by Maya Rodale
She did not need him to validate her, or to soothe her presumably wounded feelings or damaged ego. After all, she had heard it a thousand times before, so her heart must be hardened to it. Right? He did not think so. For the first time he thought of Daisy as a woman—a girl—with a heart and feelings that could be wounded even if she was acting like she hadn’t a care in the world. Just like at thirteen, just like this evening.
“She’s very lucky to have snared him. I mean, who else would marry her?”
Really, that was too much.
“Good evening, ladies.” He flashed them a smile. “I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation.”
The two young ladies reddened considerably. Was it wrong if he took some satisfaction in their discomfort? They certainly deserved a little.
Daisy’s grip tightened on his arm. “Theo . . . This really isn’t necessary.”
“Do you mean to congratulate me on my choice of bride?”
Of course that was exactly what they meant! How did he even know? Gosh, he was so intelligent and handsome and wasn’t Miss Daisy Swan the luckiest woman in New York? Everyone thought so.
Everyone except Daisy Swan herself.
“I don’t need you to be my hero,” she said sharply as she turned and stormed off. He was hot on her heels. Because he was starting to care about her in addition to how they appeared to everyone else.
“Someone has to do it,” he said. He finally felt useful. He could make amends by standing up for her. It would help their reputations; it would give him a sense of purpose. “Here I am, at your service.”
“Find something else to do other than being my white knight, Theo. Contrary to the opinion of everyone in this ballroom, I’m no damsel in distress.”
Chapter Nine
Given that the marriage between Theodore Prescott the Third and Daisy Swan is understood to be an arranged match by their parents, one does wonder how it will go the moment when the groom kisses the bride.
—The New York Post
After years of diligent practice, Daisy had perfected the art of pretending not to care what people said. Daisy had learned that she could also absorb a fair amount of snide remarks about herself before she either had to retreat—or risk showing everyone just how sharp-tongued and shrewish she could be.
But with Theo, she was attracting attention. A lot of attention.
Attending a ball with him was like stepping out with a lion on a leash.
People noticed.
People discussed.
But tonight she could no longer absorb the comments she’d been overhearing all night—all her life, really—and she especially did not have the capacity to handle Theo acting all heroic all of a sudden, twelve years too late.
A swift exit from the ballroom was an absolute necessity.
So she made one.
“Daisy—wait!”
“I do apologize,” she said with all the grace she could muster, which was very little. “I simply have an urgent need to find some other entertainment. Sticking a hot poker in my eye, for example.”
“Sounds delightful. May I join you?”
“You don’t need to follow me. I don’t need you to be my hero. This show of gallantry and concern is really unnecessary.”
“Well, it’s not like I have anything better to do,” he replied, and she was somewhat soothed by this truth.
Theo could swoop her into his arms and kiss her passionately in the middle of a crowded ballroom and people would still wonder who had dared him to do such a thing.
The prospect of kissing him was not as unappealing as she had expected.
Nevertheless, Daisy moved quickly out of the ballroom and into the hallway, walking until the din of the party faded and she reached the private rooms. She yanked open one heavy wooden door and found their host’s blessedly empty study and went in.
Theo followed.
He left the door slightly ajar, a tacit acknowledgment that he had no dishonorable intentions and that she was free to leave whenever she wished.
And so they were alone in the dimly lit room with some light spilling in from the corridor, and with the din of the ball nothing but a memory.
They were alone.
They were away from prying eyes and the cutting comments about her, which she’d had enough of for one evening, thank you very much.
They were alone and there was no need to maintain any ruse.
“Daisy, I don’t know what to say, other than that I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. You didn’t say any of those things.” He remained silent, a confession of sorts, and she understood. “You didn’t say any of those things within earshot,” she corrected. “Tonight.”
“I am so sorry. It is unkind for anyone to say such things in any circumstances. And with you, it’s also just plain wrong. For one thing, if you are old then so am I.”
Daisy couldn’t care less about being considered old, not when she was counting the minutes until she was officially On the Shelf and an Unredeemable Spinster. But she wasn’t so hurt or stuck up that she couldn’t recognize his offering of peace.
Funny that, coming from him.
But she wasn’t so hardened that she didn’t appreciate the overture. Even if she didn’t know what to do with it. In fact, it left her speechless.
They stood there in the dim light, not talking. It was as if, by mutual agreement, neither of them had any fight left and so they were left with an unspoken but understood truce. She was grateful for that, for she needed a little more time alone before she could go back and face the world.
“You do have beautiful skin,” Theo said softly.
“You don’t need to compliment me in an effort to soothe any hurt feelings you may think I have. My confidence does not rely on the good opinion of society. Thank God.”
She had genuine friends, she had a talent for chemistry, and she had an ambition that sustained her. She would be fine. But her confidence was not unshakable and her feelings were not invulnerable.
The things she’d overheard tonight weren’t really about her age or her looks or her manner. They were about a girl like her being seen with a man like him. It was because she, the Ugly Duckling of high society, had dared to stray from her little corner and step out and claim some prime territory for herself that their claws had come out.
