And the Miss Ran Away With the Rake(84)

What had Lord Henry just said? The words rang through Daphne with such a deafening clang that it took her a moment or two to make sense of them.

That would rather be like you and me falling in love.

Them? In love? It wouldn’t be the oddity that was Tabitha and Preston’s impending marriage; rather, if they—she and Lord Henry—were to fall in love, it would be . . . why, it would be . . .

Heavenly. The word came unbidden into her thoughts, carried by the memory of his kiss.

If Daphne didn’t know better, she suspected she was already in love with Lord Henry Seldon.

No, not suspected. Knew.

Oh, it was too impossible to believe. Her. In love. With a Seldon. If a postal engagement was scandalous, this was . . . beyond ruinous.

“What an unmitigated disaster that would turn out to be,” she told him with a shaky laugh, starting down the hall again.

Fleeing was more like it.

He laughed a bit as well. Was it her, or did his amusement sound as forced as hers? She glanced back at him. “Yes, wouldn’t it be?” he said. “Can you imagine Zillah’s reaction?”

Daphne made a great show of shuddering—though a good part of it wasn’t all acting. “Yes, imagine that. And my Great-Aunt Damaris.”

Lord Henry paled. “Yes, I would think it would be prudent to write to her.”

“Wouldn’t save us,” Daphne confided. “We have a saying that if you sneeze in Scotland, Aunt Damaris will hear it in London.”

He laughed. “Zillah has much the same uncanny sense of disaster.”

“Yes, our falling in love would be a disaster,” she said, slanting a glance at him.

But oh, so heavenly . . .

Daphne drew a deep breath. She had to stop thinking like that. Tonight she would find Mr. Dishforth, and she would fall in love all over again.

Not all over again, she told herself. For the first time. The very first time. Because with Mr. Dishforth it would all make sense. They already fit.

Just like Tabitha and Preston.

At least she thought they did. Hoped they would.

Then she would have to stop finding herself in these impossibly perilous interludes with Lord Henry.

No more chance encounters. No more shared jests.

No more kisses.

She looked again at him. Would it be so wrong to kiss him one more time?

Yes, decidedly.

Bother! Her conscience was starting to sound like one of Tabitha’s uncle’s sermons.

“Miss Dale, is something amiss?”

Daphne found that she’d come to a stop without even realizing it. Lord Henry stood a few paces further down the hall, staring at her.

What had he asked? If something was amiss?

Well, yes, everything! she wanted to tell him.

“No, nothing,” she said, hurrying to catch up and continuing toward the dining room. To get through dinner and then slip away to the library.

Where she was destined to find true love. Yes, that was it. True love.

Still, whatever had Lord Henry meant when he’d said, “That would rather be like you and me falling in love”?

Did he think it possible? Was he merely joking? Daphne needed to know before she set foot in that library, but however did one ask such a thing?

“Miss Dale?”

Daphne looked up and realized that yet again, in her woolgathering, she’d come to a stop. And here was Lord Henry looking her up and down as if she were standing about in her shift.

“Yes? Is there something wrong?” She feigned innocence and glanced down to make sure her gown was in order—and that she hadn’t gone out only in her chemise, as she’d dreamt the night before the Seldon ball.

“No, no,” he said. Then he made a sweeping examination of her ensemble. “But you’ve done something different tonight.”

This was promising.

“My hair,” she said, hoping Pansy’s arrangement of Grecian curls was still as orderly as it had been when she’d left her room. And yet, here was Lord Henry with his brow furrowed and looking at her with his lips in a sour purse. “Don’t you approve?”

“Approve?” Henry glanced at it again. “Uh, well. It isn’t for me to say.”

Whyever did he look so uncomfortable? She glanced down again, for she had the feeling her petticoat was showing.

But her search showed nothing but her pale green muslin laying perfectly smooth down to her hemline. So if it wasn’t her petticoat . . . perhaps . . .