And the Miss Ran Away With the Rake (17 page)

Miss Dale looked up at him. “What is the matter now?”

“Your quill—it is making the most interminable screeching.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.” And then, as if that was the end of the subject, she went back to writing her letter, scratching at it all the much louder, if that was possible. Why she sounded like a hen poking about in the gravel.

Oh, yes, Hen had been right about one thing last night—he was going to pick up Preston’s scandalous role in the family . . . starting right this moment by strangling Miss Dale.

Henry pushed his chair back and started down the table, albeit to sharpen her quill, not to throttle her, when Miss Dale was saved by the arrival of a third party to their breakfast.

A witness, as it were.

“What a cozy setting,” Miss Nashe declared, having stopped in the doorway to survey the scene before her.

Henry whirled around and then took stock of what exactly the lady was seeing—him hovering at Miss Dale’s elbow—and so he straightened and bowed to the heiress.

She acknowledged him with one of her wide smiles and came into the room. It was then that Henry noticed that the girl had brought with her an ornately decorated writing box.

“Here I thought myself so unique, getting up early to catch up on my correspondence, only to find myself in such crowded company,” Miss Nashe said. “But we make an excellent trio, do we not?”

Henry had the sense the girl was including him and Mr. Muggins and not the other lady in the room. Apparently so did Miss Dale.

“Yes, rather,” she remarked, glancing up at Miss Nashe.

Was it Henry’s imagination, or was Miss Dale once again making up lines for Miss Nashe?

Oh, the expectations placed on one when one is mentioned daily in the social columns is exhausting.

He stifled a laugh, and both ladies looked up at him. “Ah, nothing. Just that dog of Tabitha’s. Um, he’s looking at my plate again.” He waved a hand at Mr. Muggins. “I shall not share my breakfast.”

“And don’t ever,” Miss Nashe advised. “Dogs become horrible beggars when they are allowed in the dining areas.” She glanced again at Miss Dale as if she held her responsible for this crime.

Miss Dale smiled at Miss Nashe as she reached over to her own plate and slid a sausage off it for Mr. Muggins, which the dog caught with practiced ease.

Ah, so that was how the lines were going to be drawn. Henry had the sense of being caught between the English and the French.

And not for every farthing he possessed would he declare which side was which.

Miss Nashe sniffed, then delicately turned her back to Miss Dale, snubbing her. She settled her writing box on the table and began to carefully select from inside everything she needed. “I have so many letters to catch up on. Why, the attentions afforded me never seem to end.”

Henry didn’t dare look down the table at Miss Dale. She’d have that wicked light in her eyes, and he knew, just knew, he would be able to hear exactly what the lady was thinking. Still, he couldn’t keep himself from chuckling, and when both ladies glanced up at him, he waved them off and made his way to his seat. “I just remembered an invitation I must turn down. Regrettably so.”

Miss Dale made a most inelegant snort, but from Miss Nashe he received nothing but sympathy.

“Oh, my dear Lord Henry, I so understand your dilemma. Isn’t it a trial to be so pressed upon from every corner of Society?” she mused.

“Yes, I suppose so,” Henry agreed.

There was no need to look in Miss Dale’s direction to discover her thoughts. Her pen was screeching anew, as if carving her sentiments into the very table.

“Oh dear heavens, how your pen scratches, Miss Dale,” the other girl said with a delicate shudder. “Miss Emery always said at school that using a less than sharpened quill shows a disregard for one’s composition. A lady’s handwriting must be delicate and precise, so as to distinguish her from her lessers.”

The heiress’s censorious words would have been easy to dismiss as utter snobbery, but within the lady’s admonishment rang something Henry hadn’t considered.

What had that pompous chit just said?

A lady’s handwriting . . . so as to distinguish her from her lessers.

That was it. Gazing down the table at the two ladies quietly writing their letters—well, one of them quietly composing—his heart pounded.

Handwriting.
Miss Spooner’s distinctive script. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? Why, he could spot her scrawl from across the foyer.

And here were two examples right before him. Henry began to push back from the table, but he had to stop himself.

