by Liz Tyner
He had the feeling he’d been drawn into someone else’s fight and wasn’t sure which side of it he should be on.
The air chilled Miranda. She felt as alone as she had been when she didn’t know what had happened to her grandmother and was worried about the big spiders in the woods. The time before her new mother told her that she would always have a place to stay and she’d promised it. They’d both believed the promise.
Chalgrove took her arms in his grasp and scrutinised her face.
‘You’re shaking.’
‘I know. But I’m not afraid. Just angry.’ Memories of being a child and being left abandoned resurfaced along with the realisation that she finally had a life of her own and now the old woman had appeared to destroy it.
‘We’ll get out,’ he said. ‘We will. I will see to that. She’s bound for a noose the second I get free. Doesn’t matter if she won’t tell me her name or not. I’ll find out where she lives and let the law take care of it. They don’t have to know her name to judge her guilty.’
Chalgrove peered at her face.
Miranda waited before speaking. Her grandmother was twisted, dishonest, but had helped her survive childhood.
She should be punished for taking them. But not hanged. ‘She’s daft. That doesn’t mean she should get the noose.’
‘Miss Manwaring.’ He spoke so softly and precisely it was almost as if he said the letters instead of the words. ‘She needs to be hanged. Who knows what she might try next...or tomorrow...or tonight?’ He paused.
‘I just want to escape,’ she said. ‘I want this behind me. I want my life back.’
‘Why did you throw a shoe at her? To taunt an asp is never a good thing until after it’s dead and cold.’ His next words were smooth, precise. The tone a king might use when asking a question that could influence a decision. ‘You know her, don’t you? The two of you have met in the past.’
‘It didn’t end well.’
‘Tell me what happened.’
She put a hand on her hip. ‘Isn’t her kidnapping me enough? She sent one of her minions after me and they brought me here.’
‘But when did you first meet?’ he asked.
She waved her hand at her side, dismissing her words. ‘The woman is a fortune-teller at the fair. She is a swindler.’
She couldn’t tell him how her grandmother had used the fortune-telling as a way to find out who might take in an unwanted child and give it a home. She couldn’t tell him. Everyone accepted her as Manwaring’s ward, even if she and Manwaring did not get on well.
Her employer let her work in his house and care for his children, all based on her pedigree as her father’s ward, an orphan with no family. If he found out she was really the granddaughter of a woman who kidnapped people, her employer, as she had already feared, might have concerns about letting her so close to his children.
‘Did she steal from your mother?’
Miranda drew in a breath. ‘No. But I discovered she’d read my mother’s palm many times before I was left along the road. I tried to tell my mother once that the woman was tricky, but my mother wouldn’t listen and told me not to question things. She said everything had worked out the way it was supposed to.’ She frowned.
Her grandmother had disappeared after dropping Miranda off. Had never again read her mother’s palm.
The housekeeper and her mother had talked about the fortune-teller once and Miranda had listened. Apparently, in the years before Miranda arrived, her mother had visited the fortune-teller several times at the fairs. When the old woman had told her mother that she’d some day have a child, she’d been uncertain about how that would unfold, but the moment she’d seen Miranda, she taken her into her heart.
Miranda had assumed her grandmother had forgotten about her immediately after leaving, relieved to have her burden gone. Then she decided she must have died, or she would have returned for a scheme, or candlesticks, or a few gold coins. Some false tale designed to get riches from her mother.
But she’d not returned and Miranda’s mother had died. Then her stepmother had arrived and Miranda had determined she would get away from her father’s new wife.
She had got away and found respite and two beautiful children who she loved and cared for as her own.
Chalgrove stared at her, impassive and, in its own way, intense. She couldn’t forget her grandmother watching her with the same determination right before she left Miranda with a warning about spiders.
Chapter Six
Chalgrove watched her eyes when she spoke. Eyes dark, but not afraid. Her chest heaved with deep breaths, but she had no fear in her eyes. None.
Miranda knew something he did not. An innocent would not want to protect someone so deranged. He wondered if he’d misjudged her as he had the woman he’d loved.
He sat on the bed.
He’d met a man named Manwaring once at Tattersall’s and they’d both admired the same gelding. They’d crossed paths several other times. A robust old man—a mite insipid, perhaps. He couldn’t bring to mind more, although they’d talked for a quarter-hour or so. And the man had funds. His daughter surely wouldn’t be a governess. But she said she’d been disowned.
He caught her perusal of him. Nothing else moved, except the rise and fall of their chests and their contemplations as they gauged each other.
‘Well, Miss Manwaring. We might be together longer than we’d hoped.’
He would find out more from her, not only by asking her direct questions, but by speaking with her and watching her actions and seeing what she tried to avoid.
He rubbed his wrist, but truly he was feeling the place where his hand had caressed her. ‘How did that mindless old fraud capture you?’
‘A man told me... He told me someone I used to know was dying and that her last wish was to speak with me. I thought... I guess I didn’t think. But I trusted him and he shoved me into this room and locked me in.’ She shivered.
