And the Miss Ran Away With the Rake (11 page)

“Miss Nashe? The heiress?” Harriet said, gaping unfashionably at the lady.

“The one and the same,” Tabitha replied, but it was clear she did not like the girl. Though Tabitha was an heiress herself, she hardly played the part as Miss Nashe apparently did, from the French ribbons in her bonnet down to the fine calfskin of her boots. “Lady Juniper insisted she be invited. And you can’t ask Miss Nashe without including Lady Alicia.”

And they all knew why. Wherever Miss Nashe went, glowing reports in the columns were sure to follow—as they had all Season. Where Miss Nashe shopped. Who she danced with. At what times she rode in the park. To be snubbed by Miss Nashe was as good as being ruined.

And of course, there was always her dearest friend, Lady Alicia, right there, with her impeccable bloodlines and connections, though sadly none of Miss Nashe’s blunt.

Meanwhile, Preston was holding up two velvet purses. “I have the names of all the ladies in this pouch”—he held the first one up high and then hefted the other—“and the men in this one. I shall pull the name of a lady and then she will pull the name of her partner. Then the team is free to choose the carriage of their choice and be on their way.” Preston handed the pouch with the men’s names to Tabitha, then reached inside the sack with the ladies’ names. “Miss Hathaway,” he called out.

Harriet shrugged and walked forward. After a moment of trepidation, she shoved her hand in the sack and pulled out a name, holding it up for Preston.

“Fieldgate.”

The man came stalking forward, grinning like a lion. He took a map from Preston, caught Harriet’s hand in his and walked triumphantly toward the racing curricle in front.

And thus it was for the next few minutes, couples being paired up, the field of potential partners narrowing and the faster carriages disappearing quickly.

Even Lady Essex gained a partner, Lord Whenby, an older gentleman who left her blushing with whispered promises as he escorted her to one of Preston’s more daring phaetons.

Much to Daphne’s dismay, all too quickly it came down to her, Miss Nashe, Lord Astbury, and none other than Lord Henry.

Worse yet, the choice of carriages was down to an old curricle and a pony cart. Not exactly the sort of fleet conveyances that would carry one to victory.

Fixing her attention on Lord Astbury, she considered his potential as Dishforth.

He was rumored to be educated and scholarly, and it was said he kept to himself in London. All points in his favor.

And he was handsome. Ever so.

Yet . . . rebelliously her gaze strayed in the other direction.

For there was Lord Henry, grinning with rakish delight at Miss Nashe, as if he was convinced of their pairing. The girl fluttered her lashes at him and smiled, just slightly.

Truly? This was the sort of preening lady that Lord Henry found intriguing?

Once again, Daphne felt a smug satisfaction in her convictions that Lord Henry couldn’t be the man she sought. Her very sensible Mr. Dishforth would view the showy and overly resplendent Miss Nashe with prudent horror.

No, there was no earthly way Lord Henry could be Dishforth.

Just then, Daphne realized that Preston was calling another name.

“Miss Nashe.”

Daphne stilled as she watched the heiress step forward.

Her fate, her very future, was being decided by Miss Edith Nashe.

The girl fished around inside the bag for what felt like an eternity until Lord Henry said, “Miss Nashe, it is but a slip of paper—take one.” His words came out impatiently, almost testily.

“I hardly know which one to choose,” she said, smiling at both gentlemen and obviously immune to the censure.

Good heavens, pull out Lord Henry’s name and be done with it,
Daphne wanted to shout. That, or just tug off her boot and clout the simpering fool with it, like she’d seen Harriet do once to one of her brothers.

Lord Astbury was far kinder. He smiled warmly. “You have both our hearts in your dear hand, Miss Nashe.”

Daphne didn’t know why, but she slanted a disgruntled glance at Lord Henry, for she very rightly shared his impatience. And to her surprise, he was looking at her with the same look of utter exasperation.

Whatever is wrong with her?

How am I to know? I would have pulled the name by now.

She wrenched her gaze away. However was it that every time she looked at that man, he had a way of entangling her?

But this time, Lord Henry wasn’t entirely to blame.

“Yes, well, here goes,” Miss Nashe said and pulled a name from the bag.

