And the Miss Ran Away With the Rake (10 page)

He would.

“Tabitha, of course.” She glanced away, because she didn’t trust herself. Lord Henry was many things, but the man was no fool and his sharp gaze had a way of piercing her—leaving Daphne with the sense he could see right through her gown, straight to her very heart.

“And your family approves?”

“But of course,” she lied again. “My lord, let me be frank—”

“I prefer it,” he said emphatically.

“As do I,” she told him. “I am here for Tabitha and Tabitha only. Once she and Preston are wed, I will return to London . . .” Or to wherever her furious family decided to banish her. She suspected a prolonged visit to Dermot Dale would be in order, never mind that Dermot had the distinction of being the only Dale ever to be convicted and transported to Botany Bay.

A moment of panic struck her.
I wonder if they have modiste shops in New South Wales?

She steeled herself to such a fate and looked Lord Henry directly in the eye. “So you can see, you will not have to suffer my company any more than a fortnight, and then we shall never see each other again.”

She waited for him to add some comment. An “Amen!” or “Thank God.” Or the one probably closest to the surface of his sharp tongue, a heartfelt “Good riddance.”

But he did not. Much to her amazement, he nodded and sat down in the chair across from hers. “Then if that is the case, Miss Dale, might I suggest that we pledge to keep our distance?”

“You mean keep to our separate corners, as it were?” she asked, glancing tellingly down to the other end of the table.

“Yes, exactly,” he said, completely missing her point.

“An excellent proposal,” she agreed.

“Nothing I would like more,” he said, then tucked into his breakfast.

Daphne paused, then cleared her throat. “
Ahem
.”

He glanced up and blinked at her as if he had already forgotten her presence. “Yes, Miss Dale?”

“You can start by moving.”

He glanced up. “Excuse me?”

“Moving, my lord.”

“Wherever to?”

“The other end of the table.” She nodded down to the far end. The one well away from her.

“But I am settled here. I always sit here.”

“Yes, that may be so, but this was your idea, your proposal.” She dabbed her lips with her napkin. “It hardly seems gentlemanly to insist on such an arrangement, then require a lady to move.”

She eyed him yet again, sending a skeptical, scathing glance that said she highly doubted he was capable of such a gentlemanly concession.

Henry’s eyes narrowed, murderously so, but even still, he picked up his plate and stomped down to the end of the long table, well away from her.

And once he was well settled, she handed Mr. Muggins the last of her sausages and arose, having suddenly lost her appetite. As Lord Henry gaped at her, Daphne left the morning room at a serene pace despite the glowering storm cloud rising behind her.

D
aphne spent a good part of the morning in the quiet of the library, comparing the guest list she’d purloined from Tabitha’s desk drawer to her own list of possible candidates. She’d come quickly to the conclusion that she had her work cut out for her, for nearly half a dozen of the gentlemen assembled could be the man she sought.

“Bother, Mr. Muggins! However will I narrow the field?” she asked the now ever-present terrier.

Mr. Muggins scrambled to his feet, his ears at attention, and it was only after he’d raced to the door that Daphne heard the telltale click of Tabitha’s sensible boots.

Her friend poked her head in the library. “Here she is, Harriet,” she called out. And to Daphne she said, “We have been hunting for you all over. Whatever are you doing?” she asked as Harriet appeared at her shoulder.

“What else? Trying to discover who Dishforth might be.” Daphne quickly folded her papers and notes into her notebook, tying it shut.

“Perhaps you’d need only look as far as Lord Henry,” Harriet suggested.

Daphne bristled. Not this again. Ever since Tabitha’s engagement ball, Harriet had been unrelenting in her conviction that Lord Henry must be Mr. Dishforth.

“How many times must I say it, Harriet? Lord Henry is not my Mr. Dishforth.”

“But at the ball—”

“Yes, yes, I might have been misled into thinking he was Mr. Dishforth, but can’t you see how wrong I was?”

Tabitha and Harriet exchanged a pair of skeptical glances.

“Daphne,” the future duchess began, “why don’t I ask Preston if he knows—”

Daphne cut Tabitha off in an instant. “No! You mustn’t! What if he were to mention it to Lord Henry?”

“Might clear this all up,” Harriet muttered under her breath.

