Free Edith Layton by How to Seduce a Bride Page A

lay eyes on again. She wondered again why it was that a woman who was treated badly by her husband attracted men who wanted to treat her badly, too. She’d have thought they’d have wanted to rescue her. The only times she’d ever been glad of being married to Tanner was when she’d seen that desire in his friends’ eyes when they looked at her after he’d punished her.
    She’d dealt with them after Tanner died, she remembered, her mouth settling into a flat hard line. She could again. But she didn’t like doing it.
    “Daisy!” the earl said as he strode into the hall to greet her and saw her expression. “What’s displeased you?”
    “Nothing,” she said, as a footman took the cape she slipped from her shoulders. She gazed at the earl and felt the tension ease as she studied his familiar, kindly face. “Well, something,” she admitted. “I don’t like surprises.” She shook her head and set her red-gold curls trembling. “Who the devil is it that you have for me to see?”
    He laughed. “No roundabout about you, is there, Daisy? Not to worry. It’s someone you like.”
    She placed her hand on his arm and lookedup at him with solemn eyes. “Straight truth, Geoff?”
    He nodded, biting back his smile. “Cross my heart, Daisy, s’truth.”
    She glanced across the hall to his salon. “Then lead on,” she said. “I’ll deal with it.”
    She followed him to the door to the salon, Helena behind her. Daisy saw two men rise from their chairs as she entered the room. One was Viscount Haye, looking sardonic as usual, as he bowed to her. The other was a shorter man, dark and handsome, dressed like a top of the trees young gent about town. But she didn’t know any gentleman except for the earl and the viscount. Daisy frowned. This impudent fellow was laughing at her as she stood and stared at him, his slash of a smile white in his dark face.
    “Don’t know me?” he asked. “There’s a blow to my vanity. Thought you’d remember me, Mrs. T.”
    Her eyes widened. “Daffy!” she yelped, and raced up to him. She stopped short and looked up at him. “Of course I remember you. Always had a good word for me even on the hardest days, and weren’t there too many of those for both of us then? But I never saw you rigged out so fine. Lord, get a look at you!” she said, shaking her head. “A gent from your nose to your toes!”
    “That I look, but that I’m not, I’d swear you know me better,” Daffyd said. “But you! You’re a lady, Daisy.”
    “That,” she said, “I’m not. But I reckon you know that, too. Gawd, look at us, won’t you? A pair of rooks got up like swans.”
    “A trio,” the earl said.
    “No!” Daisy said, swinging around to look at him. “You’re a gentleman born, Geoff, and that you always were.”
    “You, too,” he said soberly. “You were born a lady. Have you forgotten?”
    She hesitated. “I’m trying to remember,” she told him sincerely.
    His smile was so full of sympathy and understanding that for the first time since she’d left New South Wales, she felt she’d done the right thing to come here and find him so she could make a life with him.
    Then she looked up to see the viscount’s face, and doubted herself again. The expression she’d glimpsed was gone in an instant. But Daisy always looked for insult and distrust and knew it when she saw it.
    “Lord,” she exclaimed, “some kind of lady I am! Where are my manners! I’ve forgotten most, you know. But I’m trying. Here’s my companion, Mrs. Masters; she’s here to remind me of them. Helena, here is Daffyd, the earl’s ward, one of the nicest fellows ever to be sent to Botany Bay by mistake.”
    Daffyd laughed as he sketched a bow. “That’s what every lag in the colony says, and in my case it was no mistake. But you don’t have to watchyour purse, Mrs. Masters. I gave up that life after I met the earl. So, Daisy, tell me about your trip and how things are back at Port Jackson.”
    “My trip