This stupid engagement would not be as easy as she’d thought it would be. It might not even work in her favor, as she had hoped it might—that Theo’s status in society and hers as his betrothed would help her product launch be successful. Maybe it wouldn’t help at all. Then what was this all for?
She was thinking about going downtown right now to place an announcement in the newspaper declaring the end of the match, when he spoke.
“I’m not saying it because it’s necessary,” Theo said. “I’m saying it because it’s a true thing that I noticed and I couldn’t think of anything else to say. And I wanted to say something nice to you.”
“Well, then, thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Theo said. She shifted her gaze toward the door. He would leave now, of course. They had made some sort of peace. They had spent the better portion of an hour not killing each other in the ballroom. Certainly that had to be enough to calm the gossips.
And yet, he remained. With her. In the near-dark, otherwise empty room.
In fact, he strolled closer to her.
“Now, tell me. Why can’t you accept a compliment?”
She laughed. “From the man who called me Ugly Duck?”
“I am sorry about that.”
“Fifty-five days before our supposed wedding and you are now sorry.”
“Better late than never?”
“I might have appreciated your apology more, should it have occurred on Valentine’s Day of 1889, when I received a gruesome note addressed to My Ugly Valentine. Did you know that I was called that name so often that I even answered to it upon a few utterly humiliating occasions?”
He had the dece
ncy to pale.
Anguish looked good on him.
Damn him.
“I am very, very sorry, Daisy. You have to understand that at the time, I was a thirteen-year-old boy, trying to impress my friends. It’s no excuse, I know.”
To think some young boy had possibly altered the course of her life. Just to impress his stupid friends.
She shrugged. “It’s a catchy name. You have a talent. But your friends are idiots.”
“That doesn’t excuse anything. Daisy, I had no idea . . . If I had . . .”
“You would have done it all the same. Because you were a thirteen-year-old boy with no thoughts beyond impressing his friends at any cost. Even then, you had a precious reputation to maintain. Why do you care so much?”
He had nothing to say to that.
Not with words anyway.
Theo reached out for her now. His hand closed around her upper arm, the space left bare between her elbow-length satin gloves and the short sleeves of her evening gown. His touch was gentle, but it was not without intention.
She had never really been touched by a man with intentions before. Daisy found herself immobilized by some strange, potent force between them that was not repellent.
Theodore Prescott the Adored was touching her. They were alone. In the dark. It was clear what he wanted. But what did she want? This was a situation for which she had never expected and thus never prepared. She considered leaving through that open door but decided to stay. Maybe she was curious. Maybe she ought to give all the other girls in the ballroom something to really be jealous about.
When he spoke, his voice was soft and heavy.
“You drive me mad, you know. And not in a good, romantic way.”
“Tell me what else I do to you in a bad, unromantic way.” She made her voice go low and smooth, like her father’s expensive whiskey. “Tell me what I do that gets your heart pounding. Your temper flaring. Your heat rising . . .”
“Oh, Daisy . . .”
And then he kissed her.
He kissed her.
Theodore Prescott the Third closed his beautiful blue eyes and pressed his widely admired mouth to hers and the world as Daisy had known it no longer made sense.
It was Theo. And her.
And they despised each other and yet . . .
He kissed her.
And it was . . .
Fine.
As a novice to this whole kissing business, it wasn’t quite how she had imagined it. Her toes did not curl; her lungs and heart did not forget how to perform their functions. Her pulse was as steady as ever.
She knew these things were supposed to devastate her sense of equilibrium, wreak havoc on her breathing and her heart’s ability to pump blood. She knew the world was supposed to irrevocably change. She knew she was supposed to feel a surge of feeling so powerful, so intense, so overwhelming, that she would emerge from this kiss a new woman.
Daisy read novels, she eavesdropped on other women’s conversations, and so she knew what she was supposed to feel during a first kiss with a handsome rogue, and it wasn’t this.
She said his name, Theo, or tried to. The word was mumbled against his mouth, pressing against hers, nudging her to part her lips. When she did, to mention his name, Theo, his tongue swooped in to deepen the kiss.
This okay kiss.
This ho-hum clashing of lips and mouths and tongues.
Very well, it was almost quite nearly bad.
She pushed him away.
“Theo, stop.”
To his credit, he pulled back immediately. His sense of entitlement at least had some limits.
“You’re right,” he murmured, caressing her cheek. “I left the door open. What if someone comes in here and catches us? Then we really would have to marry or our precious reputations will be thoroughly ruined.”
She was not willing to risk a lifetime of underwhelming kisses, thanks to an impulsive kiss and an open door.
“I should go,” she said.
“You’re right. We ought to return to the ballroom and continue our charm offensive.”
She would rather fling herself off the Brooklyn Bridge. Fortunately, she didn’t have to choose between the two.
“I would like to go home, actually.”
