And the Miss Ran Away With the Rake - By Elizabeth Boyle Page 0,103

he’d just found a cache of Spanish doubloons.

Tarts. The rogue. He knew those were enough to lure her closer. Spread about was a tin—tea, most likely—along with apples, a wedge of cheese and a small round loaf of bread.

“Come sit,” he bid her. “The view is most excellent.”

It was. The Cumbrian countryside rolled all around them, with a scattering of green trees here and there, while the lush green meadows carpeted the valley before them.

“He’s a fool, you know,” Lord Henry told her as she sat down. “To have eloped with the wrong woman.” He handed her a tart.

As she broke it into pieces, she mused that Dishforth wasn’t the only fool.

“He was deceived,” she replied. “Poor Dishforth is not a worldly sort.” She smiled fondly into the distance, as if dreaming of her simple, foolish lover. When she glanced back, she found Lord Henry’s brow furrowed.

“He’s what?”

“Not very worldly, not whatsoever,” she told him most emphatically, liking the way her words made his eye twitch ever-so-slightly with indignation whenever she praised Dishforth’s less than stellar qualities. “He’s a sensible man, but he’s also overly romantic, which, I suspect, is why he was so susceptible to this Jezebel who has him in her clutches.” She clucked her tongue at the injustice of it all. “However, I don’t fault him for it.”

“You don’t?” Lord Henry looked up from the apple he was eating.

“No, not in the least.” She dug into her pocket and pulled out a letter. “Just listen to this—” Daphne read the lines from a poem inscribed there.

“I find that most well put,” Lord Henry told her, sounding just a tad too defensive.

“Yes, but—” She paused and sighed.

He sat up a bit. “But what?”

“Well, those lines are hardly original,” she confided, carefully folding the letter.

“I found them quite stirring.”

“Really? I found them overly familiar. Indeed, I asked Harriet’s brother, and he laughed—told me every boy at Eton learns those lines. A schoolboy’s sentiments.” She shrugged.

“A schoolboy’s—” he began.

She leaned forward and cut him off. “I don’t like to admit this, but I fear you are right and Mr. Dishforth will turn out to be an overly simple man. Otherwise why else would he be so easily duped, as you said before.”

“Overly simple?”

“Yes,” she said with a smile. “Ever so much so.”

This time, when Lord Henry straightened, he let his apple fall to one side. “And you like that?”

“Of course. A simple man will not overrun me or attempt to deceive me. I think he sounds the perfect husband.”

“Doesn’t sound so to me. Not if he’s the sort to pass off schoolboy lines.”

“Not everyone can have your dash and polish, Lord Henry.” She smiled at him, met his gaze and waited.

There was a moment when neither of them spoke. “I have dash and polish?” he managed.

“Yes.” Again waiting for some sort of inspired declaration from the man.

Instead, he leaned back against the tree, his hands behind his handsome head.

Daphne wasn’t in the mood to let him preen for long. “Oh, you needn’t be so proud of the fact. That is also one of your faults. Seldon pride.”

“I’ve always thought the Dales possessed the lion’s share of that trait, leaving hardly any for the rest of us.”

“I’ll admit we are a prideful lot,” Daphne told him, “but then again, we have much to preen over.”

“Bah! Dales!” he mocked.

“Harrumph! Seldons!” Daphne met his gaze with an arrogant one of her own, and before she knew it, they were both laughing uproariously at the ridiculousness of it all.

“How long have our families been at each other?”

She shrugged. “Forever.”

“Over a litter of mongrel pups.”

Daphne looked aside and blushed, for she wasn’t supposed to know that, but of course she did.

“Foolish, isn’t it?” He looked at her, his glorious eyes filled with something that was far from mockery, far from the usual Seldon disdain, and Daphne’s heart skipped and tumbled as it always did when he looked at her that way.

“Very much so.”

He thrust out his hand. “Then a truce is in order!”

“A what?” she managed, looking down at his hand and willing herself to take hold of it. For as much as she bemoaned his unwillingness to declare himself, now she was just as hesitant to take what he was offering.

“A truce, minx. Yes, a Seldon-Dale truce. I declare all hostilities between our families hereby null and void.” He pressed his hand closer, and Daphne took it.

What else could she do?

And as his large palm wound around her smaller one, she felt as she