“I think,” declared Amanda Trent at dinner that evening, “that we should go to Bath for a long visit.” Four pairs of eyes focused on her face. Her parents were obviously surprised, and not overpleased. Diana looked dismayed, and George antagonistic. Amanda’s pointed chin rose. “I don’t know why I did not think of it before,” she continued. “It would be a perfect holiday for us. We don’t want the hurly-burly of London, yet the country is a bit flat at this season. So…”
“I am not an invalid,” interrupted George through clenched teeth.
A flicker of pain, instantly suppressed, clouded Amanda’s dark eyes. “An invalid?” she repeated, as if mystified. “But of course you are not. What has that to do with anything?”
Confused by his wife’s bland innocence, Major Trent blinked. He was, he knew, all too likely to lose his temper these days. He tried to control his irritation, but rarely succeeded. In fact, he hadn’t been himself since he had taken that damned fever. But he wasn’t to be cajoled into coddling himself and drinking “medicinal” waters. Death in the field was preferable to life as a bleating invalid.
“I only thought you would enjoy seeing old friends,” Amanda said, her tone reproachful. “You know that a great many of them went to Bath. You could ride with them and discuss all the news. The papers would come sooner there, you know. You would hear what Wellington is doing in Vienna almost as soon as it happens. And there would be concerts and assemblies in the evening, which I should enjoy.” Without seeming to, she watched his face anxiously. It was vital to convince George. The others presented no obstacle if he could be brought to agree. And once in Bath, among friends in some cases more seriously wounded than he, surely George could be brought to take more care of himself, and mend the faster.
Major Trent gazed at his still-full plate, a wave of guilt sweeping over him. It could not be very amusing for Amanda to be saddled with a husband such as he had been these past months. She deserved some diversion. And though this thought merely irritated him the more—for his condition was not his fault—he grunted assent. “If you wish it.”
Amanda asked for no more. She had not hoped for even grudging agreement so quickly. “We will go as soon as may be,” she replied. “Perhaps by the end of this week. Do you care to come, Mama, Papa? We should be happy to have your company.”
Mrs. Durham knew what her daughter was doing, and she approved. George would be far happier among his own friends, and the entertainments of Bath would keep him from brooding over his loss. Yet she hated to send Amanda off alone with her radically altered husband. He was so difficult now, she thought, and, despite her experiences, Amanda was still so young. But she herself had responsibilities that could not be lightly pushed aside. As she started to speak, her husband said, “I do not see how I can go away just now, Amanda. We are trying a new method of draining the Huddleston fields, and I don’t trust Bains to oversee repair of the tenant cottages. He is too likely to use inferior materials. But you might go, Celia.” He exchanged a concerned look with his wife.
“I suppose I could,” answered Mrs. Durham slowly.
Amanda laughed, knowing their thoughts. “There is not the least need, if you do not wish to go. I know you are both happiest here. We shall be very well entertained in Bath.”
“I do not like to send you off alone,” murmured her mother, hoping this would not provoke one of George’s outbursts.
“But I shall not be alone,” exclaimed Amanda. “Diana will be there.” Seeing everyone’s surprise, she spread her hands. “But of course Diana must come. I always meant her to. What would she do here in Yorkshire, without anyone?”
Diana, who had been listening with increasing unhappiness to Amanda’s plans, felt a great flood of relief. The prospect of returning to her empty house had been even more distressing after her pleasant interlude with the Durhams. But she felt obliged to say, “I shall be quite all right. You needn’t invite me because…”
“Oh, Diana, you will not desert me now, surely?” wailed her friend. “We have had such fun together. And think how lovely it will be in Bath.”
Diana did think. The idea was immensely attractive. “I don’t wish to be in the way,” she said reluctantly, glancing at George.
“Don’t be silly. George will disappear with his friends to discuss politics, and I shall be left alone for hours. You must bear me company.”
“Good thought,” grunted George.
Though his tone was sullen, this was the greatest approval Diana had heard him express during her visit. Gratefully she capitulated. “I should love to come with you.”
