by Julia Quinn
At Anthony’s somewhat forceful request, Simon had elected not to attend every social event to which Violet and Daphne had RSVPed in the affirmative. Anthony said that the only reason he had agreed to this ridiculous scheme was so that Daphne might find a husband among all her new suitors. Unfortunately, in Anthony’s opinion (and fortunately in Daphne’s) none of these eager young gentlemen dared to approach her in Simon’s presence.
“A fat lot of good this is doing,” were Anthony’s exact words.
Actually, those exact words had been appended a fair amount of cursing and invective, but Daphne had seen no reason to dwell on this. Ever since the incident at—or rather in—the Thames, Anthony had spent a great deal of time applying expletives to Simon’s name.
But Simon had seen Anthony’s point, and Simon had told Daphne that he wanted her to find a suitable husband.
And so Simon stayed away.
And Daphne was miserable.
She supposed she should have known that this was going to happen. She should have realized the dangers of being courted—even falsely—by the man society had recently dubbed The Devastating Duke.
The moniker had begun when Philipa Featherington had pronounced him “devastatingly handsome,” and since Philipa didn’t know the meaning of the word “whisper,” all the ton bore witness to her statement. Within minutes some droll young buck just down from Oxford had shortened and alliterated, and The Devastating Duke was born.
Daphne found the name woefully ironic. For The Devastating Duke was devastating her heart.
Not that he meant to. Simon treated her with nothing but respect and honor and good humor. Even Anthony was forced to admit that he’d been given no cause to complain in that quarter. Simon never tried to get Daphne alone, never did anything more than kiss her gloved hand (and much to Daphne’s dismay, that had only happened twice).
They had become the best of companions, their conversations ranging from comfortable silences to the wittiest of repartée. At every party, they danced together twice—the maximum permitted without scandalizing society.
And Daphne knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that she was falling in love.
The irony was exquisite. She had, of course, begun spending so much time in Simon’s company specifically so that she might attract other men. For his part, Simon had begun spending time in her company so that he might avoid marriage.
Come to think of it, Daphne thought, sagging against the wall, the irony was exquisitely painful.
Although Simon was still quite vocal on the subject of marriage and his determination never to enter that blessed state, she did on occasion catch him looking at her in ways that made her think he might desire her. He never repeated any of the risqué comments he’d made before he’d learned she was a Bridgerton, but sometimes she caught him looking at her in the same hungry, feral way he’d done that first evening. He turned away, of course, as soon as she noticed, but it was always enough to set her skin tingling and shorten her breath with desire.
And his eyes! Everyone likened their color to ice, and when Daphne watched him converse with other members of society, she could see why. Simon wasn’t as loquacious with others as he was with her. His words were more clipped, his tone more brusque, and his eyes echoed the hardness in his demeanor.
But when they were laughing together, just the two of them poking fun at some silly society rule, his eyes changed. They grew softer, gentler, more at ease. In her more fanciful moments, she almost thought they looked as if they were melting.
She sighed, leaning even more heavily against the wall. It seemed her fanciful moments were coming closer and closer together these days.
“Ho, there, Daff, why are you skulking in the corner?”
Daphne looked up to see Colin approaching, his usual cocky smile firmly in place on his handsome face. Since his return to London, he had taken the town by storm, and Daphne could easily name a dozen young ladies who were positive they were in love with him and desperate for his attention. She wasn’t worried about her brother’s returning any of their affections, however; Colin obviously had many more wild oats to sow before he settled down.
“I’m not skulking,” she corrected. “I’m avoiding.”
“Avoiding whom? Hastings?”
“No, of course not. He’s not here tonight, anyway.”
“Yes, he is.”
Since this was Colin, whose primary purpose in life (after chasing loose women and betting on horses, of course) was to torment his sister, Daphne meant to act blasé, but still she lurched to attention as she asked, “He is?”
Colin nodded slyly and motioned with his head toward the ballroom entrance. “I saw him enter not fifteen minutes ago.”
Daphne narrowed her eyes. “Are you bamming me? He told me quite specifically that he wasn’t planning to attend tonight.”
“And you still came?” Colin laid both his hands on his cheeks and faked surprise.
“Of course I did,” she retorted. “My life does not revolve around Hastings.”
“Doesn’t it?”
Daphne had the sinking feeling that he was not being facetious. “No, it doesn’t,” she replied, lying through her teeth. Her life might not revolve around Simon, but her thoughts certainly did.
Colin’s emerald eyes grew uncharacteristically serious. “You’ve got it bad, don’t you?”
“I have no idea what you mean.”
He smiled knowingly. “You will.”
“Colin!”
“In the meantime”—he motioned back toward the ballroom’s entrance—“why don’t you go and locate him? Clearly my scintillating company pales in comparison. I can see that your feet are already inching away from me.”
Horrified that her body would betray her in such a way, Daphne looked down.
“Ha! Made you look.”
“Colin Bridgerton,” Daphne ground out, “sometimes I swear I think you’re no more than three years old.”
“An interesting concept,” he mused, “and one that would place you at the tender age of one and a half, little sister.”
