And the Miss Ran Away With the Rake

chapter 16



I will not be parted from you. I will find you, my dearest love. This, I promise.

The last letter ever penned by Mr. Dishforth (well, nearly the last one)




When Henry came to, it was to the faces of Preston and Hen staring down at him.

“What happened?” he moaned, pushing aside the beefsteak resting over his eye and trying to sit up.

Preston pushed him back down. “You were blindsided by Dale.”

“The brute,” Hen complained. “Loathsome, horrible man!”

Dale?

Then it all came back to him. The argument. Daphne’s gasp as she turned around. And then the blackness.

This time he managed to struggle up to a sitting position. They were in the private dining room he’d ordered up. The dinner still sat on the sideboard, untouched.

“Where is Daphne? Where is she? I must speak to her—”

Again, Preston pushed him back down onto the settee. “She’s gone, my good man. Spirited off by her cousin.”

“Gone?” Henry shook his head, pushing past Preston and going for the door. “We have to go after them. We have to stop them!”

“Can’t.”

Henry turned to his nephew. “Can’t or you won’t?”

“Can’t,” Preston told him.

“Shouldn’t!” Hen enthused. “You are well rid of her, if you want my opinion.”

“Well, I don’t,” Henry told her. Hen looked ready to open her mouth and contradict him, but he cut her off. “Not another word, Hen. Need I remind you what you told Preston and me after you married Michaels?”

Her brow furrowed as she recalled her words. “The situation is hardly the same.”

Preston grimaced and looked about to argue, but one glare from Hen stayed his retort.

“I am going to marry Daphne Dale and you had best get used to it.”

Henry’s adamant announcement sent Hen staggering back, as if he’d struck her. “Never,” she told him. “Besides, she’s well and gone, and by tomorrow she will be too far from your reach to ever discover again. See if they don’t hide her away.”

“I’ll catch them before they reach Blackford,” Henry swore, wrenching open the door as much as holding onto to it to steady himself.

“Can’t,” Preston repeated.

“Whyever not?” Henry asked, a thousand thoughts going through his head. How he’d been an ass. A fool. He should have told her. She loved him and had known. Probably, knowing Daphne, she’d been testing him.

Of course, she had. Given him any number of chances to come clean.

And he’d failed her.

“Because the viscount took all the horses with him. Gave the innkeeper a ridiculous amount of money to allow him to take all the mounts. There isn’t a nag to be had—save my cattle, but they’re dead tired and need to be rested.” Preston shook his head. “Tomorrow. We’ll catch up with them tomorrow. I promise.”

But Crispin proved to be a wary adversary and thwarted Henry’s chase at every turn, bribing the tollgate keepers to delay them unnecessarily, hiring up all the changes at nearly every post, and driving at an indecent speed to beat them back to Langdale.

Daphne found herself locked in her cousin’s carriage, and only let out to use the necessary. And when she‘d nearly managed to slip away once, her determined cousin had caught her, tossed her over his shoulder and carted her right back to her prison.

“Lord Henry will save me,” she told Crispin over and over again, her frantic thoughts going back to the last time she saw him, laying on the floor of the inn.

She didn’t even know if he lived, and she doubted Crispin cared that he might have committed murder.

“He’ll come and save me,” she insisted.

“He can try,” was all Crispin would say in return.

But by the fourth day, Daphne had no idea where Henry might be. She was exhausted and battered from being tossed about the carriage, furious beyond measure at Crispin’s high-handed ways, and wishing over and over she’d told Henry everything that beautiful afternoon beneath the oak tree.

“Oh, Henry, come find me,” she whispered up to the stars night after night, hoping one of them would take pity on her and carry her message to her love.

But when Crispin’s carriage rolled into Langdale, she knew her chances of rescue were dimming. So close to Owle Park, and yet they might as well have taken a ship to the Orient.

Lord Henry would hardly expect Lord Dale to bring her right back to the original scene of the crime.

Nor did she have any hope of effecting an escape.

Especially when she was let out to find not only Great-Aunt Damaris on the front steps but also the Right Honorable Matheus Dale beaming down at her as if she had just stepped out in her finest, most fashionable London garb.

Matheus Dale? Oh, they wouldn’t.

It seemed they would.

Not that anyone was going to explain their plans to her, not that they needed to. Given the haze of tears on Phi’s face, Daphne had her answer.