“Splendid!” Amanda smiled and clasped her hands. “We need only pack our things, then, and we can be off. I daresay we can start in two days’ time.”
In the event, it took them a week to make ready. George discovered some business matters concerning his nearby estate which needed his attention. Mr. Durham managed the property for him, but there were decisions that only George could make, and he found it necessary to visit some of the tenants in order to resolve all the problems. Diana decided to put her father’s house, and nearly everything it contained, up for sale. Whatever the future brought, she never wished to return there. Perhaps she would settle in Bath. And so she sorted through all her possessions and packed them up, arranging for an agent to watch over the place and handle its sale. She also called at the bank. She and Mr. Merton determined a reasonable income, to be paid to her quarterly, and the firm gladly agreed to watch over the principal for the time being.
On the day Diana left her family home for the last time, her clothes and personal items tied up and ready to be delivered to the Durhams’ home, she walked through the rooms and tried to discover some scraps of regret among her feelings. She could not. As a child here, she had felt her natural exuberance repressed. As a young girl, she had longed only to leave. And in the last few years, she had labored under the oppression of her own mistakes and misfortunes. She would miss nothing in these now dusty and forlorn apartments.
Her certainty was both liberating and frightening. She could start afresh without guilt, but to have so little past—no one and no place to come back to—shook her to the depths. Her life was truly hers alone. What could she make of it? Her early efforts had been disastrous. Was she any more prepared to go forth now than she had been at seventeen?
Of course she was, Diana told herself, holding her head high. She had to be; the years she had spent pondering must have given her some wisdom. However, as she followed the carters carrying the last of her trunks and locked the oaken front door behind them, she felt a quiver of apprehension. Perhaps she should have retreated to her old home after all, where all was familiar, if unexciting. At least here she had known who she was. Diana stood still, one hand flat against the wood, then shook her head decisively and turned away.
On her return to the Durhams’, Diana found the whole household in an uproar. The contrast to her own silent home was dizzying, and for a moment she could only stand amazed in the front hall, and listen to Mr. Durham and George Trent debating loudly in the library, Mrs. Durham calling to her daughter upstairs, and excited talk floating up from the servants’ quarters below. Then she recovered and hurried up to Amanda.
“Oh, Diana!” Amanda exclaimed when she entered. “Did you hear the news? Napoleon has escaped from Elba and is marching through France gathering a new army. Wellington is recalled from the Congress. It will be war again.”
Diana struggled to take this in.
“George is frantic to leave. Thank heaven we are nearly ready. I had to argue for an hour against going straight to London. He hates it there, and he will get the papers nearly as quickly in Bath.”
“Is he… Will he go back into the army?”
“Oh, no. He is not completely recovered. And he is mustered out.” Amanda grimaced. “Do not tell him, but I am glad.”
Diana nodded, understanding.
“Have you finished packing?”
“Yes. I have shut up the house.”
“Good. I expect we shall go tomorrow. Lud, I thought we were finished with this war.”
Diana, feeling very ignorant, nodded again. She had never paid proper attention to such important matters, she thought.
* * *
They set off for Bath on a fine day in late March, Diana and Amanda in a post chaise, and George Trent riding beside, having gruffly refused his wife’s plea to join them and help relieve the tedium of the journey. Diana, knowing that her friend wished to lessen her husband’s exertions, had added her arguments, but to no avail. The roads were still deep in mud, but the weather was much warmer, and they made slow but steady progress southward, driven onward by George’s impatience. Aside from frequent anxious glances out the window, Amanda was content, and Diana found herself more and more attached to her old friend as they endured the vicissitudes of travel together. For the first time, she began to understand how Amanda had borne years abroad and the numberless inconveniences inevitable in military lodgings. No setback seemed to worry or discourage Amanda Trent. If a horse went lame or a posting house had nothing to offer but bread, cheese, and ale for their dinner, she accepted it with cheerful optimism, insisting that things would soon be better and raising everyone else’s spirits with some anecdote of far more harrowing conditions in Spain. Only her husband’s moods and misfortunes could depress her, Diana saw now. She had not realized this until they were on the road and other difficulties arose. She marveled at the depth of love Amanda must feel, to be so solicitous. She herself more than once stifled a sharp retort when George Trent was particularly gruff or truculent.