Lacking a suitably cutting retort, Daphne just fixed upon him her blackest scowl.
But Colin only laughed. “An attractive expression to be sure, sis, but one you might want to remove from your cheeks. His Devastatingness is heading this way.”
Daphne refused to fall for his bait this time. He wasn’t going to Make Her Look.
Colin leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, “This time I’m not kidding, Daff.”
Daphne held her scowl.
Colin chuckled.
“Daphne!” Simon’s voice. Right at her ear.
She whirled around.
Colin’s chuckles grew more heartfelt. “You really ought to have more faith in your favorite brother, dear sis.”
“He’s your favorite brother?” Simon asked, one dark brow raised in disbelief.
“Only because Gregory put a toad in my bed last night,” Daphne bit off, “and Benedict’s standing has never recovered from the time he beheaded my favorite doll.”
“Makes me wonder what Anthony’s done to deny him even an honorable mention,” Colin murmured.
“Don’t you have somewhere else to be?” Daphne asked pointedly.
Colin shrugged. “Not really.”
“Didn’t,” she asked through clenched teeth, “you just tell me you promised a dance to Prudence Featherington?”
“Gads, no. You must have misheard.”
“Perhaps Mother is looking for you, then. In fact, I’m certain I hear her calling your name.”
Colin grinned at her discomfort. “You’re not supposed to be so obvious,” he said in a stage whisper, purposely loud enough for Simon to hear. “He’ll figure out that you like him.”
Simon’s entire body jerked with barely contained mirth.
“It’s not his company I’m trying to secure,” Daphne said acidly. “It’s yours I’m trying to avoid.”
Colin clapped a hand ove
r his heart. “You wound me, Daff.” He turned to Simon. “Oh, how she wounds me.”
“You missed your calling, Bridgerton,” Simon said genially. “You should have been on the stage.”
“An interesting idea,” Colin replied, “but one that would surely give my mother the vapors.” His eyes lit up. “Now that’s an idea. And just when the party was growing tedious. Good eve to you both.” He executed a smart bow and walked off.
Daphne and Simon remained silent as they watched Colin disappear into the crowd. “The next shriek you hear,” Daphne said blandly, “will surely be my mother’s.”
“And the thud will be her body hitting the floor in a dead faint?”
Daphne nodded, a reluctant smile playing across her lips. “But of course.” She waited a moment before saying, “I wasn’t expecting you this evening.”
He shrugged, the black cloth of his evening jacket wrinkling slightly with the movement. “I was bored.”
“You were bored so you decided to come all the way out to Hampstead Heath to attend Lady Trowbridge’s annual ball?” Her eyebrows arched up. Hampstead Heath was a good seven miles from Mayfair, at least an hour’s drive in the best of conditions, more on nights like tonight, when all the ton was clogging the roads. “Forgive me if I start to question your sanity.”
“I’m starting to question it myself,” he muttered.
“Well, whatever the case,” she said with a happy sigh, “I’m glad you’re here. It’s been a ghastly evening.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “I have been plagued by questions about you.”
“Well, now, this grows interesting.”
“Think again. The first person to interrogate me was my mother. She wants to know why you never call upon me in the afternoon.”
Simon frowned. “Do you think it’s necessary? I rather thought my undivided attention at these evening affairs would be enough to perpetrate the ruse.”
Daphne surprised herself by managing not to growl in frustration. He didn’t need to make this sound like such a chore. “Your undivided attention,” she said, “would have been enough to fool anyone but my mother. And she probably wouldn’t have said anything except that your lack of calls was reported in Whistledown.”
“Really?” Simon asked with great interest.
“Really. So now you’d better call tomorrow or everyone will start to wonder.”
“I’d like to know who that woman’s spies are,” Simon murmured, “and then I’d like to hire them for myself.”
“What do you need spies for?”
“Nothing. But it seems a shame to let such stellar talent go to waste.”
Daphne rather doubted that the fictitious Lady Whistledown would agree that any talents were being wasted, but she didn’t particularly want to get into a discussion of the merits and evils of that newspaper, so she just shrugged off his comment. “And then,” she continued, “once my mother was through with me, everyone else set in, and they were even worse.”
“Heaven forfend.”
She turned an acerbic look on him. “All but one of the questioners were female, and although they all vehemently professed their happiness on my behalf, they were clearly trying to deduce the probability of our not becoming betrothed.”
“You told them all I was desperately in love with you, I assume?”
Daphne felt something lurch in her chest. “Yes,” she lied, offering him a too-sweet smile. “I have a reputation to maintain, after all.”
Simon laughed. “So then, who was the lone male doing the questioning?”
Daphne pulled a face. “It was another duke, actually. A bizarre old man who claimed to have been friends with your father.”
Simon’s face went suddenly tight.
She just shrugged, not having seen the change in his expression. “He went on and on about what a good duke your father was.” She let out a little laugh as she tried to imitate the old man’s voice. “I had no idea you dukes had to look out for one another so much. We don’t want an incompetent duke making the title look bad, after all.”
Simon said nothing.
