Lord Dashwood Missed Out(7)
Desire gripped him. Hard.
He was losing his patience for coy banter.
“Suffice it to say,” he said, “beauty and intelligence are not so hard to come by in one person. And it’s been many years since I noted both qualities in you. So again, I ask—how can you justify this scurrilous pamphlet? What did I miss out on?”
She looked as though she would speak. And Dash knew what she wanted to say.
At least, he knew what he wanted her to say.
Come along, you evasive minx. Out with it.
In the face of her silence, he had no choice but to call her bluff. He picked up the quill and dipped it. “A lawsuit it is.”
My heart, Nora wanted to shout. You missed out on my heart.
Just watching him scratching away at the paper, she was transported back to their youth. She’d passed many hours peering around her brother’s bowed head to watch Dash scrawling on his slate. He wrote so awkwardly, with his left hand all curled up. Unlike most children, he hadn’t been forced to use his right. At seven years old, he was already an orphaned baron. Who could force him to do anything?
Dash’s left-handedness had dictated their seating arrangement. He sat to the left of Andrew. Nora sat to the right. Otherwise, they all bumped elbows.
How many times had she had sat at that table, daydreaming about Dash’s strong hands or dark eyelashes, and wishing there was no Andrew between them?
Then came that dreadful day when there wasn’t any Andrew between them, and she’d rued her every wish.
Nora wasn’t the superstitious sort. She knew her brother’s death wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t anybody’s fault, not even the horse’s.
Accidents happened.
But after he died, the lessons stopped. It seemed the end of everything for Nora, too. She’d not only lost her brother, but Dash’s company—and now she would lose the chance to further her learning. Her father had humored her desire to join while he instructed the boys, but he would see no reason to educate Nora on her own.
She would never forget the day when Andrew was a fortnight in the ground, Dash came to call. She hurried down the stairs to find him standing in the entrance hall, his lesson books tucked under one arm.
He’d bowed and addressed her father. Sir, shall we continue as before?
They’d proceeded to her father’s study, taken seats in their usual chairs. Dash on the left. Nora on the right, and that horrible, empty space between them. And somehow they’d struggled to continue. Not only with lessons in mathematics and Greek, but with life.
While her father chalked an example on the wall-mounted slate, Dash reached beneath the table, bridging that empty gap, and took Nora’s hand.
Oh, she’d been infatuated with him for years.
In that moment, infatuation had become love.
They worked that way for hours. Fingers twined beneath the table in secret whilst they continued writing with their favored hands. And for every minute that ticked away on the clock, Nora’s heart was another mile gone.
There was no undoing it. She saw that now.
Her heart was his, and it always would be.
But she was terrified to tell him so. What if he’d known her heart already, too—just as he’d known her mind and her body—and yet he’d still chosen to walk away?
“Dash,” she whispered. “You missed . . .”
He threw down the quill. “What did I miss, Nora. What?”
Faced with his impatient, glowering expression, she lost her nerve. The stakes were too high. If he rejected her again, she didn’t know how she’d bear it.
But there he was, waiting on her answer.
Something wild and stupid took hold of her. Pride, she supposed.
“Only the greatest pleasure of your life.” She let the quilt fall from her shoulders, tossed her hair, and thrust out her chest. “We would have been magnificent lovers.”
CHAPTER SIX
For the third time, Pauline rearranged sweets on the plate before her. Spice biscuits, seedcake, small iced petit fours.
She sat back to look at them and consider the symmetry of her display. Then she picked one up and stuffed it in her mouth.
“Oh, don’t!” Charlotte Highwood cried. “There’ll be none for tomorrow.”
“There are four more trays in the kitchen,” Pauline muttered through a mouthful of cake. “But the event will likely be canceled anyway.”
“Don’t worry,” Kate said. “All four of our men out there searching for her. They can’t fail.”
Charlotte popped a biscuit into her mouth. “Remember, one of those four men is Colin.”
“Colin can be surprisingly resourceful at times,” her sister Minerva replied, wife of the troublemaking viscount in question.
