Just One Kiss (26 page)

“What does it look like?” he shrugged, wrapping a towel around his shoulders and then laying another over one of the chairs before sitting down on it and tugging off his boots.  “You should do the same,” he nodded, impressing even himself by how matter-of-fact he sounded.

“I will do no such thing!” Daphne sniffed, dabbing lightly at her face with her own towel.

“Take your boots off at least, Daff,” Edward sighed, and then grinned.  “Or would you rather I took them off again?” he asked with a roguish chuckle.  To his satisfaction, Daphne’s cheeks grew increasingly flushed and she couldn’t quite meet his gaze.

“I think I can manage,” she said breathlessly.

“Why just manage?” Edward purred, caressing her with his gaze.  Even wet and bedraggled she looked utterly ravishing… maybe that was even part of the appeal?  No one else saw her like this, so
disheveled
and tousled.  It almost seemed to make her more
his
…

“I wonder if anyone’s missed me at Dunnely?” she mused, ignoring her husband’s last flirtation completely.  Edward might have been annoyed, if he hadn’t felt a little flare of hope at her reference to Dunnely as just that, and not as home.

“Will Anthony be beating down the door in a moment if he has?” he asked wryly.

“Possibly,” Daphne confessed sheepishly, but Edward just shrugged his shoulders and muttered darkly: “Well, I’d like to see him try.”

Daphne couldn’t quite contain a little shiver of delight at the tone of her husband’s voice, despite the fact that he had just implicitly threatened her brother.  At least, she supposed it was delight, and not in fact a shiver of cold.  It was surprising how chilly her damp clothes were making her feel.  As if he’d read her thoughts Edward sighed, and asked:

“Do you want me to see if there’s a dress you can borrow?  I’m sure there must be something lying around that you could use just until your own things dry out.”

The offer was surprising tempting.  She really didn’t want to leave after all, Daphne
realize
d, but sadly logic and propriety seemed to win out eventually.  “No, thank you,” she said, sadly.  “I suppose I should really walk back
to
Dunnely and change into dry things of my own.”  She didn’t know quite how to feel when Edward’s face instantly fell.

“After Eldridge went to the trouble of laying out this lovely spread?” he said, almost pleadingly.

“You seem to be making quite a nice dent in it on your own, my lord,” Daphne couldn’t stop herself
from
giggling.  Edward had finished off half a plate of biscuits and was on his second cup of tea.  He gave a sheepish shrug.

“I was hungry,” he mumbled.  “The storm hasn’t quite blown over yet,” he added slowly, glancing out of the window. 

“Oh, it’s hardly anything,” Daphne said airily.  Edward grunted something that his wife couldn’t quite decipher.

“Well, if you’re adamant about going,” he grumbled, (which Daphne thought was rather unfair of him; it wasn’t as if she really
wanted
to go s
o soon after arriving.  She thought back with a blush to their encounter in the orangery- well, perhaps it wasn’t quite
so
soon after arriving.)  “I’ll order the carriage for you.”

“Edward, don’t be silly!” Daphne exclaimed.  “It isn’t far, and by the time a carriage can be made  ready I could already have reached Dunnely.”  She thought, but didn’t really believe, that Edward muttered ‘exactly’ under his breath.

“You will at least let me walk you back safely?” he demanded. 

Daphne opened her mouth to say that that wasn’t necessarily either, especially in his current state of… undress, but Edward appeared to be getting crosser by the second, and she
did
want to prolong her time with him, so she gave her head an obedient little nod. 

“Good!” he sighed, and then glanced ruefully at his wet clothes.  “I suppose it would be terribly ungallant of me to make you wait while I change into dry clothes?”

Daphne couldn’t resist nodding again, stifling a giggle as Edward groaned and made a face as he began tugging back on his damp garments.  Well it was his own fault for insisting that he needed to walk her home!

“Ready, my lord?” she asked sweetly, as Edward struggled with his last boot.  He shot
her a look that said he’d
like to throttle her, and she thought, with another little thrill of delight, that he must really want her back after all to go to all of this trouble.

Chapter 27

Edward wal
ked Daphne to the same spot where
he had left her the day before.  He wanted to walk her all the way to the house, but she eventually persuaded him to simply watch her from the top of the hill again.  He didn’t let her go without a kiss however… and consequently Daphne practically skipped up the steps to the front door of Dunnely House, fingers lightly brushing her mouth as she remembered the tingles that
had
shivered all the way to her toes a
s Edward kissed her in the rain.

“Mistress Daphne!”

The
Hargreaves
' butler choked as the bedraggled young lady sauntered happily into the hall.  Daphne cast him an apologetic little smile and then hurried up the stairs to her room, leaving a trail of puddles in her wake.

One of Daphne’s maids helped her into a clean, dry dress and undergarments, combing out her hair and then fixing it simply before Daphne wandered back downstairs.  She felt like playing her piano in the music room.  She might even choose something happy for a change, perhaps?

“…telling you, he’s back!”