And late that night, Phi came to her door, to the room where they’d locked her in “for her own good.”

“Cousin?” Phi whispered as she scratched quietly at the door.

“Phi?” Daphne sat up, then rushed to the door, kneeling before it, her fingers pressed to the solid oak barring her escape. “Whatever is going to be done? They aren’t going to—” She couldn’t even finish the thought.

Matheus Dale?! She shuddered.

“Yes, I fear so!” Phi whispered back. “But they are awaiting a Special License.”

“Get me out,” Daphne begged.

“I cannot. Aunt Damaris has the key well hidden.”

Daphne sank deeper into the door. “Oh, Phi, I love him. With all my heart, I love him.”

“I’m so sorry, Daphne. So very sorry.”

And then Phi was gone.

Two days passed, with Daphne’s only contact being a surly old maid who had no use for pleas or entreaties.

Once Matheus came to the door to invite her downstairs to sup, and she tossed a vase at the panel in a defiant reply.

As night fell that second day, Daphne heard an odd sound. A ssssh that whispered loudly in the silence. She glanced over at the door and spied a note that had been shoved beneath.

Daphne leapt upon it, her heart hammering. And indeed, when she turned it over, she found it addressed to:

Miss Spooner.

She hugged it close, and then just as quickly ripped it open.

Open your window, my love. Let me in.

Open her window? Good heavens, she was on the third floor.

Yet when she got to her window, hauling back the heavy drapes, and then pulling and yanking the sash open, there was Lord Henry climbing up a rope that seemed to dangle from the roof above.

He swung himself into the room. “Minx!” he cried out as he opened his arms to her.

Daphne rushed to him. “How did you . . . Whatever were you thinking? . . . Oh, I am ever so glad you’ve come.”

“Yes, to all of that,” he told her, smoothing back her tumbled hair. “But first this.”

And then he kissed her, and all her worries and fears and the buckets of tears she’d shed were all forgotten. The moment his lips touched hers, she knew that everything would be as it should.

When they paused, if only to gasp for breath, she rushed to ask, “How did you know how to find me? Let alone—” She waved her hand at the open window as if she still couldn’t quite believe it.

“The stable lad,” he told her, kissing her brow and her cheeks, as if he couldn’t get enough of her.

“The stable lad?”

“Yes, the one from the inn who told that horrible bouncer about Dishforth.”

“Whatever has he to do with all this?”

“Apparently he feels quite wretched over his poor dissembling—”

“Oh my! He didn’t get sacked, did he?”

Henry shook his head. “Seems he’s a dab hand with horses, but not much for telling a lie.”

“He is that,” Daphne said with a laugh and then covered her mouth. “We must be quiet.”

He nodded and lowered his voice. “The boy came up to Owle Park this afternoon and offered to help.”

She shook her head. “I don’t see how he could.”

Henry’s eyes lit up with mischief. “His sister works here. She’s a chambermaid. Knows the house inside and out. She smuggled him and the rope up to the roof. Couldn’t manage the key. Still, it was all I needed. Some way to get inside, to get to you.”

“To rescue me,” she said, grinning at him. Her own knight-errant. Then she realized something else. “However do you intend to get me out?” She looked in horror at the rope hanging outside her window.

She rather preferred a rescue that involved the backstairs and a hasty retreat in a good carriage.

“I’m going to climb back out—”

Daphne was already shaking her head. “I can’t . . . I’ll never be able to—”

“You don’t have to. Roxley is going to come to the front door and insist you be released.”

“Whyever would Crispin release me just because the Earl of Roxley insists?”

“Once we are married, he’ll have no choice but to let my wife go.”

“Married?” she gasped.

“Yes, married,” he told her, his gaze searching her gaze for some sign of agreement. So to press his point—and also to reassure her he hadn’t gone stark raving mad—he opened up his coat and dug out a piece of paper. “I’ve a Special License. All you need to do is sign it and the vicar will marry us.”

Daphne wasn’t too sure she’d heard him correctly. Get married? “Henry, I haven’t a vicar handy.”

“Ah, but minx, I do.”

Daphne gazed up at him with disbelief in her eyes. He had to admit it was a madcap scheme, but surely she would appreciate that point.

