And the Miss Ran Away With the Rake (15 page)

Lady Alicia had only wanted to discuss Miss Nashe’s charms. Miss Nashe had only wanted to discuss, well, herself. And since he’d known Lady Clare since childhood and knew that she had vowed since her broken engagement several years earlier never to marry, he sincerely doubted she had taken up Miss Spooner’s pen.

He paused for a moment beside the pianoforte and gazed across the room, where Roxley and Miss Hathaway were playing a fierce game of backgammon—something it appeared they had done before, given Roxley’s accusations of “Harry, you always cheat.”

Henry found he rather envied the earl’s easy friendship with the affable, albeit cheating, Miss Hathaway. A far sight more enjoyable than prowling the room in search of a phantom miss.

“I see you’ve settled on your conquest,” came a pert comment from his right.

Henry glanced over and found Miss Dale on the opposite side of the instrument. How had he not seen her standing there before? Yet there she was, in that same red silk gown she’d worn the night of the engagement ball, her blonde hair all piled up atop her head save for a few stray curls that tumbled down.

Tumbled.

He cringed, for suddenly he found himself wary of that word and all its implications. Especially since it carried with it echoing refrains from Zillah’s scold.

That gel looked tumbled when you brought her back. Tumbled, I say!

Looking at Miss Dale now, Henry would argue that the lady always looked slightly undone, from her fluttering lashes to that impossibly tousled hair. She was temptation in all its incarnations.

Worse, everywhere he’d turned this evening, she’d caught his eye, what with the sway of her hip as she walked, the curve of her smile, the rare light in her eyes when she laughed—really laughed, not just the polite noise she’d made for Lord Crowley when he’d recited some nonsense verse he’d written lately.

And now here she was, teasing him from across the pianoforte.

“My what?” he asked.

“Your conquest,” she repeated, then shook her head. “Oh, dear, I forgot who I was talking to. A flirtation. A dalliance, a trifling.” She listed every definition a lady could politely use.

Those words—
conquest,
flirtation
and
dalliance
—from any other person would have been ridiculous, but from Miss Dale, they seemed to hold a challenge within them. As if she knew of what she spoke.

Which she did. For look how he had behaved earlier. When it had been just the two of them.

Shaking off that memory—one that left his blood thick and throbbing through his body—he instead focused on her accusation.

That he was about to make yet another conquest.

As if he was the only one who’d spent all evening flirting. She ought to look at the wake behind her. Why, she’d dallied with nearly every man in the room, having moved from Kipps to Bramston, then Astbury, and even Crowley. Taking turns around the room with them, laughing at their jokes, fluttering her lashes at them, her gloved hand atop their sleeves, then moving to her next conquest.

And he was about to point out her expertise on the subject, but she was already nattering on.

“—I don’t suppose she is the dallying type, though she rather seems
your
sort.”

“My sort?” Henry’s gaze followed hers toward the trio of ladies by the window.

Of course, there sat Lady Alicia, Lady Clare and Miss Nashe—the trio he’d spent the night dancing attendance upon.

Henry decided the best course of action was one of innocence. “Whoever do you mean?”

“Why, Miss Nashe, of course,” she said, tipping her head as she took another examining look at the heiress.

“Whatever does
that
mean? My sort, indeed,” he puffed before he remembered what he’d said about Crispin Dale earlier.

Not that Miss Dale was going to let him forget as she turned his own sword on him, making a perfectly timed thrust into his chest. She leaned closer as she made her move. “Overdressed. Vain. Wealthy.”

He had the feeling she’d left out a few. Given the arch of her fair brow, he had to imagine that “overreaching mushroom” was a possibility.

Henry knew Miss Nashe was exactly the “sort” a second son like himself sought for a bride—wealthy, gracious and lovely, beloved by the society columns—but there was one impossible hurdle that not even her dowry could tempt him to leap.

The girl herself.

Still, he feigned surprise. “Miss Nashe? You think her vain?”

“You don’t?” Miss Dale’s nose wrinkled. “Why, look at her! Even now she is regaling poor Lady Clare and Lady Alicia with tales of her social prowess.”

