Page 60 of Barbarous

“Ahhh.”

“But perhaps Rowena could accompany you.”

That amused him. “She wouldn’t consent to ride in the same vehicle with me unless it was a tumbril, she was a guard, and I was on my way to Madame Guillotine.” He shook his head. “No, thank you. I shall take Kemal with me; his boy-wrangling skills are unparalleled.” He heaved a sigh and laid down his knife and fork, his plate empty. “By the by, why does your faithful retainer hate me so intensely?”

“She does not hate you,” Daphne lied. “Yorkshire folk merely require time to warm up to new acquaintances.”

“Hmm. Are you dining at home tonight?”

Daphne blinked at the change of subject. “Yes, I’ve invited your cousins Melinda and Simon, as well as Anne.”

“But not my aunt?”

“She is engaged elsewhere.”

He smiled. “Excellent. Please add me to your number.”

Daphne stared as he drank the last of his coffee. Just what had inspired this sudden urge for domesticity? Was he tired of gaming, carousing, and his redheaded companion?

“Well,” Hugh said, tossing his napkin onto the table and standing. “I had better find Kemal and collect the young monsters.” He dropped a mocking bow. “I shall see you this evening, my lady.” The door clicked shut behind him.

Go after him, tell him now.

I can’t, not when he is going to take the boys out. And tonight—

Excuses, excuses, excuses.

Daphne stared at the uneaten food on her plate, her body as taut and brittle as a dried-up twig.

Tell him.

“I . . . I can’t.”

“My lady?”

Daphne looked up to find the young footman, William, hovering beside her. “You said something, my lady?”

“I don’t need anything more, William, you may leave.” She waited until the door closed before shoving away the plate and dropping her head into her hands.

Tell him. The words pulsed in her head with the persistence of a war drum.

I will tell him. I will—

When?

I will tell him after the ball.

There was no answer—derisive, or otherwise—and her shoulders slumped with relief because she knew this time she meant it. Hugh would be relaunched into society, back in the bosom of his family. There could be no more excuse to delay. None.

Daphne could gather up the pieces of her life and escape with what was left.

* * *

Hugh dispatched Kemal to fetch the two boys rather than chance encountering Daphne’s hatchet-faced protector in the schoolroom. While he waited, he sifted through the remarkable number of invitations he’d received since showing his face at White’s. Thus far, he hadn’t accepted a single one—he hadn’t come to London to attend ton functions; he’d come to find Hastings. Not that he’d had any luck.

Instead of assemblies and balls and dinner parties, he’d gone to White’s, Boodle’s, Brooks’s, Watier’s and at least two dozen other lesser clubs and hells, looking for the bastard.

Other than a handful of amusing incidents, Hugh’s tedious nights of drinking and gambling failed to yield even a groat of news about Hastings. By the end of three weeks Hugh had concluded the wretched sponger really had gone to some secret assignation.