And the Miss Ran Away With the Rake(45)

“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.”