Chapter One
December 19, 1816
Yorkshire
The last thing eighteen year-old Daphne Cavanaugh wanted to do was to ride all the way to Yorkshire and spend Christmas acting as her sister Jane’s companion.
It wasn’t that she disliked her sister, mind you. She loved Jane. Adored her even. And perhaps was the most excited of all of her sisters when Jane, an invalid, won the heart of an earl four years earlier without even trying.
But that didn’t mean Daphne wanted to travel to Yorkshire in the brutal and bone chilling cold to spend the most joyous holiday ever celebrated with a slew of stuffy, old relations she didn’t know—and all for the sake of allowing Jane and Gareth, Lord Worthe, a chance to escape her unusually curious family for a few weeks!
And how fortunate for Daphne, she was the one chosen to accompany Jane and Gareth. She frowned. That didn’t sound very kind. Truly, Gareth and Jane were good people. And so was the whole Whitton family, to be truthful. A wry smile played over her lips. Well, at least she’d heard they were a good family. She’d never actually met her great grandfather, James Whitton, Duke of Danby. Her entire family had always been invited to spend Christmas at his ducal estate, but had never attended before.
“Don’t look so glum, Daphne,” Jane said, stealing her attention. “This will give you a taste of what your Season will be like next spring.”
Daphne’s mouth went dry in less than a second. Call her unusual and strange and everything that no good young lady of breeding should be, but she did not want a Season. There was something about being put on display for gentlemen to ogle and decide, based almost completely on looks and the depths of her brother’s coffers, if she’d make a suitable wife. She sighed and on their own accord her lips twisted. She did wish to marry, but not by being auctioned off to the highest bidder, so to speak.
“Gads, I do hope that won’t be the expression you’ll wear when you enter the Marriage Mart,” Gareth teased.
“Why?” Daphne cocked her head to the side. “Do you think such an expression will garner me an unsuitable suitor?”
“Indeed,” Gareth said, grimacing. “One with at least eighty years in his dish.”
Despite herself, Daphne laughed. But only a little. “I’m sure he’ll be superb.”
“While many young ladies marry significantly older gentlemen I don’t think you’d really want to find out,” Jane commented. She was right, the last thing Daphne wanted was her own Methuselah. Jane smoothed her burgundy traveling skirt as the carriage came to a stop in front of a grand, grey stone estate, appropriately named Danby Castle. “Just remember this is only a sampling of what London will be like and we’re not here for you to find a husband.”
“You two might not be, but I am,” Gareth said with a wink in Daphne’s direction. “Ever since Holbrook asked me to act as your guardian until he returns from the Continent I have been on the hunt for you for a husband. You just never know, he might be just over there—” he nodded his head toward the window. Daphne peered through the window, then shuddered. Not fifteen feet from the carriage stood a group of men dressed in the finest of furs. Every one of them with a silver flask in one hand and a cheroot in the other, creating a cloud of smoke that could rival the chimneys at Castlemoor during wintertime.
“No, thank you,” she muttered, falling back against the squabs to wait for the coachman to open the door.
“Not to worry, Daph.” Jane patted her knee. “I wouldn’t allow Gareth to marry you off to one of them—”
“Thank you, I’m quite relieved,” Daphne said with perhaps a drop of sarcasm.
“I think he’s a much better catch.” Jane gave her head a pointed nod toward the window behind Daphne.
Slowly, Daphne craned her neck so she could get a look at the man Jane had alluded to marrying her off to.
When she saw him,
Similar Books
