Guilty Series (24 page)

“I do not think—” She broke off, but she was acutely aware of every person in the room watching them, and she knew she could not say no. Her refusal would be a slight to him and to his rank, and she could not do such a thing to him in front of all these people. “Of course, your grace,” she murmured, forcing a disinterested politeness into her voice as he held out his hand to her. “I would be honored.”

She took his hand and allowed him to lead her to the floor. She could feel the fascinated stares of everyone in the room as Anthony put his hand on her waist and lifted her other hand in his. She was sure she would stumble over his feet, and she looked down.

“Look at me, Daphne. Not at the floor.”

She compromised, focusing her own gaze on the knot of his cravat, trying not to think of all the people staring at them. But her fear of making a public mistake proved unfounded, for when the waltz began, her body remembered all their hours of practice together, and she followed his lead with ease.

“I am delighted to finally have the opportunity of seeing the pink evening gown,” he commented as they waltzed. “I remember how delighted you were to have acquired it.”

Startled, Daphne looked up into his face. “You remember that?”

“Of course.” There was something in his eyes, something so intense and passionate. “I remember everything.”

She could feel herself shaking inside, so afraid. She was afraid of being his passion today, but not tomorrow, afraid of how much it would hurt in the future if she let herself believe him now.

“You look lovely in it,” he went on. “Pink suits you.”

“Don't!” she ordered in a fierce undertone. “Please do not give me these compliments.”

“Very well. I shall change the subject and thank you for your unique gift. I received it only a few hours ago, and may I say I was never so gratified to receive anything in my life.”

He did not even blink at her skeptical look or her humph of disbelief. “I speak truly, for you have been so cruel as to keep me on tenterhooks for three days, and I was beginning to lose hope of ever receiving a reply.”

“It was never my intent to cause you such suspense,” she countered. “The thing had to sit in an ice house for three days to ensure it was quite dead.”

He gave a shout of laughter, and she glanced at the blurred faces of the people around them. “Shush,” she admonished. “People are staring at us.”

“Yes, I know.” Still smiling, he said, “Words cannot express how happy I was to receive a dead, frozen ice plant. It shows me how much you care.”

“Happy?” she countered. “I am disappointed, for I was hoping your feelings would take a different direction, toward futility rather than gladness.”

“Not at all. Perhaps my reply tomorrow will be able to convince you that I live for any scrap of your favor and attention.”

“Oh, stop this, Anthony! I do not like you this way.”

“What way is that?”

“All these compliments and lavish expressions of sentiment. It smacks of insincerity, for it is so unlike you.”

“I told you I always give my opinions honestly. I would not say it if it were not the truth. Not that I blame you for thinking compliments unlike me,” he added before she could speak. “After all, I have not been the most articulate of suitors, to talk of duty and obligation, when I should have been talking of romance and passion and your beautiful eyes.”

“Stop this! You are making me quite cross.”

“You, Daphne? The woman who throws trowels at my head is cross? I do not believe it.”

“I did not throw it at you on purpose,” she reminded him. “And if I had, I would have exercised sufficient aim to actually hit you.”

“I have no doubt of it.”

She once again fixed her gaze on his cravat, pressed her lips together, and did not reply.

“Why are you angry with me, Daphne?”

She was not angry. She was trying to harden herself against him, but the tenderness of his voice was
making her raw. She looked up at him, looked away, and looked back at him again. “You went to the baron and told him we were to marry. How could you presume such a thing when I have explicitly refused you?”

“Yes, I went to Durand. I did not tell him we were to be married. As he is your closest male relation, I told him of my desire to marry you, and I secured his permission to court you in honorable fashion. That is all.”

“Knowing all the while he would entertain no doubt of my acceptance of your suit!”

“Well, yes,” he admitted, trying very hard not to smile. “But I confessed to you long ago my abhorrence for the word
no
. I am hoping that at some point I will have persuaded you to overlook that defect in my character and that you will marry me in spite of it.”

“I do not wish to marry you, and I have told you so. Why will you not accept that?”

“Because I cannot stop thinking of you. Of our dances and our conversations and the first time I ever heard you laugh. I cannot stop thinking of us, of that night in the antika,” he said, his voice low and fierce and wrenching to hear. “I remember how your skin was so cold at first, but I could feel it warming as I touched you. I remember how you looked in the moonlight with your head tilted back and your breasts in my hands.”

