And the Miss Ran Away With the Rake(27)

“Well, shall we get this over with?” he asked as the music started.

Get this over with? Daphne wrenched herself out of her woolgathering and let the full impact of his words come to rest. Get this over with? Why, she’d never been so insulted. He should be so lucky to be able to dance with a Dale.

And she would show him just how lucky he was.

Holding Miss Daphne Dale, Henry quickly surmised, was akin to holding a rosebush.

One with a generous portion of thorns that had previously been hidden beneath her beauty.

If only she wasn’t so demmed pretty. That was the real problem, Henry told himself. Lithe and fair, Miss Dale’s gown—some tempting creation of silk that clung to her every curve and left her looking like one of the Three Graces come to life—was enough to make any man mad with desire.

And how ironic that it was red. He nearly shuddered. Now every time he tried to envision his Miss Spooner, all that came to mind was this tempting chit.

Worse, the supper dance had them hedged in—for nearly everyone was dancing. Even Roxley’s old aunt, Lady Essex, was being squired about the floor by some aging gallant.

So here he was, forced to dance with an utterly desirable lady, one who would most likely leave him pricked and bleeding by the time the musicians got out the last note.

Certainly the expression on her face suggested that such a fate would not be beyond her means.

He tried smiling in the face of his predicament.

“You needn’t feign any affection you do not feel, Lord Henry. Not for my sake,” the blunt little snip told him.

So much for putting her at ease in hopes she might rein back the worst of her thorns.

“Affection is hardly the word I would use,” he replied, not caring that he was being an ass. Besides, he had a few choice things he could say about her behavior earlier.

“Then may I be frank?” she asked.

As if she wasn’t planning on being so anyway. He just nodded, for it was a rather ridiculous question.

“Lord Henry, you know who I am, and I know what you are—”

What he was? Of all the rude, presumptuous—

“Well, yes, I am under no delusions that you, as a Seldon, cannot help your predilection to vice and debauchery—”

Him? He was the most sensible Seldon who had ever borne the name, yet, holding this impossible miss, this woman who had more charms than a lady deserved, he had the insensible urge to take up Preston’s newly retired rakish mantle and prove Miss Dale right.

That he was truly a Seldon. A rake of the first order. Might send her scurrying back to Kennels . . . No, Kempling . . . Oh, bother, whatever that village of spinsters she’d come from. Well, they could have her back with his blessing.

Perhaps he could take up the matter in Parliament and see about having a wall constructed around the village so no more of its ladies descended upon London.

“—so let us make the best of this situation, and when this evening is over, we can go our separate ways,” she said, as if that settled everything neatly and properly.

As if she’d been the paragon of virtue and he the devil incarnate.

Then, to make things worse—if one could imagine this entire tangle going much further down the well—he detected what could only have been a shudder running through her limbs.

Whatever did she have to shudder about?

He straightened slightly, ruffled by her implications, for they pricked at his pride. He’d spent his entire life being tarred with the Seldon brush—that he must be a rake, that he must be inclined to vice, and he had thought he’d risen above such implications.

“Miss Dale, believe me when I say I am merely trying to make the best of this situation,” he told her, smiling this time for the sake of Aunt Zillah Seldon, who looked ready to storm the dance floor and pluck Henry from these ghastly straits.

Good heavens, she was in her eighties and could barely cross the room without her cane, let alone manage to weave and wind her way through an entire floor full of swaying couples.

Then he glanced down and realized he hardly appeared the willing gentleman—he had Miss Dale out nearly at arm’s reach and was dancing with the measured grace of a twelve-year-old lad.

While Miss Dale, despite his clod-footed handling, moved with the grace of a lady born.

A lady, indeed. He’d show one and all what sort of ladies the Dales produced.

As they swung around the next turn, Henry hitched her up close. Scandalously close.

Miss Dale’s mouth opened in a wide moue, and her brows? They now arched like a pair of cats on points.