by Julia Quinn
“Fine, we’ll just—”
“And he is going to know that I’ve got it.” Miranda gave the bookshop one last belligerent stare and then strode off in the direction of home.
“Of course I’ll buy the book for you, Miranda,” Turner said congenially. He’d been enjoying a rather leisurely afternoon, reading the newspaper and pondering life as an unattached gentleman, when his sister had burst into the room, announcing that Miranda desperately needed a favor.
It all been rather entertaining, actually, especially the death stare Miranda had bestowed upon Olivia at her use of the word desperate.
“I don’t want you to buy it for me,” Miranda ground out. “I want you to buy it with me.”
Turner sat back in his comfortable chair. “Is there a difference?”
“A world of difference.”
“A world,” Olivia confirmed, but she was grinning, and he rather suspected she didn’t see the distinction, either.
Miranda threw her another glare, and Olivia actually backed up and exclaimed. “What? I’m supporting you!”
“Don’t you think it’s wrong,” Miranda continued ferociously, returning to both her diatribe and his face, “that I cannot shop in a certain store simply because I am a woman?”
He smiled lazily at her. “Miranda, there are certain places where women cannot go.”
“I am not asking to enter one of your precious clubs. I merely wish to purchase a book. There isn’t anything remotely unsuitable about it. It is an antique, for heaven’s sake.”
“Miranda, if that gentleman owns that shop, he can decide who he does and doesn’t want sell to.”
She crossed her arms. “Well, perhaps he shouldn’t be allowed to. Perhaps there ought to be a law that says that booksellers cannot bar women from their stores.”
He raised an ironic brow at her. “You haven’t been reading that tract by Mary Wollstonecraft, have you?”
“Mary who?” Miranda asked in a distracted voice.
“Good.”
“Don’t change the subject, please, Turner. Do you or do you not agree that I should be allowed to buy that book?”
He sighed, quite exhausted by her unexpected stubbornness. And over a book. “Miranda, why should you be allowed in a gentlemen’s bookshop? You can’t even vote.”
Her sputter of outrage was colossal. “And that’s another thing—”
Turner quickly realized that he had made a tactical error. “Forget I mentioned suffrage. Please. I’ll go with you to buy the book.”
“You will?” Her eyes lit up and glowed soft and brown. “Thank you.”
“Shall we go on Friday? I don’t believe I’m engaged for the afternoon.”
“Oh, I want to go, too,” Olivia piped in.
“Absolutely not,” Turner said firmly. “One of you is all I can manage. My nerves, you know.”
“Your nerves?”
He gave her A Look. “You try them.”
“Turner!” Olivia exclaimed. She turned to Miranda. “Miranda!”
But Miranda was still focused on Turner. “Could we go now?” she asked him, giving every impression of not having heard a word of their squabble. “I don’t want that bookseller to forget about me.”
“Judging from Olivia’s rendition of your adventure,” Turner said wryly, “I doubt that is likely to happen.”
“But could we please go today? Please. Please.”
“You do realize you’re begging.”
“I don’t care,” she said promptly.
He pondered this. “It occurs to me that I could use this situation to my advantage.”
Miranda gave him a blank look. “What would be the point of that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. One never knows when one might want to call in a favor.”
“Since I have nothing you could possibly want, I advise you to forget your nefarious plans and simply take me to the bookshop.”
“Very well. Let’s be off.”
He thought she might jump with glee. Good Lord.
“It’s not far,” she was saying. “We can walk there.”
“Are you certain I cannot come with you?” Olivia asked, following them into the hall.
“Stay,” Turner ordered benignly as he watched Miranda charge the door. “Someone will need to call the watch when we don’t return in one piece.”
Ten minutes later, Miranda was standing in front of the bookshop from which she’d been ejected earlier that day.
“Gad, Miranda,” she heard Turner murmur beside her. “You look a bit a frightening.”
“Good,” she replied succinctly, and she stepped forward.
