“In a sense.”
He sat next to her on the bench, although he seemed closer than he ought to be. Certainly there was ample space on his other side, yet his shoulder brushed hers, his boot tangled in her cloak.
He most likely had a plan he had concocted with his cousin, Lieutenant Coulton-Jones. Something that would place all of them in danger. Or perhaps he had changed his mind and would not help her. He had come to his senses and decided she was more trouble than she was worth.
“Miranda,” he said, staring ahead of him, “you do realize that you’ve been staring at a bush that looks like a gigantic turd?”
She choked, then laughed, her stomach tightening as she howled. “Gerard!”
“You looked so extremely serious,” he said. “I thought I would try to lighten your mood.” He swept his hand towards the offending bush. “And it truly does look like it. Cecil’s gardener certainly has a sense of humor.”
She hiccoughed, then snorted, then hiccoughed again.
“You’re not choking, are you?” He glanced sideways at her.
“It would be your fault if I were.”
“At least now you look less frightened.”
“I am still frightened, Gerard.”
“You are never frightened. Which is why I have a very dangerous proposition for you.”
His words were serious and yet his tone was light. It confused her. “What is it?”
He turned to face her, and took her hands in his. Through their gloves she felt his warmth.
“Miranda, will you marry me?”
More than his question, the look in Gerard’s eyes made her tremble. His eyes were shining amber flames and she was the moth, drawn towards them.
She had never allowed herself to dream of this moment, this question. Dreaming of it would have made her life all the more bleak. And now that he had asked it, with both of them sitting on an icy stone bench, she didn’t know what to think, what to feel.
Why would he say such a thing to her? Surely he wasn’t serious. He was simply being gallant and would regret his hasty words in a moment.
She swallowed and closed her eyes, shutting out that expression on his face that looked like love. When she opened her eyes, her calmness slid over her like a shroud. “Gerard, why should I do that?”
“I will do all I can to protect you. I will not leave you alone.”
She had been alone, it seemed, for most of her life. Her parents had not even liked her, she suspected. She had not belonged to the set of people she’d met in London during her season.
She knew Gerard was true to his word, he would not leave her alone. For a moment, she wanted to take hold of that, to have someone who was hers. She would be free of Harriet, of Cecil and Felicity.
But this new potential threat to her life enabled her to draw back. No, she would not marry him and expose him to the same threat. She turned her face away, her skin feeling like marble, her eyes downcast. “It is dangerous and foolhardy, Gerard.”
“I don't care.”
“I will not marry you for that reason.” This was a terrible dream. It must be. She had loved him for so long, and yet now in this moment that she had never expected would happen to her, she was refusing him because she loved him. Because she couldn’t bring this menace into his life. And so she lied to him. “I will not marry without love.”
She thought that would silence him. He would assume she was a silly, romantical girl. But then the last words she expected tumbled out of his mouth.
“Miranda, I’ve fallen in love with you.”
She looked at him, and her mind became a blank. She saw only his eyes, his beautiful eyes, intent upon her face. She wanted to tell him the truth. She wanted to see his smile, hear his laughter, find joy in his arms.
It was too hard to take that step. Men like him did not love women like her. She had to make him see that his emotions were only fleeting, a mad dream from which he would wake. She gave a short laugh, tinged with both sadness and incredulity. “In a week?”
Hurt flinched across his face, and she regretted her laugh and her words.
“You cannot tell me that I do not feel as I do,” he said.
Her jaw set. “I will not allow you to make such a bad bargain.”
His jaw set, as well. She had seen this stubbornness in him, but never directed at herself. “Why is it such a bad bargain if I am in love with you?”
Love. He kept saying the word, as if he meant it. He couldn’t mean it. She had to convince him. Or perhaps … she was trying to convince herself.
She took a deep breath, then faced him squarely. “Because I do not love you, Gerard.”
Her hands shook as she said it, so she pulled them from his grasp and clamped them together, feeling her finger bones creak. But she had spent a lifetime perfecting this mask of calm—no, not a mask, a shield. She admitted it. But now, she was shielding him from herself.
He looked disbelieving, but in the face of her steady gaze, his skepticism began to crack, revealing … pain, held at bay only by some inner strength. She recognized it. She’d felt it often enough when her parents had said something particularly denigrating, when Felicity’s tongue ran sharp.
And she’d done it to Gerard.
“I ... I am sorry, that was too blunt,” she said.
Gerard didn't respond, but his eyes spoke for him—he did not want to believe her, he could not believe that he would feel this way if she did not feel the same.
She did feel the same. She loved him. But she was in a walled garden of her own making, and she held the key. And she was too weak to unlock the gate and step outside.
She wanted to believe that she could be vulnerable, that she could learn to trust. But she had been this way for too long. It was too frightening to step out. There was that part of her that was perhaps too broken.
Miranda rose to her feet. She wanted to appear practical, unfeeling—but she gnawed nervously on her bottom lip and she could not meet his eyes.
He gathered his crutches and stood before her, a numb expression on his face.
