Since Daphne had been a girl of five, challenging him for the rights to his family’s lake, she’d always shown a wicked delight in teasing him. At eight and twenty years, she was no different.
Daniel laughed, the sound emerging rusty from ill-use. “Oh?” he drawled and picked up his uncle’s now empty snifter. As he came around his desk, starting for the sideboard, Daphne furrowed her brow. Offering her resignation. Reaching the mahogany piece stocked with liquor, he gave his head a wry shake. Then he registered the absolute silence blanketing the room. Bottle of brandy and glass in hand, he turned.
Daphne remained precisely where she’d stood since his uncle had taken his leave. Her freckles stood out stark against her pale cheeks. “This is no jest, Daniel,” she said quietly. “I am offering my resignation.”
At the somberness of her tone, a frisson of panic ran through him. The bottle shook in his hand and he steadied his grip on it. Leaving? Why should that thought rouse this frantic anxiety inside? Because I’ve need of her for Alice, is all… Yes, he required her presence and his uncle approved. No other lady would do for the post. That was all. Abandoning his glass and decanter on the sideboard, he gave a crooked grin. “Very well. Then, I am not accepting it.” He leaned against the mahogany piece and winged a challenging eyebrow up.
She scrunched her mouth. He’d wager if she’d been a girl of seven and not eight and twenty, she’d be stamping her foot. “You cannot, not allow me to resign.”
“I can,” He lifted his index finger. “And I did.”
Daphne shifted her weight back and forth, and then she rested her palms on the back of the seat she’d previously occupied. “I’m leaving,” she repeated, a determined glint in her eyes that sent his panic spiraling.
He called forth countless years’ worth of rakish charm. “I understand you’re no doubt displeased with me, love,” he said in tones he’d often used with the skittish mare he’d been forced to sell off. As she should be. Daphne pursed her lips. Of course, she’d not be easy to cajole and win over like all the ladies before her. “Unpardonable for me to let my uncle question your honor,” he added.
She clenched and unclenched the top of her seat. With sharp eyes, he took in the whiteness of her knuckles. “Don’t you see? He should question her honor. He should question the honor of any woman who is entrusted with Alice’s care.”
He went still as understanding dawned. “This is because of our embrace.” An embrace he’d very much like to repeat, here in his office, spread out on his desk. His blood fired hot.
Daphne shot a horrified gaze to the open door. In seven long strides, he was across the room, yanking the handle. As soon as he’d closed the door behind them, she shook her head. “This is not because of our embrace,” she said, shaking her head. She took a faltering step toward him, and then lifted her palms. “You see, when I…” Her lips twisted. “Accepted the terms of your employment,” employment he’d all but forced her into, “I did not know the agreement you’d struck with your uncle.” She made an annoyed sound and slashed the air with one hand. “That, however, should have mattered less than Lady Alice. I am an,” she wet her lips, “unsuitable companion for your sister.”
Daniel snorted. “Why?” he asked, leaning against the wall. “Because my pompous uncle suggested as much?” With the exception of his sister, Daphne was the only proper and virtuous woman he knew—or cared to know. Of course, the sole reason being that he’d known her since they were children. Liar.
Always unrepentant, never uncertain, she glanced down at her ugly, serviceable boots. “I am scandalous.” Her whisper barely reached his ears and yet…
He squinted, peering at her. Had she just said—?
Daphne lifted her head and their stares collided. “I am scandalous, Daniel,” she repeated once more. Then, like a warrior princess, she tilted her chin at a defiant angle. “And companions must have sterling reputations and be above all reproach. Their charges’ reputations are dependent upon it. As such, I cannot, in good conscience, remain but would instead ask you to provide me with letters of reference.”
His riotous mind picked its way through those hasty ramblings before ultimately settling on one statement. …I am scandalous…
Another snorting laugh escaped him and he pushed away from the door. He took several steps toward her, then stopped. “If this is an attempt for me to free you from your responsibilities, I commend you on your cleverness.” He dropped a bow. “But, you are the least scandalous lady I know.”
“I do believe that,” she mumbled, earning another grin from him. How easy it was to smile with her and around her. He’d believed himself unable to manage any real expressions of amusement. There was something freeing in it. Daphne gave her head a shake. “Nonetheless, my past precludes me from serving as Lady Alice’s companion.”
“You have a scandal in your past?” he parroted, incredulity slipping into his tone. What shocking deeds or acts could Miss Daphne Smith—?
“When I made my Come Out,” she said, her shoulders back.
Incapable of a reply, he nudged his head in a silent urging for her to continue.
