And the Miss Ran Away With the Rake - By Elizabeth Boyle Page 0,7
feud has dragged on for how long? A century?”
Nearly three, actually, but Daphne wasn’t going to correct her.
“I would think the Dales and the Seldons could forgive and forget!” Lady Essex said. “It is all very tiresome. Besides, Tabitha is far better off marrying Preston than that odious Barkworth her uncle thought to force her to marry.”
Tiresome feud, indeed! Daphne was only glad her mother wasn’t here to hear such a thing. More so, that she wasn’t here to see her only daughter attending a Seldon ball—against her mother’s express wishes.
“Never fear, Lady Essex,” Tabitha said, looping her arm into Daphne’s and continuing their stroll around the room, “when I am married, Daphne will have no choice but to fall in love with the Seldons as well.”
“How right you are,” Lady Essex agreed. “Once she has attended the house party at Owle Park and seen your happiness in marriage, all this nonsense between the Seldons and the Dales will be forgotten. For by then, she will have found a husband as well.”
Owle Park. Daphne glanced away, the very mention leaving her at odds. The Duke of Preston’s country home. The Seldon family seat. A house as marked to the Dales as if it had been an annex to Sodom and Gomorrah.
“You are coming to the house party?” Tabitha pressed. What she really meant to ask was, Are you coming to my wedding?
Daphne stilled. Her parents, while delighted that Tabitha was making such an advantageous match, remained dead set against spending a fortnight in enemy territory.
In a Seldon house.
In such a place, her mother had said with a deep shudder.
Though they hadn’t been so ill-mannered to say it thusly in Tabitha’s hearing.
“I have been discussing the matter with my mother,” Daphne told them. Discussing it was not quite the right way to describe the situation.
When Daphne had broached the subject, her mother had gone straight to her bed and spent two straight days encamped there, crying and wailing over the request, certain that taking her only daughter, her unwed daughter, to a Seldon house party was akin to consigning her to the nearest house of ill-repute.
Everyone knew the Seldons practiced the worst sort of debauchery, but out in the country? Well away from the prying eyes of society, who knew what sort of depravity they would witness, be subjected to . . .
We will all be ruined. Or worse, her mother had wailed and complained to her sympathetic husband.
What exactly “worse” implied, Daphne didn’t know. She only hoped that Tabitha wouldn’t soon regret her marriage into such a notorious family and especially to its infamous duke. And his equally notorious relations—whom Daphne had managed to avoid meeting thus far.
“Of course she is coming to your wedding,” Lady Essex said, handing her fan to Miss Manx. “If your mother can see fit to allow you to attend the engagement ball, surely she will set aside her own prejudices and allow you to attend the duke’s house party. Why, half the ton is mad for an invitation, and the other half is just plain mad over not getting one. Your mother is no fool, Daphne Dale.”
That might be true, Daphne wanted to tell Lady Essex, but her mother was a Dale through and through—both by marriage and birth. Her disdain of the Seldons was born not from a lifetime of distrust but from generations of enmity.
“At least you are here tonight,” Tabitha said, smiling. “She didn’t forbid you to come to my engagement ball.”
Daphne pressed her lips together, for her mother had not exactly given her permission to attend.
Quite the opposite.
Certainly she had meant to keep her promise to her mother when she’d left Kempton and come to London with Tabitha that she would not spend a moment more than was necessary in the company of the Seldons.
Certainly tonight would suffice as “necessary,” with the likelihood of meeting Mr. Dishforth so close at hand.
Even if it meant enduring a dance with Preston’s uncle, Lord Henry Seldon.
Oh, it was a wretched notion, though.
“You’re thinking about Lord Henry, aren’t you?” Harriet said, giving her a nudge with her elbow.
“Please do not pull such a face when he comes to collect you,” Tabitha added.
“I wasn’t thinking of Lord Henry, nor am I pulling a face,” Daphne lied, forcing a smile onto her lips.
“You are and you were,” Harriet said. Sometimes there was no getting anything past her.
“Traitor,” Daphne whispered.
“Not my feud,” Harriet replied with a shrug.
Meanwhile, Tabitha stood there, arms crossed and slipper tapping impatiently.