Chapter 6

Miss Spooner, I must make a confession. I rarely dance. It is not that I am against dancing, it is just that it all seems so contrived. The asking, the sets, the observation of so many rules and requirements. Haven’t you, my dear girl, ever wanted to dance where you may? To dance under the stars, to even dare to dance in the rain?

Found in a letter from Mr. Dishforth to Miss Spooner

“W
e are most certainly not lost,” Lord Henry insisted.

“We most certainly are,” Daphne corrected. “I have visited this area on more than one occasion and I know for a fact we are going in the wrong direction.” She shook out the map and pointed at it. “Do you see the curve to the river? And there is the bridge marked here.” Her finger stabbed at the map. “We must turn around and go back in the other direction and take this turn . . .” Her finger tapped the paper again. “ . . . the one I pointed out earlier.”

Mr. Muggins, who had, against everyone’s orders, planted himself in the back of the pony cart and remained there still, looked from Lord Henry to Daphne and then back to Lord Henry again.

Lord Henry’s brow furrowed as he studied the map. “This can’t be correct,” he said, turning it this way and that and ignoring both Daphne and the dog.

How had everything turned out like this? One moment she’d been convinced she was going to be spending the afternoon with Lord Astbury—doing her utmost to determine if he was Mr. Dishforth—and the next, that infuriating Miss Nashe had claimed the marquess.

Oh, it was all by chance she knew, but what rotten chance this, especially since Lord Henry had gotten them lost.

“See, there is the river and that is the bridge,” she said again, pointing at the map. “We will never find the treasure at this rate.”

Instead of seeing the sense of what she was saying, he turned the map yet again, as if that would help.

Daphne gave up, scrunching herself into the corner of the narrow seat the pony cart afforded them. Which still left them wedged together, his muscled thigh brushing intimately against her skirt with each jolt of the road.

The wrong road, she wanted to shout.

For turn around they must. By Daphne’s reckoning they were nearly to Langdale. Crispin’s house, to be exact. And most likely already on Dale land.

Oh, wouldn’t that turn all her plans to naught if they ran into Cousin Crispin.

And as if only to thwart her plans further, from up ahead came the sound of horses’ hooves and the whir of wheels from a quickly moving carriage.

Mr. Muggins let out a low growl, a harbinger of the disaster about to whirl into their path.

Round the corner and over the bridge came an expensive phaeton, the sort a gentleman of means and with a penchant for driving owned.

There was no mistaking who it was coming toward them—Crispin, Viscount Dale, in all his handsome glory. The holder of the family title, the golden boy of a handsome family.

There wasn’t a female Dale cousin or close relation—or even those, like Daphne, whose place on the family tree was on the sort of branch that should have been trimmed off generations ago but was left on for the sake of family unity—who didn’t hold a torch for Crispin Dale.

Devilishly handsome and charming, with a rakish demeanor, he left the female half in a state of awe and wonder by simply walking into a room.

Daphne wouldn’t have been surprised if the sun had burst forth from the gathering clouds and shone down on his fair head, if only to illuminate his way.

Crispin barely spared them a glance, for Lord Henry had already guided the old nag and cart over toward the side of the road, but when he came nearly upon them, he took a closer look and immediately pulled his matched set to a stop, the flurry of dogs that had been racing after his carriage all tumbling to a halt in a wild, raucous chorus of barks.

At first, she thought Crispin had noticed her and was stopping to rescue her, but rather her relation had his dark gaze clapped on Lord Henry Seldon.

And he looked none too pleased to find him on Dale land. Even if they were neighbors.

So Daphne kept her chin tucked in and hoped the brim of her bonnet would shelter her face.

Just perhaps, just maybe, Crispin wouldn’t notice her. Might not even remember her.

“Sir, you are lost and should turn around.” The strained comment held all the welcoming tones of a judge about to set down a long sentence.

For Daphne knew exactly what Crispin truly meant.
Get off my land, you bounder.

“Hardly lost, sir,” Lord Henry replied with every bit of haughty disdain that only a Seldon could manage. “Merely taking a tour of the surrounding countryside. But you are correct, we should turn around. There is nothing of note ahead. Or so I’ve heard.”

