And the Miss Ran Away With the Rake(33)

By the time they had gotten seated at the window bench, Daphne was dizzy, but it seemed so was Cousin Phi, who wasn’t more than a few years older than Daphne but, having failed at finding a husband, now resided at Number 18 as Great-Aunt Damaris’s companion.

A fate no one would envy her for, though Phi seemed to consider it a boon and took the old lady’s complaints and tirades in patient stride and with nary a lament.

Better still, Phi had only been too willing to help Daphne with her correspondence with Mr. Dishforth—for no one had a more romantic little soul than Cousin Philomena.

“If only you had arrived just a few seconds earlier, why, you would have met him,” Phi was saying, looking once again up and down the street, clearly disappointed to find the block empty.

“The man? The elegant one I saw coming down the steps?” Daphne asked.

“Yes, yes, him!” Phi exclaimed, her eyes wide.

“Who was he?” Daphne asked, for it wasn’t all that unusual for Great-Aunt Damaris to have callers. She was a bit of a legend in the Dale clan, and cousins and relations from all corners came to beseech her for advice.

Which the lady doled out with a heavy hand and no lack of sarcasm.

All good advice comes with a price, she was wont to say.

Great-Aunt Damaris had the effect of leaving one feeling scalded, but better for the experience.

“Who was that, she asks! It was him!” Phi said, as if that explained everything.

Daphne paused for a second and then felt a tremor of horror. Great-Aunt Damaris hadn’t made good on her threat of ordering the Right Honorable Mr. Matheus Dale to Town on some flimsy pretense.

She’d brought it up each time Daphne had visited, claiming the two of them would suit and had a matchmaker’s fire over the notion.

Advice Great-Aunt Damaris could offer in plentitude; matchmaking, however, was not her forte.

“Not Matheus,” Daphne whispered to Phi, who was once again looking out the window.

Phi shook her head. “No, not Cousin Matheus,” she said, making a moue of displeasure. Obviously this push of Great-Aunt Damaris’s to find a Dale cousin to marry the esteemed Mr. Matheus Dale had been tried before.

“So if it wasn’t Matheus, then who?” Daphne prodded, settling into the window seat, where she and Phi always had their hasty “coze” before Great-Aunt Damaris realized, with the uncanny sense of a cat, that someone was in the house and would have Daphne summoned upstairs.

Phi’s expression brightened. “Him!” Then she lowered her voice, which was a good idea, for any Dale worth their salt knew—or at least swore—that Great-Aunt Damaris could hear conversations uttered all the way up north in the family’s Scottish hunting box. “Oh, bother, Daphne. You truly have to ask?” Still, Phi leaned closer and whispered in a voice barely audible, “It was your Mr. D.”

Daphne’s mouth fell open. That man . . . that elegant, self-assured, handsome man (at least he’d seemed handsome at that distance) was her Mr. Dishforth?

“No!” Daphne said, glancing back at the door, restraining herself from jumping up and setting off after him.

After all, it was her lack of restraint that had plunked her right down in the scandal broth.

“That was him?” she managed.

“Yes,” Phi said. “Oh, I’m ever so glad you did see him.” Her cousin’s face wore a dreamy sort of expression, as if she’d just witnessed a miracle.

Daphne reached over and caught Philomena by the arm—if only to steady her own racing nerves. “Are you certain? The man wearing the superfine jacket and the tall beaver hat was Mr. Dishforth?”

Phi nodded. “Yes, and he carried a silver-tipped walking stick. A most elegant one. Oh, Daphne, he is so handsome, and he must be ever-so-rich.”

Rich? Visions of a large rambling country house once again danced through Daphne’s thoughts.

Handsome was one thing, but Daphne wasn’t so impractical as to not realize the benefits of falling in love with a wealthy man. “And he came here?”

“Yes. And I met him,” Phi declared. “He came to the door, and luckily for you, I was downstairs checking the salver for Herself.”

“Herself” being how most everyone in the family referred to Great-Aunt Damaris.

“He came here?” Daphne’s heart raced. “Where was Croston?” Great-Aunt Damaris’s butler would certainly have had a thing or two to say to his mistress about an unknown gentleman calling.