And the Miss Ran Away With the Rake(7)

Not that such a glance wasn’t to be expected. The gown was a bit scandalous and Daphne had ordered it in a moment of passion, wondering what Dishforth would think of her, so elegantly and daringly attired.

Lady Essex came to a stop to gossip with an old friend, and Harriet drifted back toward them. “Now quickly, who is on your list, Daphne? Let’s find your Dishforth.”

Daphne plucked the list from her reticule. From the moment she’d learned that Mr. Dishforth was attending Tabitha’s engagement ball, the trio had scoured the invitation list for possible suspects.

“Lord Burstow,” Tabitha read over her shoulder.

The three of them glanced over at the man and discovered their information hadn’t been entirely correct.

“However did we get him so wrong?” Harriet whispered.

“He is well over eighty,” Tabitha said, making a tsk, tsk sound.

“And the way he shakes, well, he’d never be able to compose a legible note, let alone a letter,” Harriet pointed out.

They all agreed and struck him from their list, once again going back to their investigation.

“Tell us again what you do know,” Tabitha prodded.

Daphne, with Harriet’s help, had assembled a thick dossier on everything she knew about Dishforth. A compilation that would have rivaled the best produced by Harriet’s brother, Chaunce, who worked for the Home Office.

“First and foremost, he is a gentleman,” Daphne said. “He went to Eton—” a point he had mentioned in passing. “And his handwriting, spelling and composition all speak of a well-educated man.”

That fit most of the men in the room.

Daphne continued on. “He lives in London proper. Most likely Mayfair, given the regularity of his posts.”

“Or at the very least,” Harriet added, “has been in London since the appearance of his advertisement.”

“Nor did he quit Town at the end of the Season,” Tabitha pointed out.

Daphne suspected he might be a full-time resident of the city. “His letters are all delivered by a footman in a plain livery.”

“Sneaky fellow,” Harriet said. “Livery would be so helpful.”

Oh, yes, Mr. Dishforth was a wily adversary to track down. The address his letters were sent to had turned out to be a rented house situated quite nicely at Cumberland Place—something the trio had discovered while they’d been purportedly walking in the park.

“It is too bad we have yet to meet Lady Taft,” Tabitha mused, glancing around the room, referring to the current occupant at that address. They had been able to learn—with the help of Lady Essex’s well-thumbed edition of Debrett’s—that her ladyship had two daughters and no sons.

Sad luck that, for it meant that Dishforth most likely resided elsewhere. Then again, Daphne was using her Great-Aunt Damaris’s address for her letters to avoid Lady Essex’s discovering the truth.

“If we do not find Dishforth tonight,” Harriet said, “then tomorrow we knock on Lady Taft’s door and interview her butler as to why her ladyship acts as Dishforth’s intermediary.”

“Or who her landlord might be,” Tabitha suggested.

“No!” Daphne exclaimed, for she held a secret hope for a much more romantic venue for their first meeting. And storming the portals of Lady Taft’s rented house did not fit into that scenario.

Of course, all of what Daphne knew about the man assumed that he was being completely honest with her. That his letters were not as fictional as his name.

Certainly she’d been honest with him.

Mostly so. Certainly not her name. For she had replied as Miss Spooner, the name of her first governess. It had seemed the perfect pseudonym at the time. Hadn’t her own Miss Spooner eloped one night with a dashing naval captain?

Still, it wasn’t only her name that wasn’t true. Daphne shifted uncomfortably, for she hadn’t been absolutely honest with Mr. Dishforth. She hadn’t mentioned her lack of finishing school. Or how she loathed London.

But some things were best not admitted in a letter.

And good heavens, if everyone was completely honest in courtship, no one would ever get married.

Woolgathering as she was, Daphne hadn’t noticed that Lady Essex had returned.

“Miss Dale, you appear undone.” The old girl studied her with those piercing blue eyes of hers. “Positively flushed, I say. Miss Manx, my vinaigrette–”