“Well, I haven’t the vicar just yet. I will in about an hour,” Henry told her. “Didn’t know how long it would take to climb that wall, so Preston is waiting with the fellow just on the other side of the line and will be here at the top of the hour.” He nodded to the mantel clock.

“So we have some time to wait?” Daphne asked in a low, sultry voice that caught his attention like a lure.

“Um, yes,” he managed, his throat going dry. But as she came gliding into his arms, he found the words to murmur in her ear. “You wicked, tempting minx.”

“I’ve missed you,” was all she said before she rose up on her tiptoes and kissed him. Claimed him.

“And I, you.”

Murmuring apologies and words of love, they fell into her bed, a tangle of limbs and kisses. The moment he touched her, he was lost—hard and delirious. His lips kissing her, claiming her. His hands stealing away her gown so she was naked beneath him.

Gloriously naked and his.

Her legs opened to him and she took him inside her with little prelude. It was a hot, fierce joining. A reunion and a promise. He thrust deeply and swiftly into her, as if he’d hungered for her for years instead of just days.

And beneath him, Daphne writhed with joy, her hips meeting his thrusts, her legs winding around him, holding him closer as she rocked against him.

When she began to cry out, forgetting even their perilous situation, he covered her mouth with another kiss that contained his own deep growl of possession as he came, filling her with his seed, thrusting and thrusting until he was spent.

It was hasty, hot and quick.

But neither of them minded. They had a wedding to see to. And the rest of their lives to make love.

Beneath Daphne’s window, Preston was waging another sort of battle.

“This is highly irregular, Your Grace,” the vicar complained as he looked up at the happy couple standing in the window. He was new to his posting and still fresh from his recent ordination. “The lady looks . . . well, she appears to be . . .”

“Tumbled, I’d say. And thoroughly,” Roxley said, filling in where the blushing vicar wouldn’t.

If the man of God wasn’t blushing before, he turned a deep shade of scarlet now.

“Then I’d say it is best we see them married in all due haste,” Preston pointed out.

“Yes, I suppose so, Your Grace,” the vicar said, looking up at the window and around the darkened yard.

Preston had to imagine no amount of divinity school had prepared the poor fellow for this.

Roxley leaned forward and added to the argument. “Might I emphasize the haste part. The Dales aren’t averse to letting their dogs loose. Rather large ones.”

The man squirmed at the dilemma before him, tugging at his collar. “Still, this is a rather difficult moral position, if I must say.”

Preston got to the point. “Do you find your living at Owle Park difficult, sir?”

The man gulped. “No, Your Grace. Not in the least. Why, it is quite comfortable and—”

It was then that the man caught the duke’s meaning.

But Preston wanted to make sure the man understood. “Marry my uncle quickly and quietly before he ruins Miss Dale.” They all took another glance up at the bride and groom.

“Yet again,” Roxley added with a grin.





Epilogue

The Elephant and Whistle Inn

The Manchester and Glasgow Road

Fifteen years later

“Henry, I believe we stayed at this inn,” Lady Henry Seldon commented as she climbed out of their carriage, looking around the yard. “Indeed, I am positive.” She smiled brightly at her husband, enchanted by the notion.

“Ever the romantic, my dearest Daphne,” Lord Henry said, kissing her hand and then her lips. How was it he could never, even after all these years, have enough of her, his fair wife. Not even five children—four boys and one girl—had changed her in his eyes. They’d only made her more beautiful.

Her blue eyes sparkled as she recognized the lascivious light in his own gaze. She flitted a glance to where their poor beleaguered nanny was guiding the children inside for the luncheon, then back to her husband. “Tonight,” she whispered.

There had been many such nights since their madcap wedding. After Preston had finally coerced the vicar into marrying them, there had been the scene with Crispin and Damaris.

At first, the viscount had been incredulous at Roxley’s demands, even when the earl had produced the signed and witnessed Special License, as well as the trembling vicar to attest to the validity of the marriage. But after opening Daphne’s door and finding a grinning Henry Seldon in her bedroom, that had been all the evidence Crispin Dale had needed to wash his hands of his sullied cousin.

Oh, their marriage had caused more than just a dustup; even Daphne’s parents had refused to acknowledge the newlyweds. Hen wouldn’t speak to either of them for months, not until they’d announced that Daphne was increasing. That also managed to ease the tensions with the Dales—for being a prolific lot, the Dales adored children. Lots of them.