Turner placed a restraining hand on her arm. “Allow me to enter before you,” he suggested, an amused glint in his eye. “The mere sight of you may send the poor man into an apoplectic fit.”
Miranda scowled at him but let him pass. There was no way the bookseller would best her this time. She’d come armed with a titled gentleman and a healthy dose of rage. The book was all but hers.
A bell jingled as Turner entered the shop. Miranda followed right behind him, practically stepping on his heels.
“May I assist you, sir?” the bookseller asked, all fawning politeness.
“Yes, I’m interested in…” His words trailed off as he looked around the store.
“That book,” Miranda said firmly, pointing toward the display in the window.
“Yes, that’s the one.” Turner offered the bookseller a bland smile.
“You!” the bookseller spluttered, his face turning pink with ire. “Out! Get out of my shop!” He grabbed Miranda’s arm and tried to drag her to the door.
“Stop! Stop, I say!” Miranda, not one to let herself be abused by a man she considered to be an idiot, grabbed her reticule and thwacked him on the head.
Turner groaned.
“Simmons!” the bookseller yelled out, summoning his assistant. “Fetch a constable. This young lady is deranged.”
“I’m not deranged, you overgrown goat!”
Turner pondered his options. Really, there could be no good outcome.
“I’m a paying customer,” Miranda continued hotly. “And I want to buy Le Morte d’Arthur!”
“I’ll die before it reaches your hands, you ill-mannered trollop!”
Trollop? That was really too much for Miranda, a young lady whose sensibilities were usually more modest than one might have guessed from her current behavior. “You vile, vile man,” she hissed. She raised her reticule again.
Trollop? Turner sighed. It was an insult he really couldn’t overlook. Still, he couldn’t let Miranda attack the poor man. He grabbed the reticule from her hand. She glared daggers at him for his interference. He narrowed his eyes and gave her a warning look.
He cleared his throat and turned to the bookseller. “Sir, I must insist that you apologize to the lady.”
The bookseller crossed his arms defiantly.
Turner glanced at Miranda. Her arms were crossed in much the same manner. He looked back at the older man and said, a little more forcefully, “You will apologize to the lady.”
“She is a menace,” the bookseller said viciously.
“Why, you—” Miranda would have launched herself at him if Turner had not pulled her back with a quick grab to the back of her dress. The older man balled his fist and assumed a predatory stance that was quite at odds with his bookish appearance.
“You be quiet,” Turner hissed at her, feeling the beginnings of fury uncurl in his chest.
The bookseller shot her a triumphant look.
“Oh, that was a mistake,” Turner said. Good God, did the man have no common sense? Miranda jolted forward, which meant that Turner had to hold on to her dress even more firmly, which meant that the bookseller assumed even more of a smirk, which meant that the whole bloody farce was going to spiral into a full-blown hurricane if Turner did not settle the matter then and there.
He gave the bookseller his iciest, most aristocratic stare. “Apologize to the lady, or
I will make you very sorry, indeed.”
But the bookseller was clearly a raving idiot, because he did not accept the offer Turner had, in his estimation, so generously offered. Instead, he jutted his jaw belligerently and announced, “I have nothing for which to apologize. That woman came into my store…”
“Ah, hell,” Turner muttered. There was no avoiding it now.
“…disturbed my customers, insulted me…”
Turner balled his hand into a fist and swung, clipping the bookseller neatly next to his nose.
“Oh my good Lord,” Miranda breathed. “I think you broke his nose.”
Turner shot her a scathing glance before looking down at the bookseller on the floor. “I don’t think so. He isn’t bleeding enough.”
“Pity,” Miranda muttered.
Turner grabbed her arm and hauled her up close to him. The bloodthirsty little wench was going to get herself killed. “Not another word until we get out of here.”
Miranda’s eyes widened, but she wisely shut her mouth and allowed him to pull her out of the store. As they passed by the window, however, she caught sight of Le Morte d’Arthur and burst out, “My book!”