Daphne tucked her head down further. Oh, good heavens. She didn’t know what was worse—the Seldon pride or the Dale vanity, because one surreptitious glance revealed that Cousin Crispin appeared ready to toss down the gauntlet.

“Oh, my good God!” Cousin Crispin sputtered. “What the devil is—”

Daphne cringed, for certainly her masquerade was up. He’d spied her and was even now—

“What the hell is that mongrel doing to my best hunting bitch?!” he exclaimed.

She stilled. And then glanced over her shoulder where Mr. Muggins had been sitting in the back of the cart.

Save now the cart was empty.

Beside her, Lord Henry chuckled. “My lord, if I have to explain
that
to you, I can’t see how the Dales have been so prolific over the years.”

“Sir, get that beast off my dog!”

No! No! No!
Daphne didn’t even want to look. But she did anyway.

Oh, Mr. Muggins! How could you?

“Not my beast,” Lord Henry was saying, leaning back and tipping his head as he glanced at the oversized terrier, who was happily repeating the original scandal that had brought the Dales and Seldons to blows. “Hers,” he offered, jerking his thumb at Daphne, for which she covered her face with her hands.

“You think this is amusing?” Crispin asked, straightening up into a position so starched that Daphne thought he might snap.

“It does have a certain irony,” Lord Henry said. “Don’t you agree,
Miss Dale
?”

A stillness descended around them. Daphne thought quite possibly the world was about to be ripped asunder as she looked up and met the gaze of Crispin, Viscount Dale.

He rose up slowly in his seat until he was towering over the occupants of the pony cart, lending him an almost unearthly air. “Daphne Dale?”

“Yes, ah, a good day to you, my lord,” she offered.

Crispin couldn’t have looked more shocked. Well, save the expression he’d worn while Mr. Muggins had been ruining what might have been a profitable litter of pups. “Daphne, what are you doing—”

Henry intervened. “She’s with me. Fine day for a drive, isn’t it?”

Both the Dales ignored him.

“Cousin, get down out of that . . . that . . .” Crispin shuddered as he looked over at the poor conveyance that was barely able to amble along. “ . . . contraption,” he finally managed, “and come with me. Immediately.” He moved slightly to show her the space where he expected her to join him.

Daphne glanced from one man to another. And much to her chagrin, she caught a wry light in Lord Henry’s eyes. A most defiant shimmer that called to her.

Oh, she was a Dale through and through, but she hadn’t come this far to be ordered about like an errant child.

Even if she was behaving like one.

“I will not,” she told him, folding her hands in her lap and facing her cousin, the very head of her family, with all the defiance of, say, a Seldon.

Heaven help her.

“Perhaps you did not understand me, Daphne,” Crispin said. “You are not keeping respectable company.” The viscount’s gaze swept first over Mr. Muggins, who had finished his business and hopped back into the pony cart, and then continued to Lord Henry.

The arch of his brow said all too clearly he considered them both mongrels.

“I don’t like your implication,” Lord Henry leveled.

“I do not like your intentions,” Cousin Crispin countered. “Whatever could it be that you are doing so far from Owle Park with a young lady of good name and character—”

Thankfully, Lord Henry had the good sense not to snort over this, as he had at the engagement ball.

“—I don’t care to know, but understand this, my cousin is coming home with me
now
so she can be returned to the sanctity and safety of her parents’ keeping.” He paused and glanced over at Daphne. “Who, I suspect, have no idea their daughter is here.”

Lord Henry shot a quick glance at her, as if to watch her deny this statement. Almost immediately his eyes widened as he spied the panic she couldn’t hide.

There it was. The cat was now out of the bag.

He knew she’d lied. To him and to her family. Thankfully though, he didn’t know why she’d gone to such great lengths.

Oh, bother! It wouldn’t be long before he went digging for the truth. Lord Henry just seemed the sort who would want to know the very why of something.

Including her secrets.

To add to the already ominous air around them, the dark clouds that had been threatening all afternoon were drawing ever closer.

Crispin glanced over his shoulder as the wind freshened, bringing a brisk change to the air and the hint of the rains to come.

