by Gaelen Foley
“A lucky guess,” he countered smoothly.
“My lord?” Daphne addressed him.
He bowed to her, a hand on his heart. “At your service, my love.”
She gave him a warning look in response to his cheeky endearment. “We need to talk.”
“Aren’t we going to dance? I trust you’ve saved your first waltz for me. You have a debt of honor on this point, as I recall.”
“Never mind that, you rogue.” She shrugged off a twinge of guilt for her earlier plan, and noticed Albert Carew at some distance through the crowd. He was watching their whole exchange with a nosy stare. “Would you please come with me, my lord?”
“To the ends of the earth,” he declared.
His friends laughed.
Daphne and Carissa exchanged a long-suffering glance.
“I’d be happy with a turn around the gardens if it’s not too much trouble,” she said. “Now.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He sent his friends a crafty smile that seemed to say, She wants me. Daphne ignored it and turned to Their Lordships. “Your Grace, Lord Falconridge—it might be best if you two and Miss Portland would also come along.”
“I say, Miss Starling, what exactly do you have in mind?” the blond earl asked with a raffish flash of a smile. The giant duke gave him a wicked look askance, but Carissa eyed both big men warily.
Daphne could only conclude she must be getting used to Max’s racy brand of humor; she stifled a huff, pretending not to grasp the innuendo.
Boys, no matter their age, would still be boys.
“Come along, if you don’t mind, gentlemen,” she said archly. “I must have a private word with your friend.”
“Don’t get too excited, Jord. I think we’re just the cover,” the Duke of Warrington said.
He was right. Daphne knew that if they all took a turn around the gardens as a group, her exchange with the marquess might appear slightly less suspicious.
“Well, then. Shall we?” Max offered her his arm, but Daphne stopped herself from taking it.
“Wait—Carissa?”
“Me?”
“Here.” She pulled Carissa over to walk with Max. “You go with him. I’ll mind these two. Watch what you say to him, too. He’s a thoroughgoing slyboots.”
“I?”
“Lord Rotherstone,” she continued with an insistent smile, “don’t you remember I told you I wanted you to meet Carissa?”
“Extraordinary,” Max remarked. But he offered his arm to her friend with a look of amusement. Carissa took it with a wry, uncertain smile. “I wonder what is going on.”
“Dashed if I know,” said the duke.
“Better not question it,” Lord Falconridge advised. “I have a feeling the lady knows exactly what she’s doing.”
“A man of eminent sense,” Daphne said in approval. “Gentlemen, if you don’t mind?”
Warrington and Falconridge each simultaneously offered her an arm. Daphne took both, and, at last, they all five strolled out in a pack to the moonlight gardens with, what Daphne sincerely hoped, resembled a degree of decorum.
Albert and his two brothers stared after them. Daphne looked over her shoulder at the unpleasant Carew brothers, then she thrust them out of her mind. She had bigger things to worry about as they went out to enjoy the balmy evening.
“Well, Miss Daphne Starling!” Lord Falconridge began. “At last we meet. We have so enjoyed hearing lately how you’ve been torturing our friend.”
“Pardon?” she murmured, cocking an ear to try to hear the conversation going on ahead of her, between Max and Carissa. It went thusly:
“So, Miss Portland, I hear you are something of an amateur spy.”
I’m going to kill him.
“You must enlighten me sometime about the techniques you’ve found effective in this town,” Max was saying to Carissa a few steps ahead of them.
“Lord Rotherstone,” her friend exclaimed, “are you insinuating that I am a gossip of some kind?”
“Oh, that is such a harsh word!” he denied in a mild tone. “No, you are, as I prefer to call it, a lady of information,” he declared. “As it happens, gathering certain intelligence is a hobby that I also find amusing.”
If he was setting out to cast his charm on Carissa, too, heaven help the girl, Daphne thought. But meanwhile, she was not faring much better. His two inquisitive friends were not about to pass up this brief opportunity to interview a woman they believed had set her cap at their Inferno Club brother-at-infamy.