“There was a…” Her lips curved in a heartbreakingly empty smile. “…gentleman, and,” she grimaced, “I’m no longer the virtuous lady you take me for.”
Daniel went motionless as her quiet admission slammed into his gut like a blow he’d once taken from Gentleman Jackson himself. By God, she was Daphne, and, well, bloody hell, she was Daphne, and some bounder had put his hands on her? A loud humming filled his ears and he shook his head slowly. “Surely not.”
She nodded succinctly. “Surely,” she murmured.
His hands shook. To steady his trembling palms, he made tight fists, his nails digging into the flesh of his palms. Some bastard had robbed her of her virtue. Such a truth should not have shocked or ripped at the insides of an avowed rake and, yet, insidious thoughts slid forward. Daphne, a girl of seventeen, his sister’s age, and some stranger robbed her of her virtue. “I will kill him.” That seething whisper contained just an edge of the murderous rage ripping at him.
The hint of a smile hovered on her lips. “Do you think I was forced?”
He cocked his head. “You were not?” Which would mean Daphne had given herself to another. That she’d known desire for another. Why did he want to rip even this faceless stranger apart with his bare hands?
She collected her cane and fiddled with the top of it. “Oh, Daniel, no. He was a charming rake, who told me everything I wished to hear. And for that, I gave him my virtue. I am no virgin. No proper miss. I’m a person. Jaded and wary, just like you.”
That admission hung in the room. They were nothing alike. She had a purity of soul that had long been absent on his worthless one. Of course, it was the height of hypocrisy to expect any lady, regardless of age or station or status, to be virtuous…and yet, she was not just any woman. This was Daphne. And there had been some bastard who’d lain with her. Who’d taken her virginity and left her unwed.
He forced his thoughts into a semblance of calm that belied the tumult roiling through him. “Do you believe I, of all people, would condemn you for laying with someone?” He, who’d had countless lovers, many times simultaneously. Except, even uttering that question burned like acid in his mouth. Another man had known her, in every way. Daphne Smith, the girl who’d been his friend and the woman…the woman I didn’t even bother with when she came to London for her Season.
“Daniel,” she continued her reasoning over the tightness squeezing at his chest. “There are your funds to consider.”
My funds? Of course, his funds.
The eight thousand pounds dangled over his head, as the great hope from his dire financial straits. The same funds he’d not thought of until she’d raised the reminder. She stood, her carriage proud and strong, as she bared her secrets before him…a man who had no right to them. Yes, given his priggish uncle’s terms, he should give her those damnable references and send her on her way. Even the hint of scandal would prove calamitous.
So why did he not send her away as she urged? Because I cannot. I need her. He started. Needed her? For entirely selfish reasons. Yes, of course, it was nothing more. Yet those unspoken protestations only felt like another grand lie where Daphne was concerned.
“Daniel,” she prodded.
“My uncle already approves of you,” he said, startled back to the moment.
Daphne sighed. “He’d be a good deal less approving if he were to learn about my past.”
Her past. A past which, included some bounder who’d rutted between her legs and known the satiny smoothness of her skin. He longingly eyed his sideboard. His lips pulled in a grimace. The fates must be laughing, that he stood here, London’s most notorious rake, burning with a hunger to fell the man who’d claimed her innocence. “Regardless, Daphne, I’ve no intention of setting you free.” He could not let her go. Shock lit her emerald green eyes. “By your own admission, the gentleman was a rake.” Just as I am. A vise squeezed about his lungs at that silent likening to the man who’d deflowered her. “As such, I assure you he’ll not be at Almack’s or any other polite event. So if your efforts in revealing your past are to be relieved of your role as Alice’s companion, they are for naught.”
Why is he doing this?
The man who’d not bothered to so much as call when she’d made her Come Out, and who’d lived for his own vices and pleasures, didn’t put others’ interests before his own. He was a rake who threw wicked parties. He was a man who forgot his sister, and dallied with village widows, and came down to the foyer to make outrageous advances of a lady waiting to speak to him.
Or that was the safe, neat way in which she’d filed Daniel Winterbourne away, because he’d earned his place into that spot. Just as his uncle had seen a reprobate in his nephew, so too had Daphne, because that’s the image he presented to the world.
Now, the same man who earlier in the week had praised her spirit and her strength, stood with fury rolling off his form in waves, offering her position still, even at the possible risk of his forfeiture of those funds. That went against everything she thought she’d known about him and proved him to be so very different than the self-absorbed figure he presented to Society. A dangerous warmth unfurled inside her heart.
“Who was he?” he asked with a casual boredom.
