I like mushrooms . . . They’d been standing in this very spot when he had spoken those words, and she had interpreted that simple statement as so much more. It had seemed a declaration, of sorts, and she had treasured it as such. But now it appeared that Mr. Tisdale had never intended it that way. No, he’d only been being kind, only trying to comfort her after Kitty Dandridge had snubbed her at church. As she, like a sentimental fool, had been so desperate for love that she had pinned all her romantic hopes on nothing more than a young man’s expression of fondness for edible fungi.
I wish he had never come, she thought with sudden fierceness, flinging the denuded flower stem into the water whence it disappeared beneath the bridge, swept downstream on its long journey to the sea. She wished she might go with it and escape the recollection of her own folly. I wish I had never met him.
But even as her brain formed the thought, she knew it for a lie. The few weeks he had lived at the boardinghouse had been the happiest of her life, a brief glimpse of sunshine in an otherwise dull and gray existence. It was not his fault that the dull now seemed so much duller, the gray so very much grayer. She would treasure the memory of those golden days in her heart, and someday, when she was an old maid and a generation of villagers yet unborn would point to her and whisper pityingly behind their hands that “They say she was once a beauty, you know,” he would still be there, forever young, forever golden. Forever hers.
“Miss Daphne! Miss Daphne!” The kitchen boy’s breathless cries interrupted her thoughts, and she dabbed her eyes with the corner of her apron.
“Yes, Timmy? What is it?”
“Your ma wants you. She says the”—he screwed up his face in concentration, trying to remember the name—“the Duke of Reddington wants a word with you.”
“The Duke of—” she echoed, turning quite pale. “Are you quite certain that was the name?”
His head bobbed up and down emphatically. “I’m certain sure. I memorized it special.”
Of course that was the name, she chided herself. How many other dukes are likely to turn up inquiring after you?
“I beg your pardon, Timmy; of course you did. Run ahead and tell Mama and the duke” —her voice shook slightly on the word— “that I shall be there directly.”
As soon as the boy had gone, she stripped off her apron and draped it over the parapet, then pinched her cheeks to give them color and put a hand to her hair to make sure her chignon was still reasonably intact. Clearly, the dance was done and it was now time to pay the piper.
Surely it could not be so very bad, she told herself. The Brundys had not been angry at her entering their house under false pretenses; on the contrary, when she had seen them at church the following Sunday, Lady Helen Brundy had been all that was amiable, even expressing her hope that Daphne and her mother would come to tea one day. It would not have done, of course. Quite aside from the fact that the endless litany of chores left the Drinkard ladies with no time for social niceties, her mother was too conscious of their precarious position in society to jeopardize it by fraternizing with a mill owner, no matter how wealthy he might be. Still, if the Brundys were not offended by her gaining access to their home under false pretenses, then surely the duke could not be so very displeased at having unwittingly lent his name to the cause.
“Oh, my dearest girl!” cried her mother, meeting her with open arms and enveloping her in a slightly floury (for it was baking day) embrace. “Never in my wildest dreams did I ever—but you must not keep his grace waiting. I’ve put him in your father’s study. You must go to him at once!”
“Yes, Mama,” said Daphne in a hollow voice, noting her mother’s brimming eyes with a growing sense of dread. Apparently the duke was beyond displeased, beyond even offended. He must be livid, if he had brought her mother to such a state; under less dire circumstances, Mama would be over the moon at having a duke beneath her roof. With a last, nervous pat to her hair, Daphne crossed the hall to the study, then took a deep breath, opened the door, and stepped inside.
The sight that met her eyes deprived her of speech. There stood Mr. Tisdale, the light from the tall windows turning his hair to gold. Of the Duke of Reddington there was no sign; it seemed somehow absurd to think that such a personage might have felt the need to excuse himself to the necessary, but even dukes were human, Daphne supposed. In any case, his absence allowed her a moment alone with Theo. Strangely, she was no longer afraid, now that she did not have to face the duke’s wrath alone.
“Theo!” she exclaimed in an undervoice, softly closing the door behind her. “The duke—does he know it was you who—”
“No—that is—yes, he—he knew it all along.” He crossed the room to where she still stood just inside the door. “In fact, the Duke of Reddington is—well—he’s me.”
Daphne could only stare at him as the significance of these simple words became clear. Her stunned brain began to register the details she had missed before in the shock and, yes, joy of seeing him again: the double-breasted tailcoat of Bath superfine; the striped satin waistcoat; the tasseled Hessian boots, polished to such a sheen that they might have served, in a pinch, for a looking glass. Even his golden
