And the Miss Ran Away With the Rake - By Elizabeth Boyle Page 0,42

her face.

Just perhaps, just maybe, Crispin wouldn’t notice her. Might not even remember her.

“Sir, you are lost and should turn around.” The strained comment held all the welcoming tones of a judge about to set down a long sentence.

For Daphne knew exactly what Crispin truly meant. Get off my land, you bounder.

“Hardly lost, sir,” Lord Henry replied with every bit of haughty disdain that only a Seldon could manage. “Merely taking a tour of the surrounding countryside. But you are correct, we should turn around. There is nothing of note ahead. Or so I’ve heard.”

Daphne tucked her head down further. Oh, good heavens. She didn’t know what was worse—the Seldon pride or the Dale vanity, because one surreptitious glance revealed that Cousin Crispin appeared ready to toss down the gauntlet.

“Oh, my good God!” Cousin Crispin sputtered. “What the devil is—”

Daphne cringed, for certainly her masquerade was up. He’d spied her and was even now—

“What the hell is that mongrel doing to my best hunting bitch?!” he exclaimed.

She stilled. And then glanced over her shoulder where Mr. Muggins had been sitting in the back of the cart.

Save now the cart was empty.

Beside her, Lord Henry chuckled. “My lord, if I have to explain that to you, I can’t see how the Dales have been so prolific over the years.”

“Sir, get that beast off my dog!”

No! No! No! Daphne didn’t even want to look. But she did anyway.

Oh, Mr. Muggins! How could you?

“Not my beast,” Lord Henry was saying, leaning back and tipping his head as he glanced at the oversized terrier, who was happily repeating the original scandal that had brought the Dales and Seldons to blows. “Hers,” he offered, jerking his thumb at Daphne, for which she covered her face with her hands.

“You think this is amusing?” Crispin asked, straightening up into a position so starched that Daphne thought he might snap.

“It does have a certain irony,” Lord Henry said. “Don’t you agree, Miss Dale?”

A stillness descended around them. Daphne thought quite possibly the world was about to be ripped asunder as she looked up and met the gaze of Crispin, Viscount Dale.

He rose up slowly in his seat until he was towering over the occupants of the pony cart, lending him an almost unearthly air. “Daphne Dale?”

“Yes, ah, a good day to you, my lord,” she offered.

Crispin couldn’t have looked more shocked. Well, save the expression he’d worn while Mr. Muggins had been ruining what might have been a profitable litter of pups. “Daphne, what are you doing—”

Henry intervened. “She’s with me. Fine day for a drive, isn’t it?”

Both the Dales ignored him.

“Cousin, get down out of that . . . that . . .” Crispin shuddered as he looked over at the poor conveyance that was barely able to amble along. “ . . . contraption,” he finally managed, “and come with me. Immediately.” He moved slightly to show her the space where he expected her to join him.

Daphne glanced from one man to another. And much to her chagrin, she caught a wry light in Lord Henry’s eyes. A most defiant shimmer that called to her.

Oh, she was a Dale through and through, but she hadn’t come this far to be ordered about like an errant child.

Even if she was behaving like one.

“I will not,” she told him, folding her hands in her lap and facing her cousin, the very head of her family, with all the defiance of, say, a Seldon.

Heaven help her.

“Perhaps you did not understand me, Daphne,” Crispin said. “You are not keeping respectable company.” The viscount’s gaze swept first over Mr. Muggins, who had finished his business and hopped back into the pony cart, and then continued to Lord Henry.

The arch of his brow said all too clearly he considered them both mongrels.

“I don’t like your implication,” Lord Henry leveled.

“I do not like your intentions,” Cousin Crispin countered. “Whatever could it be that you are doing so far from Owle Park with a young lady of good name and character—”

Thankfully, Lord Henry had the good sense not to snort over this, as he had at the engagement ball.

“—I don’t care to know, but understand this, my cousin is coming home with me now so she can be returned to the sanctity and safety of her parents’ keeping.” He paused and glanced over at Daphne. “Who, I suspect, have no idea their daughter is here.”

Lord Henry shot a quick glance at her, as if to watch her deny this statement. Almost immediately his eyes