She watched his face. Cold as a stone effigy. Whatever had passed between them in the garden was already buried. Would he mourn it? She couldn’t say.
Mrs Flavell chuckled. “Rules relating to liaisons? Clearly a passionate encounter in the moonlight doesn’t count.”
Mr Hawke tutted, his patience in shreds. “Tell me what you know. I assume it relates to why I stormed into Templeton’s ballroom and crossed a line no gentleman should.”
“Not quite.” Their hostess gave an amused hum, almost dismissing him. “I knew your mother, Miss Harland. When we attended Thornborough Academy together.” She raisedboth hands in a silencing gesture. “It hardly seems possible, I know. I don’t look a day over thirty.”
Daphne’s heart skipped a beat.
No one ever spoke of her mother. Her father would turn brittle with rage. And yet the ache remained, sharp as the day she died.
“Stay the night, Miss Harland. And I shall tell you why your mother came here the week before her passing.”
The world fell silent.
The music faded.
The distant laughter dissolved.
Questions flooded her mind. Had the fever not killed her? Had those days of crippling pain and whispered goodbyes been a lie? Had her father’s grief been nothing but an act?
Oh, Mrs Flavell excelled at stirring emotions.
Daphne couldn’t leave, even if she wanted to.
Not now. Not with the past clawing at her heels.
She looked at Mr Hawke, but he barely met her gaze. His frustrated mutter said he already knew what she was about to say.
“Might we stay?”
“We need to be on the road, unless you want to sleep in a gaol cell.”
She felt the familiar tightening in her throat, but couldn’t bring herself to nod and agree. Not this time.
“You leave,” she said. He was probably desperate to put twenty miles between them, to distance himself from the kiss that had curled her toes. “I shall stay the night with Mrs Flavell and find my own way out of London.”
Mr Hawke ground his teeth and scuffed the dirt with his boot. He made the rules. He didn’t deal in propositions. And probably wasn’t averse to kidnapping.
“Don’t make me give you an ultimatum, Miss Harland.”
She said nothing as memories surfaced. Times she’d stood before her father, her choices tossed overboard like unwanted cargo.
Perhaps this was different.
Perhaps her safety mattered.
There was only one way to know.
She closed the small gap between them and laid a hand on his forearm. Tension coiled beneath her palm. “I can’t leave now. But you could stay with me.”
The sky darkened as he stared.
A muscle ticked in his jaw.
He stood like a monument to defiance.
A woman’s playful scream echoed in the night, and he nearly snarled. “We leave at dawn. I shall carry you from this house if you break our bargain.”