That was it. Turner slammed to a halt. “I don’t want to hear another word about your damned book, do you hear me?”
Her mouth fell open.
“Do you understand what just happened? I struck a man.”
“But wouldn’t you agree he needed striking?”
“Not half as much as you need throttling!”
She drew back, clearly affronted.
“Contrary to whatever it is that you think of me,” he bit off, “I don’t go about my days pondering when and where I might next be reduced to violence.”
“But—”
“But nothing, Miranda. You insulted the man—”
“He insulted me!”
“I was handling the matter,” he said between clenched teeth. “That’s why you brought me here, to handle everything. Isn’t that so?”
Miranda scowled and moved her chin in a sharp, reluctant nod.
“What the devil was the matter with you? What if that man had had less restraint? What if—”
“You thought he showed restraint?” she asked, dumb-founded.
“At least as much as you did!” He grabbed her shoulders and almost began to shake. “Good God, Miranda, you do realize that there are many men who would not blink an eye before striking a woman? Or worse,” he added meaningfully.
He waited for her answer, but she was just staring at him, her eyes huge and unblinking. And he had the most unsettling feeling that she saw something that he did not.
Something in him.
And then she said, “I’m sorry, Turner.”
“For what?” he asked less than graciously. “For making a scene in the middle of a quiet bookstore? For not keeping your mouth shut when you should have? For—”
“For upsetting you,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry. It was not well done of me.”
Her soft words cut cleanly through his anger, and he sighed. “Just don’t do anything like that again, will you?”
“I promise.”
“Good.” He realized that he was still clutching her shoulders and loosened his grip. Then he realized that her shoulders felt quite nice. Surprised, he let go altogether.
She tilted her head to the side as a worried expression crossed her face. “At least I think I promise. I shall certainly try not to do anything to upset you like that.”
Turner had a sudden vision of Miranda trying not to upset him. The vision upset him. “What has happened to you? We depend upon you to be levelheaded. Lord knows you’ve steered Olivia out of trouble more than once.”
Her lips pressed together, and then she said, “Don’t confuse levelheaded with meek, Turner. They’re not the same thing at all. And I am certainly not meek.”
She wasn’t being defiant, he realized. She was simply stating fact—one that he suspected his family had overlooked for years. “Have no fear,” he said wearily, “if ever I entertained the notion that you were meek, you have certainly disabused me of it this afternoon.”
But God help him, she wasn’t done. “If I see something that is so obviously wrong,” she said earnestly, “I can hardly sit by and do nothing.”
She was going to kill him. He was sure of it. “Just try to stay away from obvious mischief. Could you do that for me?”
“But I didn’t think this was particularly mischievous. And I did—”
He held up his hand. “No more. Not another word on the topic. It’ll take ten years off my life just talking about it.” He took her arm and steered her toward home.
Dear God, what was wrong with him? His pulse was still racing, and she hadn’t even been in any danger. Not really. He doubted the bookseller could have got a good punch in. And furthermore, why the devil was he so worried about Miranda? Of course he cared about her. She was like a little sister to him. But then he tried to imagine Olivia in her place. All he could feel was mild amusement.
Something was very wrong if Miranda could make him this furious.
Chapter 6
“Winston will be here soon.” Olivia sailed into the rose salon on that statement, bestowing upon Miranda her sunniest of smiles.
Miranda looked up from her book—a dog-eared and decidedly unglamorous copy of Le Morte d’Arthur she’d borrowed from Lord Rudland’s library. “Really?” she murmured, even though she knew very well that Winston was expected that afternoon.
“Really?” Olivia mimicked. “Is that all you can say? Pardon, but I was under the impression you were in love with the boy, oh, excuse me—he’s a man now, isn’t he?”
Miranda returned to her reading. “I told you I’m not in love with him.”
“Well, you should be,” Olivia retorted. “And you would be, if you would deign to spend some time with him.”