He’d be so flippant in his motives and then probe her with that searching question? She shook her head trying to muddle through who, in fact, Daniel Winterbourne was—diffident rake or honorable friend. “By your earlier claim, as he was a rake and unlikely to attend the same events as your sister, it’s unlikely we’ll meet again.” It was a lie. They both knew it. The likelihood of moving among the same Social events as Lord Leopold was great and, yet, she would be on the sidelines with the hired companions, invisible to him, just as she’d been invisible as anything more than a conquest to that same dastard years earlier. “And the alternative is the gentleman is married. As such, I doubt he’ll be in the habit of raising attention to past conquests he might have made.”
Long ago, she’d ceased to feel anything but a stinging hatred for the cruel man who’d taken her in his arms.
Daniel took slow, smooth steps toward her. “Then you still have not learned the proper wariness, madam.” No, her body’s heated awareness of this man even now and the burn of his kiss on her lips was proof of that. He came to stop, so close that their boots touched. For the sliver of a moment, she believed he’d dip his head and claim her mouth as he had in his library five days earlier.
And God help her, how she wanted that kiss. She concentrated on her breathing, but only inhaled the deep sandalwood scent that clung to him.
“What if I say I wish to know his name for reasons that have nothing to do with your role as companion?” he posed, brushing his knuckle down her cheek. His touch was as delicate as a butterfly’s caress. “What if I wish to know as a friend?” Something stormy and volatile turned his dark eyes nearly a shade of black.
A friend, he said. And yet, his eyes were those of a stranger. His careless words better suited the rake than the gentleman who confounded her with his words of concern and his defensiveness on her part. She stared at his rumpled white cravat, needing to build a barrier for this one-time friend, now seductive rake who made her want to risk all again in ways that would invariably result in her being hurt—again. “Is that what we are, Daniel?” she asked softly. “After all these years, friends, still?” For as much time as she’d spent as a young girl, hating him for having abandoned her, he’d been the only friend she’d ever known and he would, no matter what life and fate shaped them into, exist in that role.
Holding her gaze with his, he palmed her cheek. “I rather thought we were, Daphne.” She curled her hands hard. Friendship is all they’d once known and, yet, with him now, there was a hungering for dreams she’d long ago abandoned. He slid his stare to a point over the top of her head. “Or rather, that we could be again,” he murmured, more to himself.
Sadness assailed her. Of course, Daniel who received the world as though it was his due, would think nothing of picking up as the ten and almost thirteen-year-old children, they’d been. The difference being the ultimatum he’d give her, holding ransom those references that would set her free. “When I first arrived in London all those years ago,” she began hesitantly. “I sat inside a stranger’s household, who’d taken me in as a request from your father, looking out the window, waiting for you to come.”
His body coiled tight.
“You never came,” she said, stating the obvious as a reminder to herself. No one had. No one, except one suitor, who’d won her affections and her virtue. It was a testament to her own desperation. “I was in London for more than three months and not once did you visit. Were you too busy?”
A muscle leapt at the corner of his eye. “I…” That gruff single syllable went nowhere.
“It is fine,” she said softly, taking a step away from him and resurrecting the much needed barriers. “We were friends, Daniel, and you will always hold a place here,” she touched her chest and his gaze followed that slight movement. “But let us not pretend we’re the same children racing across the lake.” The girl she had been died in the copse with him at her side. When had his world been irrevocably changed? With Alistair’s passing? Or his mother’s? Or mayhap it had been a culmination of all the miseries he’d known. She gentled her tone. “We’ve grown up. Become different people whose lives have traveled divergent paths. I told you about Lord—” He thinned his eyes into narrow slits. “I told you what I did,” she swiftly amended, “because I am a servant in your employ and, as such, you require the truth.”
He firmed his jaw and that hard glint sharpened in his eyes. Had her words hurt him? Daniel, a man who’d prided himself on being incapable of suffering? “Of course, madam,” he said crisply. “You are correct. I have hired your services and you’re here with the sole intention of looking after my sister. As such, I will allow you to return to your responsibilities.” He drew the door open and, with that unbending divide firmly erected between them, Daphne limped forward.
When he closed the door behind her, she leaned against the opposite wall and borrowed strength from the surface. This was for the best—this safe distance. Because for his question about friendship, Daniel was something wholly dangerous—a rake—and what was more, a rake who’d proven himself to be an honorable gentleman not condemning her for her past, the way most of the ton would.
With that loyalty and honorability, he posed a far greater danger than any rake ever could. For she was still the same, hopeful girl clinging to childhood dreams about Daniel and a future with him in it. And there could never be a future with Daniel Winterbourne. Ever.
No matter how much she might wish it.