Daphne ignored her, as did Tabitha.

“The night of the engagement ball was mortifying enough—” Daphne began. “Please, Tabitha, I beg of you, don’t mention any of this to the duke.”

“I won’t,” her friend swore.

Seeing the outright pessimism on Harriet’s face, Daphne had no choice but to continue on. “I was merely caught up in the romance of a ball and the very idea of meeting him. If I had been in a more sensible frame of mind, I would never have made such a mistake. The very idea! Lord Henry, indeed. Why, it is too ridiculous to consider.”

“Yes, well,” Tabitha mused, slanting a glance at Harriet. “Might I suggest that instead of hiding in here, you resume your search in person. We are all summoned outside.” She moved forward and plucked up Daphne’s notebook, handing it off to Pansy, who was hovering behind with Daphne’s hat and a shawl at the ready.

“Whatever is going on?” Daphne asked as Tabitha hustled her and Harriet through one long hall, and then another.

“House party obligations,” Harriet filled in from behind.

Daphne was about to protest that she had better tasks at hand than tea on the lawn or embroidery when Tabitha led them out the front door and down the steps.

To her amazement, the entire house party stood about the wide gravel mews of Owle Park. Out along the curved drive that lay beyond sat a collection of carriages, gigs and carts awaiting whatever the duke had planned.

But more to the point were the gentlemen.

Daphne’s gaze flitted from one to the next. “Is this all of them?”

Tabitha’s eyes sparkled with amusement. “Yes. Much more revealing than guest lists and entries copied from Debrett’s.”

“Now all you must do is find him,” Harriet added, waving at Lady Essex, who was standing near another elderly matron.

It was at that moment that Daphne’s gaze came to an unwanted halt on Lord Henry.

He was strolling about through the throng of guests, and she could see why she might have mistaken him for Dishforth. There were glaring similarities between Preston’s uncle and her true love—certainly they shared the same sure stance and confident bearing she’d witnessed the other day on Christopher Street.

If only she had seen the man up close, for the more she looked around, she realized nearly all the men in attendance carried themselves thusly.

Good heavens, it was just her luck to be at the house party with every handsome man in England. So much for going by Phi’s near-sighted description.

“Have you been introduced to all of them, Tabitha?” she asked.

“I have,” she offered but said nothing more.

Harriet nudged her with her shoulder. “Stop being a tease and tell us who they are. Before Daphne trips you.”

Tabitha smirked. “She wouldn’t dare try that stunt twice.”

Daphne ignored them both and marched down the steps, her friends following her quickly.

Once they’d finished laughing.

As they strolled across the yard, Mr. Muggins following at their heels, Daphne tipped her head ever so slightly toward the first man before them. “Whoever is that?”

“Which one?” Tabitha asked, shielding her eyes.

Harriet laughed. “The one who looks like a pirate.”

For indeed there was a gentleman who did resemble a privateer of old—from his rugged, tanned countenance, his untamed crop of dark hair, to the nonchalance of his dress. He leaned heavily on a cane but at the same time gestured wildly as he conversed with another man.

“That is Captain Bramston,” Tabitha told them.

“Bramston?!” Harriet gasped. “
The
Captain Bramston?”

All three ladies gazed over at England’s newest hero. Daphne knew the name well, for his naval daring had figured prominently in the papers for years, and his prominence had continued once he’d been sent home to London to recuperate.

“He is a cousin or some such to Lady Juniper and Lord Henry, on their mother’s side. He also brought his sister, Lady Clare,” Tabitha supplied as they continued past the captain, who doffed his hat and winked as they passed.

“So he’s not a Seldon, then,” Daphne remarked.

Harriet let out a low whistle. “He’s handsome enough to be one.”

“And a bit devilish,” Daphne noted, wondering if perhaps behind all the man’s bluster lay Dishforth’s sensible soul. It didn’t seem possible, so she moved to the next possible candidate. “And who is that with the captain?”

“Believe it or not, the Earl of Rawcliffe,” Tabitha told them.

“Rawcliffe?” they both gasped, their gazes pivoting back to the man who, in Kempton, was as infamous as he was absent. The earl held the living that had been Tabitha’s father’s until his death, and that Tabitha’s uncle, Reverend Timmons, now held.

