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The carriage ride back home after the Hadley ball was one of the longest in his entire life.
After the entire scene unfolded, he was left standing in the ballroom, staring stonily after Emily. The sight of her dejected shoulders made him want to reach out for her, to make things right for her.
If only he could.
“Well now, you’ve gone and done it, cousin.”
He directed his deep blue gaze towards his cousin, who was sitting opposite him with a piqued expression in her pretty features. Melissa was about the same age as Emily, but her years spent in Paris had lent her a more sophisticated air, and she was wont to speak out her mind—even in those times he wished she wouldn’t.
When he refused to grace her with a reply, she regarded him with narrowed eyes. “You specifically instructed me to keep her company,” she told him. “Who knew thatyouwould be the one who would go out and ruin the poor thing?”
“Melissa,” he told her in a dangerously low voice. “I suggest you refrain from talkingrightnow.”
“Why should I?” she raised her chin and regarded him haughtily. “She is the first andonlyfriend I have ever made since I came back to London, and no thanks to you, that poor lady will have to go into seclusion unless you marry her.”
That, I simply cannot do, Daniel bristled at the thought. Emily was too beautiful, too pure, too sensitive to be married to the likes of him. He would only hurt her, and that thought brought a sharp pain searing through his chest.
“You know I cannot do that.”
“So, would you rather she married that sleazy Viscount instead?”
Daniel’s hand clenched into a tight fist at his side even as he regarded his cousin stonily. “Benedict would never allow that.”
“You have left her with no choice,” Melissa flung back. “It would be either you or Lord Caney, and heaven knows I would not wish even Eliza Charlton a lifetime of misery with that…thatscoundrel.”
Daniel saw her lips curl into a disgusted sneer and felt a measure of comfort in that. For so long, Lord Gregory Pratt had touted the reputation of being an absolute gentleman, but Daniel knew it was all a façade. Tonight, the Viscount had unmasked himself for the first time, and he was just as repulsive as Daniel initially assumed the Lord to be.
To have Emily marry that man…well, he was not having any of it!
“She is not going to marry him,” he told her firmly. “Caney would never dare to breathe a word of it to anyone unless he wants to makemehis enemy.”
“You might think that, but the Marquess and his family might not be of the same mind,” Melissa pointed out to him.
Daniel smirked at her. “Sometimes, I wish you weren’t so damned smart, cousin.”
“I have to be because heaven knows you haven’t the capacity to pull yourself out of this quagmire you have gotten yourself into.”
“So…your solution would be to marry Emily?”
She nodded. “Correct. Unless you want to doom her to a lifetime of abject misery with that scoundrel.”
“How certain are you thatIwould not make her miserable?”
Melissa regarded him as if he was an absolute idiot. “I have seen the way you look at the lady, Daniel. Any woman would give up her soul for a man who would look at her like that.”
He found himself taken aback by his cousin’s confident reply. How exactly did he look at Emily?
Good God, Melissa could not have possibly romanticized his hunger for Emily, had she?
“Don’t give me that look,” she told him curtly, wrinkling her nose.
“What look?”
“You are always about to say something stupid when you have that look.”
Daniel gave her an irate look. “Is this better?”
“Not really. Now, you just look like an idiot who is confident in his stupidity.”
