Chapter Thirteen
“I
won’t do it,” Celia said. She slid another spoonful of ice into her mouth.
Daphne’s own spoon halted halfway to its destination. Surely she had heard wrong. “It will only take a short while. A half hour at most.”
Celia kept her attention on the ice. She luxuriated in the taste of it, moaning from the pleasure. Daphne ate her own, but kept her eyes on her friend.
Finally they were done. They passed their little cups out to one of the servants from Gunter’s who tended to the carriages surrounding Berkley Square. All of them held ladies indulging as they did. Celia dabbed at her mouth with a handkerchief.
“I was not invited,” Celia said. “If you needed a chaperone, you should not have accepted without arranging to bring a companion. For me to now accompany you is pointless anyway. If it is Castleford’s intention to get you alone for seductive purposes, he will manage it whether I walk in the door with you or not.”
“I did not say I feared he had seductive—”
“Oh,
please
, Daphne.” Celia looked to heaven in exasperation. “It is very clear he is pursuing you. Everyone has noticed. This is
Castleford
. If he pursues a woman, it is for no other purpose except seduction.”
Everyone had noticed? Daphne hoped Celia only meant their friends. Her and Verity and, at worst, their husbands.
Of course, there had been those two invitations . . .
“You appear very concerned, Daphne. Tell the man that you will not have him, if you are not interested in his intentions.”
If?
“I have told him. I have even been rude about it. He does not hear me.”
“Perhaps he sees something in your reactions to him that have convinced him otherwise?”
Daphne felt her face warming. Celia’s blue eyes widened.
“Are you blushing? You
never
blush. Oh, my.” She giggled behind her hand. “Mrs. Joyes, have you been naughty?”
“If I have not remained strictly proper, I can be forgiven, I think.”
Not strictly proper
was hardly adequate. “He is just so overwhelming. Relentless. I never appreciated all those references to women having their walls breached, like such things are battles or sieges, but I tell you, Celia, this man has managed to exhaust my defenses.”
“Well, he is not without appeal. I expect you find him exciting?”
“Yes, I do. There, I have said it. For many reasons I dare not be so rash as to succumb to his appeal, but—I am losing the ability to explain why, even to myself, when he plays his games.” She looked down miserably. “He can be very persuasive in the worst ways, I am embarrassed to admit.”
“Do you need an excuse to put him off until you buttress your defenses? Is that the problem?”
“Yes. Exactly. He will lose interest soon, I am sure. I only need to discourage him until he does.” Or until she journeyed north. She would do so very soon, she had decided. To see Margaret and ask those private questions and to reassure herself about matters up there.
Celia assumed the very worldly expression that she could at times. Five years ago, when Celia joined The Rarest Blooms, Daphne had found that expression disconcerting. Sometimes she still did.
“Putting him off is easy enough to effect,” Celia said.
“It is?”
“What I have in mind will not work forever, but it should at least delay a determined assault. Instruct your man to take me home. While we ride, I will tell you what to say to Castleford today.”
D
aphne presented herself at Castleford’s door a little after five o’clock. The captain of the guard handed her over to a minion at once, and the footman escorted her through the house’s first level.
They emerged at the other side on a low terrace that overlooked the gardens. There, in the middle of the flowers and plantings, on a circle of lawn, stood a large tent. It bore a striking resemblance to the pavilions that Castleford had erected on his river barge. The ones in which their friends had enjoyed marital bliss.
The man was not being subtle. Daphne tried hard to fortify her defenses as she walked the meandering path that took her to that tent.
A flap had been fastened open. She peered inside and let her eyes adjust to the dim light. She noticed the thick netting that circled the top of the tent walls, allowing in air. She could not miss the table and chairs, or, up against the tent’s billowing walls, the wide chaise longue decorated with many pillows and looking like a sultan’s bed in this setting.
Castleford came forward to greet her.
“I thought the day should not be spent in a study,” he explained. “It is far cooler out here, and since we are not alone inside, proprieties are being maintained in the strictest sort of way.”
She laughed. They were not being maintained even in the loosest way, and he knew it.
He was in dishabille again. Not as bad as when he received her in a morning coat, but there was nothing formal in his attire. No frock coat covered his shirt and waistcoat, and his cravat had been tied into the most casual, loose knot. He appeared every inch the dangerous rogue he was. She decided that he had planned that, to put her at a disadvantage again.
Wine and lemonade waited on the table. She chose some of the latter and accepted a comfortable chair with its back to that sultan’s bed.
“You are shameless,” she said. “Really, you are.”
“See how well you have come to understand me? It has been years, I believe, since any woman has known so well what she has in me.”
“Oh, I know what I have in you. If you have some notion that I am going to play a role today in some fantasy about a seraglio, please disabuse yourself of that idea.”
His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Mischievously. “Is that a scold?”
“No!” She veered back in alarm, lest he conclude he had leave to grab her now.
He did not laugh at her reaction, but it amused him.
“Are you sure you would not like some wine?”
“I am very sure that I would not like some wine. This is not a social call. You wrote about needing to talk about the property, so I am here. A business meeting was needed, you indicated in your letter.”
“Did I? Yes, quite right.” He folded his arms and stretched out his legs. She wondered if he took that pose when meeting with the prime minister or prince regent. Probably.
