“Good morning, my lord,” she said lightly and helped herself to toast and scrambled eggs from the chafing dishes on the sideboard. “And congratulations.”
Rye had risen automatically when she came in. He held her chair, noting how neatly turned out she was in a green morning dress that somehow made her hair glow. He wondered if the glossy strands felt as soft and warm and smooth as they looked, and clutched his cup a little tighter to keep himself from reaching out to explore. “Regarding what?” He knew he sounded grumpy. He didn’t care.
She looked a little startled. “I expected you’d be totting up your successes from last night. Your sister is a Sensation indeed, and did you meet three heiresses or four? I’m afraid I lost count.” She briskly buttered her toast. “Which of them impressed you most?”
Rye filled her coffee cup. “That’s hard to say,” he mused. “Miss Mickelthorpe, I suppose. She looked at me as if I were a particularly luscious tidbit she was about to crunch between those strong, horsey teeth, and her bray of a voice definitely made an impression.”
“That is unkind of you, sir.” But he thought she had to struggle not to laugh. He wondered for a moment why she was in such a good mood, then remembered she had waltzed last night with her favorite rake. No doubt she was bubbling this morning because her dreams had been filled with Swindon. Perhaps she looked so utterly delicious because the rake had maneuvered her out of the ballroom for a kiss… No, Rye would have noticed if she’d been gone.
“Did you not think Juliana Farling pretty?” she asked.
“Oh yes. But she barely spoke a word all through the country dance we shared. And when I attempted to pay her the smallest of compliments, she turned beet red and looked as if she wanted to cry.”
“What did you tell her?”
Rye admitted, “That her blue dress matched her eyes.”
“Yes, indeed,” Portia said gravely. “That is what I would call the smallest of compliments. You’ll have to do better than that if the young ladies are to take you seriously.”
“And you’re an authority on what young ladies like to hear? Perhaps I should have danced Miss Mickelthorpe closer, so that I could have listened to what Swindon was whispering in your ear.”
Her eyes had turned to granite, but all she said was, “If Lady Stone were to hear about your lack of finesse, she’d immediately start you on a course of lessons until your style improved to her satisfaction.”
“Lessons? Do you mean she’d make me practice by flattering her?”
“Or worse, me.”
As lessons went, Rye thought, that would be far more pleasant than Latin declensions—at least until he had to share his work. He suspected Portia might be a tougher taskmaster than any Oxford don.
“You’ll need to work on your skills if you wish to escape that fate.”
Eyes, hair, lashes, smile… Rye tore his thoughts away from the mental list he’d already started. He’d need to be more original than that to please her. “Sophie said something similar last night. She told me I’d insulted our mother, when I’d meant to praise her instead. Damned if I can see it, for all I said was—”
Portia wrinkled her nose. “That you were surprised to see Lady Ryecroft looking pretty. Imagine how wonderful that must have made her feel—as though you think her an antidote the rest of the time.”
“Oh.” There were three freckles on the bridge of her nose, Rye noticed. They formed an off-balance triangle that made his finger itch to connect the dots.
“And your sister is correct. With Lady Ryecroft’s looks and figure and coloring, she would show to far better advantage in rust and periwinkle and bronze rather than gray and silver and lavender.”
He looked again at the brassy green of Portia’s dress. “You mean she should wear the same sort of colors that look so good on you?”
“There, my lord—you are able to turn a pretty compliment when you put your mind to it.” She smiled, and Rye wanted to lean closer, until he could discover for himself whether her lips were really as warm and sweet and soft as they looked just now.
He refilled his coffee cup instead. He knew he should have excused himself and left the room. He should have simply gone away—anywhere at all.
Instead he stayed in the breakfast room, where her scent tickled his nose and the light that shifted on her dress with each breath she took made him want to touch her…
No. At least he should be honest with himself. It wasn’t the light and it wasn’t her scent that made him long to touch her. And he wouldn’t be satisfied with a touch either.
Last night, when he had been struggling through that waltz with Amalie Mickelthorpe and Portia had swept past him in the arms of Lord Swindon, Rye had felt as if someone had smacked him across the head. She’d looked so damned pleased with herself—smiling at him from that libertine’s arms, letting him hold her so closely.
It was none of Rye’s business how she conducted herself, of course. He had to marry an heiress.
But there was something about Swindon he simply didn’t like. He hoped Portia knew what she was doing.
***
When the little maid who had been assigned to look after Sophie brought in her tray of chocolate, she was grinning so broadly that Sophie was startled. “Oh, miss, you won’t believe the drawing room!”
Sophie yawned and sat up, pushing a pillow behind her back. “What’s wrong with it, Susan?”
“It’s so full of flowers delivered already this morning that Mr. Padgett’s had to send to the storerooms for more tables to set them all on, and he’s turned out every vase and container in the house. Flowers for you, miss. You’re a… a Sensation, that’s what I heard Miss Portia tell him. Do hurry and drink your chocolate, so you can come and see them all.”
The maid set the tray across Sophie’s knees and went to pull the curtains open. A tap on the door made Sophie sit up a little straighter. “Come in.”
