Rising onto her toes, she peered over the top of the wall, and her stomach lurched. For between the iron bars, the truth of her fraudulent marriage flashed before her eyes. Reggie had Johnson in an impassioned embrace with their mouths melded in a lovers’ kiss. The quivers of shock resonated through her in rivulets that fast became a raging torrent when the latter released her husband’s erect penis from his breeches and went down on his knees.
Stifling her gasp with her fist, Diana fled the stables before her own legs buckled beneath her. She ran blindly back up the gravel path. What a bloody fool she’d been! How could she not have realized? She’d already known of Reggie’s unnatural preference in the bedchamber, yet in her naiveté, she’d never fathomed that he might secretly be a sodomite. It was a whispered abomination, a crime against God and nature, a deadly sin preached from every pulpit that warranted the Old Testament penalty of death. It was nothing she ever could have foreseen touching her own life.
She reached the house, darting past the bewildered servants and scurrying up the staircase to the sanctuary of her own chambers. She only managed to close the door behind her when her tremulous body gave way. Closing her eyes in shock and mortification, she slid against the door into a crumpled heap, face buried in her hands. It was there alone that she finally broke down.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“ARE YOU ALL RIGHT, MY LADY?” Polly asked with a look of apprehension.
Diana knew she was a mess both inside and out. Weak and mildly nauseated from her exhausting emotional display, her eyes burned, and her hair hung limp and lank about her tear-stained face. She needed no mirror to explain the maid’s alarm. “Yes, Polly. I must have fainted,” she lied. “But I’m fine now.” She rose from the floor on shaky legs, brushing her skirts with trembling hands.
“Fainted?” The maid’s brows rose to her hairline. “I’ve never known you to faint before, my lady. You don’t think you could possibly be…”
Diana choked on a laugh, a half-crazed sound. “My dear Polly, of that I am certain.”
Polly regarded her mistress with a concerned frown. “You don’t look yourself at all, my lady. Mayhap you should take to your bed.” Giving Diana no chance to resist, Polly looped a strong arm about her mistress’s waist and guided her across the room to the adjacent bedchamber. “You sought his lordship earlier,” she said. “He returned to his apartments about an hour ago. I must say he was in much better humor than when he left this morning. Shall I call him for you?”
“No,” Diana almost gasped. “I have no need of Lord Reggie. I’m sure a bath and a good night’s rest will see me completely restored. Pray convey to Lady Chambers that I shan’t join them for supper this evening.”
“Would you have a tray sent to your room, then?” Polly asked.
“No, thank you.” The thought of food almost made Diana retch. “If you will only call for hot water and help me to disrobe.”
The hot bath that followed soothed her shattered nerves, or perhaps it was really the medicinal dose of brandy Polly produced which Diana threw back in one long and unladylike, draining draught. It burned its way from her throat to her belly, but then quickly filled her with a welcoming languor, thanks to her empty stomach. Diana’s mind whirled with the various repercussions of her discovery.
Ten years together, and she had never had an inkling, yet having had time to overcome her initial shock, she saw that Reggie’s behavior made perfect sense. She understood now that he had felt as trapped by their marriage as she, although he had certainly had a choice in the matter. While Diana had wed him out of duty to her parents, she had known that Reggie’s motives had been entirely mercenary. Through their marriage, Diana had provided him with a title, income, and substantial properties. She had satisfied his need to live as a gentleman in the hopes they would come to rub along together, but now she understood the impossibility of that and of the more private needs she could never satisfy.
Ten years of her life wasted. Her youth sacrificed waiting and hoping for something that could never be, that never had any chance to begin with—purely because she was a woman. He had chosen to live the lie, and for that, he had punished her. He had fed her self-doubts and insecurities daily by making her question her own worth as a wife, as a woman. She felt betrayed and dishonored, a realization that filled her with an impotent rage. If she were a man, she would deal with it in a man’s way—with pistols at dawn, but she was a woman, a woman now in desperate need of vindication…of validation.
The recognition of this one simple fact, of her legitimate need to feel appreciated, to be desired, was somehow liberating and empowering. Perhaps it was the drink that falsely bolstered her confidence, for with a calm resolution she never would have thought herself capable of, Diana determined to re-claim what had been taken from her.