Daphne paused in the corridor as her mother’s animated voice drifted out of Anthony’s study.  The door had been left open a crack and something held her still, listening.  Her brother must have made an answer that she didn’t hear, because her mother then exclaimed:

“You will do nothing of the sort!  We will invite the Earl over and-”

“We will not!” Anthony bellowed, causing Daphne to jump and clap a hand over her mouth to suppress a gasp.  “He’s not coming within a hundred feet of Daphne as far as I’m concerned!”

“As far as you’re concerned?” Mrs.
Hargreaves
snapped.  “And what has it got to do with you exactly?” she demanded.  “Daphne is the Earl’s wife.  She belongs with him.  As soon as everyone begins to
realize
that maybe our family will be able to recover a little of its dignity!”

“That man isn’t fit to lick Daff’s boots,” Anthony snarled.

“Yes well,” Mrs.
Hargreaves
began tightly, and from her hiding place out in the hallway Daphne knew what was coming next.  “Perhaps Daphne should have thought about
that
before she compromised herself six years ago!  But Edward
is
the Earl of Coventry now,” she added, calming down a little in light of this fact.

“He could be a Duke and it wouldn’t change my opinion of him,” Anthony snorted.

“Well!  If that’s the attitude that you’re going to take, then I shall just go and call on him myself!”

“No!” Daphne shouted, bursting into the room before she had time to think about the consequences of her actions.  Anthony and her mother turned and stared at her incredulously.

“Daphne!  W
ere you listening at the door?” her mother gaped.

“I- was passing and I heard-”

“You were eavesdropping!” Mrs.
Hargreaves
railed.  “You know there are times when I find it very hard to believe that you are really my daughter, Daphne!”

Daphne flinched as though struck.  “Be that as it may,” she said, straining to keep her voice even.  “You will not visit Edward.”

Mrs.
Hargreaves
stared at her daughter open-mouthed for what seemed to be a full minute, and then she started brandishing her finger in Daphne’s direction as though it were a lethal weapon.

“I think,” she began shrilly, “that you need to need to remember whose house you are currently residing in, Lady Coventry!” she spat, her tone and face ugly.

Anthony’s?
  Daphne longed to answer back, but she managed to hold her tongue on that point at least.  “Yes mother,” she said shortly, “but you must remember that this is my marriage and-”

“Marriage?” Mrs. Hargreaves sniffed, looking to her son for support.  Anthony however seemed reluctant to get involved at this point.  “You don’t know what a real marriage is!”  Daphne thought, with a little pang in her heart, that her mother might very well be right, but she was loath to admit it in front of her.  “Your father and I would never have dreamt of behaving in the fashion that you and the Earl have conducted yourselves!”

“I’m sorry, mother, if I’ve disappointed you,” Daphne said difficultly.  She waited for a second, to allow her mother to contradict her.  She didn’t.  “But- I have to do what I think is right.”

“You have no idea what’s right or wrong as you keep demonstrating,” Mrs.
Hargreaves
snorted.  “Tell her Anthony!” she prompted, rounding on her son, who was scowling blackly.

“I’d rather Daphne never laid eyes on that man again,” he growled, and sat down behind his desk as his mother muttered angrily under her breath about the failings of her children. 

Daphne chewed her lip; it wasn’t exactly the reaction from her brother that she wanted, although it was the one that she expected after what had taken place in London, and at least it meant that he wouldn’t be riding over to Packwood House to interfere… unless he tried to chase Edward away?

“Well I don’t know!” Mrs.
Hargreaves
snapped, shaking her head from side to side.  “I despair of the pair of you, I really do!  One would think that you
like
seeing this family ruined!”

“We’re not ruined, mother,” Anthony sighed heavily, running a hand through his dark hair, however his mother had already stormed out of the study. 

Daphne slipped after her,
although she quickly hurrie
d off in the opposite direction. She had no desire
to listen to one of her brother’s long lectures,
She was not in the
mood to listen to her moth
er rant either.   She was in no state
to do anything but burst into hot angry tears!

“Oh Edward,” she sniffed, as she climbed the stairs back to her bedroom, almost as if she could some
how
conjure
his presence if she just wished hard enough.  “Please come for me?” she whispered, which was ridiculous really, because she had been the one to run away from him…

Let him come though
, she prayed, shutting her bedroom door behind her and then leaning back again it.  She closed her eyes and remembered their times together, loving, or talking, or simply being, she needed him back so desperately.

Edward didn’t come, not that evening at any rate, but that didn’t stop Daphne from thinking about him, and her thoughts were with him almost constantly.  She replayed their time together in the orangery over and over until she was quite flushed and breathless, but she also relieved the other moments of her day, especially the ones inside Packwood when the storm had been at its strongest, when Edward had seemed so wounded.  She wanted, so badly, to be the one who might help to heal him!

He was the last thing that Daphne thought about before she fell asleep that night, and the first thing she thought about when she woke up the following morning.  She wanted to see Edward again, but she supposed that another walk over to his estate might seem a little too eager on her part. 

Deciding that this was definitely the case, and determined to cling to her remaining dignity, Daphne dressed leisurely that morning, allowing her maid to fix her hair a little more elaborately than usual, before she wandered downstairs for a late breakfast.  She hoped that her mother and brother would already be finished, that was another reason why she had taken so long getting ready…