“Yes, he’s back in England. Has been since the beginning of the Season. Preston mentioned seeing him at White’s, and so I invited him,” Tabitha confided. “Imagine my surprise when he accepted.”

The man noticed their attentions and bowed to the three of them.

Daphne sighed. There wasn’t a spinster in Kempton who didn’t dream of being the mistress who restored Rawcliffe Manor to its former glory, the grand Tudor mansion having sat empty for far too many years.
If he were Dishforth . . .

She slanted one more glance at the Earl of Rawcliffe and considered the possibilities.

No wonder Lady Essex and several other ladies from Kempton—the Tempest twins and even shy Miss Walding—hovered about in the man’s orbit.

As they continued to move along the outside of the crowd, Daphne discarded several of the guests as unlikely candidates: Harriet’s brother Chaunce, too much a Hathaway to sit down and compose a letter; Roxley, too much a gadfly even to think of such a thing; and the Earl of Kipps? Easily dismissed, for he had pockets to let.

Kipps needed an heiress. Not something one sought by placing an advertisement in the
Morning Chronicle
.

As they got to the front of the crowd, Daphne spied Lord Henry off to Preston’s right, and discovered, much to her annoyance, that he was watching her.

She wet her lips and glanced away, that wild tremor racing through her limbs, the one that always ran rampant whenever she looked at him.

She had to imagine that when she found Dishforth, her entire body would tremble so, and so she glanced around at the crowd of gentlemen, waiting for one of them to inspire such a passion.

A slight shiver.

A spark?

And yet there was nothing.

“Daphne,” Harriet whispered. “Smile. That scowl you are wearing will have Lady Essex over here with her vinaigrette, convinced you have need of it.”

“I am hardly scowling,” she whispered back, doing her best to smile and not look at Lord Henry. “Do you know what all this is about, Tabitha?”

“Preston will explain,” the future duchess said, nodding toward her soon-to-be husband.

The duke leapt onto a mounting block and held up his hands. “Here is the challenge for today. A treasure hunt.”

There were cheers and some bits of muttering. Gentlemen cast mischievous glances at the ladies, while fans fluttered over the prospect of such a task.

The duke continued, “Each pair will be provided a map and instructions for where their treasure is hidden, and all you have to do is find it and return before anyone else.”

“However are the teams to be decided?” Fieldgate asked, sending a wink over at Harriet.

“By lots,” he told them.

This took everyone aback, and this time the muttering grew louder.

“Yes, but—” Roxley objected.

“No objections or you will not be eligible for the prize,” Preston told his friend.

“A prize?” whispered Daphne.

“Yes, just listen,” Tabitha told her.

“The winning team will have the first choice of dancing partner for the unmasking waltz at the ball.”

Daphne took a deep breath. How utterly romantic. If she were to win or Dishforth did, they could be together for the unmasking.

She saw it so perfectly in her imagination.

“Miss Spooner,” he would whisper, his fingers gently tugging at the laces of her mask, and when it fell away, they would see each other for the first time.

But much to her chagrin, as she imagined the moment, it wasn’t just any handsome features staring down at her but Lord Henry’s.

She wrenched her eyes open and shuddered.

“Whatever is the matter?” Harriet asked.

“A chill,” Daphne replied.

“I am beginning to think you do need Lady Essex’s smelling salts,” Harriet muttered back.

“I daresay it is going to rain,” Tabitha added. They both looked at her. “Well, Daphne always shivers just before it starts to rain.”

“There’s nary a cloud in the sky,” Harriet said, crossing her arms over her chest and giving Daphne a searching glance.

“It might rain,” Daphne said, not wanting to reveal the true cause of her trembling.

And this time, she didn’t look in
his
direction. Rather she scanned the rest of the crowd and noticed ladies off to one side near Lord Astbury. One of them wore a fine apple green silk that Daphne had seen in a draper’s shop in London. She’d nearly died over the cost—it had been prohibitively expensive—and now here was a young woman who not only could afford it but could also wear it done up in an ordinary day gown.

“Tabitha,” Daphne whispered. “Who is that lady—” She nodded toward Lord Astbury. “The one in the apple green silk?”

Sparing a quick glance in that direction, Tabitha’s nose wrinkled. “Miss Nashe. And of course, Lady Alicia Lovell with her.”