“You know I am not good with this sort of thing,” he admitted grumpily, hating the expectance he saw in her wide blue eyes as she studied him from across the room.
“Rubbish,” she said with a smile, “you just need practise, that’s all.”
“Danielle, you don’t understand. I wouldn’t even know how to begin.”
She chewed her lip thoughtfully, a smile in her eyes, while she mulled something over. Rhys couldn’t imagine how he’d managed to resist her for this long. Even now, the only prominent thought in his mind was the inviting bed in her little room and how she would look in it naked.
“I suppose I could help you,” she broached slowly, a mischievous look in her eyes.
“Help me in what way?” Rhys asked warily.
“Oh, you know.” Dani waved her hand flippantly through the air. “I can give you a few tips. Instructions, even. I would find that quite acceptable.”
“I’m sure you would,” Rhys grumbled.
Dani frowned. “Are you adverse to the idea?”
Rhys sighed before answering, “No. Instruct away.”
“Good.” She grinned and pulled one tulip from the bouquet, the one that looked the least harassed, and quickly brought it over to him, forcing his hand closed around the waxy stem. Looking up at him quizzically, she quickly righted a lock of black hair that stubbornly fell across his brow. After two attempts to tame the wayward lock, she seemed to settle for his tousled look with a perturbed one of her own.
Rhys thought that he should be granted immediate access into the pearly gates of heaven for his divine patience at allowing the stubborn chit to assess him as such. God, he’d punched men for less.
She even straightened his cravat and made it a little tighter before attempting to smooth out a crease on his sleeve.
Finally, she took a step back and surveyed him critically from head to toe. “Right,” she murmured approvingly, “that ought to do.”
“Danielle,” Rhys gritted out warningly.
She grinned, unmoved by his tone, before tripping lightly back to the spot across the room she had vacated to tamper with his person. She held her hands in front of her and gave him a cheerful smile. “I think you’re ready,” she told him admiringly.
“Ready for what?”
“For your instructions.” Gently, she rocked on the balls of her feet before looking pointedly at his legs. “First, you should get down on one knee.”
“Why?”
Dani rolled her eyes. “Isn’t that what a gentleman is supposed to do when he is about to propose to a lady?” she asked rhetorically.
“I’m hardly a gentleman,” he growled.
She made a condescending sound of agreement that he wasn’t sure he approved of. “We shall have to pretend that you are,” she told him in a deliberately patient voice. “Just for tonight, anyway.”
Rhys merely glared at her- thunderously.
Huffing a sigh, she gestured to the knee in question. “If you please, Lord Ashcroft,” she said tartly. “I assure you, the floor will not bite you, nor do we have termites. Your safety is assured.”
Begrudgingly, and glaring at her to make sure that she knew it was begrudgingly, he got down on one knee. “OW!”
Her eyes widened with alarm. “What’s the matter?” she asked concernedly.
“I think the floor bit me.”
Her lips pursed and she gave him a humourless glare. “This is a very serious matter, my lord.”
“Of course.”
“I hope you are taking it as seriously as I.”
“I wouldn’t take it any other way, Miss Carmichael.”
She looked at him sternly. “You’re teasing me.”
“Me? Never.”
“Hmm.” Dani glanced at the tulip in his hand, choosing to ignore that line of conversation for the time being. “Now, secondly, you should raise the flower up towards me.”
Deliberately, he shook the thing at her.
“No, no,” she admonished, showing him exactly what to do by extending her arm at an angle in front of her. “Like this.”
He complied, brandishing the tulip like a sword. She sighed and didn’t try to correct the stance. “Right, now you must declare your fondness for me.”
He made a strangled sound.
“Oh, come. It’s not so bad. Look, I’ll give you the lines and you can just repeat them to me.” She gave him an encouraging smile and when he didn’t say anything to contradict her, she continued, “Repeat after me: Miss Carmichael, your loveliness overwhelms me to the extent I write sonnets in your name-”
“What?”
