“The same Miss Daphne Smith whom you were friends with as a child.”
As St. Albans words were more a statement than anything. Daniel continued sipping away at his drink.
“An interesting choice of a companion.”
Did he imagine the suspicion underlying that casual observation? Daniel grunted. “It was mutually advantageous for the lady and me.” And he’d say nothing more on it to this man or anyone.
His friend gave a casual nod. “Of course, you’ve never been one to do anything unless it was in some way beneficial to you.”
Had there been rancor or condemnation, mayhap it would have been easier than St. Albans’ absolute pragmatism. Daniel set his jaw. “Yes, well, I must see Alice launched,” She is not a ship, Daniel. “Married off,” he corrected. “And the sooner she makes a match,” a worthwhile match. “the sooner—”
“You may return to your debauched ways?” This time, the healthy dose of disappointment there, he met St. Albans’ eyes.
“Precisely.” Daniel nodded and took another sip. He’d neither the time, care, nor inclination to indulge a censorious friend. Particularly one who’d spent more than a decade either rivaling or surpassing Daniel in the area of debauchery. He paused. And yet, he’d lived the whole of his adult life believing a rake could not be reformed—and certainly not happily. How singularly…odd to have St. Albans prove that long-held truth wrong. Unnerved, Daniel avoided the other man’s eyes.
St. Albans remained quiet, looking about the crowded club, where gentlemen tossed away small fortunes all in a bid to feel something of life. “I am worried about you.”
Daniel tightened his grip hard around his tumbler. “I assure you, there is nothing to worry about.” Which was a lie. His country estates were crumbling. Creditors frequently called. Possessions required liquidating. “My uncle has dangled a fortune above my head, enough to temporarily reform even the staunchest rake, if even for a Season.” The eight thousand would allow Daniel to carry on his depraved existence for several years. That thought should bring comfort. Instead, it heightened this odd restlessness churning in his gut.
“I’m not worried about your finances,” St. Albans clarified.
“Splendidly loyal friend, chap,” Daniel lifted his glass in mocking salute.
“I worry, that you’re continuing down the same path to ruin.”
At those charges, eerily reminiscent to Daphne’s, the lady’s sad, disapproving eyes and smile came to mind. He gritted his teeth. So there would be no forgetting Daphne Smith this day—or any day.
How much easier it had been when everyone had quite accepted him as an unrepentant rake. Now, Daphne had reentered his life, challenging him, nay worse, expecting him to be the same boy she remembered from their past. And here was St. Albans, come to do the same.
His patience snapped. Daniel planted his elbows on the table and leaned forward with such speed he spilled several droplets over the rim of his glass. “I do not need your worrying after me like a protective mama and I certainly do not require guidance on life from a man who lived the exact same existence for nearly his entire life,” he hissed, spoiling for a fight.
“Of course.” St. Albans proved again the better man and Daniel’s annoyance stirred at that reminder. He’d far preferred it when they’d been equal in their rottenness. Remarkably cool, the marquess lifted his head in acknowledgement. “I will withhold my concerns, but trust Genevieve and I will support Lady Alice in any capacity she should require.” The other man pushed back his chair. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m home to my wife.” He touched his fingertips to his forehead in a parting.
Daniel stiffly nodded. “Thank—”
“Again, there is no need to thank me. We are, after all, friends,” the marquess spoke in solemn tones, so vastly different than the ones he’d adopted as a carefree scoundrel.
With that, St. Albans, reformed rake, took his leave. Daniel stared after him until he’d departed through the famous white doors at the front of the club. Then with a curse, Daniel tossed back the remainder of his drink and shoved to his feet. There was to be no peace anywhere. Not even his goddamned clubs, it would seem.
His gaze found the long-case clock at the side of the room. At this hour, the enticing Miss Smith would be in her chambers, doing…whatever it is proper ladies did at this hour. Which was, no doubt, sleep. Daniel stalked through the club, ignoring the greetings called out. He accepted his cloak and hat from the servant at the front and then stepped outside, gathering the reins for his mount.
