And the Miss Ran Away With the Rake

chapter 4



Have you not wondered why the Fates considered bringing us together? I fear at times they could also have a change of heart and pull us apart. Promise me we shall endeavor to avoid their snare, my dearest Miss Spooner.

Found in a letter from Mr. Dishforth to Miss Spooner




Daphne was doing her best to forget the previous evening. Not that Lady Essex was likely to let her.

Where the lady should have been scandalized and overwrought, Roxley’s aunt was instead in alt. The tempest had put her in high demand with every gossip in London, and there was nothing Lady Essex liked more than being the center of attention.

Of course, the Dale clan might applaud Daphne’s scandalous part, saying it was only what a Seldon deserved, but then the inevitable questions and recriminations would come.

What the devil were you doing there in the first place?

And whatever would she say?

That she’d been corresponding with an unknown gentleman, who, she had discovered, was going to be attending the ball and she couldn’t help herself, she’d gone into the Seldon lair if only to discover her Prince Charming?

Yes, that would be about as well received as the gossip that was surely going to land on Aunt Damaris’s doorstep before nightfall—that her niece was a dreadful harridan.

Caused the scene of the Season! some catty relation would come to tell the dowager of the Dale clan.

Though Daphne couldn’t imagine who would be brave (or foolish enough) to drop such a cannonball into Aunt Damaris’s gilt salon.

Which, in itself, might buy Daphne a few days.

Perhaps even enough time to discover Mr. Dishforth’s true identity before she would be shunted off to Kempton, never to be allowed back in London again.

Which was the last thing Daphne wanted or needed. So she’d made her excuses to Lady Essex and fled Roxley’s town house, claiming an obligation to visit her Great-Aunt Damaris one more time before she returned to Kempton.

If anything, she hoped beyond hope that when she got there, she would find a note, a few lines, anything from Mr. Dishforth.

Oh, Mr. Dishforth! Whatever was she going to tell him?

Daphne hurried through the streets of Mayfair, her ever-faithful maid, Pansy, trotting along behind her, her cheeks pink with the heat and the pace.

Not that she could hope to outrun the gossip, but perhaps she could head it off before it turned into an insurmountable storm.

Daphne paused at a corner to wait for traffic and considered how she might explain her wretched behavior to him.

To Mr. Dishforth.

Well, there were only two words to justify what she’d done.

Lord Henry.

Ruinous, awful man! Daphne could not think of him without shivering. No, it wasn’t shivering, more like shuddering, she corrected herself.

For shivering had an entirely different intimation.

And not one she wanted to share with Lord Henry. Not in the least.

“Horrible man,” she muttered as she started across the street.

“My pardon, miss,” a stuffy-looking fellow huffed in reply as he hurried past.

Daphne blushed a bit, especially when Pansy looked over at her with that puzzled, censorious expression she seemed to be wearing much of late.

And feeling a bit of remorse, Daphne knew eventually she would have to admit the truth. Lord Henry couldn’t be blamed entirely. For one thing, she had tripped him.

Not deliberately. Not intentionally.

Well, maybe a little.

Daphne drew herself up straight. Annoying, wretched man. Why, he was the very epitome of all that was wrong with the Seldons and had been wrong for centuries. Too handsome. Too full of his own worth. And much too handsome.

Oh, dear, she’d listed that twice. Well, it needed to be, she told herself as she rounded the corner onto Christopher Street.

No man should look that sinful; it made him capable of driving a perfectly sensible lady to make a complete cake of herself in a crowded ballroom.

Well, never again, she vowed. Never again would she be swayed by a tall, handsome, overly charming man. Not whatsoever.

And as if the Fates meant to test her resolve, she looked up and came to a complete halt. For there, hurrying down the steps at the far end of the block—on Great-Aunt Damaris’s steps, to be exact—was a tall figure in an elegantly cut jacket of navy superfine, a tall beaver hat atop his head, the brim obscuring his face.

Just the sort to make a lady’s heart do that odd double thump if only to ensure she’d taken notice.

Yes, Daphne had noticed.

This striking Corinthian paused for a moment at the end of the steps, adjusted his hat to a jaunty tilt and then continued in the opposite direction with a determined stride, his walking stick tapping out his hurried pace.

For some reason, her boots found themselves planted to the sidewalk. She could only stand there on the curb, not even caring that she was gaping like a veritable country rube.

Out of the blue, she found herself thinking it was exactly how Lord Henry might stroll along—the very same self-assured line of his shoulders, the steady stride, as if he owned the very sidewalk.

Goodness! How ridiculous, she told herself, a bit piqued that at every turn he seemed to invade her thoughts.

Now she was even seeing him where he shouldn’t be.

Besides, she told herself, studying this object of curiosity, he didn’t possess Lord Henry’s arrogance. No, certainly not. This man held himself with an air of composure and aplomb that would captivate any woman.

So, whatever was such a man doing visiting Great-Aunt Damaris? Firstly, he was too tall and too dark to be a Dale.

“Who are you?” she whispered, not even realizing she had said the words aloud until this mysterious stranger, who was about to round the corner at the end of the block, paused, as if he had heard her question.