“So, Miss Starling, where were you born?”
“And you are how old?”
“Was all your education in the home, or did you also attend a finishing school?”
“Do you speak French? Play piano?”
“Yes, what are your accomplishments?”
“More importantly, what are your thoughts on a gentleman maintaining ties with his old bachelor chums after marriage?” the duke asked pointedly.
“We are not at all in favor of that stale, old, stodgy practice where newlywed wives force their husbands to sever ties with their bachelor friends.”
“We knew Max before you did, after all.”
“How do you gentlemen all know each other?” she countered, just to be spared the interrogation. But then she instantly regretted it when she recalled too late that she already knew the answer.
“Our club,” Lord Falconridge answered in a dry tone.
“Oh, yes,” Daphne said faintly. “The Inferno Club, is it?”
“I trust you don’t object?”
“We’re not really as wild as people say,” the duke assured her, not very convincingly.
She gave him a dubious look.
“It’s true!” the earl agreed. “We just send that rumor round to keep out all the tedious chaps.”
“The important thing is you won’t banish us from Max’s life once you are married, will you?”
Her head was spinning, to think that he had already told them he would marry her, as if it was settled!
What else might he have told these two about their rendezvous together?
“Your concerns are quite unnecessary,” she forced out.
“Well, then!” Lord Falconridge declared. “We should all get along quite famously, I daresay.”
“Everything all right back there?” Max drawled.
“Switch!” Daphne yelped. As soon as they reached a little grove bounded by sculpted yews and a willow tree that stood at the edge of the water, she fled his friends’ inquisition, surging forward to change places with Carissa.
The petite redhead approached her two, tall, smiling escorts with an expression of complete awe and some trepidation.
“What the devil’s going on?” Max asked softly as Daphne gladly took his arm. She ached to note how familiar it felt to be with him again. Yet her sole intention this evening was to get it through his head she wasn’t marrying him. “Listen to me,” she whispered, stopping at the base of the little footbridge that arched across the ornamental lake. “The most terrible thing has happened.”
His face turned deadly serious with concern. “What’s the matter?”
“Penelope has run off at the mouth again and told some people here tonight that you and I are getting married.”
“Oh, is that all?” He shrugged it off. “Lord, girl, I thought it was something serious!”
“It is. Max. Please.” She looked into his eyes, making sure she had his full attention. The urge to kiss him was very wrongheaded. And very strong. “Max?”
His face sculpted by moonlight, he gave her that irresistible little half smile of his. “Daphne?”
She permitted herself one small, aching touch of his lapel. “It’s very important that if anyone here tonight is impertinent enough to ask you if what my stepmother said is true…” She paused and regretfully lowered her hand back down to her side. “You must laugh it off, and say it’s just a silly rumor.”
He furrowed his brow.
“I will say t
he same,” she added, “and hopefully, as long as we’re both consistent, we may yet manage to avoid a scandal.”
He shook his head with a wary, probing stare. “I don’t understand. Why would there be a scandal, and why should we deny it when it’s true? I’m ready to tell the world whenever you are, Daphne.”
She stared at him for a long, hard moment, saying nothing. She didn’t have to.
She could tell as his expression changed that her message was finally getting through.
“No,” he whispered.
It took all her strength, but she held fast to her conviction. “As I already told you, I’ve thought it over carefully and I…I still must regretfully decline.”
He was shaking his head. “No, I’m not having it.”
“Lord Rotherstone—I am perfectly willing to help you gain acceptance in the ton as your friend, without the added lock of marrying you.”
“I don’t need a friend. I need a wife,” he clipped out in sharp rebuke.
The others had stopped their conversation, sensing the tension between the two of them.
From the corner of her eye, Daphne could see their friends watching uneasily, listening, witnessing every excruciating moment. The two lords exchanged uncomfortable glances, but they and Carissa hung back.