Daphne tapped her finger against her cheek in thought. “Do you know, I’ve never heard you mention your father, actually.”
“That is because I don’t choose to discuss him,” Simon said curtly.
She blinked with concern. “Is something wrong?”
“Not at all,” he said, his voice clipped.
“Oh.” She caught herself chewing on her lower lip and forced herself to stop. “I won’t mention it then.”
“I said there is nothing wrong.”
Daphne kept her expression impassive. “Of course.”
There was a long, uncomfortable silence. Daphne picked awkwardly at the fabric of her skirts before finally saying, “Lovely flowers Lady Trowbridge used for decoration, don’t you think?”
Simon followed the motion of her hand toward a large arrangement of pink and white roses. “Yes.”
“I wonder if she grew them.”
“I haven’t the faintest.”
Another awkward silence.
“Roses are so difficult to grow.”
This time his reply was just a grunt.
Daphne cleared her throat, and then, when he didn’t even so much as look at her, asked, “Have you tried the lemonade?”
“I don’t drink lemonade.”
“Well, I do,” she snapped, deciding she’d had enough. “And I’m thirsty. So if you will excuse me, I’m going to fetch myself a glass and leave you to your black mood. I’m certain you can find someone more entertaining than I.”
She turned to leave, but before she could take a step, she felt a heavy hand on her arm. She looked down, momentarily mesmerized by the sight of his white-gloved hand resting against the peach silk of her gown. She stared at it, almost waiting for it to move, to travel down the length of her arm until it reached the bare skin of her elbow.
But of course he wouldn’t do that. He only did such things in her dreams.
“Daphne, please,” he said, “turn around.”
His voice was low, and there was an intensity to it that made her shiver.
She turned, and as soon as her eyes met his, he said, “Please accept my apologies.”
She nodded.
But he clearly felt the need to explain further. “I did not . . .” He stopped and coughed quietly into his hand. “I was not on good terms with my father. I—I don’t like to talk about him.”
Daphne stared at him in fascination. She’d never seen him at such a loss for words.
Simon let out an irritated exhale. It was strange, Daphne thought, because it seemed as if he were irritated with himself.
“When you brought him up . . .” He shook his head, as if deciding to try a different avenue of conversation. “It grabs at my mind. I can’t stop thinking about him. It—it—it makes me extremely angry.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, knowing her confusion must show on her face. She thought she should say more, but she didn’t know what words to use.
“Not at you,” he said quickly, and as his pale blue eyes focused on hers, something seemed to clear in them. His face seemed to relax as well, especially the tight lines that had formed around his mouth. He swallowed uncomfortably. “I’m angry at myself.”
“And apparently at your father as well,” she said softly.
He said nothing. She hadn’t expected him to, she realized. His hand was still on her arm, and she covered it with her own. “Would you like to get a bit of air?” she asked gently. “You look as if you might need it.”
He nodded. “You stay. Anthony will have my head if I take you out onto the terrace.”
“Anthony can hang for all I care.” Daphne’s mouth tightened with irritation. “I’m sick of his constant hovering, anyway.”
“He is only trying to be a good brother to you.”
Her lips parted in consternation. “Whose side are you on, anyway?”
Deftly
ignoring her question, he said, “Very well. But just a short walk. Anthony I can take on, but if he enlists the aid of your brothers, I’m a dead man.”
There was a door leading out to the terrace a few yards away. Daphne nodded toward it, and Simon’s hand slid down her arm and around the crook of her elbow.
“There are probably dozens of couples out on the terrace, anyway,” she said. “He’ll have nothing about which to complain.”
But before they could make their way outside, a loud male voice sounded from behind them. “Hastings!”
Simon halted and turned around, grimly realizing that he had grown used to the name. In no time, he’d be thinking of it as his own.
Somehow that concept made him ill.
An older man leaning on a cane hobbled his way toward them. “That’s the duke I told you about,” Daphne said. “Of Middlethorpe, I believe.”
Simon nodded curtly, having no desire to speak.
“Hastings!” the old man said, patting him on the arm. “I have wanted to make your acquaintance for so very long. I am Middlethorpe. Your father was a good friend of mine.”
Simon just nodded again, the motion almost military in its precision.
“He missed you, you know. While you were off traveling.”
A rage began to build in his mouth, a rage that rendered his tongue swollen and his cheeks tight and rigid. He knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if he tried to speak, he would sound just as he’d done when he was a lad of eight.
And there was no way he’d shame himself in such a way in front of Daphne.
Somehow—he’d never know how, maybe it was because he’d never had much trouble with vowels aside from “I”—he managed to say, “Oh?” He was pleased that his voice came out sharp and condescending.
But if the old man heard the rancor in his tone, he made no reaction to it. “I was with him when he died,” Middlethorpe said.
Simon said nothing.
Daphne—bless her—leapt into the fray with a sympathetic, “My goodness.”
“He asked me to pass along some messages to you. I have several letters in my house.”
“Burn them.”
Daphne gasped and grabbed Middlethorpe by the arm. “Oh, no, don’t do that. He might not want to see them now, but surely he will change his mind in the future.”