Her mother, already neatly attired in a charcoal walking dress despite the hour, came in. “Did you sleep well, Sophie? You were not too excited to rest?”
Sophie stretched luxuriously. “Oh, wasn’t it a grand ball? Susan tells me I’m being sent flowers. Loads and loads of flowers, she says. Have you seen them?”
“I have not.”
“And she tells me that Portia says I am a Sensation… Susan, please bring another cup so my mother may join me.”
Lady Ryecroft picked up Sophie’s dance card, which had slipped off the chair where Sophie had dropped it last night along with her gloves. She ran her eye down the list of names before she laid it aside.
“Sophie,” she said as soon as the door closed behind the little maid. “It’s one thing to be the belle of Surrey, but I should hate to have you expect the same reaction here in London, where there are many pretty girls.”
“And every last one of them has more of a dowry than I possess. I know, Mama.”
“Perhaps I should speak to Portia. Calling you a Sensation…”
Sophie laughed. “Oh, Mama, don’t be silly. Of course I’m not getting a big head over this. I expect if there are three nosegays downstairs, Susan would consider them a roomful, for surely Lady Stone doesn’t receive flowers regularly. And as for Portia—well, most likely she said I was sensitive instead, and Susan simply heard her wrong. But I must own to being relieved that I can hold up my head with confidence. Just think of the shame if I had made so small an impression that I didn’t receive even one single rose!”
“Speaking of shame…” Lady Ryecroft’s tone of voice was a warning.
“What did I do, Mama?”
“I find it hard to believe you don’t know. Sitting out a dance with Lord Carrisbrooke, in a chair meant for one person…”
“Mama, it was not so small as that! And if it was improper to use it, why was it right there, at the corner of the ballroom?”
“Perhaps so a fatigued dancer—one fatigued dancer, Sophie—could sit there. Your behavior last night in allowing him to pay you such part
icular attention…”
“It was only a dance, Mama.”
“How is it that I do not see his name on your card?”
“He traded…” Sophie bit her tongue, but it was too late.
“He bargained for your hand in a dance?”
“Mama, it wasn’t like that at all. He did nothing improper… he merely stepped in for a friend.” Sophie watched her mother’s brows draw together and hurried on, hoping to distract her. “And he has the most beautiful way of speaking! He recited poetry to me entirely through the waltz, as the dancers circled before us. It was so romantic.”
Lady Ryecroft’s lips were tight.
“Did you enjoy dancing with his uncle?” Sophie ventured. “Carrisbrooke asked him to do so, he said.”
“We will discuss this later, Sophronia.” As Susan came in with the cup, Lady Ryecroft went out—and for once, Sophie noted, her mother did not so much as pause for a smile or a kind word for the servant.
I must really be in for it. Sophie set her chocolate cup aside untouched and pushed back the blankets. She might as well face the day.
***
The distance from Grosvenor Square to Bloomsbury, where the gossip columns reported that Marcus Winston had bought a house shortly after his return from the New World, was not great in miles. But the surroundings could hardly be more different, Miranda thought as the hackney carriage took her eastward. The farther the carriage went, the smaller and closer together the houses were. Though they were still sizable and solid, these homes were nothing like the elegant edifices that surrounded the great squares of the West End. And the occupants were likely to be bohemians—artists, writers, successful businessmen—rather than members of society.
Which made it an appropriate location for a man like Marcus Winston. She wondered if this neighborhood reminded him of his home in America. She knew so little of what he had done there, where he had lived, how he had gone on, what his business was…
“And I don’t care to know,” she reminded herself. The only thing she cared about—and the only reason she was here today—was his promise to put a stop to his nephew’s infatuation. Miranda aimed to hold him to it.
She half expected, when the front door opened, to see Marcus himself standing there; it seemed the sort of thing he might do. But she was greeted by a proper manservant instead. Neither a butler nor a footman, however; perhaps he was something in between.
He looked skeptical at the sight of her, and Miranda wished she hadn’t been so cautious in choosing a bonnet with a dark, obscuring veil. She had no desire to look interestingly mysterious, only to be overlooked altogether.
She held out her card. “I wish to see Mr. Winston.”
The manservant showed her into a small reception room where no fire had yet been laid, and returned only a few minutes later to say, “If my lady will follow me.” He led the way up the first set of stairs.
Miranda’s heart skittered madly as she followed in his wake, and even more so as his careful, steady tread passed by what must be the doors of a drawing room and went on toward the back of the house. Where was he taking her?
He tapped on a closed door, but rather than open it immediately, he waited at attention, and only when she heard Marcus’s voice calling permission from inside did he turn the knob. “Lady Ryecroft, sir,” he said formally, and Miranda found herself frozen on the threshold for an instant before she could gather herself and step into the room.
At least, Miranda thought, he had not brought her to a bedroom. Though it was close enough, truth be told; there was a chaise longue, and a sofa that was larger and looked even more comfortable than the one in the study at Carris Abbey.
I’m not going to think of that right now, she told herself.
She heard the door close softly behind her, and for a moment she was utterly alone. There was not even a sound except for the soft crackle of coals settling in the grate. Marcus was nowhere to be seen. But she had heard him speak, had she not?
