Just One Kiss (22 page)

“Where was your
favorite
?” Edward asked,
marveling
that she would have done such an amazing thing.

Daphne blinked, and looking up from her paint spattered fingers, which she had been studying.  “My
favorite
?”

“Of the places you followed me?” he nodded.

She hesitated for a moment, but only for a moment.  “India,” she whispered, as if confessing a long kept secret.

“Really?” Edward grinned.  “I loved it in India.  So completely different
from
here,” he mused reminiscently.  “All the
colors
were so much more vivid it seemed, and the women’s dress
es were so strange
,” he paused, imagining how Daphne would look in a brightly
colored
sari… “and the smell of place
s
, so spicy and hot…”  Daphne, Edward
realize
d, was hanging on
his every word, soaking them up like
a
dry sponge.

“Books can’t help you with scent,” she said sadly, looking back at her painting.

“Maybe one day you’ll smell it for yourself,” Edward said slowly.

Daphne just laughed.  “I hardly think so!”

“You never know,” Edward shrugged. 
Could he take her?  Maybe on
a
honeymoon… he was only six years late…

Daphne just shook her head as though s
he thought he was crazy.
She did smile
, but then she looked up at the sky
and sighed softly.

“I have to get back to the house,” Daphne said.  “Anthony will worry if I’m gone for very much longer.”

Edward frowned.  Her words hit him like a punch to the gut.  How had he forgotten, after so very short a time, that they would be going their separate ways?

“Let me take you back at least?” he said instantly.  “You can’t carry all of this on your own,” he added, waving his hand in the direction of her painting things, “and it’s hardly safe for you to go traipsing back alone.”

“The house is less than five minutes away,” Daphne said, her lips quirking in a small smile.  “I hardly think anything will happen to me.  Nothing ever has!” she pointed out logically.

“You come out on your own like this often?” Edward’s frown deepened.

“I’m fine, Edward.”

“Daphne, I’d still feel better if you’d let me escort you back to Dunnely House,” Edward pressed, but his wife shook her head.

“Anthony will
be
terribly angry if you do, Edward,” she breathed softly.  “I’ll be fine, I promise,” she said quickly, probably noting the black scowl that darkened her husband’s face.

Edward fell silent, not making another objection to his wife’s determined plan.  She collected her things, tucking her easel under her arm and packing her paints and brushes away into a carefully crafted box.

“Goodbye then, Lord Coventry,” she said, in awkward, stilted tones.

“Goodbye, Daphne,” Edward grumbled.  He watched her turn, watched her take one step away from him, and then he acted- he simply couldn’t help himself. 

Edward reached out and grabbed Daphne’s wrist, tugging her back towards him, into his arms, sending her things tumbling to the ground as his lips closed over her mouth, which was parted in shock and surprise.  Edward wasn’t reluctant to take advantage of that fact.  He kissed her, deeply, clutching at her like a man desperately clinging to life.

He groaned when she kissed him back, the sweet, timid flick of her tongue against his own felt like heaven.  He had missed her.  He had missed her so much!  How was it even possible to ache for a woman as he ached for Daphne when he had been with her as her husband for less than a week?  It was madness.  But it was how Edward felt.

“Stop!” Daphne gasped, pushing against his chest.  “We can’t-
I
can’t think-” she panted. She looked
up at him with heavy eyes and swollen lips.  “I- I-” she stammered, looking so lost that
he
tighten
ed
his hold on her.

“I’m going to win you back, Daff,” Edward growled, feeling the shiver that ran the length of his wife’s body as he spoke.  “I swear it!”

Edward let her go after that.  He had to
release her
while he still could, before the desire to toss Daphne over his shoulder and ride with her back to Packwood House be
came
to
o
strong to resist.

“Edward?” she breathed shakily, and, just a little hopefully?  But Edward didn’t trust himself to say anything else for a moment.  He picked up her easel and paints, handing them back to her, ensuring that their fingers brushed as he did so.

“You still mean to walk back alone?” he asked, gazing down at her enticingly flushed face.

“I have to,” she said, but Edward was pleased at least that she sounded less than happy about leaving him.

“I’ll
watch
you
walk
back,” Edward declared.  If he walked just a little way with Daphne then he could stop on top of a small hill from which Dunnely could be seen and see her safely back to the house.

“Oh but- you don’t have to,” Daphne was quick to remind him.

“I want to,” he argued firmly, and that was that.

They walked silently for the few feet of their journey together, both stealing glances at the other when they thought they weren’t being watched. 
She was so beautiful,
Edward mused, but her beauty had never been in doubt, so why was it only really now that being in her presence made him feel like an awkward youth desperate to curry the favour of a beautiful lady?

“I’ll have to leave you here then,” Edward said, having already walked further than he’d m
eant to.  He wondered, if he had
n’t said anything, how far Daphne would have let him go…

“I am going to see you again, aren’t I, Edward?” Daphne said suddenly, looking almost as though she feared she’d imagined the entire meeting.  “You won’t leave again without saying goodbye?”