Miranda stared at her feet. “I am sorry, Gerard. I am grateful for the honour of your proposal, but I cannot marry you.”
She turned away to hurry back to the children.
Behind her, she thought she heard him growl, “I do not want your gratitude.”
Then his hand captured her elbow. Not hard, but firmly enough to detain her. She turned back to demand that he release her.
His crutches clattered to the ground, and then his arms were around her, pulling her tight against his body. His kissed her, his lips firm and sensual.
Then she wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling his head down. Blood pulsed fast and hard in her ears, and she kissed him with all that her heart had to give to him.
His tongue touched her lips and she opened for him. His hand tightened on her waist, her back, and she pressed herself against him.
It was glorious. And for a moment, the Upper Garden was in full bloom.
He pulled away from her, breathing hard. His eyes were amber fires, and the love she saw in them made her want to weep.
Her breath was coming in soft gasps, but when she gently pushed at him and his arms loosened about her, she still couldn’t seem to draw air into her lungs.
“Miranda, you lied to me.” Fierce delight shone in his smile. “You do love me.”
“I did not lie.” She pushed away from him, slithering around him to walk a few feet away.
He took only one limping step toward her. “You cannot lie your way through this. I felt it.”
She turned her back to him. He had felt it.
“Miranda, you must marry me.”
“I do not want to marry you.” Because she loved him, she also knew the most painful way to hurt him. “You say you can protect me, but we both know that a cripple cannot do so.”
There was no sound behind her. She could not turn around to see his face, so she hurried out of the garden without looking bac
k. Upon walking through the arch into the Lower Garden, she spotted a little boy hiding behind a manicured bush. Which admittedly looked like a gigantic turd.
“I see you, Paul!” She ran to him, arms outstretched as though to tickle him to death.
He ran from her, screaming with laughter.
She played with the children for another half hour, but Gerard did not appear. When she, Miss Teel, and the nursery-maids gathered the children and marched them back to the house for tea, he still had not departed from the bleak Upper Garden.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Gerard made his way blindly down the corridors. He knew Miranda could not have meant the callous words she had flung at him. She was not indifferent to him. She had given herself away with that kiss.
She would have refused him in order to keep him safe. The thought warmed through the cold that had seeped into his limbs. So she must have lied to him.
If she had lied, she was uncomfortably good at it. She had looked him in the eye to tell him she did not love him.
Why would she refuse him? He could offer her everything she did not have. He could protect her.
Unless, he realized bitterly, she truly did doubt his broken body’s ability to protect her from anything.
No, he knew she had lied to him about that, too.
He knew where he wanted to go. He made his way deeper into the bowels of the house, searching out the older section. The carpets were older, smelling of long winters, and wall-hangings flanked the corridors like medieval squires.
At last he stood before the wooden door to the family chapel. It was strangely shorter and narrower than he remembered, but the wood was still deeply grained, darkened with age and woodsmoke, studded with iron.
He pushed open the door, which gave a mighty creak. Colored light from the narrow stained-glass window over the altar dazzled his eyes, and it took him a moment to adjust to the darkness of the interior. Four pillars stood at attention, spreading outward at the top into the delicately vaulted ceiling. The wooden pews seemed almost crushed into the rest of the floor space since it was not a pretentiously grand chapel, being small and only modestly airy.
And near the front, Lady Wynwood turned to look at him. As soon as he saw her, he knew he needed her, even though he had not been able to articulate it to himself. He had come here to find her.
She rose and came to him, taking his hands in hers. “My dear boy, come and sit.”
He sat with her in the front pew, resting his crutches against it. But now that he was here, he could not speak. The quiet of the chapel seeped into his bones, but instead of calming him, it only made him feel more helpless and vulnerable.
Lady Wynwood let him sit for several minutes before she spoke. “Won’t you unburden yourself to me?”
“There is too much. It has shown me that I am less of a man because of it.”
“Surely not, Gerard.”
“What purpose has this served?” He gripped his knee, and pain shot down his leg. “Was I too proud? Was I in need of humbling? Did I do something that required judgement?”
“The Lord does not punish in that way.”
“But He allowed this to happen.” And therein lay the root of his problems. Because of his injury, he had not been able to protect Miranda as he would have had he been whole. He squeezed harder, sending pain spiking up his thigh.
Lady Wynwood gave him a frank look. “We think that there is a reason for everything. But the truth is that there are many reasons for everything.” She laid her hand over his, smoothing the taut knuckles. “Your knee has brought you home to your parents, to a new chapter in your life.”
Miranda had said much the same. “But this is not the chapter I wanted. Not so soon. I want to know why God has done this to me.”
Her face had become drawn, and there was a hollowness and a horror behind her eyes that he had never seen before. “That is a trail that doubles back upon itself, and then doubles again.”
He shot to his feet and limped to the altar. Dust coated the brocade cloth covering it.
“For me,” she said from behind him, “anger is not a fire. It has been like drowning, a constant thrashing about, a constant questioning, ‘Why me?’ until it utterly exhausts me.”