“Stop it.” She was blushing under the staring eyes of a room of people.

“I remember how you said my name over and
over again as I touched you, of how I loved hearing you say it, of how you were filling my senses until I could not think.”

She caught back a sob of pain and fury. “You are cruel, Anthony,” she told him in a fierce whisper. “Cruel to say such things to me when we both know it is only your determination to have your way that impels you to say them.”

“We both did what we hate to do, Daphne. We both lost control. I take all the blame, for I knew what the result would be, yet I could not stop myself from doing it anyway. You call me cruel? You will not even allow me to make up for the wrong I have done you. If I am determined, it is only to make you safe. It is you who are cruel, Daphne, to deny me that.”

The dance came to an end, and the music stopped. As he returned her to her place beside Elizabeth, he defied the stares directed at them and whispered close to her ear, “I remember everything, and I cannot believe you have forgotten. If you have, I will make you remember. I vow on my life I will.”

D
espite his accusation, Daphne had not forgotten their night together, nor anything else about him, and she could not believe he could think for a moment that she had. Memories of him were etched into her brain like carvings in stone, memories of how he had kissed her and made love to her, memories of the hard strength of his body, and the glorious delight of his hands and his mouth. And the act itself—the delight and pleasure of that experience never left her for a moment. She would never forget him, and even had she wanted to, the fortnight that followed their evening at the Haydon Assembly Rooms gave her no chance to do so.

The first day after their dance together, he sent her twelve bouquets of variegated tulips and rose
mary to convey his admiration of her beautiful eyes and to signify his memory of the first time he had told her that. Each bouquet was in its own crystal vase banded with a ribbon knotted around a gold hairpin. Daphne fingered one of the dangling hair ornaments, remembering exactly what he wanted her to remember—of how he had taken down her hair that night and refashioned it himself.

A woman's hair can be a man's obsession.

Was he imagining her hair down, spread across his pillows?

That was the night he had admitted to her his awe of love, confessed his fear of it, recognized her defenses against it.

This gift was so lavish and expensive that the proper thing to do was send the whole lot—flowers, crystal vases, and gold hairpins—back to him. In the end, she kept the flowers, but she sent back the rest, with a note that reminded him she could not keep gifts, particularly such absurd, extravagant ones, for if she did, others would think them engaged, and they were not.

A few days later, twelve bouquets of dittany proclaimed his passion for her and his memory of their picnic, when she had described the hills of Crete to him, but they were tied with simple silk ribbons, and there were no gold hairpins or crystal vases with them.

After another few days, twelve more bouquets arrived. These were sprays of peach blossoms.

“You hold me captive,” Elizabeth read from the book in her hands, then lowered it to lean forward
and sniff one of the fragrant sprays in Daphne's bedroom. “It also means, ‘I am in your power.'” With a sigh, she turned away from the bouquets on the windowsill and fell forward onto Daphne's bed. “I would fall in love with a man who told me that.”

“He is talking nonsense,” Daphne answered, squeezing the water out of her freshly washed hair into the bowl on her dressing table. “‘I am in your power,'” she repeated as she wrapped her head in a towel. “As if Anthony could mean anything so ridiculous.”

She turned away from the dressing table, and her gaze caught on the flowers. She paused, pressing her fingers to her lips, remembering that night they had bargained over her spectacles.

Do you not see how much power you could have over me?

The same warm, aching sensation of anticipation and desire spread through her limbs as she remembered that night.

“But does it not soften your heart, at least a little?” Elizabeth asked.

Daphne jerked her hand down and frowned at her friend. “He does not mean it.”

“You do not believe he is sincere?”

“I do not know!” she cried in vexation. “Let's not talk of it anymore.”

Elizabeth did not mention it again, and the rest of the Fitzhugh family remained tactfully silent on the subject as well, although when twelve lime trees laden with fruit arrived, conveying the duke's undimmed intent to marry her, Sir Edward asked
with amused exasperation whether these demonstrations of his grace's affection would extend to the next Christmas season, for if so, he feared they would be receiving an enormous quantity of partridges and pear trees.