Daphne was grateful that her loyal friend refused to abandon her, though, no doubt, Carissa longed to run away from all this as much as she did.
“I thought we resolved this,” he said, holding her stare in building anger.
“My feelings are unchanged. I told you my decision. That’s why I sent the necklace back, as you recall.”
“That’s not all that happened that day,” he whispered in mounting intensity. “As you recall—Miss Starling.”
“Nothing’s changed. It ends now, my lord.”
“It ends when I say it ends!” he erupted in a thunderous tone.
She braced herself, remembering the portraits of all those Rotherstone marquesses, and realizing in that moment that she was attempting to defy several hundred years’ worth of autocratic male power, and the lordly blood of privilege that flowed through his veins.
Oh, yes, she was acutely aware just then that his broadsword-swinging ancestors had been knights who had simply taken what they wanted.
Nevertheless, though it must have been unthinkable to him not to get his way, she refused to be intimidated.
She would never respect herself if she cowered before him. “Max,” she started calmly—but her calm only seemed to set off his fire.
“I don’t understand you!” He leaned toward her, lifting his hands out to his sides. “I have been patient, have I not? I have been fair. Damn it, Daphne! I have laid all that I possess at your feet, and you—” He faltered, changed direction on her. He pulled back and dropped his arms to his sides with a bewildered shrug. “Why are you pretending as if you feel nothing for me? It’s obvious you do.”
“Well, well, well,” a snide voice intruded. “If it isn’t the happy couple.”
They both looked over angrily. At once, Max bristled ferociously as Albert emerged from the garden greenery a few feet down the path. Daphne rolled her eyes. Oh, God, were they eavesdropping on our conversation?
Hands in pockets, the haughty leading dandy ambled toward them with an ugly mocking smile. His two younger brothers followed a step behind, flanking him, as usual.
The Carew brothers were already snickering. As it sank in that they had witnessed her refusing Max’s offer of marriage, Daphne felt as though she had been kicked in the chest. Guilt and dread immediately filled her. Max’s steely body tensed as the Carew brothers came closer.
Oh, no. Her heart began to pound. “Go away, Albert!” she warned. “You have no business here.”
“Oh, but it’s just too rich, my dear!” He swaggered closer with a gargoyle smile from ear to ear. “I told you she was trouble, Max. You should have listened to me.”
His pale eyes narrowed to slashes of wrathful warning. Albert foolishly kept taunting him. “The mighty Marquess of Rotherstone, laid low by a mere slip of a girl! Oh, how can this be happening? And to you, of all people, Max. For shame! There is no justice in the world. As rich as Croesus and nearly as high in rank as my idiot brother, and still she does not want you. Wonder why!”
They all three laughed.
Max stared at him in icy silence, but Daphne could not bear the way they were mocking him. “What were you doing, Albert, spying on us? You are so immature!”
“Ah, but you must grant a man a little moment’s gloat, my dear. You might at least afford me that much pleasure.”
She shook her head, remembering all too clearly Max’s lethal performance in Bucket Lane. “You’re being very stupid, Albert. I wouldn’t bait him if I were you.”
“Spare me your advice, dear lady.” Albert halted dangerously close to Max and stood smiling at him insufferably. “I’ve only come to offer Max my sympathy.”
Whether Albert did not realize he was in striking distance, or was emboldened by his brothers’ presence, she did not know. But Max had stepped off the footbridge, back onto the grassy banks of the ornamental lake.
Worried by his silence and his look of deepening rage, she glanced over at Warrington and Falconridge. The pair appeared completely nonchalant, keeping an eye on things, but quite unruffled by the opposition.
Indeed, as his friends looked on in cool amusement, Daphne realized they had total faith in his ability to handle all three Carew brothers on his own.
“So, welcome to the club, Max. Daphne Starling’s jilted admirers. What of it, Daphne? Will no man do? Perhaps you would prefer Carissa.”