A door opened across the room, and Marcus came in, one hand lifted as if he was still adjusting the pearl stickpin in his cravat. “What a pleasure to receive you so early in the morning, Miranda. Would you care to join me for breakfast?”
She couldn’t prevent the picture that sprang to her mind. The two of them, sitting at a small table that stood in a bay window overlooking a garden. Herself in a soft morning gown, her hair caught up under a cap. Marcus passing the toast rack, commenting on a tidbit from the newspapers, rising from the table to go about his day, but pausing to brush aside the lace edge of her cap to kiss her nape… then—with his business forgotten—pulling off the cap to release her hair… kissing her throat and her lips and her breasts… taking her back to bed…
How utterly foolish. You might as well picture him making love to you right there on the breakfast table, among the coffee cups and the toast crumbs.
The trouble was she could visualize that with no difficulty at all.
“How long did it take you to train your manservant to knock at doors before entering?” she asked.
“A while. I never could abide the way the servants slithered around Carris Abbey, popping up when they were least expected—or wanted. Never a moment of privacy.”
“And of course that’s important to you. It must make things far more convenient when you wish to… entertain.”
He smiled. “If you came to discuss with me the intricacies of having an affair, Miranda, I’d be happy to demonstrate how all things are possible to those who have both the desire and the imagination.”
“That is not why I came.”
“A pity,” he said. “I gather you do not wish to share my breakfast after all? Or my bed, it seems. Then pray, do sit down and tell me what I may do for you.”
She perched on the edge of the sofa. “Only what you promised—you said you would put a stop to Carrisbrooke’s paying court to Sophie.”
“I have every intention of doing so. I spoke to him last evening, in fact.”
“For all the good it did. He sent Sophie flowers this morning.”
“Surely he’s not the only one who thought of that trite gesture.”
“Four dozen red roses—at least four dozen, I didn’t actually count them. I saw the bouquet delivered, so I came directly to talk to you.”
Marcus braced his elbow on the mantel. “How unimaginative of my nephew. I expected far better from the poetic soul that he would like to appear.”
“I do wish you’d take this seriously. He is far too young for her.”
“As cases of puppy love go, I take it seriously indeed. But the way to handle puppy love is not to forbid it. Miranda, you didn’t scold your daughter, did you?”
“Of course I did. She should know better—she was nearly sitting on his lap!”
Marcus shook his head. “You would do far better to tell her how much his childish antics amuse you.”
“Childish!”
“Well, he is, you know. He’s not yet nineteen—barely dry behind the ears.”
“The same age Sophie is, give or take a few months.”
“Exactly. But young women of that age are far more pragmatic than the boys are. Given time, Carrisbrooke will fall out of love with your Sophie and into it again with some shockingly inappropriate opera dancer. But if you make him a romantic hero to her by forbidding contact between them, don’t be surprised if she climbs down the drainpipe some night and runs off with him before he has a chance to get over her.”
Was it possible he was right? “I do not doubt that you know your nephew better than I do, but—”
Marcus’s eyes widened. “Do I hear aright? Lady Ryecroft admits that someone else might have the advantage of her? If only I had a witness to swear to this occasion!”
“…but you do not know my daughter.”
“I should like to, Miranda.” There was a thread of steel under the soft baritone.
Her eyelids prickled, and she blinked hard. She would not cry. “No, Marcus. You’re too old
for her.”
“You say I am too old,” he said philosophically, “and Carrisbrooke is too young… Will anyone ever be satisfactory, in your mind?”
“She is special.”
“I don’t doubt it, my dear. She’s your daughter.”
“I mean it, Marcus. I can’t bear it—you and Sophie.” Her voice caught, and she realized too late that she had given herself away. Primly, she added, “Or Carrisbrooke either.”
“There’s a way to fix this, Miranda. But it requires your cooperation.”
There was a long instant where everything seemed to stop. Each muscle in Miranda’s body went as rigid as if she had frozen solid. “Be your mistress, you mean. If I become your mistress, you’ll leave Sophie alone.”
Marcus looked thoughtful. “You told me last night it would be impossible to blackmail you into such a thing.”
“But of course you would try it anyway,” she said bitterly. “If that’s the price…”
His eyes gleamed. With triumph, she thought. Very well. She had made her bargain, and she would live with it.
But he didn’t move. He didn’t swoop on her to claim his prize.
No doubt he was savoring his victory and drawing out the satisfaction of her surrender.
He crossed the room and sat next to her on the big sofa. Too close for propriety, she thought, before she remembered that what was proper had now changed—utterly, completely, and forever.
But he did not touch her, only sat with his head tipped a little to one side and looked at her. Finally he stretched out a hand and tugged at the ribbon that held her close-fitting bonnet in place. In the quiet room, the sound of the satin ribbon sliding against itself seemed as loud to Miranda as the beat of her heart. Then the knot gave way, and slowly he lifted the bonnet from her head and tossed it aside.
“That,” he said quietly, “was not what I meant, my dear. My plan does not involve courting your daughter, for I have concluded you are correct and she is indeed too young for me. So there is no need for the offer you have made.”
Just One Season in London Page 13