to speak.
What if the woman who'd earnestly whispered that she was a foreign princess -
No, no. Of course she wasn't. She spoke broad Yorkshire. All the same, Diana could imagine herself, bedraggled by merely being there, trying to convince a stranger that she was a grand lady, unfairly imprisoned.
She straightened, fighting back from panic. One thing she knew. The marquess would never permit that. She'd spoken truly when she said that she resented needing his protection, but she was grateful for it, too. Grateful especially for his promise to marry her as ultimate security.
Then her eyes narrowed as she imagined having to be a complaisant wife as he sought the beds of women like Madame de Couriac. And the exotic Sappho. Perdition, that was certainly another reason to avoid that extreme. She'd end up shooting someone!
She leaned at the open window, elbows on the sill, wondering if he and the damnable Frenchwoman were already tangled in his sheets. Then she heard a patter of rapid French below.
Well, she thought, spirits lifting, at least they weren't tangled