Max stepped toward him.
Albert moved back quickly, laughing, baiting him. “And as for you, my dear Miss Starling,” he continued, “before you let this grand new conquest go to your head, it’s only fair to tell you the real reason he’s been pursuing you. Go on, Max, tell her about our little contest. Now that you’ve lost, she might as well know the truth.”
“What is he talking about?” she murmured.
“He’s a liar. Don’t listen to him,” Max answered barely audibly.
Albert scoffed. “I’m a liar? You’re the one who’s not telling the truth, old boy. Daphne, you daft chit, he doesn’t care about you. The only reason your fine Lord Rotherstone ever pursued you in the first place was to try to prove something to me. Isn’t that right, Max?”
He answered with his fist in Albert’s face. One neat blow that dropped him like a stone.
Daphne gasped while the other Carew brothers charged at Max in rage. He slammed his fist into the second man’s nose and kicked the third in the stomach, sending him crashing back into the lake.
Albert jumped up, but Max felled him again with a right-left pair of punches to his jaw and middle.
The second brother, Richard, climbed to his feet, but he took one look at Max’s glower and ran.
Daphne also stared at Max, but when he turned to her with guarded, simmering fury in his eyes, she could only shake her head at him in disbelief.
Without another word, shaken by the way his control had snapped, she turned away and walked over the arching bridge, leaving the scene of the fight and heading swiftly for the far side of the garden.
Carissa would be fine with his friends, and for her part, Daphne needed a moment to collect herself. His barbaric display merely confirmed that they were through.
Loud angry footfalls pounded on the wooden planks behind her. “Daphne, wait,” Max ordered in a taut tone.
She marched on. “Really, Max! A contest! I should have known! God, you are even worse than him. Let go of me!” she shouted when he took hold of her arm. She pivoted, glaring at him. “I am not marrying you!”
“You cannot believe his lies!”
“I don’t know what to believe anymore! If you’d try being open with me instead of manipulating—oh, forget the whole thing, Max! I’m telling my father right now that I am not marrying you.”
“Well, you’d better think again—”
“Your father’s broke,” he interrupted in a steely tone, “and I’ve already paid for you.”
She gasped, pulling back in astonishment; he stared at her in the darkness, not letting go of her.
“Take your hands off me,” she choked out.
Max instantly released her, only then realizing how hard he had been holding on.
Daphne stumbled back from him with a sob. “Stay away from me.” Without another word, she spun away and ran.
“Daphne!” he shouted after her.
“Let her go, man!” Lord Falconridge had strode over to his side. “What the hell are you doing? Trying to scare her? Haven’t you done enough harm for one night?”
Daphne fled, unable to stop the tears from flowing down her cheeks as she rushed out to the long winding drive where all the waiting carriages were parked.
Hard, cold, ruthless man!
She was not sure what she intended, but she had to get out of here. Blindly searching the long rows of carriages, she tried to find her family’s chariot. Footman William, she was sure, would drive her home.
“Daphne! Daphne? Please, wait!” From a distance, she heard Carissa calling to her.
She stopped and waited, wiping tears away, as her friend ran over to her.
“Oh, sweeting! Don’t run off. Where are you going?”
“Home. I have to find our carriage.”
“Are you all right?”
“I despise him, both of them—Papa and him! I can’t believe they did this to me, b-bought and sold me like a sack of flour. I will not stand for it!” she thundered in growing anger now that he was not there to terrify her. “All his ploys to charm me…If I never even had a choice, why didn’t they just say so? They were only humoring me. Oh, I feel like such a fool.” She shook her head. “A contest? And how could he use his fortune to take advantage of Papa?”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I just want to go home. But wait.” She paused. “I can’t.” Fresh tears surged into her eyes. “They are all against me.”
“Oh, how I wish I could help you. I don’t know what to do. Perhaps if I spoke to my cousins—”