Page 57 of Daisy and the Duke
Tristan refused Bella’s offer of a drink, and turned to Lady Rutherford in frustration. “How can you be so calm? Surely you want to know where she is!”
Lady Rutherford sipped her tea and gave a little sniff. “Who knows where the girl has run off. She was always an ungrateful wretch and now it seems quite obvious who was behind the many missing items from the Grange over the years.”
“Mama, please!” Bella said, her eyes wide in the dim light of the room. “We don’t know that. It must have been servants or something.”
“What was she, but a glorified servant with airs beyond her station? You are too sweet, darling,” her mother said. “And my goodness, look at the hour. You should retire, or you’ll have circles under your eyes tomorrow.”
That hardly seemed like the most pressing matter to Tristan, but it was clear that Lady Rutherford didn’t have much interest in locating her stepdaughter.
“She is a lone woman, with no more than one dancing slipper to run on, it’s near freezing temperatures tonight, and she’s dressed like abutterfly,” Tristan said. He faced the assembled group, asking the same questions he’d asked since she fled. “Where did she go? Why has no one seen her? How could she simply disappear?”
As before, no one had answers.
Jack suggested that there was little more anyone could do tonight. “Let’s head back to Lyondale, and arrange for a proper search first thing in the morning. I’m sure the baroness will be willing to lend her servants to the effort.”
Lady Rutherford sighed and said that she would. “The girl has to come back sometime. She’s got nowhere else to go.”
If this was the atmosphere Daisy called home, perhaps it wasn’t surprising that she ran away. But where did she go?
In the coach, Tristan told Jack, “I’m going to find her, and we are getting to the bottom of this.”
“Bythis, you mean the running away?” Jack asked.
“I mean all of this. The charge of theft, the strange attitude of the baroness, and every other mystery of the Grange. I owe her that. She may never forgive me for what happened tonight, but I’m going to clear her name if it’s the last thing I do as duke.”
Chapter 15
When Daisy had fled fromthe ball, she ran through the fields, heading roughly south. She’d lost one her dancing slippers almost the moment she entered the gardens, but she couldn’t go back for it, not now. Not ever.
She had dashed through the formal gardens and the meadow, then plunged into the farm fields. Her gown snagged on the broken stalks of whatever crop was growing there. Daisy ignored the scrapes from the stubs of the crops and the jabbing from the stones in the dirt. She had to get away from Lyondale, and Tristan, and everyone else there who stared at her with cruel, judging eyes.
At first, all she wanted was to rush home to the kitchen at Rutherford Grange, to the warm hearth and Elaine’s motherly embrace. But even before she saw the lights of the great house, she knew she couldn’t go there. Now everyone knew that “Lady Wildwood” was plain old Daisy Merriot—thief and interloper. She’d be discovered at home, probably arrested or dragged off for whatever punishment the vicar and her stepmother and the duke dreamed up.
She needed another refuge.
All at once, she remembered Tabitha’s cottage, and the old woman’s strange exhortation that Daisy must come to her if she ever left the Grange. How prophetic, but how welcome now. The old woman would hide Daisy for a night! And it was unlikely the fine folk of the county would even think of the old woman’s place for a day or two, by which point Daisy would be gone.
When Daisy knocked on Tabitha’s door, she was exhausted, foot-sore, and in tears. “Tabitha, it’s Daisy! I need your help, please let me in!”
Moments later, the door swung open and a thin, bony arm reached out to pull Daisy inside. The door slammed shut behind her.
“What’s going on, girl? Are there brigands out there?”
A flame suddenly illuminated the tiny cottage, as Tabitha lit a tallow candle.
“I’m in trouble,” Daisy said, her breath coming in great heaves. “I am so sorry, but I had nowhere else to go.”
“You poor dear! Sit down, and be easy. No one will find you here.”
And before Daisy knew it, she was divested of her once-beautiful but now tattered butterfly gown, wrapped in a woolen blanket by Tabitha’s fireplace, her hands around a mug of chamomile tea.
She poured her heart out, explaining about the magic of the gown’s appearance and sneaking into the ball under a false name, then dancing with Tristan and slipping away with him to his rooms. She recalled the forbidden liaison with pain in her heart, for even though it had been foolish, she couldn’t say she didn’t want it. But oh the troubles that followed…
Daisy told Tabitha about the fireworks, which the old lady had heard even at this distance. She explained about Tristan’s reaction to the explosions and how she ran for help, only to be unmasked and suddenly accused of theft and worse.
“And the duke now thinks me shallow and mean, I’m sure. Probably like so many other women, trying to trap him into a marriage by being compromised, though I didn’t say anything! But people must have seen him and Lady Wildwood leave the ballroom together, and they now know it was me. I can’t stay here anymore. Even if I can prove I’m not a thief—and how could I?—I’ll be ashamed to show my face. And the baroness will never let me stay at the Grange anymore. It would reflect badly on Bella, to have a ruined woman in the house. Oh, I don’t know what to do.”
“Sounds to me as though you need a good night’s sleep, child,” Tabitha said. “You’re distraught, and tired, and cold. Let’s see what tomorrow brings. I promise you that no one will bother you through the night.”
