And the Miss Ran Away With the Rake (21 page)

“Miss Dale,” he whispered.
Daphne.

“I’m late . . . and a bit lost,” she murmured, her gaze never leaving his, her lashes fluttering as she spoke.

He had the sense she wasn’t just talking about finding the dining room—that the two of them were on the same errant course. One that kept tossing them together only to pull them apart.

Never mind that she was a Dale . . . oh, he couldn’t deny that was a rub. Henry could almost hear his forebears rising up to protest such a coupling . . . or how Aunt Zillah would take the news.

Perhaps that was exactly why Miss Dale was so devilishly tempting.

“I’m rather lost as well,” he confessed, looking down at her and resisting the urge to brush an errant strand of her blonde hair out of her eyes.

She shook her head as if she didn’t believe him. “How can you be lost?”

“I’ve never been here,” he told her, not even realizing that he had drawn her closer until he felt the rustle of her gown against his hips, or how his words might have a second, more important, meaning.

“Never?” Again the question was so laden with so many implications.

Layers Henry didn’t dare peel back. Even for a peek. “Yes, well, Preston grew up here. Until . . . until . . .” He paused, but one look at the sudden sad light that flickered in her gaze told him she knew the horrible story as well.

How Owle Park had been Preston’s childhood home until his entire family, save him, had perished from fever, leaving him orphaned and the heir all in one fell swoop.

That cold, haunted memory stopped them both. Sent a chill between them as if the ghosts in this house had better sense than they did.

It was enough to give Miss Dale the impetus to step out of his grasp, wavering still, but this time, he suspected her trembling stance wasn’t from their collision.

“There, see,” she said, glancing down at her feet and smoothing her skirts. “No damage done. So sorry to have . . .” Again, she glanced up at him, this time almost warily.

“No, truly, it was my fault,” he told her.

Then it started all again, that awkward silence, followed by the compelling need to close the gap between them.

Henry sensed that if they dared, if they took that one step to close the chasm, there would be no turning back.

Miss Dale drew a deep breath. “I suppose we should find the dining room,” she suggested, glancing right and left and not at him.

So it was decided. Which was for the best. “Yes, quite,” he agreed. After all, he was to meet Miss Spooner tonight.

Sensible, practical, perfectly acceptable Miss Spooner.

The sooner, the better, he realized as his body continued to thrum with reckless desire. So he started down the hall, Miss Dale at his side.

Right where she belongs.

Henry cringed and decided to take a different tack. “Are you in trouble over—”

“That incident which should not be named?” she asked, her lips twitching into a sly smile.

Oh, how it called to him. Henry shrugged off that notion and continued doing his utmost to maintain an orderly veneer. “Yes. Truly, I should never have suggested it. If I had known your daring side—”

“Daring had nothing to do with it,” she told him. “Nor did I. It was all Miss Nashe. Well, nearly all Miss Nashe.”

“Then you had something to do with it,” he pressed.

She glanced away. “A small part. Hardly worth mentioning.”

“Hardly?”

“So slight,” she demurred. “The lady found the gown all on her own and was most insistent on making it hers.”

“Yet you didn’t warn her?”

“Tabitha might have tried,” she admitted.

“Might have?”

“She might have been able to do so if my hand hadn’t been covering her mouth.”

Henry, despite his better nature, burst out laughing. How could he not? The scene was rife with irony: Miss Nashe in all her haughtiness and dear Tabitha, ever the vicar’s daughter, trying to do the right thing.

And then there was Miss Dale.

“Wicked girl!”

She slanted a glance at him. “You shouldn’t sound so admiring over it.”

He straightened, for he shouldn’t. Admire her, that is. “Whyever not?”

“Lady Essex says there will a grand scandal over it.”

“You can count on it,” he told her. “Benley has been laid low with all the posts leaving Owle Park this afternoon. Not one of these gossipy harpies wants to be the last one to make her report.”

“And you don’t mind?” she asked.

Henry shook his head. “Quite immune to it.”

“I suppose you are.”

“And you?”

“My mother would have horrors over my part in all of it, but thankfully no one will ever know,” she admitted.

