And the Miss Ran Away With the Rake - By Elizabeth Boyle Page 0,80
I admitted as much,” he added hastily. “She takes great pride in our scandalous reputation.”
“She must be ever so disappointed in Preston, now that he’s reformed.” Then she slowed slightly and lowered her voice. “Was he as scandalous as they say?”
“I do believe Preston was under the impression that was how he ought to behave—not how he truly is.”
“So I am beginning to see,” she admitted.
“Still, you don’t approve.”
“Tabitha’s engagement to Preston took us all by surprise,” she said. “It was just so sudden, so . . .”
“You are being diplomatic,” he said, folding his hands behind his back.
“Yes, well, as a Dale—”
“Yes, yes, say no more—”
“No, I must. You mistake me,” she said. “While of course I can hardly approve of the match—for he is—”
Henry arched a brow and waited for her answer, if only to see how far her diplomacy could take them.
“He is Preston,” she finally said.
True enough. That had been enough this past Season to have even the most upstart mushrooms giving the entire Seldon family the cut direct.
Then Miss Dale surprised him. “Yet he does love Tabitha.”
“Passionately,” Henry added.
“Yes, that he does.” And it was that—the very envy in her voice—that cut him to the quick.
And now it seemed it was a sentiment he shared with Miss Dale.
Yet she wasn’t done. “Tabitha would never choose any man who wasn’t deserving, and it is as you say, that the duke loves her passionately, but I fear . . .”
They had come to a stop.
“Well, what I mean to say is . . . that is . . . do you think—” she began, then she looked up at him and finished, “is passion enough?”
Oh, very much so, he wanted to tell her.
That thought, that conviction made without even blinking, came straight from his heart.
For all he could see was Miss Dale undone, in his bed, beneath him. Passion? She left him in its throes by walking into a room. To spend the rest of his life that way?
Henry would never have believed how alive passion, desire, could make one feel.
Until now.
Good God, he hoped when he walked into the library it was Miss Dale there. Never mind the dustup such an affair would result in. He wanted to be her rake. To be the passion in her life. To have her always.
Damn tradition. Damn the lines.
Yet she took his silence all wrong and started walking again. “Everyone speaks of love as if it was so easy to understand, as if it makes sense,” she was saying when he caught up.
“It doesn’t?” he asked as he joined her.
She shook her head. “Preston is . . . well, he’s Preston. And Tabitha is . . . goodness, she’s a vicar’s daughter. Yet they fit. They make the other whole. How can that be?”
Henry spoke without thinking, his restraint and sensibilities having fled in the face of Miss Daphne Dale, and without those confining boundaries, he said, “That would rather be like you and me falling in love.”
What had Lord Henry just said? The words rang through Daphne with such a deafening clang that it took her a moment or two to make sense of them.
That would rather be like you and me falling in love.
Them? In love? It wouldn’t be the oddity that was Tabitha and Preston’s impending marriage; rather, if they—she and Lord Henry—were to fall in love, it would be . . . why, it would be . . .
Heavenly. The word came unbidden into her thoughts, carried by the memory of his kiss.
If Daphne didn’t know better, she suspected she was already in love with Lord Henry Seldon.
No, not suspected. Knew.
Oh, it was too impossible to believe. Her. In love. With a Seldon. If a postal engagement was scandalous, this was . . . beyond ruinous.
“What an unmitigated disaster that would turn out to be,” she told him with a shaky laugh, starting down the hall again.
Fleeing was more like it.
He laughed a bit as well. Was it her, or did his amusement sound as forced as hers? She glanced back at him. “Yes, wouldn’t it be?” he said. “Can you imagine Zillah’s reaction?”
Daphne made a great show of shuddering—though a good part of it wasn’t all acting. “Yes, imagine that. And my Great-Aunt Damaris.”
Lord Henry paled. “Yes, I would think it would be prudent to write to her.”
“Wouldn’t save us,” Daphne confided. “We have a saying that if you sneeze in Scotland, Aunt Damaris will hear it in London.”