Diana the Huntress by MC Beaton Page A

were only the four of them, the gentlemen did not wish to be left with their wine but begged the ladies tostay at table and continue talking. The candles burned low in their sockets. Diana listened to Mr Emberton’s easy voice, talking of this and that, and dreamed of being on a more intimate footing with him so that she could learn more of his adventurous life. He did not actually say much, seeming happy to describe other people’s adventures and stories. He appeared to know all the rich and famous people in London with the exception of Diana’s brothers-in-law. Then, just as Lady Godolphin was about to bring the evening to an end, Mr Emberton said, ‘I hear Dantrey has come back to this country.’
    Diana’s face became set. Lady Godolphin said hurriedly, ‘I must tell the servants to buy the milk from the cows in Green Park and not from those wretched Welsh milkmaids who come to the doorstep. I don’t know what that blueish fluid is supposed to be, but it’s certainly not milk.’
    Diana began to talk quickly of various interesting and amusing hawkers, her voice breathless and rapid.
    ‘Oho!’ thought Mr Emberton. ‘A mystery here.’ But he did not mention Lord Dantrey again that evening.
    As he was waiting for Colonel Brian to be helped into his greatcoat, Mr Emberton murmured to Diana, ‘I fear you do not like London. Would you like me to try to persuade your father to let you return to Hopeworth?’
    Diana clasped her hands and looked at him with wide beseeching eyes. ‘I should like that of all things,’ she said.
    He raised her hand to his lips and looked into herwide dark eyes. Diana quickly withdrew her hand and buried it in the folds of her dress. She smiled at him to cover her rudeness. But there had been something almost predatory in his eyes, in his bearing, that had made her instinctively shrink from him. She put it down quickly to a normal female nervousness in the face of the attentions of such a masculine man.
    When she was being undressed for bed by Sally, Lady Godolphin’s maid, Diana pondered over the strangeness of her feelings for Mr Emberton. When he was with her, she was sure he was all her heart could desire. When she saw his merry blue eyes and listened to his deep voice, she seemed to be at the threshold of that magical country called love, waiting tremulously for that one long step which would take her across to the land where the days were long and sunny, and where the unicorns played on the crushed pearls of the beach beside the sapphire river.
    But when he was gone, she was uncomfortable and had doubts. She longed for the next time she would see him so that these doubts would fade away again.
    Then there was that wretched cat. Did she not see Lord Dantrey almost immediately after the cat had run across her path? ‘Close the window, Sally,’ she said sharply. The candle flames were being blown in the draught and ‘winding sheets’ were curling about the candles. Sally went to do as she was bid, with her usual nods and winks and grimaces, as if aware of some nasty secret that she could tell if only she would. Lady Godolphin had told Diana that she put up with Sally’s peculiar mannerisms because Sally was a genius at herjob. But Diana found Sally an uncomfortable person to have around and found herself wishing from time to time that she had Sarah’s company.
    She kept Mr Emberton’s face firmly in her mind’s eye before she fell asleep, hoping to dream of him, but it was Lord Dantrey’s lips that bore down on her own and Lord Dantrey’s body that made her own burn and ache. She awoke briefly with a cry of distress, turned over and fell asleep, to dream this time of riding out with her father’s hunt on a clear autumn day when the bracken shone gold in the clear mellow light and the sharp air was tangy with wood smoke.
    Lady Godolphin awoke with a feeling that it would be a very good thing to stay in bed and pull the covers over her head. Arthur, Colonel Brian, had turned