“Let me see.... Mr. Edwards writes that the examination of the property continues at a pace, and thus far nothing of note has been found. He says it should not take more than another fortnight or so.”
“Another fortnight or so? I think these men you sent are enjoying too much country air at your expense, if it takes that long.”
“It must be done methodically and carefully, or it will have to be done over. That would leave you here in London for months. We don’t want that, do we?”
“I am beginning to think this would all have been decided faster if I never came up to town. It is now sounding as if it will be months before I know my fate.”
He studied her. He looked at her so specifically that she stirred, even though there was nothing seductive in his gaze.
“Allow me to remove your fears about your fate, Mrs. Joyes. Should I conclude that you can no longer use that property, I will move you to another that is at least as good, and even construct another greenhouse for your use.”
She had not expected that. He managed to astonish her still, sometimes. She gazed down at her hands in her lap while she accommodated what this abrupt generosity did to her.
The weight of worrying about The Rarest Blooms drained away, leaving her almost empty with its passing, since it had preoccupied her so much. The breeze sifting through the tent seemed to enter her heart with its cool, light flow.
This promise was not a small thing. True, she would have to reestablish the gardens, so it was not as perfect a solution as staying where she was. However, suddenly the future stretched securely and sure, not like a path lost in the near distance in a dank mist.
All of her plans resurrected, now that they could, exciting her. Moving her. Her immediate plans, and even the special ones for the future that had been little more than dreams for years. He had no idea what he had just given her, of course. A man with his privilege and wealth would never understand how just knowing one had a permanent home could affect everything in one’s life.
His boots moved back. He leaned toward her. His hand appeared on the table near her, then left. A small box now rested in front of her, opened. Inside it, two stunning diamond ear bobs rested on a bed of velvet. They flashed in the low light.
“You are too generous,” she said, carefully. “You have already given me a great gift with your reassurance. To add these is too much.”
“These are old gifts, not from today. They are only being delivered today.”
“I cannot accept them. Please do not be insulted.” She truly did not want to offend him right now, and not only because he had taken this weight from her soul.
“I am not insulted, but you have already accepted them. Remember? You certainly did not refuse them.”
“I understand how you may have misunderstood my silence when you mentioned them. However, I am not befuddled by wine this evening.”
“You were not befuddled on the barge.”
“I was thoroughly befuddled. Foxed. I would have never,
ever
been so . . . wicked, otherwise.”
“Nonsense. You loved being wicked. I know of what I speak, so do not try to be a fraud with me. I am a connoisseur of inebriation and wickedness, and you were not too much the first to be ignorant of embracing the latter. You were pleasantly relaxed but not thoroughly foxed.”
She felt her face warming. “A gentleman would allow a lady her excuses, it seems to me.”
“Fine. If you require wine to have an excuse, I will pour you some.”
“No!”
He just waited for more. He watched her in that seductive way he could call up at will, where nothing ostensibly changed, but it was just there, in the air, the appeal that led a woman to think of him in sensual terms. There should be a law against a man being able to do that. She felt her armor falling off, item by item, under that gaze.
She would try honesty first. He had been sympathetic today, so far. He might be still.
“I believe that you have misunderstood, due to the wine and my bad behavior, and that you now think . . . well, you assume that with these diamonds that . . .”
He just looked at her. He did not show any inclination to help her by showing he understood the rest. He just let her twist in the wind at the end of her words.
“It would be most unwise for me to be befuddled again, whether by wine or diamonds. I do not choose to be wicked with you anymore.”
No insult showed in his expression. Rather, she saw curiosity claim him. That could be more dangerous, she knew.
He dropped his elbow on the table, propped his chin on his hand, and considered her. “What an interesting woman you are. It is not shyness that makes you refuse me on all counts, I do not think. Or lack of desire. Do not protest that point, please. I will go to France and enter a monastery if I cannot recognize desire in a woman by now. As for your ability to respond to pleasure, well, we settled that question on the barge. So, what is your objection when it is very obvious that we want each other? Considering how I have suffered, I claim a right to know.”
When she had thought of honesty being a good idea, she had not expected quite this much to be required of her. What would he think if she answered with the whole truth? If she satisfied all his curiosity?
She had never explained herself to anyone before, of course. Perhaps, if Latham had not returned to London, she might have considered it now. Only she did not trust Castleford, or anyone, to know the truth and keep it private.
She picked over his little speech, to find something to say. “I do not think it is very obvious that we want—”
His dramatic sigh cut her off. He just looked at her, expecting an answer.
Rather suddenly she found herself at that point where she was hard-pressed to come up with a reason that made sense, that he would not demolish with ease, and that she wanted to share. Bereft of an excuse, she used Celia’s advice for delaying this pursuit.
“You are known to frequent brothels, sir. For my health alone, it would be most unwise to succumb to your blandishments.”
She stunned him. At least she hoped that was the explanation for the way his face froze. Not only stunned but dumbfounded, apparently. He stood up and looked down on her, speechless. Then he walked away.
She felt obliged to stand too. She saw him near the open flap, appearing very thoughtful and, she regretfully noted, angry. Celia had warned he would not take it well. That was an understatement.