Miranda’s eyes, which had been resolutely moving over the words on the page, slammed to a halt. She looked up. “I beg your pardon. Isn’t he in Oxford?”
“Well, yes,” Olivia said, waving off the comment as if the sixty miles’ distance was of no consequence, “but he was here last week, and you barely spent any time with him.”
“That’s not true,” Miranda replied. “We rode in Hyde Park, went to Gunter’s for ices, and even took a boat out into the Serpentine that one day it was actually warm.”
Olivia plopped down in a nearby chair, crossing her arms. “It’s not enough.”
“You’ve gone mad,” Miranda said. She gave her head a little shake and turned back to her book.
“I know that you will love him. You need only to spend enough time in his company.”
Miranda pressed her lips together and kept her eyes firmly on her book. This was not a conversation that could go anywhere sensible.
“He will be here for only two days,” Olivia mused. “We’re going to need to work quickly.”
Miranda flipped a page and said, “You do what you wish, Olivia, but I will not be party to your schemes.” Then she looked up in alarm. “No, I’ve changed my mind. Don’t do what you wish. If I leave matters up to you, I’ll find myself drugged and on my way to Gretna Green before I know it.”
“An intriguing thought.”
“Livvy, no matchmaking. I want you to promise me.”
Olivia’s expression turned arch. “I won’t make a promise I might not keep.”
“Olivia.”
“Oh, very well. But you cannot stop Winston if he has matchmaking in mind. And judging from his recent behavior, he very well might.”
“Just so long as you don’t interfere.”
Olivia sniffed and tried to look affronted. “I am hurt that you would even think I would do such a thing.”
“Oh, please.” Miranda turned back to her book, but it was nearly impossible to focus on the plot when in her mind she was counting down…twenty, nineteen, eighteen…
Surely Olivia would not be able to remain silent for mor
e than twenty seconds.
Seventeen…sixteen…
“Winston will make a lovely husband, don’t you think?”
Four seconds. That was remarkable, even for Olivia.
“He’s young, of course, but so are we.”
Miranda studiously ignored her.
“Turner probably would have made a fine husband, as well, if Leticia hadn’t gone and ruined him.”
Miranda’s head snapped up. “Don’t you think that’s an unkind remark?”
Olivia gave a little smile. “I knew you were listening to me.”
“It’s nearly impossible not to,” Miranda muttered.
“I was merely saying that—” Olivia’s chin rose, and her gaze moved to the doorway behind Miranda. “And here he is now. What a coincidence.”
“Winston,” Miranda said cheerfully, twisting in her seat so that she could peer over the edge of the sofa. Except it wasn’t Winston.
“Sorry to disappoint,” Turner said, one corner of his mouth twisting into a lazy and extremely slight smile.
“Sorry,” Miranda mumbled, feeling rather unexpectedly foolish. “We were speaking of him.”
“We were speaking of you, too,” Olivia said. “More recently, in fact, which is why I remarked upon your entrance.”
“Diabolical things, I hope.”
“Oh, indeed,” Olivia said.
Miranda managed a close-lipped smile as he took a seat across from her.
Olivia leaned forward and rested her chin coquettishly in her hand. “I was just telling Miranda that I thought you would make someone a terrible husband.”
He looked amused as he sat back. “True enough.”
“But I was about to say that with the proper training,” Olivia continued, “you could be rehabilitated.”
Turner stood. “I’m leaving.”
“No, don’t go!” Olivia called out with a laugh. “I am teasing, of course. You’re quite beyond redemption. But Winston…Now, Winston is like a lump of clay.”
“I shan’t tell him you said that,” Miranda murmured.
“Don’t say you don’t agree,” Olivia said provocatively. “He hasn’t had time to turn dreadful, the way most men do.”
Turner watched his sister with undisguised amazement. “How is it possible that I am sitting here listening to you lecture on the management of men?”