“I’ll escort you.”
He was probably only considering appearances. But he did look genuinely concerned. She thought, for the first time, that he was more than just pretty. But one so-so kiss and some sympathy did not easily override a decade’s worth of angst that he’d caused.
“I’d like to go alone.”
His gaze drifted from her eyes to her lips.
“Is it because of what everyone said? Because you shouldn’t take it to heart—”
“No, it’s not that. Nothing said tonight was anything I hadn’t heard—or been made to understand—before.”
She watched as he bit his lip as if trying to restrain himself, before giving in and asking the question on his mind.
“Is it because I kissed you?”
She could lie. She could plead a headache or fatigue. But it was her and him and when had they ever spared the other’s feelings? She had a reputation as a shrewish, plainspoken spinster so why stop now?
“Yes. Precisely.” She paused. “When you kissed me, I found myself . . . whelmed.”
He furrowed his brow, having no care at all about wrinkles. Drat the man.
“Whelmed? I’m not familiar with the word. What with my second-rate education. From Harvard. Perhaps you mean anticlimactic.”
“Anticlimactic would imply that I have been anticipating kissing you,” she said softly. Before tonight the thought had not even occurred to her. Because it was her. And him. And them. Still, she found herself tensing because she had refused him, and insulted him while they were alone, and she didn’t know how he would take it.
“The lady wounds,” he said softly. She exhaled.
“It’s a polite way of saying I was underwhelmed by your kiss and should like to conclude our evening.”
Daisy winced at her own frankness, but she really was tired now and did feel a headache coming on. She braced herself waiting for his retort that an ugly, old shrew like her wouldn’t know a good kiss if it stuck its tongue in her mouth. There was nothing worse or downright dangerous than a man with a wounded ego.
But Theo surprised her with his soft-spoken reply as he stepped aside to let her leave: “The lady slays.”
Theo could have returned to the ballroom and struck up a flirtation with Esme, or Margaret, or Viola, or any of the young ladies whose company he enjoyed at parties. They’d all grown up together, come out together, and now took the city and social whirl by storm together. Theo could have handed any of those women a glass of champagne and agreed in hushed tones and seductive murmurs what a ghastly spectacle his fiancée had made. He could elicit their sympathies publicly, and privately lament the hold his father had over him.
Because he was nothing but a wealthy, well-connected man with a first-rate education, as Daisy had so astutely observed the other night. His options were all at once vast and limited to what would meet his father’s approval.
Which was of the utmost importance.
Theo recalled Daisy’s shrug and question of why?
He did not have an answer for her.
But damn, if that girl didn’t have a way of speaking the truth and making him call into question . . . everything. Theo was in no state to socialize. Not with so much beating around in his brain.
Instead, Theo left the party without a second thought or a backward glance.
Instead, his boots hit the Fifth Avenue sidewalk, slick from a recent rain, and he started to walk.
Theo had some idea of making his way down to The Tenderloin, that infamous stretch of street where gentlemen could be assured to find some amusement or entertainment and where he might spend a pleasant hour with Violet or Gwendolyn or one of the other girls he liked at Madame Rosa’s establishment. He could silence all t
hese thoughts and questions, soothe his flummoxed state of mind with wine and women who didn’t find his kisses merely whelming.
Or did they?
With women in positions such as theirs, would he ever truly know?
Disconcerting thought, that.
Damned unsettling to realize that maybe you weren’t the man you thought you were. Worse yet, that you didn’t know the man who you wanted to be.
Most terrifying of all: he needed a woman like Daisy to reveal him as he really was.
Theo kept walking.
One could do worse than a walk down Fifth Avenue in New York City when one needed to sort out one’s entire existence. Even if all the new buildings—each one taller than the next—were constructed of Prescott Steel. As if he needed a reminder of how his father loomed large in this town and loomed large over him, especially.
Much as Theo appreciated what steel had done for the city skyline, he knew in his heart that he had no interest in that business. Not even to earn his father’s attention and approval. Yet he wasn’t ready to give up on it, either.
If only he cared less.
If only there were some other way . . .
Theo let his gaze drift lower, to the business names and brand slogans painted on the sides of the buildings and hanging over storefronts that lined the streets. There were signs and banners promoting patent medicines, millinery, upholstery, sailcloth and whalebone, antiques, dresses and boots, and all manner of things anyone could need to make their lives feel complete. Anything anyone could ever want was for sale. And even things people didn’t even know they wanted. Steel may be the skeleton of this city, but commerce was its engine.
If only there was something else he could do . . .
Theo kept walking, letting his direction be determined by the flow of traffic. He had some idea of where he wanted to go and he let the city push and pull him in that general direction. Eventually, Theo stood before Madame Rosa’s establishment, one of dozens along this stretch of Twenty-Third Street. The lights were blazing bright; the sound of a piano and a drunken sing-along spilled out onto the street. It was just one of the haunts that he and his fellow Rogues of Millionaire Row were known to frequent.