“-and I am besotted with the sound of your melodious voice. Oh, my dove, sing for me-”
“Danielle, this is ridiculous!” Rhys barked, climbing to his feet and throwing the tulip on the bed. Her laughing eyes watched him studiously, her fingers ill-concealing her smiling lips. “I’m not some clumsy love-sick fop attempting to court you, poorly at that. I won’t ever be.” Rhys shoved his hand into the pocket of his trousers and yanked out the small box that Gabriel had given him a couple of nights ago. “I am a man of four and thirty years, of ill-temperament and bouts of uncontrollable anger, yet somehow I find myself lucky enough to have the affections of a stubborn country miss who has plagued me for a proposal since the day we met-”
She gasped indignantly. “I most certainly have not!”
He gave her an authoritative look before continuing. “The point is, Miss Carmichael, is that I am here now, proposing to you in the only way I know how- in anger, as you seem to evoke the reaction constantly of late. Lord help me, but I think I’d enjoy being married to you and for the life of me, I can’t possibly imagine why you would even want marry me.” He paused, staring at the box for a moment before flipping it open. “So, I guess what I’m saying is, will you do me the honour-”
“Yes!”
She bolted into his arms, nearly knocking him off his feet. Her arms wrapped around his neck and Rhys only had an imperceptible moment to glimpse the tears shining in her eyes before she buried her face against his shoulder. “Oh, God, yes!”
“Danielle,” Rhys murmured into her hair. It was everywhere. “Are you crying?”
“No,” she mumbled with a sniff.
Rhys slid his arms around her waist, revelling the way she fit against him. A wave of irrepressible desire churned within him and he could not suppress the shudder that coursed through his veins. Tenderly, he pulled back from her and brought the hand that held the box between them. She stared down the ring encased securely atop a little cushion. He removed it and slipped it on her finger, allowing his touch to linger against her skin as he did so. Teary, beautiful eyes were raised to his and she said, “I’ve never been given something so beautiful before.”
“Gabriel chose it,” Rhys told her with a warm smile.
“No.” She shook her head. “I wasn’t talking about the ring.”
“What were you talking about?”
A small, soft smile touched her lips. “You.”
His body tautened with the need that raged through him and his arms reflexively clamped her tighter to him. Groaning, he dipped his head to her neck. “Jesus, Danielle,” he rasped, “you can’t… you can’t possibly know what you do when you say things like that.”
“Mustn’t I?” she asked curiously before she gasped, Rhys’s hand having grasped her hip and jerking her into vivid contact with his hard thighs.
“Not,” he growled, dragging his teeth along the curve of her neck, “until after the wedding.”
She pulled away from him slightly and he smiled arrogantly at her flustered expression. “Why?” she asked curiously.
“Because our wedding night might be sooner than the wedding if you do.”
“Oh.” Her lips pursed and that inquisitive gleam remained in her eyes. “I wouldn’t mind, you know.”
Oh, dear God. Rhys had to firmly extricate himself from the warmth of her body and set her at arm’s length, all too awar
e that an inviting bed was but a few feet away. “I’ll not deny you your wedding night,” he told her huskily. He meant it, too. By marrying him, Dani would not be granted what most girls claimed when they married an earl. He was already denying her so much. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, deny her that. He looked at her and his gut clenched with desire at the slightly disappointed look on her face.
He was going to die.
Chapter 20
Dani pressed an ear against the shut door of her uncle’s study.
“Danielle, I can see you, you know?” Fiona admonished from the bench she sat on, her fingers busily working through her knitting.
Guiltily, she started away from the door and turned to her aunt with a nervous look. “I can’t help it,” she whined, anxiously biting her thumb. “They’ve been in there for a long time.”
