Chapter Five
They were back in the carriage soon enough, once more traveling north.
The air was growing colder by the mile, and she was not dressed for it.
Daphne realized that quickly enough as a cool draft seeped in around the windows.
Not even the most well-made carriage, and surely it was, could be completely impervious to the wind.
In fact, the air was so cold that frost was beginning to form inside the windows. Daphne couldn’t stop the shiver that wracked her. Instantly, she felt a gaze on her.
“You’re cold,” he said, searching her face.
“A bit,” she admitted. “When I left London, I was not prepared for the weather to turn. I hadn’t anticipated it would grow so cold so quickly. I suppose that is the price for having fled in such haste.”
He nodded. “I understand, of course. It’s not easy for you to get away from your parents’ home with a fully packed valise. In fact, it wasn’t easy for you to escape over a garden wall of a prison that should have been a home. It was remarkably resourceful and brave.”
He leaned forward, just enough that he could shrug out of the heavy coat that he wore, and then he crossed the carriage expanse, settling himself on the seat beside her. But he didn’t just drape the coat around her shoulders. Instead, he settled next to her and draped it over both of them.
“I’m a gentleman,” he said, “but I’m not an idiot. Neither one of us will be any good to the other if we both freeze to death.”
She certainly couldn’t fault his logic. He was factually correct. And yet the intimacy of being so close to him, of having both of them covered by the heavy warmth of his coat as they were pressed side by side on the narrow carriage seat, was unlike anything she had ever experienced.
In all of her courtship with Lord Lynley, he had never once kissed her.
He’d never tried to steal a kiss, sneak an embrace, or taken a single liberty.
In short, he had never done anything to indicate that he was interested in anything more than having her walk down the aisle to become his wife, not because of any great desire for her but because he needed her fortune.
And to his credit, he had never pretended otherwise.
There had been no subterfuge or deception on his part, no promises of grand passion.
And she had never desired such things from him.
But now a strange curiosity was building within her.
Perhaps it was having seen the way Lord Lynley had looked at his wife, the knowing glances that passed between them and the way Ellis had blushed under his regard.
That wasn’t the cold and aloof man she’d known.
Would her soon-to-be husband ever look at her thusly?
Would she ever feel the weight of his gaze on her and blush in response simply because she could glean the nature of his thoughts?
Seated as she was next to Fletcher, she wondered what it might be like if she were wrapped in more than the embrace of his borrowed coat?
What would it feel like if it was his arms wrapped about her instead?
What would it feel like to have her body pressed against the firmness of his?
What would it feel like for him to kiss her?
A blush stole over her cheeks, and she was grateful for the dim interior of the carriage which hid it. For him to know the current course of her thoughts would have been utterly humiliating. For the life of her, she could not understand what about him affected her so.
Daphne had the very uncomfortable feeling that she was very much in over her head.
She had asked Mrs. Dove-Lyon to find her a husband, to give her an alternative to marrying Cecil Pozenby, but what she hadn’t asked for was this overwhelming uncertainty about herself, or about the man who was beside her.
Because it no longer felt like simply a convenience. It was beginning to feel less like a business arrangement, less like a mutually beneficial association based on circumstance, and more like the mysterious hand of fate—some sort of weird and wonderful destiny.
Those sorts of thoughts were not for her. She was not a romantic. She was not sentimental. She was always pragmatic and logical, and nearly as cold as her parents, and that was perhaps why people had assumed she and Lord Lynley were a perfect fit.
Because they were both cold.
Clearly, the man’s marriage to Ellis had shown the world he was anything but. And now, with this creeping awareness of her own desire to be close to Fletcher Quill, she was being forced to admit that perhaps she was not as cold as she had once thought either.
“For someone who says so little,” Fletcher stated, “your thoughts are very loud.”
Daphne lifted her head to give him a brief grin. “I can’t help it. I have a great deal on my mind.”
He nodded. “Will worrying about it change anything at all?”
She shook her head slightly. “No… not really.”
“Then leave it be. Leave those worries for another day… We don’t have to have all the answers today, Daphne. We don’t have to have any answers today. All we have to do today is continue moving forward.”
“Moving forward to what?” she asked. “What exactly are we doing?”
“We are leaving,” he replied. “We are leaving London and your family, obviously. We are going to marry. We are going to build what I hope is a happy life together. And that is all we need to worry about for now. Let the rest of it be.”
It sounded so easy, but the reality was anything but.
Her expression must have given away her thoughts because he smiled at her with a gentleness that left her shaken. “I promise, it will be fine. It will be fine.”
She laughed a bit bitterly. “No man who has ever told me things would be fine has kept his word. Why should you be different?”
