“That sounds absolutely perfect,” James said.
He continually surprised her, understanding the things she valued without having to ask. “We had a particular spot we loved most.” She relived the memories even as she spoke of them. “It sat just far enough from the house that we could forget for a time the pull of responsibilities and worries. We were permitted to be carefree children for the hour or so we lingered there.”
“It was a happy place for you, then?”
She sighed. “Very.”
They turned down a path that led along the side of a copse of trees. A light breeze rustled the leaves and created ripples in the ankle-high grass just beyond the narrow path. Daphne leaned her head against his upper arm, discovering that doing so felt entirely natural.
“I was concerned about you last night,” he said. “You were very quiet.”
“I have had a lot on my mind.”
“Sometimes it helps to talk with someone,” James said.
She turned her face up to him. “You always have been quite willing to listen to me. And you even manage not to appear annoyed that I am taking up your time.”
“Perhaps that is because I am not annoyed.”
“Not at all?” She doubted he found recountings of her difficulties a pleasing way to pass an afternoon.
“I find I very much enjoy talking with you,” he said. “You are not empty-headed or demanding. Better yet, you are not a shrew.”
“A shrew?” Daphne chuckled at that. “I should hope not.”
He stopped walking, necessitating her own halt. James released her arm. Just as her heart began to drop, he stepped in front of her, taking her hands in his and smiling. “I have missed your laugh. It is far too rare a sound.”
Warmth stole across her face.
He stood silently watching her, his eyes continually drifting toward her mouth. Daphne’s heart pounded in her throat. He swallowed, still silent and intent on her face.
James pushed out a breath. “You’d best put that dimple away, Miss Lancaster. I swore quite faithfully to your sister that I would behave with utmost decorum.”
Somehow, that only made her smile wider.
He shook his head, a twinkle of amusement in his eyes. “See, now this is precisely why I had to decide against a picnic.” He began down the path once more.
Daphne quickly caught up to him. “A picnic?” She had yet to go on a picnic. The one in London hardly counted, having ended in such monumental disaster.
“I even inquired after your family’s traditional picnicking spot,” James said, his step very nearly jaunty. “It proved far too isolated, especially considering your unwillingness to keep your dimple out of sight.” He smiled at her as though he would rather be there with her than anywhere else in the world.
“What have you planned instead?”
He assumed a very serious demeanor, one belied by the lingering amusement that tugged at his mouth. “A most proper walk around the grounds, Miss Lancaster.”
“And there is no chance we might have a picnic?”
“Your sister and brother-in-law would decidedly disapprove. And though I am rather fond of picnics, I am also rather fond of being left alive.”
His teasing tone proved infectious. “I suppose your life would be a very steep price to pay for a single picnic.”
“I am pleased that you think so,” he said. She loved seeing him smile so freely. He rarely had before breaking with his father. “I am likewise pleased that you have agreed to such a lackluster activity as taking a turn with me. Strolling with a rather ordinary fellow cannot be nearly as enjoyable an excursion for a beautiful lady.”
A beautiful lady. To hide her furious blush, Daphne offered a light comment. “I do believe you are flirting with me.”
“I most certainly am,” he replied.
An excited yelping cut off whatever he intended to say next.
James turned in the direction of the sound. “Blast it,” he muttered under his breath. “That pup manages to ruin more moments . . .”
She slipped her hand from his and began leisurely walking back toward the house. “I’ll leave the two of you alone, then.”
He called after her, his voice nearly begging, “Please, don’t leave.”
The words reverberated in her mind, echoing in her own voice again and again, the sound reminiscent of the very little girl she’d once been, through her growing up years, and as recently as the silent pleas she’d held back during Linus’s departure. “Please, don’t leave” had ever been her words. So many times she had begged using that precise phrase, but never had it been directed at her.
She turned back just as James reached her. His was a look of near panic. Had he truly been so upset at the possibility of her walking away?
“Daphne,” he breathed out her name, relief filling the single word to near bursting. “I hadn’t meant to make such a mull of things. I have been racking my brain trying to think of the right way to go about all this, but romance and courtship are hardly my forte.”
“Romance?” The word emerged so quietly he likely hadn’t heard.
“You deserve all of that, but I’m such a muttonhead about it all. I will try. I swear I will. Only, please, Daphne.” He took hold of her hand, the gesture almost frantic. “Please, don’t leave me.”
Her heart pounded, her thoughts swirling around.
“I realize life has not taught you to trust easily. My own history with you has only added to that. But I swear to you, I will not walk out on you. So, please, do not walk out on me.”
Good heavens, he looked very nearly desperate, worried to the point of utter agitation.
“Why is it so important for me to stay?” she asked, praying his answer was the one she longed most to hear.
He gently took her face in his hands. Stepping closer to her and bending so they stood nearly eye to eye, he whispered, “Because I cannot live without you.” He closed his eyes, anguish radiating from him. “Because if you ever left me, I’d be broken. Just like Apollo mourned his Daphne the rest of his life. Just as your father still grieves for his wife. I’d be lost without you, Daphne.”
