Page 8 of A Lyon for Luck
“Then leave it be. Leave those worries for another day… We don’t have to have all the answers today, Daphne. We don’t have to have any answers today. All we have to do today is continue moving forward.”
“Moving forward to what?” she asked. “What exactly are we doing?”
“We are leaving,” he replied. “We are leaving London and yourfamily, obviously. We are going to marry. We are going to build what I hope is a happy life together. And that is all we need to worry about for now. Let the rest of it be.”
It sounded so easy, but the reality was anything but.
Her expression must have given away her thoughts because he smiled at her with a gentleness that left her shaken. “I promise, it will be fine. It will be fine.”
She laughed a bit bitterly. “No man who has ever told me things would be fine has kept his word. Why should you be different?”
He shrugged. “I can’t change what others have done. And I can only ever control what I do. But when I give you my word, Daphne, I will keep it. Come hell or high water.”
There weren’t many people in whom she had any actual faith. Being ruined in the eyes of the ton had a way of showing one precisely who one’s friends were, and just how limited in number. But she believed him. It was terrifying and exhilarating all at once to find herself fully believing in this man whom she barely knew. But perhaps the problem had always been not that there was no one to trust but that her own circle had been so filled with vipers the trustworthy never dared enter it.
He would havesaid more, but at that moment, the wheels hit a particularly deep rut. The carriage rocked and swayed. His heavier form was secure enough, but Daphne, far slighter, nearly slid from the seat even as his heavy greatcoat tumbled to the floor. Reaching out, he grasped her arm.
She made a sound, a slight gasp not of shock but pain. He hadn’t gripped her so firmly that it should have caused harm.Without asking, Fletcher pushed back her sleeve. There were bruises along her forearm, extending upward past her elbow. Some of them could be attributed to her mad dash into the night and climbing over walls. But the ones that held his attention were perfect ovals, five of them, four together and one slightly offset. Keeping his touch gentle, he wrapped his hand about her arm, matching the tips of his fingers and his thumb to those marks.
“Your father?”
She pulled away from him, her expression one that reflected something far deeper than embarrassment. Shame. Shame tightened her delicate features in a way that made him angrier than perhaps he’d ever been.
“He was very upset when I left the other day. Even thinking I’d only gone to Hatchard’s he was furious. Had he known that I went to the Lyon’s Den, I cannot imagine what he would have done,” she admitted.
“He will never touch you again… not in anger, not in any way,” Fletcher vowed. “I’ve no tolerance for men who bully and abuse others. It’s bad enough that he’d try to marry you off to Pozenby out of some misguided belief that he was securing your future. But for him to intimidate and coerce through violence—that isn’t a man, Daphne. That’s a coward.”
She glanced back at him then. “You really mean that, don’t you?”
“I’ve suffered my share of bullies in life. At school, mostly. I suffered them until I grew tall enough and strong enough that I no longer had to. And I promised myself then that I would never be counted amongst their ilk nor would I ever tolerate such things in my presence,” he admitted. “And I’ve kept to that.”
“Thank you.”
“Whatever for?”
She cocked her head slightly to one side. “For offering me something I have not had in months—if ever… Hope.”
They settled against the seat once more. He retrieved the coat and covered them both with it again until they had some reasonable semblance of warmth and comfort. And as the carriage rolled onward, making for the northern counties and eventually the Scottish border, Fletcher knew that things had shifted between them. Something was different now. Something that held the portent of great change. It wasn’t something that he’d intended, it wasn’t something that he’d manipulated or sought or planned—it simply had occurred. Somewhere along the way, in the very short time that they had known one another, a bond had formed between them, and with every passing minute that bond seemed to be growing stronger.
He didn’t mind that. He was unnerved by it, perhaps—a bit frightened of what it might mean going forward, and of just how significant it felt.
Given everything that he had heard—all the different gossip and all the wild tales that were bandied about—he had a great deal to consider. Given Mrs. Dove-Lyon’s seemingly mystical ability to make matches that were not only successful, but happy, he had to wonder if there wasn’t something to the whispers that Bessie had her own kind of magic.
Perhaps that wasn’t such a terrible thing. Everyone could use a little magic.
Perhaps Daphne Acres more than anyone he’d ever known. For someone so young, and seemingly with a genuinely well-developed streak of honor, she’d been done very badly by almost everyone she knew. Everyone she had encountered had been exploitive or unkind, possibly even cruel. But no one seemed to have ever put her first. No one had ever made it a point to ensure that she was taken care of before anyone else.
It had been a long time since he’d had that in his own life. But he could recall it easily enough from his childhood. His mother had been a very loving woman, generous and gentle by nature. His father hadbeen a bit of a rapscallion, but a good man. He missed them terribly, but he’d learned a great deal in the short time he’d had with them. And what he learned was that they had loved one another, and they had loved one another well.
Marriage wasn’t something he’d ever given a great deal of thought before. Perhaps because marriage had seemed so very, very far from the realm of possibility for someone with such limited prospects as he’d once had. But he could recognize now that that was the sort of marriage he wanted to have. It was certainly the sort he would have sought out if he’d thought it a possibility.
Something his mother had often said to him as a boy came back to him in that moment.Where does luck come from if not divine intervention?The notion of Bessie Dove-Lyon being an instrument of God was enough to keep the smile on his face, even as the road disintegrated into a series of ruts and potholes.
Chapter Six
It was justpast ten in the morning, by the time Reginald accepted one irrefutable fact: Daphne was nowhere to be found. How she’d done it, how she’d managed to escape London without anyone being the wiser, was something he couldn’t fathom. And he was growing more furious by the very second.
How dare she? How dare she defy their edicts that way? How dare she be so ungrateful as a daughter that she would not comply with their wishes? Pozenby, all his many flaws aside, was a perfectly reasonable match, especially for a young woman such as herself, whose reputation was in tatters. It was her too high opinion of herself and her complete lack of gratitude that were truly the problem.