Fiona, poised and calm, hardly glanced up from her wool and needles whereas Dani was a riotous mass of nerves and anxiety. Her uncle George was a strict man, resolute with what was right and proper, and she could not begin to predict what he might be telling, or doing, to poor Rhys. Unable to remain still for an extended period of time, she began to pace the length of the narrow door.
“Do stop,” Fiona chided calmly. “You’ll make yourself ill.”
Dani halted and turned to her with a look of anguish. “What’s taking so long?” she complained, throwing her hands up in the air beseechingly. “It’s not like England’s security is under threat.”
“Mmm.” Fiona continued to knit, blithely unaware of her ward’s distress. “You know George, dear. He can be quite thorough.” She looked at Dani sternly over her pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. “This did come as quite a surprise to the both of us, you know.”
Dani blushed, recalling how she had only an hour this morning to break the news to both her aunt and uncle about her engagement to the Earl of Falmouth before her fiancé arrived for an interview with George Smith. Fiona and George had been duly shocked at the news and Dani had been thoroughly honest with them, omitting only the most scandalous of details but inserting enough truth to imply that a hasty marriage was imperative.
Dani sighed and settled for hugging her waist, tapping her foot agitatedly. Almost immediately, she began leaning closer to the wood of the door, hoping to catch a glimpse of what was transpiring from within.
“Danielle!”
“Sorry.” Pouting, she moved away and slumped down next to her aunt. “I can’t help it.”
“I know,” she said, her voice injected with more sympathy this time. “You must just be patient. You’ll find that it’ll turn out alright.”
“How can you be sure?” Dani asked hopefully, eager eyes turned on her aunt as if Fiona had been issued some sort of hint that clued her in on the exact proceedings from within the study.
“Danielle, really, you are quite preposterous. Patience is, after all, a virtue. All will turn out for the best, you’ll see.”
Dani snorted disbelievingly. Honestly, that was probably the worst thing one could say to a person whose fate was being decided by two of the most ornery men she’d ever had the misfortune to come across.
Within seconds, Dani was on her feet again, pacing in front of the door of the study. She just couldn’t sit still. There was every possibility George would find fault with Rhys and throw him out the cottage. Then what? Would Rhys be willing to elope? Dani didn’t think he’d resort to such drastic measures. The scandal would be so disgraceful… God, she wouldn’t be able to face Fiona again.
The previous night seemed an entire year ago. She’d been so happy, so deliriously content, and Rhys had been wonderful. Now… she hated the seesawing of emotions. It was surely aging her prematurely. Between the infuriating man she was intending to marry and her uncle, whose decision would dictate the outcome of Dani’s very happiness, she was unlikely to have a day of emotional stability ever again.
Discreetly, Dani leaned close to the door of the study and received the fright of her life when the door was yanked open a few inches from her face.
Rhys gave her dry look, his expression very clearly telling her that he had expected nothing less.
Blushing, she stepped back and allowed both men to exit, George coming out last and ponderously. He was of average size and proportion but there just seemed to be an air of authority that emanated from around him. It could have been the years George Smith had practised law, but the man simply oozed of strictness and clout, so much so that one feared ever being caught doing something wrong in his presence. He was a man of stout principles and had honed his intellectual skills academically. As such, he was an incredibly intelligent human being and could usually detangle a situation to its baser fundamentals within a few seconds. Good at assessing the human psyche, it was very hard to keep a secret from George Smith.
George looked at his wife thoughtfully before saying, “Perhaps we should call for some tea.”
Fiona nodded and quietly got up from her seat to ring for some.
George turned Rhys and Dani. “Sit.”
Dani did so immediately while Rhys completely the task idly, crafting an impression that stated it had been his intention to do so all along. An expression of cool indifference on his face, Rhys reclined with masculine grace and sensuality that was formidably contrasted with the small feminine chair he had chosen. How he managed to remain so composed was beyond her, but she found it quite irritating.
Fiona returned with the tea.