Demmit, he had no good excuse to go ambling down to the other end of the table to peer over Miss Nashe’s shoulder to see if her handwriting matched the very familiar hand of Miss Spooner.

And what about Miss Dale’s?

He cleared his throat in an effort to force that thought out of his head. No, he wouldn’t venture that far in his quest. Stealing a glance down the table, he found her bent over her page, her teeth nipping at her bottom lip as she was lost in her composition.

Scratch. Screetch. Scratch.

Henry shuddered. The infernal noise was enough to peel the gilt paper from the walls. And yet . . . he had to admit that
delicate
was not the word he would use to describe Miss Spooner’s determined penmanship.

And watching Miss Dale write was like watching a mad artist paint. Her words flowed from her pen with passion and . . . dare he admit it? . . . purpose and determination.

Just like he’d always imagined Miss Spooner at her desk, writing to him.

No, no, no! It couldn’t be. Not her.

Henry took a deep breath, for he knew exactly what he would have to do if it was Miss Dale: Hie off to London as fast as he could and then pay his secretary an indecent amount of money never to let him compose another letter ever again.

Well, he wasn’t ready to flee just yet, not before he’d scratched Miss Nashe’s standing from his shrinking list.

Slowly and with as much nonchalance as he could possess, he rose from his chair and, looking around for an excuse, picked up his half-finished plate and wandered over to the sideboard to refill the empty spots.

“Miss Dale, do you have a spare piece of paper?” Miss Nashe was saying. “I need to make a list for my maid, and the coarse sheets you seem to prefer appear perfect for such a task.”

“Yes, of course,” Daphne told her and fished out an extra sheet of paper for the girl.

As Miss Nashe walked down the side of the table, Henry saw his chance.

But then, as it had with everything else in his search for Miss Spooner, Fate intervened.

Or rather Hen did.

“Henry! There you are!” she said in that exasperated tone of hers. “I’ve been searching all over for you.”

“Just a moment,” he told her, the page and his answer nearly in his sights.

“I will not be put off. Zillah is causing another commotion. I have assured her you want nothing to do with that wretched Miss—”

At that moment Hen stopped her grand entrance and spied the rest of the occupants of the room. “Oh, my, Miss Dale. And dear Miss Nashe. How charming,” she said, shooting a glance at Henry that said she was anything but.

Charmed, that is.

Henry took this momentary diversion to start for the other end of the table, but Hen was too quick for him.

“Oh, don’t think to escape through the butler’s pantry. You will help me with Zillah, or I will move her to your wing of the house.” She bustled over to his side, one hand coiling into the crook of his elbow like an anchor line. In the blink of an eye, he was being towed from port, a reluctant ship against the tide.

And when he stole one last glance at the room, he found both ladies watching him leave.

Miss Nashe with a smile that encouraged him to return.

From the far end came the wry glance of Miss Dale, one that wished him well on his journey.

And if he didn’t know better, she hoped it would be a long and hazardous one.

D
aphne drew a deep breath as Lord Henry was hauled from the room, and she did her best to ignore the knowing glance that Miss Nashe tossed in her direction.

Yet the heiress was hardly done with just her snide expression. After several minutes, she set down her pen and pushed her “urgent” correspondence aside. “Lord Henry,” she announced, “is certainly a creature of strong habits if both our maids have discovered his penchant for an early breakfast and correspondence.”

“Our maids?” Daphne said, not quite catching on.

“If we are both arriving here at this ungodly hour to catch him,” she supplied, one brow tipped in a challenge.

Daphne’s mouth fell open. “Oh, goodness, no! You don’t think that I . . . that is, I have no desire to—”

“Miss Dale, everyone at this house party is discussing your blatant attempts to ensnare Lord Henry.” Miss Nashe’s nose turned up slightly. “A girl in your situation and a man of his wealth and lands, why wouldn’t you set your cap so far above your station?”

For a moment Daphne was too shocked to take in the more insulting parts of what Miss Nashe was saying. How was it that this girl knew all about Lord Henry’s wealth, as if his holdings were common knowledge?

Perhaps she knew as little about the Seldons, as she’d accused Lord Henry of knowing about the Dale dynasty. Well, she’d make sense of all that later.

Right now there was a more insulting matter to be dealt with.