“Now, now, Daphne,” her cousin said in the smooth, polite tones one used with an unruly child. “I’ll see to it that you are inside before the weather turns. It would be a dreadful shame for that lovely gown to be ruined.” Then he did exactly what she feared he might.

Gave her the Dale smolder.

That tip of the head, the half-lidded smoky glance that could lure a dedicated and lifelong spinster out of her corset.

It was a snare no woman could resist. Except, so it seemed, Daphne.

You are not like other ladies, are you, Miss Spooner? For that I am most relieved. Most ladies bore me to distraction.

Mr. Dishforth’s words came forth from who knew where. Perhaps the Fates had brought them along with this unseasonable bout of rain. But they gave Daphne the wherewithal she needed to do the last thing Crispin Dale expected.

Defy him yet again.

“No, my lord. I think not,” she told him, settling into the narrow seat of the pony cart as if it were Lady Essex’s well-appointed barouche. “I am most comfortable here.”

“Cousin, I order you to get out of that cart,” Crispin said, smolder replaced by a furious glare.

“And I, Cousin, politely refuse.” She managed a firm smile that belied her quaking insides.

“Daphne Dale!” he commanded. “You cannot be left alone with this . . . this . . .”

“I am of age, my lord,” she pointed out, “and can therefore make my own choices. I will not be bullied by you”—she glanced over at Lord Henry as well—“or any man.” Daphne looked up at the gathering clouds framing Crispin’s towering figure. “You have my answer, my lord. You’d best hurry to Langdale without me, or you’ll find your jacket ruined.”

“We shall see about that!” he said, plunking down in his seat and gathering up the reins. “Consider this choice carefully, Daphne, for once made it cannot be undone—just as many other things cannot be salvaged. You must see how you have no other choice but to return with me.”

Daphne shook at his implication that she was as good as ruined. “I disagree.”

“You cannot refuse me,” he shot back.

“I think she has,” Lord Henry told him, taking up the reins to the cart and clucking a bit at the tired nag. The poor horse was hardly a matched set of bays chafing in their traces, but you couldn’t tell that by Lord Henry’s demeanor. “Now, it is time you ceased badgering the lady and let us get on our way before the rain catches us.”

Crispin’s brow furrowed. “If that is your choice, Daphne.”

“It is.”

“So be it,” he said. “But hear me well, Seldon,” he added, turning his stormy gaze toward Lord Henry. “This lady’s welfare is in your hands. See her safely back to Owle Park. Immediately.”

“I have no desire to be drenched,” Lord Henry replied, neglecting to mention Daphne’s welfare, much to Crispin’s chagrin.

He straightened. “I shall hold you to your word, sir, that Miss Dale is returned without any hint of dishonor.”

Lord Henry bowed slightly in agreement.

Crispin turned to her, his gaze flitting for a second to Mr. Muggins, who hovered close to her shoulder. “Do not think this is the end of this, Daphne.” With that said, he wheeled his carriage around in a tight circle and drove off as if the hounds of hell were nipping his heels.

Or rather, Mr. Muggins after another of his prized hunting dogs.

“Yes, well,” Lord Henry said as the dust of Crispin’s carriage began to settle, “best get you back before he has time to fetch a halberd and settle this in some medieval fashion.” He glanced at her. “I’ve never fancied a pike through the chest.”

“I hardly think he’d choose halberds when he is an excellent shot,” she said, settling her hands primly into her lap. Then, after Lord Henry had turned the cart around—certainly not with Crispin’s skill, but well enough—she turned to him. “He has a right to be concerned.”

Lord Henry snorted.

“You are a Seldon.”

“And you are a Dale.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

One of his brows tipped into a high arch.

“Yes, right,” she agreed, recalling how this very same disagreement had gotten them into trouble at the ball—a path neither of them wished to travel down again . . . or so she thought.

“I might add though—” Lord Henry began.

Daphne set her jaw. Of course he couldn’t leave well enough alone.

But what Lord Henry said next shocked her. Utterly.

“If you were my cousin, I would not have left you in my care but followed you back to Owle Park to make sure you were well chaperoned. Your cousin is an overly proud fool.” He gave a disapproving shake of his head and said no more. Not that he needed to.

He was right, of course. And she glanced over her shoulder, where there was no sign of Crispin racing to her rescue.