“Oh, James.” Emotion broke her words even as hope surged within her.
He leaned his forehead against hers, eyes still closed. “I love you,” he said quietly. “I love you.”
Words she thought never to hear, though she’d dreamed of him saying them since she was twelve years old. “I was not leaving, James.”
He opened his eyes and pulled back only enough to look at her. “Not now? Or not ever?” he pressed as though he depended on that answer to go on.
The implications of his question struck her with such force she required a moment to catch her breath. He wanted her with him always. He loved her. “I’ll not ever leave you, James.”
He kissed her gently, holding her with a tender earnestness, as though she were a very fragile treasure. He broke the seal of their lips but immediately thought better of it and kissed her once more.
“We should return to the house,” he said after a moment. “Else your brother-in-law will likely make good on his threats and murder me at last.”
“I won’t let him.”
He kept an arm around her waist as they walked up the path once more. “He is the Dangerous Duke,” he reminded her.
“Yes, but I am not afraid of him.”
James pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “You do not fear the Duke of Kielder. You were not intimidated by my father nor crushed by the unkindness of the Bowers, and by some miracle, you have begun to forgive me for my many trespasses against you.”
“I have had a very busy Season.”
He laughed and pulled her ever closer. “You are remarkable, my dear.”
She very much feared she would wake up at any moment to discover this all was little more
than a glorious dream.
Chapter Forty-Two
“Please drink it, Papa.” Daphne held a cup of steaming tea near her father’s mouth. “You need your rest, and this will help you sleep.”
He didn’t object. Daphne had tended to her father over the past week, her devotion to him evident in every tender ministration. James had declared her remarkable, but he was finding the word insufficient.
“Has he drunk it all, Miss Lancaster?” Mrs. Ashton slipped past James and into the room. Daphne’s attentions to her father had allowed the nurse a moment to herself now and then, something for which she’d praised the heavens. “I’d like to see him resting more peacefully.”
“As would I.” Daphne rose, though her concerned gaze didn’t leave her father’s face. “He does seem a little improved this past week.”
“That’s your tonic’s doing.” Mrs. Ashton took Daphne’s vacated chair. “Now you just leave Mr. Lancaster to my care. His lordship’s anxious for your company, I daresay.”
Daphne looked over at James, giving him that secret smile she only ever offered him. “You’ve been very patient.”
He dismissed the apology he heard in her words. “It is always a pleasure to watch you healing.”
She slipped her hand in his without hesitation, without worry. How far they’d come in so short a time. He was quite possibly the luckiest man in all the world.
Artemis stood in the corridor, just to the side of Mr. Lancaster’s bedchamber door.
“Papa is awake if you wish to see him,” Daphne told her sister.
Artemis shrugged a single shoulder. “I was only passing by.”
“But you haven’t looked in on him even once this past week.” Daphne set her hand on Artemis’s arm.
Artemis pulled free. “He hasn’t mentioned me once these past fifteen years. He doesn’t miss me, and I don’t miss him.” She flipped her hair as she walked away, chin held defiantly high.
James didn’t believe the show of indifference. Daphne likely didn’t either.
“It seems your entire family has been wounded in one way or another by your father’s decline.”
Daphne nodded, her eyes still trained on Artemis’s retreating form. “We will all have to make our peace with it in our own way.”
He heard tears in her voice. “Darling?”
“I worry about her, is all. And Linus. And Athena. And Persephone.” She turned a tremulous smile up to him. “Now you’ll likely tell me I worry too much.”
“You care, Daphne. I love that about you.” He ran his finger along her suddenly rosy cheek. “And I love the way you blush.”
“How fortunate for you, then, that I blush so easily.”
He took her hand once more and walked with her toward the back of the house. “How soon does your family mean to leave for Northumberland?”
“In only a fortnight or so. Persephone and Adam wish to begin preparing the Falstone Castle nursery and interviewing for a local nursemaid.”
Only two weeks. “I suppose you’ll have to go with them.”
She rested her head against his shoulder as they stepped outside. “I can’t very well stay. Father is hardly an acceptable chaperone.”
“No, he is not.” It was an unfortunate thing for many reasons. “This house will be so empty without you.”
“I have always been the one who was left behind,” she said. “I’m not at all accustomed to being the one doing the leaving.”
James’s heart lodged in his throat. He forced his next words out despite the impediment. “You could stay. I wish you would, in fact.”
“I can’t. We aren’t family.”
He pressed forward while his courage held out. “I’d like us to be, my dearest Daphne.” He stopped and turned to face her, taking her hands in his. “I know I have a great deal yet to atone for, and I do not yet deserve your full trust, but someday, someday soon, I hope—I pray that I will have proven myself worthy of your love and affection.”
She kissed his cheek, something she did more and more often of late. “You have it already, James.”