“It just feels strange that we’re all sitting here eating cakes,” said Susanna Bramwell, Lady Rycliff, helping herself to the sweets. “Feminine empowerment is the reason I began inviting ladies to Spindle Cove. It’s the reason you’ve invited Miss Browning to speak. And here we are, waiting for the men to save the day.”
“Men do want to feel needed from time to time,” Kate said.
“Speaking of men feeling needed”—Minerva paused in the act of bringing a seedcake to her lips—“did any of your husbands seem oddly . . . um . . . determined before they left this evening?”
“Now that you mention it,” Susanna replied slowly, “Bram did seem rather focused on a goal.”
She, Minerva, and Kate exchanged knowing glances.
“What?” Charlotte asked. “What is it?”
Declining to answer, the three married ladies each bit into a teacake.
Pauline couldn’t help but feel envious of their blushes. Griff had been gone for what felt like ages, and they hadn’t had any sort of proper reunion . She felt guilty for the way they’d parted. Right now, they could have been rolling in bed, and instead he was somewhere out in the cold.
Mrs. Highwood roused herself from a nearby table and joined them, knocking a third teacake out of Charlotte’s hand with her fan. “Do stop stuffing your face, Charlotte.”
“But Pauline is worried. We’re consoling her—and ourselves.” Charlotte frowned at her mother. “And why do you have a fan, anyhow? It’s snowing outside.”
“My nerves know no season.” Mrs. Highwood fanned with vigor. “I, for one, am happy if Miss Browning never arrives. It’s shocking. Teaching young ladies that they needn’t marry to have value? Rejecting the opinions of gentlemen? Appalling. If she did arrive, Charlotte, you would not be permitted to attend.”
Pauline watched Minerva and Charlotte exchange an exasperated glance. The Highwood sisters were no stranger to their mother’s nerves, nor her loud opinions on marriage. One would think having her eldest two daughters happily wed would allow the matron to relax about Charlotte’s prospects.
On the contrary, Mrs. Highwood seemed to have redoubled her determination.
“Don’t look to this group for advice, Charlotte,” the older woman said. “Or if you must look to them, heed their example, not their words. They know the importance of an advantageous match.” With her folded fan, she gestured to Susanna, Minerva, and Pauline in turns. “Married to an earl, viscount, and duke.”
“But we married for love, Mrs. Highwood, not advantage,” Susanna said.
Kate raised her hand. “And I chose a soldier when I might have married a marquess.”
“More to the point, your own eldest daughter married a blacksmith!” Charlotte cried.
“Diana married an artisan,” her mother corrected. “And don’t remind me.” She flicked open her fan and worked it furiously. “So help me, Charlotte. If you run away with a butcher before you even have your first season . . .”
“I’ve no intention of running away with a butcher. Nor a baker, nor a candlestick maker. Unlike my sisters, I enjoy dancing, and I’m fond of parties. I’m heartily looking forward to my season.”
“Thank heaven. I knew I’d given birth to one daughter with sense.”
“In fact,” Charlotte continued, “I hope to have at least five seasons in Town before I even think of settling down.”
With a dramatic moan, Mrs. Highwood sank into a chair and reached for a cake.
“Magnificent,” Dash drawled. “We would have been magnificent lovers. This is your argument.”
“Yes.”
“You, an untried, gently bred virgin, know how to please a man. Better than any merry widow or courtesan.”
A shiver went through her. Nora started to worry about whether he meant to call her bluff—and how she meant to respond, if he did.
Nevertheless, she couldn’t back down.
“I don’t care how many lovers you’ve taken, nor how experienced they were.” She held up her index finger. “I have more passion in one fingertip than they have in their whole bodies.”
He propped an elbow on the table. A smile played at the corners of his lips. “Why, Elinora Jane Browning. What on earth have you been doing with that fingertip?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know.” She kept her tone saucy, trying not to betray her nerves.
“I think I would, yes.”
His gaze made a slow journey up her body, lingering on the swell of her breasts where they overflowed her corset. Her pulse raced, and her breathing quickened.