He swung his leg over Satan and nudged the black gelding onward to his residence. He’d but a handful of months, at most, to suffer through proper clubs, dull events, and friendly lectures about his pursuit of wickedness. Alice would be wed, Daphne would be off for her post at the rotted finishing school, and he could continue doing what he’d done since he’d left university—nothing. Nothing, outside of whoring and carousing and drinking and wagering.
He nudged Satan at a quicker clip, frowning into the darkened London night. There should be some relief in thinking of what awaited him…and yet, there was this queer hollowness. “What in blazes is wrong with you?” he muttered, as he reined in his mount outside his Mayfair residence. Exhaustion. Ennui. There was no other accounting for it.
He dismounted and a waiting servant rushed outside to collect the reins. Daniel handed them over and then took the steps two at a time, sailing through the front door. He tossed his hat to the butler. “Tanner,” he greeted and started for the stairway.
Under Tanner’s bushy eyebrows, the butler’s eyes formed perfect circles. “You are retiring already, my lord?” the older man blurted.
Daniel faltered and his neck went hot. “Uh, see that a bath is readied,” he ordered. With the slack-jawed servant staring after him, he redirected his footsteps to his office and his well-stocked sideboard.
Couldn’t a gentleman retire at—Daniel fished around for his watch fob and consulted the timepiece—he choked. Ten in the evening? And with the request for a bath like some aged dowager? Daniel cringed. No wonder his butler had been shocked into insolence. Daniel had not taken to his chambers at this hour in…he searched his mind…well, ever. Not the naughty child who’d snuck around his family’s estates in the dead of night when none were the wiser. And not as a troublesome student at Eton and then Oxford. And most certainly never as a rake, living for his own amusements.
Daniel continued a brisk clip for his office, when he caught sight of the faint glow of light stretching from the open library doorway. He slowed his steps and peeked around the doorframe. Daphne reclined on the leather button sofa with a book resting on the table across from her.
Continue walking, Daniel Davidson Winterbourne. Continue walking…
Except, Tanner really was correct. It really was entirely too early for a chap to retire. And no decent rake worth his salt would seek his rooms before his sister’s proper, often-reprimanding companion.
Abandoning his previous plans, he lingered at the doorway, eyeing her.
Chapter 10
At ten o’clock in the evening, a proper spinster, serving as a young lady’s companion, would be tucked away inside her chambers.
But then, Daphne wasn’t truly the proper lady that Daniel, and the world, took her to be. It was not, however, past wickedness that had her tucked away in the spacious library. Leaning against the arm of the leather button sofa, she stretched her arms forward and then winced as the knotted muscles clenched spasmodically.
Concentrating on her breathing, she laboriously shoved herself back into a reclining position and closed her eyes. In accepting Daniel’s offer of employment and coming to London, she’d battled the fear of again facing Lord Leopold and having him reveal to the world that she was more whore than proper lady. She’d worried over entering Polite Society and suffering through their cold, mocking stares and pitying whispers.
But she’d not put proper thought into all the exertions that would be required of her.
Thirty-three stairs, climbed countless times. Jaunts through the uneven London streets that were really feats of movement better fitted to the god Achilles. Climbing in a carriage. Climbing out. There was always movement. Constant movement that strained the limits of her body in ways that drew forth all her deepest regrets and frustrations. In dreaming of employment, where she helped formatively shape ladies into the strong figures they should and would become, Daphne had not allowed herself to think about how greatly her leg impaired her work.
She bit the inside of her cheek, despising herself that weakness, and briefly pressed her eyes closed. An unholy desire gripped her to be the carefree girl she’d once been, running through the countryside and not confined to a goddamned leather sofa because her leg was too useless to move. Certainly too useless to manage another thirty-three stairs this night.
