And the Miss Ran Away With the Rake(105)

He shook his head and smiled at her. “No, nothing, Miss Dale. Nothing at all.”



Two days later

“You do not seem overly distressed that we are stranded,” Lord Henry posed as they stood beside the road and watched the posting lad and coachman ride away with their horses.

“Travel is fraught with such mishaps,” Daphne replied, hoping her sense of relief as she watched them disappear around the bend wasn’t overly apparent.

“Don’t you think it odd that all four horses suddenly went lame?”

“I suppose it can happen; in fact it has,” she replied, nodding at their own horses happily trotting down the road and hardly looking lame.

“Still . . .” Lord Henry kicked a stone across the road, his jaw set.

Perhaps she should feign a demeanor fraught with worry and concern for Dishforth, or, more to the point, over her certainly lost reputation.

For here she was stranded out in the middle of nowhere with Lord Henry Seldon.

All alone.

Where anything could happen.

She slanted a glance in his direction. Anything.

And yet nothing was. Much to her growing annoyance.

If anything was leaving her fraught with worry, it was Lord Henry’s suddenly honorable and gentlemanly behavior toward her.

“I will say, though,” she offered, “that if one must be stranded, it is in a perfectly lovely spot.”

Indeed it was. For there was a large oak on the other side of a rock wall, and beyond its sheltering shade were wide meadows dotted with wildflowers. There was even a wide, clear stream dividing the valley laid out before them.

Lord Henry glanced around and huffed another sigh, picking up the basket and crossing the road.

Daphne chewed at her lower lip and went over the last few days in her head. Through all the changes of horses, all the miles, all the hours of traveling so intimately together, not once had Lord Henry attempted anything untoward.

He’d been the epitome of a gentleman.

Wretched beast.

Hopefully this delay would be enough to nudge him into confessing the truth.

That he was Mr. Dishforth.



A few days earlier at Owle Park

“Was it him or wasn’t it?” Lady Zillah demanded.

Something inside of Daphne—most likely that bit of her that had left more than one relation shaking their head and likening her to Great-Aunt Damaris—refused to yield.

She took a few steps forward and smiled at the lady politely. As if she were a Fitzgerald or a Smythe and not this Seldon crone.

“Pardon, my lady?”

“Harrumph!” Zillah snorted. “You have Damaris Dale’s pride all over you.”

“Thank you, my lady.”

“That was no compliment.”

“I shall take it as one, all the same.”

“Bah! He’s a fool to even glance in your direction. And what’s worse is that you know it.”

Daphne didn’t reply, for even to acknowledge the lady’s accusation was to give it credit.

Where none was deserved or wanted.

Lord Henry! She didn’t know whether to shout with joy or cry her eyes out. She was head over heels in love with him and all but promised to another.

“He’d have none of my advice to leave you be. Quite the opposite, he’s determined to make mischief where it doesn’t belong.”

Meaning with her. With a Dale.

“So I am asking you, since for some folly of a reason Preston will not, to leave Owle Park before you have that boy in knots.” Daphne opened her mouth to protest, but again Zillah obviously had been looking for an opportunity to make this speech and had it all planned out. Thus, she continued unabated, “You will make your curtsy, apologize profusely and leave immediately. I will not see him bedeviled another day.”

“I have no reason to leave. Whatever would I say?” Daphne posed.

“Lie,” the lady said plainly. “You’re a Dale, after all. It should come naturally.”

Daphne sucked in a deep breath, every bit of indignation she possessed coming to the forefront.

While Lady Zillah’s age and rank required Daphne to give the lady every bit of respect she possessed, in her estimation, Lady Zillah deserved none.

But there was no time to utter even the quickest of retorts, for Lady Zillah had turned back to the piano and was gathering up her music sheets. She tsk tsk’d over each one. “And after Henry was so kind to make all these notations for me,” she complained, glancing down at the pages she held. “For another time when I won’t be disturbed.”