Her face wasn’t as plain as he’d perceived at first. She had a pert nose and a certain grace when she moved. Her form, well—with those prim clothes—she tried to hide herself, but that would only work when she stared in her own mirror.
Her slender fingers straightened her skirt. He wagered he could get her to rearrange her skirt or straighten her hairpin again with very few words. Yet it was as if she tried to make herself less attractive instead of more alluring.
He wanted to let her think he was satisfied with her answers. Perhaps lull her into believing that he trusted her.
He ate some bread and left some for her. He decided to see if he really could get her to re-fluff herself.
He remembered the old woman at the window and she’d smiled, as if things were going as she’d planned. And she’d called herself a matchmaker. She was as daft as any soul in Bedlam. He shoved the knowledge from his mind. It didn’t matter. She might be witless, but she was cunning and they were trapped.
He let his lips relax. He needed to find out what Miss Manwaring knew that she wasn’t telling him and he wanted to thaw the ice around her. ‘You’ve a good arm. If the window hadn’t been so boarded up, you’d have clouted her with the shoe.’ He added assurance to his words. ‘Wellington would have been proud to have you in his army.’
Sure enough, she glanced away, adjusted the hairpin, fiddled with her sleeves, then patted her skirt.
He felt comforted for some reason.
He wondered who’d given the pin to her. She wore nothing else of colour or fashion.
Her eyes moved to him and he could tell she didn’t believe he had confidence in her.
‘I do not encourage the attention of lawful people, much less criminals. This room seems to become smaller every hour and I am thinking we will have to gnaw ourselves out of here.’ Her eyes flickered over him. ‘I didn’t want this to happen. To you or me. I assure you.’
‘When that bottle came at me from out of the darkness, I didn’t take that as a sign you wanted me here.’ Then he checked the scratches on his head, acknowledging her force, and indicated his shoulder. He moved to the light, and the thin fabric of his shirt showed a darkening underneath. ‘I would have woken up dead this morning if you’d had your way.’
‘My apologies.’ Her eyes dipped.
‘It doesn’t hurt,’ he said. ‘But I certainly couldn’t show this bruise to my friends as I could when my horse kicked me. They might ask how it happened and I can hardly tell them about a woman with a waist half as big as the bottle in her hand and as spirited as any ten Viking wenches. They’d be wanting an introduction.’
‘I want no such introductions and I am nothing like a Viking wench.’
‘You need no such introductions. And please don’t tell me you aren’t as spirited as ten Viking women.’ He patted the bruised area. ‘My pride might be hurt.’ He delivered the words in a way to bring a smile to her lips, though she quickly replaced it.
‘Did you have a governess who taught you boxing along with your stories of Peter the Great?’ he asked, voice soft, intent on finding out more about her.
She studied him, gauging his words and her own. He’d not deluded her. She saw through him as easily as a pane of glass.
Still, she answered.
‘Miss Cuthbert, a dear companion who reminded me of a pigeon when she moved about the house. We have remained close, but after my father married again she was not welcome in the new household. I miss her. She found me the governess position.’
He paused. ‘She taught you well.’
She accepted his words and a barrier fell from between them.
‘It was like losing my mother twice in the same year. Mother died, then Father brought in a new wife and Miss Cuthbert had to leave. She wasn’t precisely sacked, but she said she could not countenance living under the same roof with my stepmother. After all, I didn’t need a governess and Miss Cuthbert had become a companion to both my mother and me. She helped so much when Mother passed.’
‘What happened?’
‘The maid went to wake Mother and she was already gone, but her health had always been fragile. Miss Cuthbert said seeing me grow had kept Mother alive more years than she would have lived otherwise.’
She paced to the opening and peered out. ‘This is easy compared to losing her.’
Miranda had returned to the bed, her back against the wall again and her knees up so she could prop her arms on them. The room had no chair and, somehow, sitting the way she did seemed more proper than any other way.
He’d not wanted to speak after she’d mentioned the horrible year of her life and neither had she.
She’d spread the skirt around her, covering her stocking feet. But she’d had no wish to put her shoes back on after using them against her grandmother.
She no longer felt like a governess with all the proper gestures. She felt like a beggar. The beggar her father’s new wife had called her. Begging for freedom and the return of her life.
‘The old woman wouldn’t be feeding us if she wanted us dead. That is, if she is sensible.’ He broke the silence.
Her grandmother was all machinations and trickery and whatever else at hand. She wouldn’t let them starve, but the food she gave them might be stolen.
Miranda had once walked through an orchard with her grandmother at night, filling her basket.
The gamekeeper, who they’d lived with, was the biggest poacher of them all and she’d sometimes had to stay with him while her grandmother went to fairs.
One night, they’d all traipsed out and he’d kept the dogs quiet so they would not alert anyone that the orchard apples were being picked, which had amused her grandmother.
Her grandmother had once taken in and fed a little mouse with a broken leg, but then after it had got well, she’d let the cat into the house to catch the mouse.