Drawing in a slow breath, she again sat up and stretched her fingers toward her knotted calf. That’s when the groaning floorboards penetrated the nighttime still. On a gasp, she whipped her gaze to the doorway. Her stomach promptly sank.
Bloody fantastic.
“Hullo, Daphne.”
With her leg throbbing as a mocking testament to her own miserable lack of beauty, the last thing she cared to be presented with was the splendidly perfect Daniel Winterbourne with his languid steps and effortless grace.
He leaned one shoulder against the doorjamb. Must he be so smoothly elegant? “I’ll give you a hint, Miss Smith,” he said on a husky whisper. She damned her heart for tripling its beat. “This is where you return a greeting.”
“My lord,” she said, despising the breathless timbre to her voice. She gripped her skirts. Mayhap he’d not heard it. Mayhap…
His lips curled up in a feral grin better suited a hunter stalking its prey. He pushed away from the doorway. A fledgling hope stirred to life that he’d turn around and—he pulled the door closed. Of course, he’d closet them away. The bounder. “A good companion would, no doubt, rise and curtsy,” he continued, slowly advancing.
“I never proclaimed to be a good companion,” she muttered, covetously eyeing the wood panel between her and freedom. And there were also those too many steps and thirty-three stairs. She’d not forget those. “You are the one who put the demands to me. I simply wanted my references.”
“Your false references,” he pointed out.
“Given your less than honorable reputation,” the one he took such delight in reminding her of, “I—” He stopped before her seat, bringing her gaze directly in line with his thickly corded thighs. Her mouth went dry. She’d scaled trees more narrow than their impressive breadth.
“You were saying?” Daniel drawled and she jerked her head up.
The knowing glint in his chocolate brown eyes sent heat rushing to her cheeks. What had she been saying? What was it…?
He flicked a hand. “Given my less than honorable reputation?”
Oh, yes! Daphne cleared her throat and with all the dignity a lady confined to a sofa for the better part of four hours could manage, proudly angled her chin. “I expected writing on behalf of a former friend was certainly not outside the realm of your moral culpabilities.”
He layered his palms to the arm of the sofa. His gloveless fingers brushed the sensitive skin of her nape as he leaned forward. “I don’t have any morals. Quite reprehensible, really.” Then, he stroked the pad of his thumb along her right earlobe, bringing her eyelashes wildly fluttering. She gave thanks for the dimly lit space and his own positioning that protected her from that telling reaction to his careless caress.
A rake like Daniel had far more fiendish pursuits to attend than teasing her in a library. Alas…
He slid into the leather winged back chair closest to her and proceeded to drum his fingertips on the arms.
She sighed.
“Unable to sleep?” he hazarded.
Daphne forced herself around. She made to lower her legs on the floor, but the joint locked at the knee, suspending movement. Catching the flesh of her lower lip hard between her teeth, she smiled through the agony ripping through that limb.
He stared at her dubiously.
“Yes,” she managed when she trusted herself to speak. “I am unable to sleep.” Which wasn’t altogether untrue. If she couldn’t get herself abovestairs to her bed, then she certainly wasn’t able to sleep. “I take it you do not have any other roguish—”
“Rakish,” he neatly slid in.
“—pursuits, demanding your attention?”
Her question brought an immediate cessation to his drumming. “Do you know, Daphne?” he asked, stretching his legs out before him and hooking them at the ankles. “It occurs to me with your frequent questions and mention of my dissolute lifestyle, that you have an inordinate fascination with it.”
She stared longingly at his crossed limbs. How easy it was for him. How simple and effortless. And it had once been that way for her, too. Then his words registered and she swiveled her head up to meet his hooded eyes. She snorted. “Do not be silly, Daniel.” Despite the opinions he had of her as a straitlaced, virgin spinster, she was no innocent. She certainly knew what a rake’s intentions were and where those seductive words and improper glances found a lady.
“Ah,” he said, drawing out that syllable as he shoved himself up and dragged his seat closer to her. “So it is me you are so fascinated by?”
