Page 69 of The Lady Knows Best

“I don’t care to dwell too long on the symbolism,” he said softly. A wry smile played about his mouth as he plucked the piece from her hand and returned it to its proper place on the board.

While the others filed from the library behind Miles, who had promised a cold collation in the dining room, Daphne hung back to speak with Lord Ryland, who was studying a pair of sketches done by Lady Deveraux in her youth.

“You have visited Lyneham Park many times,” she remarked, coming to stand beside him.

“Too many to count,” he agreed. “I came for the first time the summer I turned thirteen.”

Daphne pretended to turn her attention to the pictures. “Is Lord Deveraux always so thoughtful about his grandmother’s birthday?”

“Well, it is rather a special year—she will be eighty on the first of July.”

“Remarkable. I wonder . . .” She paused, uncertain what to ask, or how much she really wanted to know. “It’s quite a coincidence, is it not, with such a momentous family occasion on the horizon, that he should make a wager requiring him to marry by the end of June? And that he should choose to do so here, at Lyneham Park?”

He did not move, and yet she was aware that his posture had stiffened. “Quite,” he acknowledged after a moment. “Young men do make rash bets, I’m afraid.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“My friend is fortunate—most fortunate—to come out ahead this time.”

Understanding that he intended to pay her a compliment, Daphne dipped her head. “He did not want to disappoint Lady Deveraux.” She still could not wrap her mind around the wager, but she was beginning to grasp that Miles had believed his marriage would make his grandmother happy, a sort of present for her, if not for himself.

A strange sort of sacrifice, made out of the love Daphne had once believed a man like him incapable of feeling.

“No,” acknowledged Lord Ryland readily. Then he tilted his head just enough to meet her eye. “But I have known both of them for many years, and if I may say so, it is something else again to see both of them so well pleased.”

Could he be right? Did the thought of marrying Daphne make Miles happy too?

With a bow, Lord Ryland turned away and left her to contemplate Lady Deveraux’s pen and ink drawings, one of a building that was probably the village church, and another of a young man who looked like, but was not, Miles.

Oh, she ought never to have come here.

But then, countered the inner voice that was not Miss Busy B., you might never have learned the truth. You might have missed seeing the real him.

Was the man at Lyneham Park the real Miles?

Or was the real Miles the rake who held her secret, and her future, in his remarkably skillful hands?

From the doorway, Bell called for her. “Luncheon’s ready, Daph.”

“I’m not hungry,” she replied. “I think I’ll just go to my room for a bit.” She hoped Lady Stalbridge had returned her writing desk.

She had an essay to write—a very different essay from the one she’d begun last week.

CHAPTER 22

Miles’s high hopes for the drive into the village faltered when the arrangement of the two carriages somehow ended with Daphne in one conveyance with his grandmama and Alistair in the other with Miles.

The ladies had all declared that since the barouche seated four perfectly, they would not be separated, and Lord Stalbridge had preferred to ride on horseback, leaving Miles alone in his glossy curricle, with its snug seat for two. With an apologetic shrug, Alistair had climbed in beside him. “Could be worse, old man,” he insisted.

But at present, Miles wasn’t sure how.

Not a moment for private conversation between him and Daphne since last night—unless one counted those few seconds in the library this morning, which he had squandered with a bawdy remark about the broken chess piece. Not a moment to ascertain how she was feeling, whether she had any regrets. (He was confident she’d had at least some satisfactions.)

Two bloody hours he might have spent in wooing—genuinely wooing, this time—and he would have to bloody waste half the time bumping along the bloody road beside Alistair.

The heavy barouche traveled more slowly, so he’d opted to let its driver set the pace, which now only increased his frustration. And when Stalbridge trotted past and drew abreast of the ladies’ open carriage, chatting amiably with them as they rolled along, Miles muttered a string of epithets beneath his breath.

“I wouldn’t curse him too heartily,” Alistair advised.