In addition to the flowers sent to Daphne, they received stacks and stacks of cards and invitations. So many visitors came to Russell Square that the small drawing room could not always accommodate them all. Every person who called talked delicately of weddings and engagements, though none were so bold as to discuss the rumors about hers. No engagement had been announced, but Daphne's silence on the subject was thought to be motivated by an understandable desire for discretion rather than the unbelievable alternative that she had refused him.

The baron called on them numerous times during that week, making several such visits as well as some outings with him so that they might get to know one another. Daphne had no idea if her grandfather was coming to have a genuine concern for her, or was simply pretending his familial interest in her affairs. Whatever his reasons, Durand remained convinced that despite her denials, Daphne would soon be wed to the duke.

His conviction was reinforced by the pages of every society paper in London, for all of them seemed to take her acceptance of Anthony's suit for granted. Decorum prevented her from denouncing these rumors publicly, and she could do nothing but wait for the speculation to die down.

However, as the second week of this unusual courtship progressed, the speculation did not end, it only grew. Word of the lime trees got out, as did the news that Anthony was using the book of Charlotte de la Tour as the basis of his courtship. Soon London bookstores were depleted of every available copy and people of the ton found occasion to walk in the park of Russell Square quite often, hoping to see another of the duke's floral letters to Miss Wade pass through the doors of Sir Edward Fitzhugh's house.

There was a great deal of discussion in the papers about Daphne's background, which was so significantly lower than Tremore's. There was also some talk of her parents' elopement and the baron's desire to cover up such a scandal by claiming his daughter was in Italy with relations there. One or two hinted that her parents had not married at all, but such rumors were quickly refuted.

The most incredible statements about her life in Africa were bandied about, along with the news that she had been employed by the duke to do research on his antiquities and render the sketches for his museum.

Comments were made about her unprepossessing looks, her lack of a substantial dowry, and her connections, which though respectable, were hardly worthy of a duke. All of this pointed to her complete lack of suitability to be a duchess and led some papers to wonder if Tremore was quite right in the head.

Daphne did her best to ignore the hurtful things
that were being said about her in the papers and repeated to her by rumor-mongering acquaintances who “meant well.” Harder to bear was the scrutiny. She could not go anywhere without being observed and discussed, and she truly began to appreciate what Anthony had told her about how smothering his life could be.

That did not stop him from adding fuel to the fire. The day of the Fitzhugh card party, another floral message from him arrived at the house in Russell Square.

“He is impossible!” Daphne declared, watching as two men maneuvered an enormous bouquet of flowers through the door, an arrangement in all the colors of the rainbow that filled the drawing room at once with the fragrance of its many flowers.

Lady Fitzhugh had a corner of the room cleared away to accommodate the thing, for it was at least three feet across, four feet high, and could not possibly fit in their tiny vestibule. Once this was accomplished, the two men who had delivered it departed, Elizabeth and Anne examined its flowers with exclamations of delight, and Daphne turned to Lady Fitzhugh in exasperation. “What am I to do?” she cried. “He will not take no.”

“You are refusing him?” Anne cried. “Oh, Daphne, how can you be so heartless as that?”

The accusation stung, and Elizabeth must have seen it. “She should not have to marry him if she does not love him!”

“Do you not love him?” Anne asked, incredulous. “But why not?”

“Anne, that is enough,” Lady Fitzhugh said. “It is not our business to inquire about Daphne's feelings. Now, girls, I believe we must depart for Lady Atherton's. It is nearly three o'clock. Let us allow Daphne some peace. Heaven knows, she is in need of it.”

She gave Lady Fitzhugh a grateful look as the other woman ushered the girls out of the room, leaving Daphne alone with her latest present. She studied it for a long time.

Despite the dozens of flowers and plants in front of her that told of his passion, his attention to his duty, and his desire to protect and honor her, Daphne could not help but notice that there was no symbol anywhere in this enormous display that conveyed a declaration of love.

It hardly mattered. Anthony himself had deemed his feelings for her a temporary affliction, and even if a rose or a carnation or a spray of forget-me-nots had been tucked somewhere amid this vast quantity of flowers, it would not have convinced her he felt anything permanent for her. There was no flower, no gift, no words that could ever convince one's heart of anything.