“Save me,” he said, waggling his brows at her. He couldn’t help himself.

“Oh, dear heavens, does that mean I’m indebted to you?” she asked in mock horror.

“Your secret is safe with me,” he told her in all solemnity.

“I believe you. I even trust you. Which I never thought I’d say about a Seldon.” She needn’t sound so shocked.

“No? And how many have you met?” he asked.

Miss Dale laughed. “Only you and Preston. Oh, and Lady Juniper and Lady Zillah.”

“I do believe, then, you have met all of us.”

She turned and gaped at him. “That’s all there is? Just you four?”

He nodded. “Well, we’ve never been a prolific lot, like you Dales.”

“Which is rather ironic,” she pointed out.

“How so?”

“You Seldons are considered quite licentious, and yet there are so few of you left.”

“Perhaps we are not as licentious as we seem,” he said with a rakish wink that made her blush. He rather liked it when she did—it wasn’t so much because she was embarrassed but because she thought him a rake.

“Please do not tell Zillah I admitted as much,” he added hastily. “She takes great pride in our scandalous reputation.”

“She must be ever so disappointed in Preston, now that he’s reformed.” Then she slowed slightly and lowered her voice. “Was he as scandalous as they say?”

“I do believe Preston was under the impression that was how he ought to behave—not how he truly is.”

“So I am beginning to see,” she admitted.

“Still, you don’t approve.”

“Tabitha’s engagement to Preston took us all by surprise,” she said. “It was just so sudden, so . . .”

“You are being diplomatic,” he said, folding his hands behind his back.

“Yes, well, as a Dale—”

“Yes, yes, say no more—”

“No, I must. You mistake me,” she said. “While of course I can hardly approve of the match—for he is—”

Henry arched a brow and waited for her answer, if only to see how far her diplomacy could take them.

“He is Preston,” she finally said.

True enough. That had been enough this past Season to have even the most upstart mushrooms giving the entire Seldon family the cut direct.

Then Miss Dale surprised him. “Yet he does love Tabitha.”

“Passionately,” Henry added.

“Yes, that he does.” And it was that—the very envy in her voice—that cut him to the quick.

And now it seemed it was a sentiment he shared with Miss Dale.

Yet she wasn’t done. “Tabitha would never choose any man who wasn’t deserving, and it is as you say, that the duke loves her passionately, but I fear . . .”

They had come to a stop.

“Well, what I mean to say is . . . that is . . . do you think—” she began, then she looked up at him and finished, “is passion enough?”

Oh, very much so,
he wanted to tell her.

That thought, that conviction made without even blinking, came straight from his heart.

For all he could see was Miss Dale undone, in his bed, beneath him. Passion? She left him in its throes by walking into a room. To spend the rest of his life that way?

Henry would never have believed how alive passion, desire, could make one feel.

Until now.

Good God, he hoped when he walked into the library it was Miss Dale there. Never mind the dustup such an affair would result in. He wanted to be her rake. To be the passion in her life. To have her always.

Damn tradition. Damn the lines.

Yet she took his silence all wrong and started walking again. “Everyone speaks of love as if it was so easy to understand, as if it makes sense,” she was saying when he caught up.

“It doesn’t?” he asked as he joined her.

She shook her head. “Preston is . . . well, he’s Preston. And Tabitha is . . . goodness, she’s a vicar’s daughter. Yet they fit. They make the other whole. How can that be?”

Henry spoke without thinking, his restraint and sensibilities having fled in the face of Miss Daphne Dale, and without those confining boundaries, he said, “That would rather be like you and me falling in love.”

W
hat had Lord Henry just said? The words rang through Daphne with such a deafening clang that it took her a moment or two to make sense of them.

That would rather be like you and me falling in love.

Them? In love? It wouldn’t be the oddity that was Tabitha and Preston’s impending marriage; rather, if they—she and Lord Henry—were to fall in love, it would be . . . why, it would be . . .

Heavenly
. The word came unbidden into her thoughts, carried by the memory of his kiss.

If Daphne didn’t know better, she suspected she was already in love with Lord Henry Seldon.

No, not suspected. Knew.