Perhaps she was right. He had lived with this bitterness for so many months that now he didn't know how to live without it, how to release this tightness in his soul.
“What would you suggest I do?” His voice was harsh. “Pray? Give alms to the poor?”
“Be still,” she said simply.
He turned to look at her. She had a calmness of expression that reminded him of Miranda, but the weight of her gaze spoke of past pain, of hard lessons learned.
He swung back to the altar, his fingers wrinkling the cloth. “Since coming ashore, I have not been able to be still. I had more rest when I was on board ship, in the midst of a war.”
“War has not followed you home, Gerard. There are different ways to fight the battles on land.”
“What use is God when He takes away a man’s career and leaves his body broken? What use is God if He cannot save the poor and the helpless? No one else sees her. No one else cares for her except …”
The echo of his words shouted in the small chapel rang through the silence between them. It was blasphemous of him to say such things, but they came clawing up from the bitter gall in his heart.
A rustle of cloth, then Lady Wynwood was beside him, her hand on his again. “God sees her.”
He shook his head wordlessly. How could he know that?
“God sees you,” she said. “I do not know why you were injured, but I do know He can heal you.”
The idea seeped into his mind like water into the bilges of a ship. He could be restored. “How would He do that?”
“I do not know. Perhaps in ways we cannot understand. But I have felt that healing. Miranda’s calmness—the way that she calms you—that is like the peace of God that can heal you.”
But without Miranda, he was not calm. He was still angry, and frustrated, and bitter, his own unholy trinity. How could he possibly be healed?
But if God was all powerful, then would He not see Gerard? Would He not reach him?
Lady Wynwood grasped his shoulders to turn him to face her. “Do you want to battle this for years on end?”
“No,” he said, with more certainty than he had thought he possessed.
“Dear Gerard.” She touched his cheek. “Even if you do not trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, I do. I know that one day, with His peace, you will once again be happy.”
He had no reply for her. He did not feel much different from when he had entered the chapel. Perhaps he had expected too much. His talk with her had not changed today, and today was what pained him.
Lady Wynwood walked back down the aisle and left the chapel. Gerard remained, hands still gripping the altar, still without answers, still without an idea of what he could do.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Ellie was missing.
Miranda had walked back from the Lower Gardens with her and the other children, and there had been much bustling about as they shed their cloaks, scarves, caps, and mittens. The nursery smelled strongly—and not very pleasantly—of wet wool, freshened only in the corners where pine boughs were tucked.
Dinner for the children was earlier than usual today because of the New Year’s Eve dinner party. The kitchen simply could not prepare the food for all the children and the grand party at the same time. But when it was time to eat, Ellie was nowhere to be found.
Miranda spent twenty minutes searching the nursery wing, in every closet and corner. She had begun to feel real concern when Jean, the under-maid, came up to her in the deserted hallway. “Miss, I found Miss Ellie.”
Miranda had not seen Jean since the incident in the family wing two days ago, and her appearance now with Ellie missing made Miranda’s breath freeze in her throat. “Where is she?”
“If you’ll follow me, miss.”
“I wouldn’t follow you if you promised the way to Paradise.”
Jean surprised her by stepping close to her, enough that Miranda could see the hard lines along her mouth and eyes. In a low voice, she said, “You’ll come with me if you want to see Ellie again.”
“If you’ve hurt her, you’ll see what I’m capable of,” Miranda said in a dark voice.
That startled Jean, and she blinked her pale eyes twice, thrice. Then they narrowed. “If you don’t come with me, she’ll be hurt badly.”
Miranda set her jaw, then noticed Jean was wearing a cloak. “Are we going outside? Let me get my cloak.” Jean looked as though she would object simply to be contrary, but Miranda added, “I will come quietly if you let me get my cloak.”
Jean came into the bedroom with her as she retrieved her wool cloak, and did not object when she also snatched up her bonnet and Gerard’s black and red scarf. Miranda then followed Jean down the stairs.
Michael would be helping with the preparations for the dinner party. Would they pass the dining room or the kitchens? Could she catch his eye?
But they descended to the family wing and then took the back stairs to the gardens. They saw no other servants, for they were all helping guests in their bedrooms or preparing for the dinner.
They turned toward the south end of the estate, but they did not cross the lawn, instead skirting the edge of the forest. Gerard’s bedroom window faced in the opposite direction. He would never see her.
The wind had risen, and it cut through her thin cloak like ice daggers. But her heart felt even more frozen. Was despair always so cold?
After taking a short trail through a narrow strip of woods, they came upon a dirt road used by the tenant farmers. An old traveling coach sat fifty yards away, driven by one of the men who had attacked them in the garden and at the skating party. It was the taller one, who had injured Gerard.
The coach opened and the round-faced man who had tried to take Miranda stepped out. He nodded to someone inside, and then Miranda saw Harriet.
She exited the vehicle gracefully. She had deep lines in her hard face, but her hair, visible under her bonnet, was still thick and beautiful, a rich brown color. Her eyes glittered when she spotted Miranda, but she didn’t smile.
The Spinster's Christmas Page 13