And the Miss Ran Away With the Rake(83)

“My mother would have horrors over my part in all of it, but thankfully no one will ever know,” she admitted.

“Save me,” he said, waggling his brows at her. He couldn’t help himself.

“Oh, dear heavens, does that mean I’m indebted to you?” she asked in mock horror.

“Your secret is safe with me,” he told her in all solemnity.

“I believe you. I even trust you. Which I never thought I’d say about a Seldon.” She needn’t sound so shocked.

“No? And how many have you met?” he asked.

Miss Dale laughed. “Only you and Preston. Oh, and Lady Juniper and Lady Zillah.”

“I do believe, then, you have met all of us.”

She turned and gaped at him. “That’s all there is? Just you four?”

He nodded. “Well, we’ve never been a prolific lot, like you Dales.”

“Which is rather ironic,” she pointed out.

“How so?”

“You Seldons are considered quite licentious, and yet there are so few of you left.”

“Perhaps we are not as licentious as we seem,” he said with a rakish wink that made her blush. He rather liked it when she did—it wasn’t so much because she was embarrassed but because she thought him a rake.

“Please do not tell Zillah I admitted as much,” he added hastily. “She takes great pride in our scandalous reputation.”

“She must be ever so disappointed in Preston, now that he’s reformed.” Then she slowed slightly and lowered her voice. “Was he as scandalous as they say?”

“I do believe Preston was under the impression that was how he ought to behave—not how he truly is.”

“So I am beginning to see,” she admitted.

“Still, you don’t approve.”

“Tabitha’s engagement to Preston took us all by surprise,” she said. “It was just so sudden, so . . .”

“You are being diplomatic,” he said, folding his hands behind his back.

“Yes, well, as a Dale—”

“Yes, yes, say no more—”

“No, I must. You mistake me,” she said. “While of course I can hardly approve of the match—for he is—”

Henry arched a brow and waited for her answer, if only to see how far her diplomacy could take them.

“He is Preston,” she finally said.

True enough. That had been enough this past Season to have even the most upstart mushrooms giving the entire Seldon family the cut direct.

Then Miss Dale surprised him. “Yet he does love Tabitha.”

“Passionately,” Henry added.

“Yes, that he does.” And it was that—the very envy in her voice—that cut him to the quick.

And now it seemed it was a sentiment he shared with Miss Dale.

Yet she wasn’t done. “Tabitha would never choose any man who wasn’t deserving, and it is as you say, that the duke loves her passionately, but I fear . . .”

They had come to a stop.

“Well, what I mean to say is . . . that is . . . do you think—” she began, then she looked up at him and finished, “is passion enough?”

Oh, very much so, he wanted to tell her.

That thought, that conviction made without even blinking, came straight from his heart.

For all he could see was Miss Dale undone, in his bed, beneath him. Passion? She left him in its throes by walking into a room. To spend the rest of his life that way?

Henry would never have believed how alive passion, desire, could make one feel.

Until now.

Good God, he hoped when he walked into the library it was Miss Dale there. Never mind the dustup such an affair would result in. He wanted to be her rake. To be the passion in her life. To have her always.

Damn tradition. Damn the lines.

Yet she took his silence all wrong and started walking again. “Everyone speaks of love as if it was so easy to understand, as if it makes sense,” she was saying when he caught up.

“It doesn’t?” he asked as he joined her.

She shook her head. “Preston is . . . well, he’s Preston. And Tabitha is . . . goodness, she’s a vicar’s daughter. Yet they fit. They make the other whole. How can that be?”

Henry spoke without thinking, his restraint and sensibilities having fled in the face of Miss Daphne Dale, and without those confining boundaries, he said, “That would rather be like you and me falling in love.”