Oh, it was too impossible to believe. Her. In love. With a Seldon. If a postal engagement was scandalous, this was . . . beyond ruinous.

“What an unmitigated disaster that would turn out to be,” she told him with a shaky laugh, starting down the hall again.

Fleeing was more like it.

He laughed a bit as well. Was it her, or did his amusement sound as forced as hers? She glanced back at him. “Yes, wouldn’t it be?” he said. “Can you imagine Zillah’s reaction?”

Daphne made a great show of shuddering—though a good part of it wasn’t all acting. “Yes, imagine that. And my Great-Aunt Damaris.”

Lord Henry paled. “Yes, I would think it would be prudent to write to her.”

“Wouldn’t save us,” Daphne confided. “We have a saying that if you sneeze in Scotland, Aunt Damaris will hear it in London.”

He laughed. “Zillah has much the same uncanny sense of disaster.”

“Yes, our falling in love would be a disaster,” she said, slanting a glance at him.

But oh, so heavenly . . .

Daphne drew a deep breath. She had to stop thinking like that. Tonight she would find Mr. Dishforth, and she would fall in love all over again.

Not all over again, she told herself. For the first time. The very first time. Because with Mr. Dishforth it would all make sense. They already fit.

Just like Tabitha and Preston.

At least she thought they did. Hoped they would.

Then she would have to stop finding herself in these impossibly perilous interludes with Lord Henry.

No more chance encounters. No more shared jests.

No more kisses.

She looked again at him.
Would it be so wrong to kiss him one more time?

Yes, decidedly.

Bother!
Her conscience was starting to sound like one of Tabitha’s uncle’s sermons.

“Miss Dale, is something amiss?”

Daphne found that she’d come to a stop without even realizing it. Lord Henry stood a few paces further down the hall, staring at her.

What had he asked? If something was amiss?

Well, yes, everything!
she wanted to tell him.

“No, nothing,” she said, hurrying to catch up and continuing toward the dining room. To get through dinner and then slip away to the library.

Where she was destined to find true love. Yes, that was it. True love.

Still, whatever had Lord Henry meant when he’d said, “
That would rather be like you and me falling in love”?

Did he think it possible? Was he merely joking? Daphne needed to know before she set foot in that library, but however did one ask such a thing?

“Miss Dale?”

Daphne looked up and realized that yet again, in her woolgathering, she’d come to a stop. And here was Lord Henry looking her up and down as if she were standing about in her shift.

“Yes? Is there something wrong?” She feigned innocence and glanced down to make sure her gown was in order—and that she hadn’t gone out only in her chemise, as she’d dreamt the night before the Seldon ball.

“No, no,” he said. Then he made a sweeping examination of her ensemble. “But you’ve done something different tonight.”

This was promising.

“My hair,” she said, hoping Pansy’s arrangement of Grecian curls was still as orderly as it had been when she’d left her room. And yet, here was Lord Henry with his brow furrowed and looking at her with his lips in a sour purse. “Don’t you approve?”

“Approve?” Henry glanced at it again. “Uh, well. It isn’t for me to say.”

Whyever did he look so uncomfortable? She glanced down again, for she had the feeling her petticoat was showing.

But her search showed nothing but her pale green muslin laying perfectly smooth down to her hemline. So if it wasn’t her petticoat . . . perhaps . . .

She tipped her head just so, letting the collection of curls fall over one bare shoulder. “I would so love a man’s opinion. Does this arrangement suit me?”

“Yes,” he ground out. “Perfectly so.”

He hardly sounded inclined to kiss her. More as if he was in some state of discomfort. Oh, this would never do.

“And this gown?” she asked, holding out her skirt just so.

“Yes,” he replied. “Miss Dale, believe me when I say you would look perfectly amiable in sackcloth and ashes.”

Amiable? That was hardly the description she’d been hoping for.

“I am so pleased that you approve,” she said, knowing all too well that she didn’t sound pleased. And before she had to explain her pique, she started back down the hall.

Perfectly amiable, indeed! Oh, she’d never felt so foolish in her life.

“W
hatever is wrong?” Lord Henry said, his stride leaving him capable of catching up with her all too quickly.