“I don’t care to discuss my marriage with you, so if you cannot refrain from offering your unsolicited opinions, you’re going to have to leave.”
“You can’t ask me to leave,” he said in disbelief.
She crossed her arms. “This is my house.”
Colin stared at her, then looked around the room—the drawing room of the Duchess of Hastings—then looked back at Daphne, as if just realizing that his little sister, whom he’d always viewed as a rather jolly extension of himself, had become her own woman.
He reached out and took her hand. “Daff,” he said quietly, “I’ll let you handle this as you see fit.”
“Thank you.”
“For now,”he warned. “Don’t think I’ll let this situation continue indefinitely.”
But it wouldn’t, Daphne thought a half hour later as Colin left the house. It couldn’t continue indefinitely. Within a fortnight, she would know.
Every morning Daphne woke to find she was holding her breath. Even before her courses were due to arrive, she bit her lip, said a little prayer, and gingerly peeled back the covers of her bed and looked for blood.
And every morning she saw nothing but snowy white linen.
A week after her courses were due, she allowed herself the first glimmerings of hope. Her courses had never been perfectly punctual; they could, she reasoned, still arrive at any time. But still, she had never been quite this late . . .
After another week, though, she found herself smiling each morning, holding on to her secret as she would a treasure. She wasn’t ready to share this with anyone yet. Not her mother, not her brothers, and certainly not Simon.
She didn’t feel terribly guilty about withholding the news from him. After all, he had withheld his seed from her. But more importantly, she feared that his reaction would be explosively negative, and she just wasn’t ready to let his displeasure ruin her perfect moment of joy. She did, however, jot off a note to his steward, asking that he forward Simon’s new address to her.
But then finally, after the third week, her conscience got the better of her, and she sat down at her desk to write him a letter.
Unfortunately for Daphne, the sealing wax hadn’t even dried on her missive when her brother Anthony, obviously returned from his sojourn in the country, came crashing into the room. Since Daphne was upstairs, in her private chamber, where she was not supposed to receive visitors, she didn’t even want to think about how many servants he had injured on his way up.
He looked furious, and she knew she probably shouldn’t provoke him, but he always made her slightly sarcastic, so she asked, “And how did you get up here? Don’t I have a butler?”
“You had a butler,” he growled.
“Oh, dear.”
“Where is he?”
“Not here, obviously.” There didn’t seem any point in pretending she didn’t know exactly who he was talking about.
“I’m going to kill him.”
Daphne stood, eyes flashing. “No, you’re not!”
Anthony, who had been standing with his hands on his hips, leaned forward and speared her with a stare. “I made a vow to Hastings before he married you, did you know that?”
She shook her head.
“I reminded him that I had been prepared to kill him for damaging your reputation. Heaven help him if he damages your soul.”
“He hasn’t damaged my soul, Anthony.” Her hand strayed to her abdomen. “Quite the opposite, actually.”
But if Anthony found her words odd, she would never know, because his eyes strayed to her writing table, then narrowed. “What is that?” he asked.
Daphne followed his line of vision to the small pile of paper that constituted her discarded attempts at a letter to Simon. “It’s nothing,” she said, reaching forward to grab the evidence.
“You’re writing him a letter, aren’t you?” Anthony’s already stormy expression grew positively thunderous. “Oh, for the love of God, don’t try to lie about it. I saw his name at the top of the paper.”
Daphne crumpled the wasted papers and dropped them into a basket under the desk. “It’s none of your business.”
Anthony eyed the basket as if he were about to lunge under the desk and retrieve the half-written notes. Finally, he just looked back at Daphne, and said, “I’m not going to let him get away with this.”
“Anthony, this isn’t your affair.”
He didn’t dignify that with a reply. “I’ll find him, you know. I’ll find him, and I’ll kill—”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Daphne finally exploded. “This is my marriage, Anthony, not yours. And if you interfere in my affairs, so help me God, I swear I will never speak to you again.”
Her eyes were steady, and her tone was forceful, and Anthony looked slightly shaken by her words. “Very well,” he muttered, “I won’t kill him.”