Then, to her shock, he turned slightly and glanced over his shoulder.

Oh, my! Oh, goodness . . . Her thoughts jangled together as his features slowly came into view, until—

“Do you mind?” a voice blared at her as a large fellow shouldered past her. Tall and wide enough, it turned out, to completely blot out her view. “Don’t you have anything better to do?” the old gentleman scolded. “Foolish chits! The same every year! Filling the streets like a baffled horde of dimwits.” He huffed and continued down the block, and by the time she could see past him, the corner where the gentleman had stood was empty.

He was gone.

“Bother,” she muttered. Then, realizing there was only one way to find out who he might be, she hurried down the street to Number 18 and had barely gained the first step when the door flew open.

“Oh, heavens, Daphne!” Cousin Philomena Dale exclaimed. “You just missed him.”

“Him?”

Her cousin didn’t answer immediately, having come down the steps only to herd Daphne and Pansy back up them with great haste. “Come in, come in,” she said.

Pansy, now that her mistress was in good hands, scurried off for the kitchens, while Phi plucked off Daphne’s hat and pelisse, chattering on in a blur of “ooh’s” and “ah’s,” which were punctuated by a chorus of “him” and “shocking” and “ever-so-thrilling’s.”

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.

“Downstairs,” Phi said, her eyes wide with the luck of it. “Checking on tea. And luckily I caught the door before he pulled the bell.”

He. Mr. Dishforth. Daphne still couldn’t get over it, the image of the handsome stranger now burnt into her memory. “What did he want?”

Another foolish question, for Daphne knew all too well what Mr. Dishforth desired. Wanted. Had written so boldly.

My darling Miss Spooner, we cannot ignore that some day, some day very soon, we shall have to meet. I long for the moment when I first set eyes on you.

And Phi wasn’t so innocent not to see right through the feigned query, the desires behind it. “You, of course. He came calling to meet you.” She sat back and eyed her cousin with a look that was nothing less than incredulous.

Daphne opened her mouth to say something, yet nothing came out.

“Yes. Shocking, indeed,” the practical Phi said, echoing Daphne’s feelings precisely. Then Phi’s brows furrowed and her voice lowered noticeably—for Croston wasn’t above tattling. “You said he wouldn’t come calling.”

“He promised not to,” Daphne shot back. But then again, after last night . . . Oh, no!

What if, somehow, he’d discovered that she, Miss Daphne Dale, was his “dearest girl” after all and had been horrified by the scene she’d created.

Perhaps he’d come to call—in person, no less—to wash his hands of their entire affair.

Daphne shivered. It was no affair. Their letters were just that, letters.

An affair implied something so much more . . . well, personal. Physical.

And why was it that when that word physical came teasing through her thoughts, she recalled Lord Henry’s arms around her?

Lord Henry holding her close . . . Lord Henry about to . . .

Dear heavens, had Dishforth seen her with that Seldon scoundrel? Seen her lingering in his embrace? However would she explain that she’d thought that rakish devil was him?

“Don’t look so despairing, Daphne,” Phi told her. “I know you are jumping to every conclusion but the correct one.”

The correct one? The note in Phi’s words lent some hope to the entire scenario.

“Tell me everything,” Daphne said. “Everything.”

Phi basked in her moment of importance. “He is the handsomest man I have ever seen. Far more handsome than Cousin Crispin.”

More handsome than even Crispin, Viscount Dale? Was such a thing possible?

Then Daphne noticed something important. “Phi?”

“Yes?” Her cousin winked owlishly at her.

“Where are your spectacles?”

Phi touched her nose and, realizing she didn’t have them on, plucked them out of her apron pocket and quickly slid them on. She blinked a few times, then glanced at Daphne as if seeing her anew.

Which she was.

“My, don’t you look lovely today!” Phi enthused. Then she must have seen Daphne’s speculative expression. “I know what you are thinking, and yes, even without my spectacles, I can discern a truly handsome man.”

“If you say so—”

“I do,” she insisted, ruffling a bit. “Now where was I? Oh, yes, sorting out the salver—just in case one of his letters had been mixed in—when I heard someone coming up the steps. His boots made such an impressive sound—so strong a stride. Immediately I knew.”

Daphne nodded in understanding, thinking of the steady, purposeful beat of Lord Henry’s heels as he’d danced with her.

Though the comparison was not to be taken very seriously. Lord Henry could hardly hold a candle to Mr. Dishforth.

Especially now that she’d seen him. Well, sort of.

“I got the door just as he was about to ring the bell,” Phi said.

“Thank goodness!” Daphne exclaimed, having been curious as to how Great-Aunt Damaris had not been awakened.

“Yes, precisely,” Phi agreed. “Then he bowed—most elegantly—”

“Of course,” Daphne agreed, envisioning him doffing his top hat and making his bow.

“And then he introduced himself,” she said. “And asked to see you. Well, not you, but Miss Spooner. ‘I am here to see Miss Spooner,’ he said and in such a commanding voice, Daphne.” Phi sighed. “Yet he was ever-so-considerate at the same time. I nearly swooned.”

“Truly?” For Phi was the most practical of all the practical Dales.

