Chapter Five #2
“How many others are there?” Daphne asked under her breath.
Fanny hesitated. Slowly she raised both hands.
“Seven?” Daphne’s shock added unintended volume to her words.
She turned her face forward, keeping her expression neutral by sheer willpower.
Adam was having them followed? A maid in the carriage was to be expected if a young lady did not have a mother or sister or companion with her, but to commission the entire stable staff to keep an eye on them was the outside of enough.
She began calculating in her head. The two mounted men.
She suspected the “vendor” they’d passed earlier was likewise a spy Adam had sent.
Four others lingered somewhere in the vicinity.
“This is a decidedly new experience for me,” James said. “I have driven out with young ladies on any number of occasions but have never once been stalked.”
Humiliation closed swiftly in on Daphne. She refused to break down in front of him twice in the course of a single carriage ride. Yet her embarrassment threatened to overcome every effort to conceal it.
“I am sorry,” she managed to say.
An awkward and heavy silence fell between them.
The tiny tiger perched on the back of the carriage in front of them glanced back at them a few times. By the second look, Daphne recognized the Falstone House knife boy.
“A flower for your lady?”
Daphne turned at the sound of a voice thick with a lower-class London accent.
A girl, probably only a year or two younger than herself, held up an assortment of nosegays as she kept pace with the slow-moving carriage.
Hyde Park traffic never was likely to set any speed records during the busiest times of the Season.
“As much as I would like to give the lady a flower,” James said, “I do not dare allow my horses the opportunity to run off with us by giving them less than all my attention.”
The girl nodded in approval. Daphne very nearly rolled her eyes. No sooner had the flower seller slid back from the carriage than James turned questioning eyes to Daphne.
She sighed. “She is a chambermaid at Falstone House.”
“If my calculations are correct, we have identified all but two of your brother-in-law’s henchmen.” His teasing tone fell just the slightest bit flat, as though he were earnestly attempting to find the situation humorous. “Perhaps one of them was hiding beneath Mrs. Bower’s bonnet.”
If she hadn’t been absolutely mortified, she likely would have laughed at the very amusing observation.
The remainder of the ride passed in relative silence. They stopped a small number of times, James making introductions and striking up quick, innocuous conversations with the people he knew. But between visits, he kept quiet. Daphne’s face never fully cooled.
They returned to Falstone House, an entire entourage of mounted groomsmen arriving at the same time they did. James assisted her from the carriage and walked with her to the door. His stiff posture and stoic silence starkly contrasted his earlier easy demeanor.
Adam and Persephone were both sitting in the drawing room when James escorted her there. “I have returned Miss Lancaster unharmed, as requested,” he said.
Adam’s gaze turned to Fanny standing just behind them. His look of inquiry received an “I’ve nothin’ to report, Your Grace” from the maid.
“You’re free to go,” Adam said, looking entirely unrepentant about receiving a report on James’s actions with him still in the room.
James bowed civilly. “Miss Lancaster, it has been a pleasure.”
She stood still, not moving from the spot. He no longer smiled at her. His manner had become distant, formal.
“Thank you.” Her words hardly broke a whisper.
James left with little beyond the barest words of farewell.
“Did you have a nice ride?” Persephone asked after he was gone.
The last thing she wanted was to rehash the disaster that had been her one and only drive with a gentleman at the fashionable hour. “It began well.” To offer anything more positive than that would not have been entirely honest—quite dishonest, in fact.
“What did Tilburn do?” Adam’s lips pursed in the way they did whenever his cousin George came up in conversation. He thoroughly disliked his cousin. Apparently he felt similarly about Lord Tilburn.
“He was a perfect gentleman, and very tolerant, as I am certain your army of spies will assure you once they make their various reports.” Daphne sat in a nearby chair, striking a very unladylike, slumped posture.
She’d imagined so many times driving out with James Tilburn, but never in all her imaginings had the outing ended so disappointingly.
“Spies?” Adam managed to sound almost as if he didn’t know what she was talking about.
“Over the course of the ride, we crossed paths with a veritable horde of staff from this house, all under instructions to follow Lord Tilburn’s carriage.”
Persephone turned to her husband. “You had them followed?”
“Merely precautionary.” Adam’s unshakable confidence seldom grated on Daphne the way it did in that moment.
“You do not trust Lord Tilburn?” Persephone asked.
“I did not say that.”
“Then you do not trust me,” Daphne surmised.
“I most certainly did not say that.”
Persephone seemed genuinely confused. “Then why the armed guard?”
“Only two of them were actually armed.”
Daphne dropped her head into her open palm.
An armed guard. Was it not clear to him how slim her chances were of enjoying any degree of social success?
A strikingly beautiful young lady or one who conversed easily or possessed obvious accomplishments might be worth enduring such treatment.
The gentlemen of Society would never make such an effort for a plain, quiet girl who could claim little talent beyond a knowledge of home remedies and the ability to go unnoticed for hours on end.
“Oh, my dear Adam.” A laugh touched Persephone’s words. How could she, Daphne’s own sister, find this amusing? “Were you attempting to test his mettle?”
“Only offering a friendly warning.”
“Friendly?” That brought Persephone’s laugh entirely to the surface.
Daphne didn’t find the conversation funny in the least, though it did explain something she’d wondered about. “You meant for Lord Tilburn to realize the extent of your ability to keep an eye on him?”
“Believe me, Daphne, if I had wanted my efforts to go unnoticed, they would have.”
She shook her head and could not for a moment formulate a response. He’d embarrassed her on purpose. He’d likely driven James away and still remained entirely unrepentant about it. “You realize, don’t you, he’ll probably never come back.”
Adam crossed his arms in front of him, his stance of choice when feeling particularly impatient. “If he is such a lily-livered, kitten-hearted coward, he is hardly worth your time.”
Daphne returned Adam’s look of annoyance with a dry look of her own. “So I should turn my attention to the dozens of eager gentlemen waiting to take his place?”
“You have admitted defeat before the Season has even begun. There will be dozens of gentlemen, though you obviously believe otherwise,” Persephone insisted.
Adam’s expression only grew more cloudy.
“How many gentlemen do you know, Persephone, who would endure this kind of treatment?”
“I can think of one—he married our sister.” Persephone gave her a pointed look.
“Harry is the universal exception to every rule,” Daphne said. “And he wasn’t Athena’s only option.”
Persephone was undeterred. “Then let me suggest you wait and see if Lord Tilburn is every bit as exceptional as our dear Harry. If he comes back despite your well-meaning guardian’s tactics, that would be a very good sign.
And I would, once again, insist you not decide before your Season even begins that you are going to be an abysmal failure. ”
Daphne nodded, recognizing her sister’s wisdom.
They’d taken that approach often during the years they’d gone without the luxury of funds to cover even some of their most basic needs.
“No use borrowing trouble” had been Daphne’s favorite version of their oft-repeated family motto.
If a childhood spent in poverty had taught her anything, it was the sustaining power of seemingly naive optimism.
So long as there remained a chance that James would come back, Daphne would allow herself to hope that tiny bit.
And tiny it was, indeed. For James had shown no inclination to return.