And the Miss Ran Away With the Rake - By Elizabeth Boyle Page 0,56
that Kipps had pockets to let—through his own imprudence and recklessness—he was an earl.
Foolish chit. Lord Henry is twice the man Kipps will ever be, Daphne thought, the vehemence of those words resounding through her like the echoes of St. Edwards’s sturdy bell.
Yet what if she does prefer Lord Henry over the Earl of Kipps?
The question prodded at Daphne more than she cared to admit.
And as if to tug at that nagging thread, Harriet and Tabitha joined her on the settee.
“Lord Henry,” Tabitha whispered.
“No, I wager Kipps,” Harriet countered. “As Benedict might say”—referring to her brother in the navy— “half pay will never suit Miss Nashe.”
Meaning a mere second son, with just an honorific title like Lord Henry, was not up to her lofty aspirations.
“What do you think, Daphne?” Tabitha asked, smoothing out her skirt even as the door opened and the gentlemen began to arrive, sending a nervous flutter of fans and whispers through the sitting room.
“I think you should have stricken her from the guest list before the invitations went out,” Daphne said, smiling politely at the heiress across the room.
For the better part of the evening, Henry had done his ingenuous best to discover Miss Spooner’s identity.
And to prove that the lady’s similarities to Miss Dale were a ridiculous coincidence.
However, his search had been for naught.
Lady Alicia had only wanted to discuss Miss Nashe’s charms. Miss Nashe had only wanted to discuss, well, herself. And since he’d known Lady Clare since childhood and knew that she had vowed since her broken engagement several years earlier never to marry, he sincerely doubted she had taken up Miss Spooner’s pen.
He paused for a moment beside the pianoforte and gazed across the room, where Roxley and Miss Hathaway were playing a fierce game of backgammon—something it appeared they had done before, given Roxley’s accusations of “Harry, you always cheat.”
Henry found he rather envied the earl’s easy friendship with the affable, albeit cheating, Miss Hathaway. A far sight more enjoyable than prowling the room in search of a phantom miss.
“I see you’ve settled on your conquest,” came a pert comment from his right.
Henry glanced over and found Miss Dale on the opposite side of the instrument. How had he not seen her standing there before? Yet there she was, in that same red silk gown she’d worn the night of the engagement ball, her blonde hair all piled up atop her head save for a few stray curls that tumbled down.
Tumbled.
He cringed, for suddenly he found himself wary of that word and all its implications. Especially since it carried with it echoing refrains from Zillah’s scold.
That gel looked tumbled when you brought her back. Tumbled, I say!
Looking at Miss Dale now, Henry would argue that the lady always looked slightly undone, from her fluttering lashes to that impossibly tousled hair. She was temptation in all its incarnations.
Worse, everywhere he’d turned this evening, she’d caught his eye, what with the sway of her hip as she walked, the curve of her smile, the rare light in her eyes when she laughed—really laughed, not just the polite noise she’d made for Lord Crowley when he’d recited some nonsense verse he’d written lately.
And now here she was, teasing him from across the pianoforte.
“My what?” he asked.
“Your conquest,” she repeated, then shook her head. “Oh, dear, I forgot who I was talking to. A flirtation. A dalliance, a trifling.” She listed every definition a lady could politely use.
Those words—conquest, flirtation and dalliance—from any other person would have been ridiculous, but from Miss Dale, they seemed to hold a challenge within them. As if she knew of what she spoke.
Which she did. For look how he had behaved earlier. When it had been just the two of them.
Shaking off that memory—one that left his blood thick and throbbing through his body—he instead focused on her accusation.
That he was about to make yet another conquest.
As if he was the only one who’d spent all evening flirting. She ought to look at the wake behind her. Why, she’d dallied with nearly every man in the room, having moved from Kipps to Bramston, then Astbury, and even Crowley. Taking turns around the room with them, laughing at their jokes, fluttering her lashes at them, her gloved hand atop their sleeves, then moving to her next conquest.
And he was about to point out her expertise on the subject, but she was already nattering on.
“—I don’t suppose she is the dallying type, though she rather seems your sort.”