Given the set of Lady Clare’s jaw, Miss Dale was probably correct, but Henry wasn’t going to admit such a thing. Instead, he asked, “However can you hear what is being said? They are all the way across the room.”

Miss Dale’s chin rose. “I have a talent for these things.”

Of course she did.

“You do?” he asked against his better judgment.

“Yes, watch,” she said, glancing over at the trio. The next time Miss Nashe opened her mouth, Miss Dale supplied the words.

“Oh, the expectations placed on one when one is mentioned daily in the social columns are exhausting.”

Henry coughed on the fit of laughter that nearly choked him. “She would never say such a thing,” he argued as he tried to compose himself.

“No, no,” Miss Dale told him. “She isn’t finished. Listen—”

Then modulating her tones and clipping her words, she matched Miss Nashe’s overly educated enunciation perfectly.

“Yet I endeavor to provide proper and edifying
on dits
so as to inspire the lesser of my peers to learn from my grace and status. It is my gift to Society.”

And demmed if Miss Nashe didn’t finish and smile at the end of Miss Dale’s lines, as if indeed she was conveying such a condescending speech to her audience.

Henry snorted back another fit of laughter and turned his back to the trio, for it was devilishly hard to look at Miss Nashe and not hear Miss Dale’s recitation.

Meanwhile, his impish companion grinned with wicked delight. “I told you.”

Henry had to admit that the one thing he rather liked about Miss Dale was the fact that she didn’t suffer from a lack of straightforward honesty. And so he replied in kind. “She is rather impressed with herself.”

Miss Dale covered her mouth to keep from laughing aloud. “What a terrible thing to say, Lord Henry.”

“You started it,” he shot back. “But I confess that after listening to her go on for half an hour as to how she’d modernize Owle Park if she were Tabitha—”

Daphne’s eyes widened with outrage. “Change this house? Whatever for?”

Her annoyance echoed his own. He tipped his head closer. “Apparently it is not the first stare of fashion.”

Miss Dale clucked her tongue. “It isn’t supposed to be. It is a family home.” And she didn’t stop there. “Owle Park is delightful. Rather surprising, actually.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it isn’t what I expected,” she said, glancing away, a bit of a blush on her cheeks.

“What did you think you would find, Miss Dale? Remnants of the Hell Fire Club in the dining room? Stray virgins lolling about awaiting pagan sacrifice?” The color on her cheeks confirmed just that. Henry laughed. “You did, didn’t you?”

“It is just that one hears such tales, and then one supposes . . .”

“Disappointed?”

She paused for a moment and then glanced up at him, a twinkle in her eyes. “Slightly.”

They both laughed, and it seemed the entire room stilled and looked over at them.

Henry stepped away from Miss Dale, probably a bit too quickly, for it made him look guilty . . . of something.

Not that he had anything to feel guilty about. And yet there was Zillah, her dark eyes blazing with accusations.
Not again, you foolish boy!

He edged a little farther away from Miss Dale before his proximity prompted his great-aunt to come over and give the entire room a recitation of the Seldon family rules.

With nothing of note happening around the pianoforte, the other guests finally went back to their previous pursuits. All too soon, the din of quiet discussions, exclamations from well-played hands, and Roxley’s occasional expletive followed by a “Harry, one of these days I’ll catch you cheating,” left Henry to draw a sigh of relief.

As if he’d lucked out this time. Better than earlier, when he’d gained an earful.

He glanced over at Miss Dale. “You weren’t in too much trouble, earlier that is, were you?” he asked quietly.

“A bit,” she said with a sigh. “And you?”

“Oh, yes.” He had her attention now.

“Rang a peel?”

“Quite.”

She nodded in understanding, then lowered her voice. “They don’t know about—”

She had no need to say the rest . . .
the kiss.

“No!” he shot back. “You didn’t mention—”

Miss Dale shook her head slightly. “No.”

“Best forgotten,” he advised, though he knew it would be some time before he could. Forget, that is.

“Yes, precisely,” she agreed, rocking on her heels.

“Terrible mistake.”

“Exactly,” she shot back.

Rather quickly, he noted. Too quickly.

