And the Miss Ran Away With the Rake - By Elizabeth Boyle Page 0,41

goes,” Miss Nashe said and pulled a name from the bag.

Chapter 6

Miss Spooner, I must make a confession. I rarely dance. It is not that I am against dancing, it is just that it all seems so contrived. The asking, the sets, the observation of so many rules and requirements. Haven’t you, my dear girl, ever wanted to dance where you may? To dance under the stars, to even dare to dance in the rain?

Found in a letter from Mr. Dishforth to Miss Spooner

“We are most certainly not lost,” Lord Henry insisted.

“We most certainly are,” Daphne corrected. “I have visited this area on more than one occasion and I know for a fact we are going in the wrong direction.” She shook out the map and pointed at it. “Do you see the curve to the river? And there is the bridge marked here.” Her finger stabbed at the map. “We must turn around and go back in the other direction and take this turn . . .” Her finger tapped the paper again. “ . . . the one I pointed out earlier.”

Mr. Muggins, who had, against everyone’s orders, planted himself in the back of the pony cart and remained there still, looked from Lord Henry to Daphne and then back to Lord Henry again.

Lord Henry’s brow furrowed as he studied the map. “This can’t be correct,” he said, turning it this way and that and ignoring both Daphne and the dog.

How had everything turned out like this? One moment she’d been convinced she was going to be spending the afternoon with Lord Astbury—doing her utmost to determine if he was Mr. Dishforth—and the next, that infuriating Miss Nashe had claimed the marquess.

Oh, it was all by chance she knew, but what rotten chance this, especially since Lord Henry had gotten them lost.

“See, there is the river and that is the bridge,” she said again, pointing at the map. “We will never find the treasure at this rate.”

Instead of seeing the sense of what she was saying, he turned the map yet again, as if that would help.

Daphne gave up, scrunching herself into the corner of the narrow seat the pony cart afforded them. Which still left them wedged together, his muscled thigh brushing intimately against her skirt with each jolt of the road.

The wrong road, she wanted to shout.

For turn around they must. By Daphne’s reckoning they were nearly to Langdale. Crispin’s house, to be exact. And most likely already on Dale land.

Oh, wouldn’t that turn all her plans to naught if they ran into Cousin Crispin.

And as if only to thwart her plans further, from up ahead came the sound of horses’ hooves and the whir of wheels from a quickly moving carriage.

Mr. Muggins let out a low growl, a harbinger of the disaster about to whirl into their path.

Round the corner and over the bridge came an expensive phaeton, the sort a gentleman of means and with a penchant for driving owned.

There was no mistaking who it was coming toward them—Crispin, Viscount Dale, in all his handsome glory. The holder of the family title, the golden boy of a handsome family.

There wasn’t a female Dale cousin or close relation—or even those, like Daphne, whose place on the family tree was on the sort of branch that should have been trimmed off generations ago but was left on for the sake of family unity—who didn’t hold a torch for Crispin Dale.

Devilishly handsome and charming, with a rakish demeanor, he left the female half in a state of awe and wonder by simply walking into a room.

Daphne wouldn’t have been surprised if the sun had burst forth from the gathering clouds and shone down on his fair head, if only to illuminate his way.

Crispin barely spared them a glance, for Lord Henry had already guided the old nag and cart over toward the side of the road, but when he came nearly upon them, he took a closer look and immediately pulled his matched set to a stop, the flurry of dogs that had been racing after his carriage all tumbling to a halt in a wild, raucous chorus of barks.

At first, she thought Crispin had noticed her and was stopping to rescue her, but rather her relation had his dark gaze clapped on Lord Henry Seldon.

And he looked none too pleased to find him on Dale land. Even if they were neighbors.

So Daphne kept her chin tucked in and hoped the brim of her bonnet would shelter