Romancing Her Rival - Joanna Barker Page 0,33

of the sitter’s flaws was a part of the portrait process,” Cole protested.

“Oh, yes, an integral part.” Daphne made another cut—the top of his lip—and tried not to blush with Aunt Hartwell watching her every move. “If only to keep one humble upon seeing the finished work.”

She spoke lightly, but her words sank deep inside her. Humble. Cole did not need to be humbled. He was already as unpretentious as a man could be. And she hadn’t been lying when she said she thought him generous and honorable. He was all those things—and more.

As she traced his outline with her eyes, inspecting the bend and flow of his lips, a line from Lavater slipped into her mind, one she would never dare to speak aloud. Such lips signify a tender, innate, sincere love, combined with resolution and candor.

And she could not help but think that description unfathomably precise.

Chapter 9

The next three days passed in an odd sort of way. Daphne knew time was passing, and yet at the end of each day she looked back and couldn’t quite recall how the hours had gone so quickly.

But that was summer at Cheriton. There was a magic here, an otherworldliness about the estate that always made her feel like a child looking in upon a storybook. The brightness of the sun and vivid wildflowers that perched upon every hill—Daphne wanted to paint it, though she’d given up on watercolor when she was eighteen. Perhaps Aunt Hartwell was right. Perhaps she did abandon her interests too quickly, without giving them enough time to grow. She determined to find her paints when she returned to London.

Of course, there was another reason the time passed so quickly. Cole. She’d seen a great deal of him, both in the evenings for dinner and during the day. They seemed to always come across one another—out on the estate while Daphne walked and Cole made his rounds, or inside the manor when Daphne happened to wander near his study and they wound up talking for far too long. Each time they met, their conversation grew easier, and Daphne found herself falling back into the comfortable friendship she’d once treasured.

Although neither “comfortable” nor “friendship” were exactly the right words. Most of the time, Cole was amiable and teasing, but there was often a look in his eyes—that same look he’d given her when she’d cut his silhouette—that made her stomach feel like one of the fluffy clouds racing across the summer sky.

This was Cole, she reminded herself. Her friend, the boy she’d known for almost two decades. In the novels she and her friends had read in school, the hero had always been brooding and mysterious, or dashing and gallant, but always someone new. She could not remember a story where the heroine fell in love with her childhood friend.

But it could happen, her heart whispered.

Daphne tried not to let that thought take hold. After all, what were the odds that after she’d endured Season after Season in London looking for a man who could light her heart afire, that Cole would be that man? Yet she could not ignore those feelings that rose inside her, making it difficult to breathe and think when he was too near.

Saturday arrived bright and breezy, a perfect day for a trip to the seashore. Daphne dressed carefully and fixed her hair after Jenny had left, examining herself in the mirror as she did. She had gained a bit of color in her pale skin, and even a few new freckles scattered across her nose. Mother would surely have something to say about that. But Daphne could not bring herself to regret any time she’d spent in the sun, chasing what happiness she could find.

She tied her bonnet beneath her chin, and her eyes fell upon the red beaded bracelet on her vanity. She hadn’t worn it in weeks, not since she’d thrown it there in anger. Now she picked it up carefully, guilt winding through her. No matter how she had felt, she should not have treated this token of her best friends so carelessly. She slipped it over her wrist and carefully secured it against her glove.

Daphne went downstairs and waited near the window beside the front door, as the coach had not yet come around. Her hands fidgeted restlessly with her bracelet. An entire day in Cole’s company, albeit with her aunt. Should she wish so very much that Aunt Hartwell did not have to come as well?

“Daphne, are you