And the Miss Ran Away With the Rake - By Elizabeth Boyle Page 0,111

last letter ever penned by Mr. Dishforth (well, nearly the last one)

When Henry came to, it was to the faces of Preston and Hen staring down at him.

“What happened?” he moaned, pushing aside the beefsteak resting over his eye and trying to sit up.

Preston pushed him back down. “You were blindsided by Dale.”

“The brute,” Hen complained. “Loathsome, horrible man!”

Dale?

Then it all came back to him. The argument. Daphne’s gasp as she turned around. And then the blackness.

This time he managed to struggle up to a sitting position. They were in the private dining room he’d ordered up. The dinner still sat on the sideboard, untouched.

“Where is Daphne? Where is she? I must speak to her—”

Again, Preston pushed him back down onto the settee. “She’s gone, my good man. Spirited off by her cousin.”

“Gone?” Henry shook his head, pushing past Preston and going for the door. “We have to go after them. We have to stop them!”

“Can’t.”

Henry turned to his nephew. “Can’t or you won’t?”

“Can’t,” Preston told him.

“Shouldn’t!” Hen enthused. “You are well rid of her, if you want my opinion.”

“Well, I don’t,” Henry told her. Hen looked ready to open her mouth and contradict him, but he cut her off. “Not another word, Hen. Need I remind you what you told Preston and me after you married Michaels?”

Her brow furrowed as she recalled her words. “The situation is hardly the same.”

Preston grimaced and looked about to argue, but one glare from Hen stayed his retort.

“I am going to marry Daphne Dale and you had best get used to it.”

Henry’s adamant announcement sent Hen staggering back, as if he’d struck her. “Never,” she told him. “Besides, she’s well and gone, and by tomorrow she will be too far from your reach to ever discover again. See if they don’t hide her away.”

“I’ll catch them before they reach Blackford,” Henry swore, wrenching open the door as much as holding onto to it to steady himself.

“Can’t,” Preston repeated.

“Whyever not?” Henry asked, a thousand thoughts going through his head. How he’d been an ass. A fool. He should have told her. She loved him and had known. Probably, knowing Daphne, she’d been testing him.

Of course, she had. Given him any number of chances to come clean.

And he’d failed her.

“Because the viscount took all the horses with him. Gave the innkeeper a ridiculous amount of money to allow him to take all the mounts. There isn’t a nag to be had—save my cattle, but they’re dead tired and need to be rested.” Preston shook his head. “Tomorrow. We’ll catch up with them tomorrow. I promise.”

But Crispin proved to be a wary adversary and thwarted Henry’s chase at every turn, bribing the tollgate keepers to delay them unnecessarily, hiring up all the changes at nearly every post, and driving at an indecent speed to beat them back to Langdale.

Daphne found herself locked in her cousin’s carriage, and only let out to use the necessary. And when she‘d nearly managed to slip away once, her determined cousin had caught her, tossed her over his shoulder and carted her right back to her prison.

“Lord Henry will save me,” she told Crispin over and over again, her frantic thoughts going back to the last time she saw him, laying on the floor of the inn.

She didn’t even know if he lived, and she doubted Crispin cared that he might have committed murder.

“He’ll come and save me,” she insisted.

“He can try,” was all Crispin would say in return.

But by the fourth day, Daphne had no idea where Henry might be. She was exhausted and battered from being tossed about the carriage, furious beyond measure at Crispin’s high-handed ways, and wishing over and over she’d told Henry everything that beautiful afternoon beneath the oak tree.

“Oh, Henry, come find me,” she whispered up to the stars night after night, hoping one of them would take pity on her and carry her message to her love.

But when Crispin’s carriage rolled into Langdale, she knew her chances of rescue were dimming. So close to Owle Park, and yet they might as well have taken a ship to the Orient.

Lord Henry would hardly expect Lord Dale to bring her right back to the original scene of the crime.

Nor did she have any hope of effecting an escape.

Especially when she was let out to find not only Great-Aunt Damaris on the front steps but also the Right Honorable Matheus Dale beaming down at her as if she had just stepped out in her finest, most fashionable