“Thank you,” Daphne said, rather sarcastically.
“But I will find him,” Anthony vowed. “And I will make my disapproval clear.”
Daphne took one look at his face and knew that he meant it. “Very well,” she said, reaching for the completed letter that she’d tucked away in a drawer. “I’ll let you deliver this.”
“Good.” He reached for the envelope.
Daphne moved it out of his reach. “But only if you make me two promises.”
“Which are . . . ? ”
“First, you must promise that you won’t read this.”
He looked mortally affronted that she’d even suggested he would.
“Don’t try that ‘I’m so honorable’ expression with me,” Daphne said with a snort. “I know you, Anthony Bridgerton, and I know that you would read this in a second if you thought you could get away with it.”
Anthony glared at her.
“But I also know,” she continued, “that you would never break an explicit promise made to me. So I’ll need your promise, Anthony.”
“This is hardly necessary, Daff.”
“Promise!” she ordered.
“Oh, all right,” he grumbled, “I promise.”
“Good.” She handed him the letter. He looked at it longingly.
“Secondly,” Daphne said loudly, forcing his attention back to her, “you must promise not to hurt him.”
“Oh, now, wait one second, Daphne,” Anthony burst out. “You ask for too much.”
She held out her hand. “I’ll be taking that letter back.”
He shoved it behind his back. “You already gave it to me.”
She smirked. “I didn’t give you his address.”
“I can get his address,” he returned.
“No, you can’t, and you know it,” Daphne shot back. “He has no end of estates. It’d take you weeks to figure out which one he’s visiting.”
“A-ha!” Anthony said triumphantly. “So he’s at one of his estates. You, my dear, let slip a vital clue.”
“Is this a game?” Daphne asked in amazement.
“Just tell me where he is.”
“Not unless you promise—no violence, Anthony.” She crossed her arms. “I mean it.”
“All right,” he mumbled.
“Say it.”
“You’re a hard woman, Daphne Bridgerton.”
“It’s Daphne Basset, and I’ve had good teachers.”
“I promise,” he said—barely. His words weren’t precisely crisp.
“I need a bit more than that,” Daphne said. She uncrossed her arms and twisted her right hand in a rolling manner, as if to draw forth the words from his lips. “I promise not to . . .”
“I promise not to hurt your bloody idiot of a husband,” Anthony spat out. “There. Is that good enough?”
“Certainly,” Daphne said congenially. She reached into a drawer and pulled out the letter she’d received earlier that week from Simon’s steward, giving his address. “Here you are.”
Anthony took it with a decidedly ungraceful—and ungrateful—swipe of his hand. He glanced down, scanned the lines, then said, “I’ll be back in four days.”
“You’re leaving today?” Daphne asked, surprised.
“I don’t know how long I can keep my violent impulses in check,” he drawled.
“Then by all means, go today,” Daphne said.
He did.
“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t pull your lungs out through your mouth.”
Simon looked up from his desk to see a travel-dusty Anthony Bridgerton, fuming in the doorway to his study. “It’s nice to see you, too, Anthony,” he murmured.
Anthony entered the room with all the grace of a thunderstorm, planted his hands on Simon’s desk and leaned forward menacingly. “Would you mind telling me why my sister is in London, crying herself to sleep every night, while you’re in—” He looked around the office and scowled. “Where the hell are we?”
“Wiltshire,” Simon supplied.
“While you’re in Wiltshire, puttering around an inconsequential estate?”
“Daphne’s in London?”
“You’d think,” Anthony growled, “that as her husband you’d know that.”
“You’d think a lot of things,” Simon muttered, “but most of the time, you’d be wrong.” It had been two months since he’d left Clyvedon. Two months since he’d looked at Daphne and not been able to utter a word. Two months of utter emptiness.
In all honesty, Simon was surprised it had taken Daphne this long to get in touch with him, even if she had elected to do so through her somewhat belligerent older brother. Simon wasn’t exactly certain why, but he’d thought she would have contacted him sooner, if only to blister his ears. Daphne wasn’t the sort to stew in silence when she was upset; he’d half expected her to track him down and explain in six different ways why he was an utter fool.