“Above my station?” she echoed.

“Well, of course,” Miss Nashe said in all sympathy.

For her. Daphne Dale of the Kempton Dales.

“Miss Dale, you seem quite intelligent despite your lack of finish and must know the only reason you are here, in this company, is because of Miss Timmons’s dear and simple affection for her former friends.”

Former
friends?

“But if it were any other lady marrying the Duke of Preston, you would never have been invited.”

There was some truth there, Daphne would admit. She was a Dale at a Seldon wedding after all, but she doubted that Miss Nashe, with her
cit
origins and new money, had any notion of the Dale and Seldon relations.

Or therein lack of.

“Surely you can see how embarrassing your pursuit of Lord Henry is becoming—”

“My pursuit?”

“Yes, well, it can hardly be called a courtship when the man has no interest in you,” Miss Nashe declared. “I fear for what little credit you do possess, for there will be nothing left of it when you leave here, unattached and so very humbled.”

Daphne’s blood boiled. Oh, whyever had she promised Tabitha not to dump anything over Miss Nashe? Worse yet, she was so furious that she couldn’t find the perfect retort, the right words to send Miss Nashe packing.

Meanwhile, the other girl was gathering up her belongings, tossing them haphazardly into her expensive writing box and, worse, taking Daphne’s silence as agreement.

Mr. Muggins, hoping for a sympathetic handout, stirred, his gaze flitting from the heiress to the sideboard.

“Leaving so soon?” Daphne said, finally finding her tongue and her own pitchfork. “What of your multitude of admirers?”

Miss Nashe glanced up as if she’d all but forgotten Daphne. “Excuse me?”

“Your correspondence? Your admirers? Won’t they be watching their posts for some tiding from you?”

The girl smiled. “Why, Miss Dale, that is why I have a secretary.” Her smirk finished the sentence.
And you clearly do not.

And when she left, Daphne noticed she had not taken the sheet of paper she had borrowed.

“Horrid mushroom,” Daphne said, glancing over at Mr. Muggins.

The dog seemed to agree. For certainly there had been no sausages from Miss Nashe.

“As if I am chasing Lord Henry!” Daphne shook her head. “Nor am I lingering after the man.”

Lingering after him! As if she might want his kiss. Which she did not. Not in the least.

She glanced over at Mr. Muggins. “I don’t,” she told the dog. “Not at all.”

And why would she? Lord Henry left her all a tangle. Furious one moment, and the next . . .

Well, Daphne didn’t want to consider what came next. Not with him.

For there was Dishforth—steady, reliable Dishforth. And he was ever so close. He’d never leave her at sixes and sevens. Never tower over her and accuse her of lingering.

He was all that was comfortable and sensible and right about a gentleman. And Lord Henry, for all his protestations and Miss Nashe’s claims of his desirability, was none of those things.

He is so much more.

That thought stopped Daphne cold. How could she even think such a thing? This was what came from not keeping to their vow to stay out of each other’s company. Well, no more, she promised herself.

Again.

She reached for her pen. This time she meant it. To that end, she snatched up the unused sheet of paper and wrote the only words that needed to be said.

Glancing over at Mr. Muggins, she said, “This is the solution to everything.” With that, she addressed it with the one name that could save her from the lonely depths of humiliation to which Miss Nashe had described with such glee.

Dishforth.

He would rescue her. Save her from Miss Nashe and her ilk.

And from Lord Henry . . . and the other sort of ruin he represented.

H
en’s attempt to pull Henry into another one of Zillah’s tempers came up short when they crossed paths with Benley in the foyer.

“Ah, my lady,” the butler intoned. “A word with you if I may. About the masquerade costumes.” He waved his hand over to the stack of trunks piled up in the corner.

“Excellent,” Hen declared, letting go of Henry and marching over to survey her newly arrived treasures.

Taking advantage of his sister’s diverted attention, Henry backed out of the foyer and beat a quick path toward the morning room, determined to investigate Miss Nashe’s handwriting.

Oh, and that of Miss Dale’s as well.

But when he came up to the room, he could hear Miss Nashe’s voice, slightly raised from its usually well-modulated tones.