“I won’t need to say goodbye when I leave Coventry next, because I’ll be taking you with me,” he promised, his voice both soft and firm at the same time.

Da
phne’s lips parted in a little “O”
of surprise as
color
flooded her cheeks, but she couldn’t then stop them from curving into a small, shy smile.  “Goodbye for now then, Edward,” she said softly.

“Remember, Daphne, Packwood’s your home, you don’t need to wait for an invitation to visit,” he called after her, amazed by how
good
he suddenly felt.  He hadn’t been one hundred percent certain that he was doing the right thing until the second he’d
touched her lips. T
hen he’d known- just how much he wanted, no
needed
, her to come back.

Still, it wasn’t without an aching heart that Edward watched Daphne’s figure retreat.  She should have been walking in the other direction- home with him, he thought, as he saw her safely into Dunnely before he turned back to his horse.

Chapter 24

Daphne had a smile on her face when she walked into the entrance hall of her childhood home, an occurrence so rare in recent days that the butler, who had been with the family since before Daphne had been born, commented on the fact that the fresh air had done her good. 

Daphne smiled and nodded her agreement, although she privately had to correct him, it wasn’t the fresh air, it was Edward, his presence and his kiss, that had broken her depression.

She still couldn’t quite believe that he had come, that it was real, that he was here!  Edward had chased her all the way back to Coventry.  Oh- she had hoped, but she had never dared
expect
that he would come, and certainly not so soon!  Daphne could feel her heart fluttering in her chest.  Right now, at this very moment, Edward was probably arriving back at Packwood House, which was just a little over a mile away.  He was so wonderfully close!  Everything felt different, just knowing that he was near.

Sighing dreamily, feeling
just as ridiculous
as she had as a foolish girl of sixt
een, Daphne carried
her painti
ng things upstairs to her room. She asked for a
dinner
tray to be sent upstairs
.  She didn’t
want to eat
with her mother and brother this evening.  They would only spoil her happy mood.  Her mother kept threatening to leave and visit her sister in Plymouth, perhaps if Daphne’s luck held she would go?

Mrs.
Hargreaves
had reserved a decidedly less than warm welcome home for her only daughter.  For the most part she pretended that Daphne wasn’t even in residence at Dunnely, and when they were forced to converse, usually at Anthony’s prompting, she made her disapproval blatantly clear.  Daphne had sadly reached the conclusion that she wouldn’t be able to do anything to restore her mother’s good opinion of her- and so she had stopped trying.

She was however determined to push that gloomy thought aside with memories of her, all too brief, meeting with Edward.  He had looked quite dashingly dishevelled she reflected as she tidied her things away, and couldn’t help but wonder, with a thrilling kind of guilt, how hard and fast he had ridden to reach her? 

Daphne closed her eyes and tried to call to mind the masculine scent of him, leather and pine and
Edward
, the feel of him, the slight, scratchy growth of a beard against her skin, and the pressure o
f his lips as he kissed her.
Daphne was losing herself so completely in the last memory that she almost didn’t hear the knock at her door.  She called in a fluster for the maid to enter when she
realize
d that she had been standing staring into space for the best part of five minutes.

She busied herself by looking through her old port
folio of paints while the maid delivered
supper.  Daphne
found
the pictures she’d created of India.  She wondered if Edwar
d would like to see them. Th
en she almost instantly decided that was a silly idea.  They were probably all wrong anyway. 

She ran a lovin
g finger over them nonetheless. Did she dare believe
that Edward
was serious when he
said that one day she would see all these places for herself?  Maybe he would take her?  Daphne’s heart leapt.  Maybe not all the way to India, but to France perhaps, or Italy
.  S
he would love that so much.

“There you are, Mistress Daphne,” the maid said with a little bob.  Daphne’s mother had instructed the house staff to address her as such, refusing to hear her called ‘Lady Coventry’ inside Dunnely.  She didn’t think that her daughter deserved any of the privileges that came with her marriage after she had left her husband.  “Will there be anything else, miss?” the young girl asked.

“No, no thank you, that will be all,” Daphne said quietly. 

She sat down at the
cozy
little table after the maid had gone, tucking into the cold beef and parsley pie with more relish than she had shown when eating anything in days. 

Helping herself to a glass of water, Daphne wondered what Edward was eating- if he was eating well.  She hoped that his housekeeper kept a good pantry.  She would ensure that things were in order if she
returned.
Daphne stopped herself before she let her thoughts run too far away with her.

It could have been her responsibility, and really it
should be her responsibility. S
he found that she wanted to take care of Edward, to look after him, as a wife should, but for the moment at least she had given up that role.  He seemed to want to make sure that she took it back though, Daphne considered.