He shrugged. “I can’t change what others have done. And I can only ever control what I do. But when I give you my word, Daphne, I will keep it. Come hell or high water.”
There weren’t many people in whom she had any actual faith.
Being ruined in the eyes of the ton had a way of showing one precisely who one’s friends were, and just how limited in number.
But she believed him. It was terrifying and exhilarating all at once to find herself fully believing in this man whom she barely knew.
But perhaps the problem had always been not that there was no one to trust but that her own circle had been so filled with vipers the trustworthy never dared enter it.
He would have said more, but at that moment, the wheels hit a particularly deep rut. The carriage rocked and swayed. His heavier form was secure enough, but Daphne, far slighter, nearly slid from the seat even as his heavy greatcoat tumbled to the floor. Reaching out, he grasped her arm.
She made a sound, a slight gasp not of shock but pain.
He hadn’t gripped her so firmly that it should have caused harm.
Without asking, Fletcher pushed back her sleeve.
There were bruises along her forearm, extending upward past her elbow.
Some of them could be attributed to her mad dash into the night and climbing over walls.
But the ones that held his attention were perfect ovals, five of them, four together and one slightly offset.
Keeping his touch gentle, he wrapped his hand about her arm, matching the tips of his fingers and his thumb to those marks.
“Your father?”
She pulled away from him, her expression one that reflected something far deeper than embarrassment. Shame. Shame tightened her delicate features in a way that made him angrier than perhaps he’d ever been.
“He was very upset when I left the other day. Even thinking I’d only gone to Hatchard’s he was furious. Had he known that I went to the Lyon’s Den, I cannot imagine what he would have done,” she admitted.
“He will never touch you again… not in anger, not in any way,” Fletcher vowed.
“I’ve no tolerance for men who bully and abuse others.
It’s bad enough that he’d try to marry you off to Pozenby out of some misguided belief that he was securing your future.
But for him to intimidate and coerce through violence—that isn’t a man, Daphne. That’s a coward.”
She glanced back at him then. “You really mean that, don’t you?”
“I’ve suffered my share of bullies in life.
At school, mostly. I suffered them until I grew tall enough and strong enough that I no longer had to.
And I promised myself then that I would never be counted amongst their ilk nor would I ever tolerate such things in my presence,” he admitted. “And I’ve kept to that.”
“Thank you.”
“Whatever for?”
She cocked her head slightly to one side. “For offering me something I have not had in months—if ever… Hope.”
They settled against the seat once more.
He retrieved the coat and covered them both with it again until they had some reasonable semblance of warmth and comfort.
And as the carriage rolled onward, making for the northern counties and eventually the Scottish border, Fletcher knew that things had shifted between them.
Something was different now. Something that held the portent of great change.
It wasn’t something that he’d intended, it wasn’t something that he’d manipulated or sought or planned—it simply had occurred.
Somewhere along the way, in the very short time that they had known one another, a bond had formed between them, and with every passing minute that bond seemed to be growing stronger.
He didn’t mind that. He was unnerved by it, perhaps—a bit frightened of what it might mean going forward, and of just how significant it felt.
Given everything that he had heard—all the different gossip and all the wild tales that were bandied about—he had a great deal to consider.
Given Mrs. Dove-Lyon’s seemingly mystical ability to make matches that were not only successful, but happy, he had to wonder if there wasn’t something to the whispers that Bessie had her own kind of magic.
Perhaps that wasn’t such a terrible thing. Everyone could use a little magic.
Perhaps Daphne Acres more than anyone he’d ever known.
For someone so young, and seemingly with a genuinely well-developed streak of honor, she’d been done very badly by almost everyone she knew.
Everyone she had encountered had been exploitive or unkind, possibly even cruel.
But no one seemed to have ever put her first. No one had ever made it a point to ensure that she was taken care of before anyone else.
It had been a long time since he’d had that in his own life.
But he could recall it easily enough from his childhood.
His mother had been a very loving woman, generous and gentle by nature.
His father had been a bit of a rapscallion, but a good man.
He missed them terribly, but he’d learned a great deal in the short time he’d had with them.
And what he learned was that they had loved one another, and they had loved one another well.
Marriage wasn’t something he’d ever given a great deal of thought before.
Perhaps because marriage had seemed so very, very far from the realm of possibility for someone with such limited prospects as he’d once had.
But he could recognize now that that was the sort of marriage he wanted to have.
It was certainly the sort he would have sought out if he’d thought it a possibility.
Something his mother had often said to him as a boy came back to him in that moment.
Where does luck come from if not divine intervention?
The notion of Bessie Dove-Lyon being an instrument of God was enough to keep the smile on his face, even as the road disintegrated into a series of ruts and potholes.