Page 53 of The Lady Knows Best

He hadn’t given his own happiness much thought. Nor had he thought about love—well, other than his grandmother’s love for him, and in turn, his for her. Excepting, perhaps, Alistair’s sisters, he had never spent much time with the sort of women a man like him was expected to marry. He had fully expected—accepted—that the woman he married would be accomplished and proper, which was to say dull and passionless.

All that mattered was that she be the sort of woman with whom Grandmama wouldn’t object to sharing the name Lady Deveraux.

He hadn’t expected to have any trouble finding such a woman. He was titled, good looking, and rich, after all. He’d spoken rashly, as he often did, and taken the wagers against him in good fun.

He certainly hadn’t expected Daphne.

“Do you think she’ll like her?”

Alistair, who knew him better than he knew himself, understood the question, despite its ambiguities. Miles could see it on his face. But being Alistair—which was to say, cautious, thoughtful, and just a little bit sanctimonious—he had to spell it out.

“Do I think . . . ?”

He was pacing in front of a tall decorative screen that divided the bedchamber from the dressing room. It was covered with pictures of naked cherubs, cavorting across a blue sky dotted with fluffy clouds. It had been standing in that spot the first time Alistair visited Lyneham Park, at an age when cavorting, naked anything had been of interest—perhaps too much interest—to both of them. In more recent years, Miles had offered to replace it, but Alistair had laughed and said he wouldn’t recognize his room without it.

“Do I think that your grandmother will like the woman with whom you are about to take the vows of holy matrimony, a young lady you hardly know—one who seems, forgive me, less than enthusiastic about the prospect of marrying you—and to whom you only proposed to avoid losing a foolish bet you made to find a wife by her birthday? Is that—is that really what you’re asking?”

“Christ,” Miles muttered, running a hand through his hair. “When you put it that way . . .”

Alistair dropped into the chair opposite Miles and tipped his head against its tall back. “How else am I to put it?”

“Well, you could start by leaving out anything to do with the wager. Grandmama must never know I’ve been gambling.”

Alistair’s chin dropped forward far enough that he could fix Miles with a dark, level stare. “It’s been in all the papers, old chap. Newspapers from which I’ve heard Lady Deveraux’s companion read aloud to her on more than one occasion.”

“Oh, that.” Miles dismissed the concern with a flick of his wrist. “I instructed the servants a decade ago to skip over any item that makes mention of me.”

“Must make the news rather thin, some days. More of a leaflet, really.” To emphasize the point, he drew a small rectangle in the air with his fingertips.

“And,” Miles continued, ignoring him, “I don’t see any reason to mention how well Miss Burke and I do, or do not, know one another. People marry on short acquaintance all the time.”

“They do.” He managed, somehow, with two short words, to make clear he thought it an ill-advised practice.

“So then, it’s really just a matter of Miss Burke’s supposed reluctance. Is she reluctant, do you think?”

“You tell me.”

The truth was a leaden weight in Miles’s chest. How good it would feel to relieve himself of the burden, to tell Alistair about Miss Busy B., his damnable insistence that Daphne owed him a bride, the wobble in her lip and the fire in her eye when she’d offered herself instead.

“Though I suppose we’ll know soon enough,” Alistair said, pushing to his feet again, “when the Burke clan descends on Lyneham Park.” He made his way across the room, this time to the window. “Or doesn’t.”

“She’ll come,” Miles vowed harshly. What choice did she have?

And when she did, she would see why he’d done it. He would show her his home, show her this part of himself that almost no one had ever seen.

He would prove to her that he was more than that devil, Deveraux.

CHAPTER 17

At least the presence of Bellis and Lord Stalbridge in the traveling coach had made it impossible for Lady Stalbridge to press Daphne for details about the essay on rakes—or anything else.

Daphne had never been able to determine how much, or even if, Lord Stalbridge knew about the magazine. He seemed a fair-minded, easygoing sort, and clearly head over ears in love with his wife. But none of that meant he would be pleased to discover she was the leader of a secret cabal of young ladies writing to encourage others of their sex to rebel against authority and throw off the burdensome yoke of society’s expectations.

“This is a pretty part of the county,” he declared, inspecting from the window as the carriage rolled past green fields. “I think we must be almost there.”

At those words, the lid of the basket on her sister’s lap popped up and Eileen stuck her head out, as if the cat were determined to see for herself whether it was true. Though never particularly happy about being confined to her basket, she was a seasoned traveler, having made her first lengthy voyage, including a trip across the Irish Sea, as a kitten.

With a sideways glance at Daphne to see if she had noticed, Bell poked the cat’s pink nose back into the basket and held the lid shut more securely. Daphne had urged her to leave the cat at Finch House, but Bell had insisted Lord Deveraux wouldn’t mind. “He likes animals, remember?” she had said, a clear reference to his behavior the night before last, after dinner.