“I suppose you’ll want to know what I’ve decided,” George informed the room at large but only Dani concurred with a vigorous nodding of her head. “Danielle, I’m sure that you are aware that your behaviour has been shameful. Your actions jeopardised the good-standing of both your aunt and I, not excluding yourself. I trust that you are aware of this?”
George Smith had the uncanny ability to make one feel like the vilest fiend. Dani could only nod, fearing she might choke on the shame.
“And you, Lord Ashcroft,” George continued with a stern look at the large man reclining nonchalantly in a dainty chair beside Dani, “should have not encouraged such insurgent behaviours from a young girl.”
At that, Rhys’s lips twitched. Dani threw him a quelling look.
“But it is to my understanding, and if I know anything about Danielle at all, that she probably coordinated the whole debacle in the first place.”
Dani gasped. Why was everyone assuming everything was her fault of late? How absurd and unfair. There was a smug look on Rhys’s face. Her fingers itched to slap it off.
“However, despite all this, you were both right to assume marriage the best solution,” George pontificated as his wife dutifully handed him his tea. “Under the circumstances, I think it best that a hasty marriage be advisable. Of course, there will be some talk about your mourning period, Danielle, but we will have to bear through it. I trust a month from now is suitable.”
An overpowering surge of happiness swept through Dani at his words and the smile that swept across her lips she did not endeavour to conceal.
“One week,” Rhys stated implacably.
“That is unacceptable. The scandal would be devastating to Danielle. Surely you must consider her reputation in all of this?” George objected reproachfully.
Rhys consented with an incline of his chin. “You’re right, of course. Two weeks.”
George rubbed the bridge of his nose with his index finger and thumb, squeezing his eyes shut. The poor man had probably experienced enough palaver to tide him through for the rest of his life. “Three weeks, Ashcroft. You’d be ill-advised to marry in less.”
“Fine.”
“That settles that then,” George concluded. He turned to Dani meaningfully. “I trust that for the duration of those weeks you will adhere to etiquette and propriety, conforming to the dictates of society as any other young lady of your standing would comport herself.”
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Dani protested unhappily.
George didn’t say anythi
ng. He merely looked at her in that way that made her squirm; that made her feel like a horrible person. It was no wonder Dani went out of her way to avoid her uncle. He was a good man though and despite his strict preferences for utmost propriety, George had never once been unnecessarily short or ill-tempered towards his ward. He had just made her very aware of what she did wrong.
Dani felt very aware at this moment just how wrongly she had actually behaved and folded her arms defensively. The one time in her life she had been remotely rebellious and had thrown caution to the wind… Damn. She couldn’t regret it even if she wanted to. It was just too darn fun. Just because George Smith thought she was a shameful little harlot, didn’t mean that she was. The next time she looked at her uncle, however, he was smiling quietly at her and she knew then that George Smith didn’t have, and never would have, a bad thought about her in his head.
The very next day, their forthcoming nuptials were printed in the morning newspaper and by mid-afternoon, all of London had heard of the Earl of Falmouth’s betrothal to a Miss Danielle Carmichael, whom many had heard of, of course, but whom none had paid much attention to.
For Dani, the first week flew by in waves of exhaustion and frustration. Exhaustion due to the countless trips to Truro made by carriage in order to confirm milliner appointments for both herself, her aunt, and Victoria, who was to be her maid of honour (naturally). The carriage rides were not agreeable to her back and each night Dani suffered the agony quietly, relieved only by the thought of when she would next see Rhys again.
The frustrating parts of the whole ordeal were the visitors. Suddenly, Danielle Carmichael was the only topic of conversation of the ton and people who had never even bothered with a cursory glance in her direction were flocking to Falmouth and calling upon the Smiths’ cottage. Worst of all were the sly speculations made about her directly to her face, the implications and predisposed opinions many had already formulated about her, and Dani abhorred those visits the most.
“Oh, you must think you’re so lucky to have snatched an earl-”
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