“But do I have enough of it to hope that one day we’ll never have to be apart?”
Her eyes flew to his face. “What is it you’re asking of me?”
He lifted her hands one at a time to his lips. “I am asking if you . . . Will you marry me, Daphne?”
Her smile blossomed on the instant, though she didn’t answer his hastily posed question.
“My dear?” he pressed nervously.
“Of course my answer is yes. A thousand times yes.”
Relief rushed over him. He pulled her into his arms, pressing light kisses to her hair and face. “I will do everything in my power to secure your happiness,” he said between kisses. “I swear it.”
A yelp followed that sounded strikingly like agreement.
He ceased his show of affection long enough to cast his meddlesome puppy a disapproving but amused glare. “Have you been eavesdropping this entire time, you unmannered mongrel?”
“The little scamp,” Daphne added.
James chuckled. Then, wrapping his arms around her once more, lifted her from the ground and spun her about in a show of unabashed celebration, their laughter echoing through the trees around them.
Chapter Forty-Three
The Duke of Kielder really ought to be given full rein of everything in the kingdom. The man regularly accomplished the impossible. Only ten days had passed since James had sought formal permission from the gentleman to marry Daphne, and there they were, married and ready to embark on an abbreviated wedding trip he’d not been required to plan or finance.
“I cannot abide the sight of newlyweds,” His Grace had said when James had objected. “I am paying you to get out of my sight—a wedding gift to myself. Say another word against the idea, and I’ll toss you off the roof.”
So James had graciously conceded the point and opted not to bring up the fact that the duke had obtained and paid for the special license that had allowed them to marry in such short order. He also kept mum about the miraculous arrival of his mother in Shropshire. Except for her short and somewhat dismal trip to London, that lady had not left the immediate grounds of Techney Manor in twenty years. Ben made the journey from Northumberland, bringing with him the regrets of the Windover family that Mrs. Windover’s fast-approaching confinement did not allow them to attend.
Perhaps the most miraculous occurrence of all was Father’s presence. His attitude shocked both James and his brother into near incoherence. He did not once attempt to bully or threaten or intimidate them. He spoke to Daphne with utmost gentility and respect. He mostly ignored his wife, something for which they were all immensely grateful. The only person with whom his interactions were not outwardly unexceptional was the duke. James did not know what precisely had passed between the two gentlemen beyond what he’d seen at the memorable family dinner several weeks earlier, but he knew without a doubt that his usually blustery father was utterly terrified of his son’s new brother-in-law.
James stood near the entryway, waiting. Three hours had passed since the wedding. A seemingly endless meal celebrating the marriage had finally reached its conclusion, and any moment now, his new bride would join him, and they could begin their journey. A smile tugged at his mouth. His new bride. Not a month ago, he’d been plagued with doubts, wondering what miracle would be required to finally win her heart and her trust. Now he had a lifetime in which to prove himself worthy of it.
“A word with you.” The duke spoke as he strode to where James stood. The man would likely always be intimidating, though James found he did not feel quite so nervous in his presence as he once had.
“Certainly, Your Grace.”
The duke gave him a look of complete annoyance. “I will not be ‘Your Grace’-ed by my own family—at least not those on the Lancast
er side. Like it or not, you’re included in that number.”
“I find I like it very much,” James said. Daphne always smiled when her brother-in-law grumbled in that irritated manner. James had not yet reached that level of familiarity but almost felt a bubble of amusement.
“The relations I can tolerate call me Adam,” he said but not in a way that would naturally invite familial regard. Somehow, though, the invitation did not feel begrudgingly made.
“I will attempt to do so,” James said, “though I admit it will not come naturally.”
“Of course it won’t. You are not a presumptuous mushroom. Work on it—you’ll get it eventually.”
“I will.”
The duke’s expression shifted quickly from annoyance to threat. James took an involuntary step backward.
“I believe it is customary,” the duke said, his tone low and a bit ominous, “for a guardian to spout vague threats to his ward’s new husband should that husband bring any harm to his new wife.”
James nodded, glancing quickly at the duke’s right boot, where he’d learned a dagger was always sheathed.
“I, however, do not make vague threats.” The duke’s eyes narrowed. “Should you show yourself in any way less than worthy of the trust Daphne has placed in you, you will find yourself swinging from the gibbet at Falstone Castle, taken down regularly to be beaten, then locked in irons in the dungeon and placed in the room I refer to as the Rat’s Nest, where the vermin will be delighted to make your better acquaintance. You will next be invited to join me in my vast, dense forest, where I will leave you for the wolves to chew on.”
That threat was about as far from vague as possible. “I understand, Your Grace.”
“You don’t look worried.” The pronouncement seemed to simultaneously annoy and please the duke.
“I have no intention of ever mistreating Daphne,” James said. “She is far too precious to me. If I appear unconcerned by your very thorough description of torture, it is only because I know I will never do anything that will warrant such treatment.”
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