Yet she would leave crumbs of food on rocks in the wintertime for whatever creature might find it. She claimed to be feeding good fortune.
Well, the fortune had dissolved for Miranda and might have grown tentacles.
The old woman wanted Miranda to get married and so she’d locked them in a room, not caring about repercussions.
‘Might anyone search for you?’ she asked.
‘I’ll not be missed until the Earl of Kenton’s house party.’ He gave a quick shake of his head. ‘I’d been with my mother yesterday for an early celebration of her birthday and I was going to a cousin’s house to escape the evening festivities she had planned for her friends. I had mentioned to my cousin I might visit, but I’d not been certain. He’ll think I stayed at my estate.
‘You are to attend an earl’s house party?’ Her stomach would have fallen to the floor had it been able.
This unshaven man was a friend of an earl?
‘Yes. His wife is my aunt.’
Related to an earl.
‘Well...’ her throat scratched to get out the words ‘...I’m sure they will miss you soon.’ Although it was highly doubtful they’d know where to search for him. ‘Did the old woman know who you are?’
‘The men were told I was a tailor.’ He stopped and leaned his back against the wall opposite Miranda, his hands behind him. ‘Beau Brummell’s. If I am to be a tailor, I suppose that is the one to be, although I understood Mr Brummell himself has moved to France.’
‘Did she say why she took you?’
‘I’m not sure.’ He pushed himself from the wall. ‘She laughed when I asked. Although the men who helped her said I was to be held for ransom.’ He paused. ‘Which is strange. I control most of the family funds,’ he mused, as if talking to himself. ‘The person to kidnap would be someone I care about. I can bundle funds together much more easily than they, which is no secret. I even have an elderly aunt, Agatha Miles, in London, who is coddled by the same servants who’ve been with her for her lifetime. She could have been a much easier target.’
She swallowed. ‘You’re very wealthy?’
He stopped, his body still and his gaze on her face. ‘I’m not just Chal. I’m Lord Chal. Lord Chalgrove.’
Her jaw dropped and she didn’t even hear the end of his sentence. If the truth came out, the whole truth, she would never again find work. She might be considered an accomplice. It would be easy for a man such as this to have witnesses against her. The courts could do as they wished to please an influential man. A lord.
The trials were held one after the other and, at the end of the session, the criminals were led to the gallows. No long waits. No long goodbyes.
‘I care for the Duke of Chalgrove’s properties because they’re mine. My father died about five years ago.’
Then she remembered hearing of the old Duke of Chalgrove and how his son had taken the title, and she’d forgotten about it because it had happened in the year her mother had died. She’d completely disregarded it. She dropped her head, bumping her knees with it. ‘I am going to die.’
‘You know. You know more than you’re telling me,’ he whispered into the room, but the words had as much portent as a shout. He realised she knew more than she admitted, but not everything. She’d not known who he was.
‘You should be overjoyed to be with someone who might have friends to sway others to help rescue us.’ His voice lowered. ‘Yet you give the impression you’re displeased.’
She raised her head, her eyes on his. Face pale even in the shadows.
‘Miss Manwaring?’ His eyes studied her.
She let out a deep breath.
‘Why aren’t you happy that I’m a duke with the resources to have justice done?’
‘I am. Happy you’re a duke. It’s the situation that’s upset me. The old woman doesn’t care how close she dances to the noose.’ She moved back and pulled herself into a tighter ball, her arms circli
ng her propped knees and her brow against her arms. ‘Your father died the same year as my mother. And I may have seen him once. A man who stood rather like some sea god with flowing white hair and people would bow and shake as he walked by.’
She whispered. ‘Thank goodness he is dead.’
‘Miss Manwaring.’ He could say nothing else. Her rudeness was unthinkable.
She jumped. ‘It would be very difficult for him to know you were taken and not know where you are.’
‘He’d be tearing the world apart to find out what happened.’ As the current Duke of Chalgrove planned.
This was the first time in his life anyone had appeared crushed when finding out he was a duke. She had her head down so low he could only see the top of it.
‘I am in trouble. I’ve been bundled together with a duke. My employer will let me go. My stepmother will use this as an excuse to cast more aspersions at me.’
Her knees were still raised, her arms crossed over them, and her chin rested there. Her eyes were closed so he studied her face. The lashes rimmed her eyes so thickly he wanted to brush his cheek against them to see if they felt as lush as they appeared.
Then he called himself a fool.
His fascination with Susanna had not taught him anything.
Again, he was enthralled by a pretty face. A woman who seemed to need his help. Another woman with secrets. ‘You had no more choice in this than I.’
‘No one will believe that.’
He wondered why she would think such a thing. Unless she, too, had thought he was a tailor and was in on the plot to kidnap him. She might be brave enough to help in the abduction of a tailor without influential friends, but a duke might cause her pause.
Apparently, it did.
And based on the shoes flying about, her cohort had betrayed her.
* * *
Miranda could almost feel the heat wafting from her skin like steam from a pot, but that felt better than the dread roiling inside her.
The Duke had turned away. The Duke of Chalgrove.