Did she have to agree
that
fast?

When he looked back at her, he found her studying Miss Nashe once again.

“Are you supplying more lines for the drama over there?” he asked.

“No,” she said with a slight shake of her head. However, the tip of her lips said quite another.

Henry shot her a wry glance.

“Well, perhaps,” she admitted.

“You are a devilish minx, Miss Dale.”

“You disapprove?”

Henry sighed. “Sadly, not in the least.”

Once again, their eyes met, and it wasn’t just their gazes that entangled. It was something altogether more dangerous.

Henry’s blood came rushing through his veins as he remembered how it had felt to take her in his arms, kiss her madly, passionately. For no other reason than she thought him a rake.

And given the light in her eyes, she still thought him one.

Then she bit her bottom lip and tugged her glance away. “We need to stay apart,” she reminded him.

Henry glanced up and around the room, feigning disinterest. “Yes, I suppose we must.”

“Need I remind you, I am nearly engaged elsewhere—”

“Yes, your most excellent gentleman,” Henry mused.

“Yes, him.” She stole a nervous glance around the room, and suddenly an entirely new possibility occurred to Henry.

The answer to the Gordian knot in his life: Why the devil was Miss Dale here at Owle Park?

Actually, he’d never quite believed her declaration of having a betrothed. Or a nearly betrothed, whatever that nonsense meant.

But now . . .

Henry turned to her, a wide grin turning his lips. He had his answer. He’d bet his fortune on it.

“He’s here, isn’t he?”

D
aphne’s heart nearly stopped.

Lord Henry had not just asked that question.

“Well, is he or isn’t he here?” the man pressed.

Yes, apparently he had
.

Daphne wasn’t a member of the Society for the Temperance and Improvement of Kempton for nothing. For when not gathering baskets for the poor spinsters in the village or planting flowers in the graveyard, they also practiced deportment at Lady Essex’s urging.

Therefore Daphne could give even a Bath-educated lady like Miss Nashe a run for her money when it came to being utterly composed.

Even when one felt like running in a blind panic.

She straightened and collected herself as best she could. If only she could still her hammering heart. “I am not discussing
him
with
you
.”

He leaned in, indecently close, like the wolf that he was. “Whyever not?”

The nearer he got, the more Daphne’s resolve and composure began to waver. Bay rum and a hint of port invaded her senses. It was like being surrounded by his coat all over again. Yet this wasn’t just a greatcoat enfolding her but the man himself.

The one who’d kissed her breathless. Touched her until she’d trembled. Ignited a fire in her once temperate heart.

Oh, but she was too close to finding her perfect happiness to let Lord Henry Seldon ruin everything. For that is what Seldons were unsurpassed at: ruin.

“My affairs are none of your business,” she told him as tartly as Lady Essex did when she scolded her nephew, Lord Roxley. Adding to this, she folded her arms over her chest to show him just how firm she was in her resolve.

And not, as one might think, to ward him off from breaching what little control she could still claim.

Unfortunately, her tone had no effect on the man. Her words, on the other hand . . . they seemed to urge him on.

“So it is an affair—” he said, his eyes sparking with mischievous delight.

“Not in the way you would assume,” she told him. “Ours is a coming together of the mind and the heart. Far outside of the realm of your base encounters.”

“Is that what we shared earlier, a ‘base encounter’?” he asked.

Daphne shook with anger. “I told you, I am not discussing that.”

He glanced down at the music rack, absently thumbing through the sheets. “I suppose there really isn’t much to discuss now, is there?”

She sucked in a deep breath, trying to hold back the scathing remark that so wanted to come bursting out.

“So tell me this, Miss Dale,” he continued, edging still ever closer, his hand sliding along the top of the pianoforte until it was nearly around her hip, “why aren’t you at his side right this moment?” He looked around the room as if he was trying to imagine where she rightly belonged, even as he took another step toward her.

“Whatever are you doing?” she asked, for he had her trapped, cornered in every sense of the word.

“Testing a theory.” He took another step, leaving naught but a whisper between them.

In front of the entire party? Good heavens, could he now see how this looked?

“We agreed to keep our distance,” she reminded him.