Phi spoke in hushed tones of awe. “His voice is like the finest plum cake. Rich and deep and ever so tempting.”

Daphne sat back and eyed her cousin. She had the sudden suspicion that Phi had taken to reading those ridiculous Miss Darby novels that Harriet swore were the most romantic stories ever written.

“Yes, well,” Phi continued when she realized Daphne was gaping at her, “suffice it to say your Mr. D is handsome, mannerly and speaks in the most heavenly tones.”

“But what did he want?”

“Well, you!” Phi said. “He wanted to see you. He was most insistent.”

Daphne let out the breath she’d been holding. “Whatever did you tell him?”

“That you were not here. That you had gone out of Town.” Phi sighed. “Which is nearly the truth, for you are still planning on returning to Kempton when the others go to that house party, are you not?”

“That house party” being the one at Owle Park.

Phi was a Dale down to her bones in her dismay.

“Yes,” Daphne told her. “I am returning to Kempton. On the afternoon coach, the day after next.”

Phi nodded approvingly, for she’d been on hand when Great-Aunt Damaris had lectured for a full hour on the follies and ruin of associating with the Seldons, including instructing Daphne on how to extract herself from her friendship with Miss Timmons now that Tabitha was to be so tainted in her marriage to one.

“You might want to find some way to delay your return,” Phi said, “for he would not take ‘no’ for an answer when I said you were unavailable.”

Daphne shivered. Handsome and forceful. “Whatever did you do?”

“Gave him the letter you asked me to post yesterday. And wished him a good day.” She shrugged. “I had to get him out of the foyer as quickly as possible before Herself caught wind of him . . . or worse, Croston came up from the kitchen.”

Daphne’s mouth dropped open at Phi’s presence of mind.

“Thankfully, he was enough of a gentleman to take no for an answer,” Phi continued, smoothing out her skirt.

Unlike how Lord Henry might have handled the matter, Daphne found herself thinking, imagining him in the foyer and not leaving well enough alone, bursting into the parlor and giving Great-Aunt Damaris the fright of her life.

Before the old girl gave him one of her own.

Goodness, Daphne thought with a shake, would that man never stop invading her thoughts?

Thank goodness Mr. Dishforth was nothing like him.

Save the handsome part.

A handsome Mr. Dishforth, a wealthy Mr. Dishforth. This gave Daphne some smug satisfaction.

Oh, if only she’d been able to find him last night at the Duke of Preston’s ball before she’d met with such humiliating disgrace. Then she could have danced with him and snubbed the Seldons, one and all, from the sanctuary of Mr. Dishforth’s solid and steady embrace.

And she would never have had to suffer through Lord Henry’s insufferable opinions.

“Are you sure about that?” she could almost hear him mock.

“Oh!” Phi burst out, straightening up and digging into the pocket of her apron. Her actions jolted Daphne out of her woolgathering. “But that wasn’t all.”

There was more?

“He asked me to pass this on to you.” Phi held it close for a moment longer. “He said he had written it just in case he could not meet you in person.”

Of course he had. Mr. Dishforth was not only a romantic; he was also a practical man who always had the forethought to plan ahead.

It was one of a myriad of reasons Daphne was already in love with him.

Phi continued to hold onto the letter, slowly presenting it, as if she was offering a chest of jewels, ones she truly didn’t want to surrender.

Daphne barely breathed as she reached out for the now familiar thick paper, the address written in that strong, bold hand she liked to trace with her finger.

Miss Spooner

18, Christopher Street

Mayfair, London

“Open it!” Phi said, as breathless as Daphne.

“Yes, yes,” she said, suddenly reluctant to do so. Especially in front of Phi.

What would she say if it held more of those bold, passionate sentiments that his letter of the other day had carried?

But the news, she soon discovered, was of a different sort.

My Dearest Miss Spooner, I have put off telling you this, and I had hoped to tell you all this last night—may I say this frankly, shall we forget last night?—

Forgotten, Daphne would have told him most emphatically.

I am under an obligation to leave Town and will not be back for a month, perhaps longer. I am to attend a house party in the country. Please, after last night, if you are still inclined to correspond with me, address your letters to Owle Park, Kent, . . .

Daphne sucked in a deep breath. Owle Park?

“What is it?” Cousin Phi begged, squinting down at the page.

“He is going to the wedding.”

“He is going to be married?” Her cousin straightened, clearly outraged and ready to pitch herself headlong into a plot to exact revenge.

Daphne reached over and pulled her back. “No, no! He is going to a wedding.” Then, remembering where she was, she lowered her voice. “Tabitha’s wedding.”

Phi paused as she made all the connections, then her mouth fell open. “Dear heavens!”

“Whatever am I to do? Mother has forbidden me from going. Aunt Damaris said she will have me removed from the family annals if I even consider attending.”

Cousin Phi straightened. Then she said something that shocked Daphne right down to her boots. “There is nothing left for you to do but go. You must.”

Had Cousin Phi just urged her to go to the wedding? A Seldon wedding?

“How do I dare?” Daphne whispered.

Phi leaned closer. “If you had met Mr. Dishforth, as I have, you wouldn’t even ask that question.”