Page 6 of A Lyon for Luck
Chapter Four
They traveled throughthe night, not stopping until dawn was breaking. There was a small estate near Gayhurst that belonged to Lynley where the horses would be changed and where they could have a few moments to ease stiff joints and sore muscles from having been bounced about in the carriage, well sprung as it was, through the night. Then they’d be off once more. The farther north they could get before switching to the mail coach, the better off they’d be.
As he stepped down, turning back to offer her his aid, Fletcher was only too well aware that—but for the schemes of others—she’d have been mistress of that estate and several others. Never one for pretense unless it was bluffing in a card game, he voiced that opinion easily enough. “You’d have had the run of this place if things had been different.”
“It would have simply been one more place to be unhappy,” she observed. “One more place to feel quietly discontented.”
“I can only offer you one such place… if we don’t get on, if we decide we can’t stand the sight of one another, there’s no escape. There’s no living separate lives unless we can manage to do so under one roof,” he observed starkly. “I think of all the properties I do own, only one of those has a roof.”
Her response was a simple shrug of her slim shoulders. “One roof is all I require. So long as it’s not Cecil Pozenby’s roof, I cannot think of any better option… and for what it’s worth, Viscount Lynley is a man much changed. And that is primarily because of his very kind and very good-hearted wife.”
Fletcher looked at her for a moment. “He said much the same of you… that circumstances had changed you for the better.”
“He isn’t wrong,” Daphne said. “I was content to go along with what others demanded of me before. It never occurred to me that I ought to be choosing my own fate. Now, I cannot imagine simply leaving that to the whim of others.”
“And Lynley? Do you have regrets there, Miss Acres?” He wasn’t certain why the answer mattered so very much to him, but it did.
She met his gaze squarely. “Not a single one, Lord Aldwyn. Whatever our shared fate may be, I wouldn’t trade places with Lady Lynley for the world. He and I would have been miserable. But at least this way, two people have found happiness… and we have a chance at it. Or at the very least contentment, I think.”
His brows drew together as he simply tried to make sense of her. “You are both sentimental and singularly unromantic at the same time, Miss Acres. A paradox.”
“I have been called infinitely worse, my lord. And very recently by people who should never utter such things about their own flesh and blood… A paradox is something I can most assuredly live with being. Can you?”
Fletcher felt a smile tugging at his lips. “Do you snore?”
“Not that I am aware.”
“Any annoying habits like picking your teeth or laughing like a braying donkey?”
Her lips didn’t exactly form a smile, but there was visible effort to keep from it. “Again, no one has ever informed me of such.”
“I think we might be all right then,” he offered.
“Do you snore?” she asked.
“Like a bullfrog,” he said breezily. “Terrible. Rattles the timbers overhead.”
“You’re putting me on,” she accused with a laugh.
“You’ll know soon enough,” he said. And suddenly, laughter died away for them both. In its place was awareness. This wasn’t simply a journey, after all. At the end of it, far more would have changed than simply their location. They weren’t traveling from one city to the next but one phase of life to the next. And going forward, their lives would be joined forever more. But more than that, their bodies would join, as well.
Fletcher wasn’t innocent. Not by any means. He’d had his share of lovers. Not so many as to be considered a rogue, but enough that he understood the importance of shared pleasure and that its presence or absence would mark them both going forward. And she might not have the same degree of understanding, but she wasn’t so ignorant of it all that she was oblivious to the shift in their conversation, or the charged air that now existed between them.
“I’m going to take a turn,” she said, pointing toward a graveled path that led around the drive. “A bit of a walk will be nice after being cooped up.”
He saw it for what it was—a need for space, a need for a moment to herself to process what was happening. And he respected that. “I’ll see about getting us something to eat. Maybe I can charm the cook… if there is one?”
“If she exists, I’ve no doubt you’ll succeed, my lor—”
“Fletcher,” he said. “I’ve never been amy lordanything and it feels strange to hear it. And I dislike the notion of you addressing me as Quill. As though we were simply old school chums or acquaintances. You should call me Fletcher.”
“And will you call me Daphne?”
“Is that your wish?” he asked her.
Silence stretched for a second longer than was comfortable, then she nodded. “It is, actually. I think I should like that very much.”
“Then I will see you back here in half an hour, Daphne, and we shall depart once more.”
