“I don't know,” she said in a strained voice. “I'm not sure I'm the right person.”
Middlethorpe's ancient eyes crinkled with wisdom. “I think you might be exactly the right person,” he said softly. “And I believe you'll know when the time is right to give him the letters. May I have them delivered to you?”
Mutely, she nodded. She didn't know what else to do.
Middlethorpe lifted his cane and pointed it out toward the terrace. “You'd best go to him.”
Daphne caught his gaze, nodded, and scurried outside. The terrace was lit by only a few wall sconces, so the night air was dim, and it was only with the aid of the moon that she saw Simon off in the corner. His stance was wide and angry, and his arms were crossed across his chest. He was facing the endless lawn that stretched out past the terrace, but Daphne sincerely doubted he saw anything aside from his own raging emotions.
She moved silently toward him, the cool breeze a welcome change from the stagnant air in the overcrowded ballroom. Light murmurs of voices drifted through the night, indicating that they were not alone on the terrace, but Daphne saw no one else in the dim light. Clearly the other guests had elected to sequester themselves in dark corners. Or maybe they had descended the steps to the garden and were sitting on the benches below.
As she walked to him, she thought about saying something like, “You were very rude to the duke,” or “Why are you so angry at your father?” but in the end she decided this was not the time to probe into Simon's feelings, and so when she reached his side, she just leaned against the balustrade, and said, “I wish I could see the stars.”
Simon looked at her, first with surprise, then with curiosity.
“You can never see them in London,” she continued, keeping her voice purposefully light. “Either the lights are too bright, or the fog has rolled in. Or sometimes the air is just too filthy to see through it.” She shrugged and glanced back up at the sky, which was overcast. “I'd hoped that I'd be able to see them here in Hampstead Heath. But alas, the clouds do not cooperate.”
There was a very long moment of silence. Then Simon cleared his throat, and asked, “Did you know that the stars are completely different in the southern hemisphere?”
Daphne hadn't realized how tense she was until she felt her entire body relax at his query. Clearly, he was trying to force their evening back into normal patterns, and she was happy to let him. She looked at him quizzically, and said, “You're joking.”
“I'm not. Look it up in any astronomy book.”
“Hmmm.”
“The interesting thing,” Simon continued, his voice sounding less strained as he moved further into the conversation, “is that even if you're not a scholar of astronomy—and I'm not—”
“And obviously,” Daphne interrupted with a self-deprecating smile, “neither am I.”
He patted her hand, and smiled, and Daphne noticed with relief that his happiness reached his eyes. Then her relief turned into something a little more precious—joy. Because she had been the one to chase the shadows from his eyes. She wanted to banish them forever, she realized.
If only he would let her…
“You'd notice the difference anyway,” he said. “That's what's so strange. I never cared to learn the constellations and yet when I was in Africa, I looked up into the sky—and the night was so clear. You've never seen a night like that.”
Daphne stared at him, fascinated.
“I looked up into the sky,” he said with a bewildered shake of his head, “and it looked wrong.”
“How can a sky look wrong?”
He shrugged, lifting one of his hands in an unknowing gesture. “It just did. All the stars were in the wrong place.”
“I suppose I should want to see the southern sky,” Daphne mused. “If I were exotic and dashing, and the sort of female men write poetry about, I suppose I should want to travel.”
“You are the sort of female men write poetry about.” Simon reminded her with a slightly sarcastic tilt to his head. “It was just bad poetry.”
Daphne laughed. “Oh, don't tease. It was exciting. My first day with six callers and Neville Binsby actually wrote poetry.”
“Seven callers,” Simon corrected, “including me.”
“Seven including you. But you don't really count.”
“You wound me,” he teased, doing a fair imitation of Colin. “Oh, how you wound me.”
“Perhaps you should consider a career in the theater as well.”
“Perhaps not,” he replied.
She smiled gently. “Perhaps not. But what I was going to say is that, boring English girl that I am, I have no desire to go anywhere else. I'm happy here.”
Simon shook his head, a strange, almost electric light appearing in his eyes. “You're not boring. And”—his voice dropped down to an emotional whisper—“I'm glad you're happy. I haven't known many truly happy people.”
Daphne looked up at him, and it slowly dawned on her that he had moved closer. Somehow she doubted he even realized it, but his body was swaying toward hers, and she was finding it nigh near impossible to pull her eyes from his.
“Simon?” she whispered.
“There are people here,” he said, his voice oddly strangled.
Daphne turned her head to the corners of the terrace. The murmuring voices she'd heard earlier were gone, but that just might mean that their erstwhile neighbors were eavesdropping.
In front of her the garden beckoned. If this were a London ball, there would have been no place to go past the terrace, but Lady Trowbridge prided herself on being different, and thus always hosted her annual ball at her second residence in Hampstead Heath. It was less than ten miles from Mayfair, but it might as well have been in another world. Elegant homes dotted wide patches of green, and in Lady Trowbridge's garden, there were trees and flowers, shrubs and hedges—dark corners where a couple could lose themselves.