March was ending by the time they reached Bath, and daffodils were showing by the side of the road. Diana was very glad when they reached the final stage, and the postboys informed them that they would arrive in the city by midafternoon. She was heartily sick of the bouncing chaise, ill-aired inn sheets, and the effort to appear good-humored for every minute of the day. She was deeply accustomed to a certain amount of solitude, she found, and though she was fonder than ever of Amanda, she nevertheless wished they might escape each other for some part of the day—as they would, of course, in Bath.
They drove into the town at three on a cloudless afternoon and went directly to the Royal Crescent, where Amanda had engaged a set of apartments. As they passed through the streets, the ladies commented on the beauties of the place. Diana had never seen Bath, and Amanda had not visited for some years.
“How lovely,” exclaimed Diana as they pulled up before their lodgings. The pale buildings of the Crescent curved before them, overlooking a wide, sloping lawn with the garden below.
“You won’t mind the hill, will you?” Amanda asked as both women descended from the post chaise. “I tried to find rooms farther down, but there was nothing suitable. We can always hire a chair.”
“Why, it’s nothing at all,” replied Diana, looking back at the steep slant they had ascended. “I can walk that easily. How beautiful it all is. I can never thank you properly for asking me to come, Amanda.”
“Nonsense. I should have been sadly flat without you. And here is the building, number five. I do hope they had my last letter.”
All was well within, the rooms ready and quite satisfactory. As the servants carried their things inside and began to unpack, Diana and Amanda went through the apartments together and exclaimed at the elegance of the furnishings. Amanda repeatedly called her husband’s attention to some particularly fine detail. “If only we could have found such lodgings in Spain, George,” she laughed finally, when they had gathered in the drawing room and she no longer had to shout down the stairs to capture his attention. “Do you remember our first place in Madrid? I should have thought I was in heaven if I had walked in here then.”
Diana was surprised at George Trent’s reminiscent smile. “Still, we had some fine times there. Remember the night Johnny Eagleton came to dinner?” George asked.
Amanda laughed. “Do I not!” She turned to Diana. “He brought his own goose, alive, and expected me to cook it for him. I had only a Spanish girl of fourteen to help me—we could scarcely speak four words to each other—and here was this great bird flapping and hissing about the drawing room. Terrifying! And George would do nothing but laugh!”
He laughed now, for the first time since Diana had met him again. “I wonder where Johnny is now? I suppose he is with the army in America.” At this thought, his smile faded again, and he turned away.
“Are you going out to gather news?” asked Amanda, keeping her tone resolutely gay. “If you pass the assembly rooms, you must put our names down. I daresay you will see a dozen acquaintances in the street. Or in the Pump Room. We must ask what is the fashionable hour there.”
Major Trent did not reply, but his attention seemed caught, and in a few minutes he did indeed go out.
“Oh, I do hope he encounters some old friends,” said Amanda, watching him from the drawing-room window. “It will make such a difference.”
“I’m sure he will,” replied Diana. “I saw uniforms everywhere as we drove in.”
“Yes, a great many men are still in the army,” Amanda said, though she was distracted, her eyes still on her departing husband. “He will never have a chair,” she murmured. “I hope the hill does not exhaust him.”
Diana wished to offer Amanda some diversion, but her mind held only envy of the major. She longed to go exploring herself.
At last Amanda turned from the panes. “I believe I will go upstairs and lie down. I am tired out from the journey.”
Diana had rather hoped they could go out together, but she merely said, “Of course. Can I do anything for you?”
“No.” Amanda smiled. “If you would like to see the town, you can take Fanny with you.”
Diana’s answering smile was sheepish, and her friend laughed. “Go on. I can see you are longing to get out.”
“It is just that I have never visited such a place before,” apologized Diana. “You are a jaded traveler.”
