Dangerous in Diamonds - Madeline Hunter [83]
“Of course I thought you would not. There was no reason in the world for you to do so.”
“That is not true.”
“Oh, forgive me. That is right, how stupid I am being. The infamous wicked rogue had not completed his seduction. Well, I hardly expected you to travel all over the realm to have your way. I had no idea you were so spoiled that you would go to the ends of the earth to have a woman who had caught your eye, if she dared slip out of your grasp.”
“I do not have to have my way with every woman who catches my eye, Daphne. Just you.”
Her indignation drained away when he said that. A deep ache grew among the confusion of emotions that replaced it, however. Oh, Your Grace, we neither of us truly know what we have in the other.
“How did you even find me?” She struggled not to reveal the poignant reactions making her melt. She had made a terrible muddle of this and would pay dearly now, with her heart if not her privacy.
“I asked Miss Johnson where you had gone. When she gave me the name of the village, I guessed the rest.”
She dared not respond. She would not assume what he meant by “the rest.”
His dark eyes let her wonder for a while or perhaps waited for her to explain the rest herself.
He extracted some papers from his coat pocket and handed them to her. She looked down at four pages from a pocket map, marked and noted and well creased from careless handling. She saw the one that had brought him to The Rarest Blooms and also the one with this cottage’s location explained.
“I guessed that the tenant of one of those spots of land I inherited had gone to visit the tenant on another of them,” he said. “You had shown some interest in the others. I thought that perhaps you had come to investigate, but I know now that you lived here, after you left Becksbridge’s household, during those years when you told the world you had been married and following the drum.”
“Then you know enough already, it appears.”
He took the pages from her and put them back in his pocket. “Not why you came here now, at such a dangerous time. You are not a stupid woman.”
“Perhaps I came because I thought it was a place where you would not find me.”
She felt cruel as soon as she said it, even though he did not appear insulted. She decided to add enough so that perhaps enough would indeed be enough. “I worried for my old friend. Because of the danger. Also, I thought she might be concerned, as I was, after Becksbridge died, that perhaps her future was too uncertain. I came to reassure her and to bring her back with me if I could not.”
He took that in thoughtfully.
“Is your inquisition finished?” she asked.
He looked at her, and in his eyes she saw more honesty and more kindness than she had ever seen.
“I would say that is enough, Daphne. For now.”
Margaret politely invited Castleford to join them for their midday meal. To Daphne’s dismay, he accepted.
They ate in her tidy dining room off mismatched china plates. Being the daughter of a gentleman had mattered, Daphne had realized. Mrs. Joyes had lived better than Mrs. Rolland these last years. Becksbridge had given none of them more than he thought their birth deserved.
Castleford made conversation. He did not pry, but he managed to learn enough of Margaret’s history to confirm that she had been a servant in Becksbridge’s household.
“So the two of you became friends there,” he said.
Margaret’s smile froze.
“Yes,” Daphne said. If one of them had to lie, she would be the one to do it. Margaret had not asked for any of this trouble. Nor did she feel guilty for her response. If the duke wanted to pry still, they owed him no explanations.
“Mrs. Rolland, do you have any idea how many people went to Manchester today?” he asked, changing the subject.
Margaret regarded him skeptically. “Are you asking as a member of the government?”
“I am asking as a man who finds himself in a village all but emptied of men and even women. If all the villages are like this, that would mean there is a very large crowd in the city.”
“Many thousands,” she said. “There will be no cotton woven today.