 

Anthony knew there was no way to court Daphne without generating gossip. What he was not prepared for was his own anger every time he saw another snide comment about her in the society papers, an anger that burned all the stronger since he had once been as blind as that himself. During the week that followed their waltz together at the Haydon
Rooms, he did not call on her at Russell Square, hoping that would cause the gossip to die down.

Instead of Russell Square, he spent a great deal of time at his club. One night a week after the evening at the Haydon Rooms, he came into Brooks to find Dylan there, halfway through a bottle of brandy.

Anthony accepted Dylan's invitation to join him and sat down. He leaned back in his chair, noting the other man's drawn face and bloodshot eyes. “Every time I see you like this, I am grateful I do not have the artistic temperament,” he commented.

“I do not have it either, it seems,” Dylan said wearily. “I cannot seem to write two notes together, so I am occupying myself with a binge of alcoholic excess.” He gestured to the bottle on the table. “Would you care to join me? From what I hear, you could use a drink yourself.”

Anthony admitted nothing. Instead, he signaled for a glass. When it came, he poured a brandy for himself, ignoring his friend's amused stare.

“I hear the London florists are quite busy.”

Anthony took a sip of brandy in silence.

“Perhaps I shall begin sending flowers to young ladies. That would be something new for me. How do you use flowers to ask a woman to share your bed?”

Anthony smothered a laugh. “You have already bedded so many, how do you keep count?”

“Not true,” Dylan corrected. “I haven't bedded yours, much as I would enjoy doing so.”

Anthony stiffened, his hand tightening around his glass. He said nothing.

Dylan leaned back in his chair and his brows rose with that mocking amusement. “The society papers call her plain, you know. They say her skin is a bit too tanned for fashion, her cheeks are too round, and her hair is an unremarkable brown. You would compare the color to honey, no doubt.”

Anthony was in no frame of mind for Dylan's mockery. “Are you trying to provoke me?”

“I confess I am. I would like to see the ducal hauteur come down for once. D'you know, in all the years I have known you, I have never once seen you lose your temper? Not once. But let us leave your character for another day, and talk of the charms of Miss Wade.” He took a swallow of brandy. “They say her vision is very poor, for she wears her spectacles nearly all the time. All the women of London are baffled by how such a dowdy thing has claimed your heart, but I—and I think there are plenty of other men who would agree with me on this—see something quite appealing there.”

Anthony picked up the copy of
The Times
that lay on the table and folded it back to the political pages.

“She has a luscious figure,” Dylan went on. “I saw that straightaway, for I always notice the most important things first. Now, the papers may have a point about her face, for it is a bit too round to be truly pretty, but sweet enough to look at for all that. It is not a face to give much away, is it? I watched as you danced with her, and I might have thought she didn't care tuppence for you. And as for her eyes, God, what a color!”

Anthony slapped the paper back on the table. “Do not push me, Moore, for I am not in the mood for your satiric comments tonight.”

“You in the agonies of unrequited love
is
a satire. In fact, watching this romance from a distance as it unfolds has become my most entertaining amusement. Lime trees, Tremore? No one to touch you for folly. Miss Wade does not seem to share your passion. How do you feel? Frustrated? Wounded? Outraged that the gods have thwarted you?”

A muscle ticked in Anthony's jaw. “Go to the devil.”

“I already have, my friend.” Dylan refilled his glass and lifted it. “Here's to hell,” he said, and knocked back the brandy. “Now that both of us are there.”

He shoved back his chair and rose as if to depart, but before he did so, he leaned toward Anthony, resting his palms on the table. “I believe I shall compose a piece in Miss Wade's honor,” he said in a low voice. “‘Daphne of the Violet Eyes,' or something like that. Who knows? I might succeed with a sonata where your flowers have failed.”

A blackness came over Anthony like a curtain going down, and the next thing he knew, his greatest friend was on the floor with a bloody lip, a bone-jarring ache was in his fist, and other members of Brook's had seized his arms to hold him back.

Dylan touched his hand to the corner of his
mouth. He glanced at the smear of blood on his fingertips, then raised his gaze, confronting Anthony's rage with a rueful smile. “You see, my friend?” he murmured. “Madness comes to us all. Even you.”