As always, Amanda remembered her friend’s sheltered history with a start. When one talked with Diana, it was so easy to forget that she had never been anywhere or done anything, because she seemed so knowledgeable. “Go, by all means,” Amanda urged, “only keep Fanny with you and do not get lost.” Fanny was the Yorkshire girl they had hired as Diana’s personal maid.
“Yes, Mama,” laughed Diana. “And I shall be home in time for tea.”
“See that you are,” responded the other with mock severity. They walked up the stairs arm in arm, laughing together, so that Diana could fetch her hat.
* * *
Diana found Bath fascinating. Never in her life had she been able to stroll through bustling streets and observe such a variety of people. Though she stopped nowhere, she paused before the exclusive shops on Milsom Street, the desire for a new wardrobe rising in her breast, and she gazed at the Pump Room and the assembly rooms with eager eyes. Despite her good looks, she herself was not much marked because of her unfashionable black gown and outmoded bonnet, but this suited Diana perfectly. She would not have known how to turn away excessive interest. As it was, she could revel in the novel sights and sounds of Bath secure under the meager protection of Fanny, whose eyes and mouth were so wide she continually tripped over her own feet.
The afternoon waned, and Diana reluctantly concluded that it was time to turn toward their lodgings. She consoled herself with the knowledge that she was actually staying in town, and that she might take such a walk every day if she chose, as well as attend the public concerts and assemblies. The prospect sent her into a happy daze of anticipation.
Thus, neither Diana nor Fanny was watching very carefully as they made their way along the pavement in the general direction of the Royal Crescent. Town dwellers might have warned them that the street was no place for pleasant imaginings, particularly in early spring when the dirt was greatest, but they were not acquainted with any Bath resident, and none was likely to accost a stranger with unsolicited advice.
They turned into one of the major thoroughfares and, skirting a wide puddle, went on toward home. Diana did not even turn her head at the clatter of hooves and wheels behind. The approach of a carriage had already become commonplace, though she would have run to the window in excitement just a week before, at home.
The noise intensified, and someone shouted, “Look out, there!” With a sudden rush, a hired chaise swept around the corner and cut through the broad puddle in the road, throwing up a spray of mud and water nearly six feet high. Diana and Fanny were directly in its path; in an instant, they were coated from head to foot with mud. There was not even time to throw up an arm to protect their faces.
Diana was so startled that she did not move for a moment. Then she raised a hand to her face and wiped ineffectually at the stiffening mask. She heard a male voice shout, “Pull up, you fool!” She blinked her eyes rapidly, a speck of mud making them water, and tried to focus as a tall figure in uniform rapidly approached. “I beg your pardon,” said the same voice. “That idiot of a driver didn’t see you, I suppose. Are you all right? Apart from this confounded mud, of course.”
Diana peered up at him, her vision still clouded. He wore the dark-blue jacket and gray trousers of the Royal Horse Guards, the red and gold trim seeming painfully bright in her present condition. But though his uniform was smart, he looked thin for his height, his broad shoulders a little too wide for his girth, and his face showed signs of hardship and suffering. He couldn’t be more than thirty, she thought, but he had certainly seen a good deal of action.
The man smiled, and his thin face was abruptly transformed. He was by no means unhandsome, but his brown hair and light-blue eyes were not really striking until he smiled. His gaze seemed to take light from the air, and the planes of his high cheekbones shifted to reveal a character and temperament more attractive than mere good looks. He laughed, and this impression intensified. Diana felt an odd fluttering near the base of her throat. “I am sorry,” he added. “I am not laughing at you, you know. It is just…”
“…that I look so very ridiculous,” finished Diana, imagining her eyes looking out of a mud-covered face. Her tone was sharp, though she did not precisely blame him for the incident. He had not been driving, after all, and he had apologized. Yet she could not help but be irritated.
“Not at all.” But his blue eyes danced. “Allow me to make amends by driving you home. It is the least I can do.”
“We will muddy your carriage,” answered Diana, who nonetheless had no intention of refusing his offer.
“It is hired, and no more than the driver deserves, for his carelessness.” He started to offer his arm, then thought better of it, his smile widening.