Daphne’s parents were the first to send their congratulations.

And Zillah? Well, Zillah had been the most shocking.

For they hadn’t heard a word from her in over a year, until the gossip made the rounds that a little Seldon would be making his or her debut in the spring. And then Zillah had arrived, knitting in hand, and with all her trunks.

For while the Dales were prolific, the Seldons regarded babies as something close to the second coming. And Zillah was going to be there when this newest Seldon arrived.

Then Zillah had stayed, she and Daphne finding much in common in their love of the growing brood. The Seldon relic had lived happily with them at Stowting Mote until just this past winter, when the old girl had finally gone in her sleep, a quiet, peaceful ending to a long and scandalous life.

The children missed the old girl and the hours they’d spent with her by the piano listening to her play.

That was the reason for this journey north. Zillah had left them a collection of houses, this last one in Scotland, of all places.

“I had no idea she had so much property,” Henry had said, shaking his head when the solicitor had brought her will to the house. Six in all. One for each of their children, and a spare one in Scotland that they’d decided to go visit.

“Shall we?” Daphne asked, tugging his thoughts back to the present.

“Yes, of course,” Henry said. Taking her hand in his, they walked into the public room, only to find the entire place packed, nearly every bench and stool filled.

Henry had never seen an inn so crowded.

“Mama, it’s him! It’s—” young Harriet whispered as she caught her mother’s hand and pulled her forward.

The boys shushed their sister and stopped her rush to tattle, but now the cat was out of the bag.

“Who, Harry?” Henry asked, brushing his hand over his daughter’s fair head. “Who is it?”

The children shared a guilty glance until Christopher, the eldest, piped up. “Mr. Dishforth.”

“Wha-a—at?” Henry and Daphne said at once.

Harriet pointed to a spot near the fireplace where an old man sat hunched on a stool, the entire room fixed on his every word.

“How can this—” Henry began, but all around them, the crowd added their own “Ssshh!” to stop his words, while Daphne gaped in wonder.

“So I stole my dearest Adelaide away from the villainous nobleman who had locked her away, and we rode north—” the old man was saying.

Henry was about to get up and protest when he spied the mischievous light in Daphne’s eyes and so he followed her lead and listened to the tale of Abernathy Dishforth and his dearest Adelaide. The story vaguely resembled their mad-cap dash, for this one contained a host of villains: highwaymen, broken wheels, their carriage nearly tumbling down a rocky ravine.

The crowd around them listened avidly, cheering when the couple made it to Gretna Green, and there was hardly a dry eye in the house as Mr. Dishforth related Adelaide’s sad passing of late.

Henry leaned forward and whispered in Daphne’s ear, “This is the devil who’s been dunning me all these years.”

For indeed, several times a year, bills from inns and public houses along Manchester Road would arrive addressed to Lord Henry Seldon for the expense and care of one Abernathy Dishforth.

Henry and Daphne had long suspected that someone, a con artist of sorts, had heard their story all those years ago and occasionally put the tale to good use. Now it seemed they’d found the fellow.

“Finally I can put an end to this gull,” Henry said.

“Leave him be,” Daphne replied, putting a staying hand on his sleeve. “I rather like that our story is told. Look around—who doesn’t love a happy ending?”

And indeed, people were smiling and laughing, and a few were dashing aside tears.

Who was Henry to ruin such a tale?

“Papa?” Harriet asked as they returned to their carriage. “Was that really Mr. Dishforth?”

“I daresay we’ll find out when they charge us twice,” Lord Henry complained.

Daphne laughed. “I think it must be, Harriet. But however did you find out about Mr. Dishforth?”

“Last Christmas. When we went to visit Lady Roxley at Foxgrove,” she said, yawning and ready for her afternoon nap. “She knows all about him. Have you heard of him as well?”

“Aye, sweetling. He used to write me letters.”

Harriet’s eyes grew wide. “Did you write him back?”

Daphne leaned over and whispered in her ear. “Yes, I quite fancied him once. But don’t tell your father.”

Harriet Hathaway has only one wish when it comes to love: to marry the Earl of Roxley. But wishing for his heart and keeping it, Harriet will soon learn, takes more than casting up a whispered desire to earn the perfect happily ever after.