Page 74 of The Lady Knows Best

At that veiled reference to their shared, itchy malady, Gabriel fidgeted and Cami raised a quelling eyebrow at him. “Never better.”

“Have you met Lord Ryland, Lord Deveraux’s friend?”

Gabriel and Lord Ryland nodded and explained they had been acquainted in Town.

“But where is Deveraux?” Gabriel asked the room.

“Called away, I’m afraid,” said Lord Ryland. “I’m sure he will join us for dinner. If he can.”

“You must be wishing for an opportunity for some family conversation,” said Lady Deveraux, planting her cane and attempting to push to her feet.

“Do not let us displace you, ma’am,” Cami insisted, without denying the older woman’s supposition. “I’m sure there must be somewhere else—”

Bellis appeared in the doorway, looking flustered. “What did I miss?”

Daphne rose. “With your permission, ma’am,” she said to Lady Deveraux, “we’ll go down to the drawing room.”

“An excellent notion,” said Lady Deveraux, settling back into her chair. “But I’m sure our travelers must also have need of some refreshment. Shall we all join you in the dining room in an hour for a light luncheon?”

Murmurs of agreement passed around the room. Lady Deveraux sent Miss Palmer with a message for the cook, while Daphne gestured her eldest sister toward the door. As she passed Bellis, she said in a low voice, “Did you forget your book?”

A flicker of confusion crossed Bell’s brow, and then she laughed. “Silly me. I’ll fetch it and meet you in the drawing room. I won’t be a minute.”

In fact, the task took at least ten minutes—time Cami did not waste.

Hardly had the footman closed the drawing room door than she asked again about Miles’s absence. “It shows a remarkable lack of manners. Did he not expect us?”

“The precise day of your arrival was not known,” Daphne pointed out. “To say nothing of the hour.”

Gabriel laid a soothing hand on his wife’s shoulder. “And many things may demand a gentleman’s attention.”

“Doubtless some amusement called him back to Town.”

Astonished even by the suggestion, though her own speculations would have run along a similar path not so long ago, Daphne hardly knew what to say. But Gabriel calmly reminded Cami, “We would have passed him on the road.”

Rather than let herself be consoled, Cami began a different line of questioning. “What of the wedding plans? No one breathed a word upstairs—almost as if he has no intention of going through with it, as if he simply wanted to humiliate you, or—or drag you to the middle of nowhere, apart from your family, and have his way with—”

“Cami!”

No one had heard the door open, but Bellis stood just inside it now, mouth agape. “How could you say such things? I assure you, Lord Deveraux has behaved with perfect decorum since we arrived—”

Daphne managed, somehow, to keep herself from choking, though her cheeks prickled with heat.

“And Lord and Lady Stalbridge have been most attentive,” Bell continued. “We have hardly been friendless here. We have not been gallivanting about the country unchaperoned.”

Cami looked chagrined by that reprimand, a pointed reminder of her own past misdeeds.

Gabriel hid his smile with his hand.

Their eldest sister sank down on a chair, and her husband came to stand behind her. “I’m sorry,” Cami said, looking from Bell to Daphne. “It’s just that, for so long now, it’s been my job to worry . . .”

“Your job, Cami?” Daphne came to sit in the chair next to hers and reached for her hand. “Did Mama, or Papa, ask you to—”

“No,” she confessed with a shake of her head. “Of course not. It’s just that, as the eldest, I—”

“Felt responsible,” supplied Bell, still standing several feet away. “But we’re not children anymore. We have to be allowed to make a few of our own mistakes.”

Cami seized on those words. “So, you think it’s a mistake, too, Daphne’s decision to marry this—this—”