“I ought to insist upon support,” responded Diana, ruthlessly suppressing an answering smile at the thought of how his smart uniform sleeve would look covered with mud.
At once, he extended his arm again. “You are welcome to it.”
She shook her head and stepped toward the chaise. “I could not spoil your uniform.”
“It has seen worse than mud.” His expression was wry as he turned to follow her. He had a cane and walked with one stiff knee, Diana noticed. “And I shall be putting it off for a time here in Bath, worse luck.”
“You are on leave?”
He nodded as he put a hand under her elbow to help her into the carriage. “At the worst possible time, naturally.” He ushered Fanny into the forward seat and climbed in after her, his stiff left leg making his movement awkward. “My name is Robert Wilton, by the by. Which way?”
Diana gave her direction and sat back. Her initial anger at the accident was fading, only to be replaced by a far more intense chagrin at the manner of their meeting. She found Robert Wilton extremely engaging. Why could she not have encountered him in the assembly rooms, or the concert hall, when she had acquired a new gown and perhaps a modicum of assurance? Diana knew she would never match the London misses who had had the benefit of a season and constant practice in the art of conversation, but she might have made a better impression than this. She fingered her mud-stiffened black gown. He could not even have a proper idea of what she looked like, and he must think her a perfect fool for being caught so.
Yet it should not matter what he thought. She knew nothing of him. Was she so susceptible that she swooned over the first male she met after years of solitude? Diana flushed crimson at the thought. She had made that mistake before. Had she learned nothing since then? Setting her jaw, she gazed out the window at the passing scene.
“Are you very angry?” asked Wilton. “I cannot blame you, of course, but I do hope you will forgive me eventually.” He paused, as if waiting for something, then added, “Will you tell me your name, though I do not deserve it?”
Realizing that she could have done so when he gave his, she said, “Diana Gresham,” in a stiff voice. It was an unconventional introduction.
“You are staying in Bath?”
“Yes.” Why did he insist on talking?
“I, too. Perhaps we shall meet again.” Again he waited, a bit puzzled. She had seemed so open at first, and he had been impressed by her reaction to the accident. Most women, he imagined, would have collapsed in a fit of the vapors and screeched at him like a fishwife. Miss Gresham had not only remained calm; she had traded a mild joke with him. What had he done to turn her so cold?
Robert Wilton was the first to admit that he knew very little of women. For the six years since he came of age, he had been fighting with Wellington’s army. He had not spent more than a score of evenings in a drawing room in his life, and he was always deucedly awkward with the girls his mother put in his way on those occasions. His eldest brother, Lord Faring, rallied him about it whenever they met. Yet, with this woman, Wilton had felt no constraint at first. Probably he had put his foot in it somehow, without even knowing it. He would drop her at her lodgings and fade away as quickly as possible. But this thought brought an immediate protest from some part of him, and he found himself asking, “You are here with your parents?” At least he would know what name to seek, he thought.
“No, with friends.” Diana’s tone was discouraging. She would not make an even greater fool of herself, she thought. But when silence descended upon the carriage, she felt a pang of regret. They were nearly at the Crescent In a moment, she would climb down, and the incident would be closed forever. She might never see him again. “Major and Mrs. Trent,” she heard herself add.
“George Trent?”
“Yes.”
“But we are old friends. Has he recovered from the fever he took at Toulouse?”
“Not…not completely,” faltered Diana.
“I must call at once.” They pulled up before the house, and he jumped out to help Diana, wincing as his stiff knee jarred against the cobblestones. It seemed he might actually come inside with her. Diana searched her mind for a deterrent, but it turned out to be unnecessary. “Please convey my compliments and say I shall come soon, perhaps tomorrow.”
Diana nodded.
“And, again, my deepest apologies.” He bowed slightly.
She nodded again and turned toward the door.
“George will tell you that mud is my natural element,” added Wilton, laughter in his voice.
When she looked over her shoulder, he was getting back into the carriage. Inexplicably, Diana felt a pang of misery. Why must she botch everything? She resolved to be a paragon of polish and elegance when Robert Wilton called on the Trents.