Daphne forced a laugh, but it emerged as a husky whisper of breath that sounded wicked to her own ears. “Your arrogance knows no bounds. And lest we forget, I am the one who taught you how to bait a hook.” That reminder, harkening back to their past, came out more for her benefit than anything.
“But on matters of seduction—”
“You are shameless.” She tossed her book at him and he easily caught it. Not bothering to steal a glance at the title, he set it aside.
“You judge me for being a rake,” he said straightforwardly. “But at least I live.” At his charge, she set her teeth. “What of you? How have you spent the past thirteen years?” Tucked away in her parents’ house, reading, and embroidering. God, how she’d despised the tedium of that task she’d always been rubbish at and being confined to the cottage. And in this moment, she despised Daniel for being so bloody accurate. She went tight-lipped, refusing to let him bait her. “Hidden away in the country,” he accurately supplied. “When was the last time you danced or swam or played shuttlecock?”
She’d been ten and he’d been almost thirteen. They’d played until the moon chased away the sun. “You know nothing of it,” she groused. How dare he presume to know what she’d lost that long ago day and how it had shaped ever day thereafter? Her toes twitched, aching to take part in those long abandoned activities.
He inclined his head. “I gather it’s been since your injury, then?” Damn him for being accurate.
People didn’t speak of her leg. Instead, they offered pitying stares and low-expectations and, yet, Daniel did not. She appreciated that, but met that with stony silence, anyway.
“Very well,” he sighed. “We shall cease all talks of the downcast lady you’ve become—”
“I am not downcast,” she gritted out. “I am logical and practical.”
“Ah, yes. You said that earlier. We shall also end all mention of my devilish reputation.”
She studied him, welcoming the distraction from the pain radiating up her leg and from the too-personal charges he’d leveled. “Do you attach that word to any and every mention of your name to convince others that you are as wicked as the world believes you to be?”
But for a muscle that jumped at the corner of his eye, his body went motionless. “There is no convincing required,” he drawled. “I assure you, I’m quite depraved.” He fished a silver flask from his jacket, uncorked it, and toasted her. “Just as my father predicted.”
She frowned. He’d not always been the immoral figure who thrilled at his own wickedness. Once, he’d been a loyal friend. The boy who’d carried her countless steps when she’d br
oken her leg. After Lord Alistair’s drowning, Daniel had been forever changed—just as his entire family had. “Your father saw good in you,” she said quietly. Or he had. Daniel had slowly retreated over the years, so the details of that relationship were now foreign ventures she only made.
Daniel changed positions and kicked his legs out, once again, hooking them at the ankles. “The boy who killed his only worthy son?”
His words wrung a painful gasp from her. Surely the once-loving, late earl had not leveled such hateful words on his sole living son? Then, grief did awful things to a person. It turned men into monsters and fiery girls into spiritless creatures. “You didn’t kill your brother, Daniel,” she said with a firm resolve.
His gaze moved to a point beyond her shoulder. “I couldn’t save him.” There was an eerie emptiness to his eyes, such agonized pain, that the air lodged in her chest.
Is that why he’d become this empty shell? Mayhap for her earlier charges, he did, in fact, know something about retreating within himself. “Sometimes accidents happen,” she said softly, calling his focus back to her. “Sometimes there are wicked rainstorms that see little girls with a broken leg and sometimes young boys get carried away by a violent lake. There can be no undoing those moments.” No matter how much one tortured oneself with dreams of returning to an innocent past.
He gave a casual shrug and took another drink from his flask. “Mayhap, but I am still the dark scoundrel the world takes me for.”
“If you have to say it as much as you do, then you are less corrupt than you believe.” A lightness filled her at that obvious truth.
He snorted. “And if you believe that, then you are a naïve miss who’d do well to watch the rakes and rogues around you.”
To Redeem a Rake (The Heart of a Duke Book 11) Page 12