“I always suspected there was a woman.” Olly looked vaguely apologetic. “There generally is.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” said Jason.
“Well,” said Olly, “all that swooping about like the Prince of Darkness, despising women and refusing to fall in love.”
“I don’t swoop,” said Jason irritably. “And I certainly don’t despise women.”
He was, in point of fact, very fond of women. In the years since his escape from the hulks, he had known many beautiful women who desired him and wished to amuse him. Sally with her bright hair and laughing eyes, whose uncle had owned the tavern in which Jason had won his first thousand pounds… Isabella, the delicious little redheaded soprano who had sung “Papagena” and introduced him to the world of the demimonde where he had made his earliest fortune… Madeleine, the dancer he had installed in a small house in Mayfair, and who on parting had asked for and received a priceless diamond parure… Yes, there had been innumerable affairs in the last decade. It would be absurd to say he had never recovered from the events of ten years before. True, he had never fallen in love, but nor had any of his paramours. Everyone involved understood fully the subtle economics governing these transactions. Hearts were not a part of the equation.
Olly raised an eyebrow. “Very well,” he said. “You don’t despise women. Tell me about Miss Thornwood.”
“What is there to tell?” snapped Jason.
“To begin with,” said Olly, in the eminently reasonable tone generally reserved to address small and unreasonable children, “she is clearly a lady, and yet she has turned up here at Blakewell’s, looking for you.”
“I am acquainted with a great many ladies.”
“Yes, of course,” said Olly. He regarded his employer speculatively. “The Thornwood estate is in Hertfordshire, if I recollect correctly. Is that not where you grew up?”
“You know very well I’m from Hertfordshire,” said Jason. “Stop fishing and go away.”
Olly stiffened. “Very well, sir,” he said, a look of faint hurt in his face. “I’ll be in my office if you need me for anything else.”
The little man got to his feet. Jason watched him move across the room. Olly had nearly gained the door when Jason said abruptly, “You must think I’ve gone quite mad.”
The steward came to a halt in the doorway. “I would not dream of presuming such a thing.”
“It’s a deadly dull story,” said Jason. “Still, if you wish to hear it.” He shrugged.
Olly turned around. “I do.”
“Very well,” he said, leaning his head back against the armchair with ineffable weariness. He drew a breath and spoke aloud of Miranda Thornwood for the first time in ten years.
His father had been a footman at Thornwood, his mother a kitchen maid.
“They were both orphans, very young when they married, and very much in love,” said Jason, remembering the stories Mrs. Andrewes, the kindly housekeeper, used to tell him. “But they died of scarlet fever when I was a baby, so the servants at Thornwood, seeing as I had no other home or relations, agreed to raise me. They were very good to me, Olly. My childhood was not an unhappy one. I was a kitchen boy and then a stable boy and I probably would have become a footman, as I was six foot two by the time I was seventeen.”
“And very well-muscled in the calves,” said Oliver, sotto voce. “You wouldn’t have needed any padding in your livery breeches.”
Jason ignored his friend’s gibe, though he felt his mouth curve reluctantly. “Viscount Thornwood, however, was a harsh and cruel master. His wife had hated and feared him so much she absconded with a footman a year after presenting her lord with an heir. She died of fever after eloping with her lover to the West Indies.”
“I perceive Miss Thornwood and the current Lord Thornwood are the viscount’s progeny?”
“You perceive correctly. Lord Thornwood ignored them both for the most part, and they ran quite wild. But Miranda is nearly ten years older than her brother, and I was the only other child on the estate close to her age. I can’t remember a time when we weren’t friends and constant companions.”
Oliver’s kind, owlish face grew so sympathetic that Jason turned his head to gaze out the window at the damp, rain-drenched night.
“It was all very idyllic, as you can no doubt imagine. I taught her to ride and fish. She taught me to read and write. She even used to bring me books she had stolen from her father’s library.”
He broke off, trying not to remember, even as a thousand images from the past flickered through his mind, each one like the face of an upturned card in a falling deck. Miranda as a child, standing in her mother’s garden, her arms full of roses she had picked to brighten his tiny attic bedchamber. Miranda, thirteen years old, helping him and the gruff old Scottish coachman deliver a breech foal in the dead of winter. Miranda, holding out to him in her slender cupped hands the first wild strawberries of spring each year.
And then, unbidden, a final memory, one he had tried arduously to forget, and which now rose with perfect clarity in his mind—that still, solemn, golden afternoon ten years ago, when he had kissed her for the first time, in her mother’s rose garden beneath the effervescent light of a late summer sun.
“It was perhaps inevitable that as you grew older you should fall in love with her,” said Oliver quietly. “She is certainly a very beautiful woman, and if you had shared an emotional attachment since childhood—”
“It was not simply a childhood attachment, Olly,” Jason said. “It was an unbreakable bond, an indestructible connection, a linking of our very souls. Or so I believed. It all sounds very melodramatic now, doesn’t it? But I was twenty-one—and I was mad with love for her.” He gave a short, bitter laugh.
“It is not always wise to mock our younger selves, Jason,” said Oliver gently.
“We made plans together,” he said, hardly hearing what his friend had said. “We were going to elope to America. But at the last moment she suddenly realized what it would mean to be my wife. I suppose she’d never really stopped to consider the advantages her station in life gave her, and only as she was about to lose her wealth and her jewels and her fine gowns did she realize she could not live on love alone. But instead of informing me of her change of heart—I would have gone away, if she had asked, God knows I would have done anything for her—she confessed everything to her father.”
“Lord Thornwood was no doubt furious,” said Oliver thoughtfully. “Especially as his wife had run off with a footman.”
“He had me horsewhipped,” said Jason. “Then he informed the local magistrate I had stolen some silver from Thornwood. I hadn’t, of course, but the magistrate sentenced me to the hulks for ten years.” He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. “The rest of the story you know.”
They were silent for a long moment. Finally, Oliver said, “She was very young, Jason—you were both very young—and she was no doubt terrified of leaving the only home and life she had ever known. Perhaps it is time to forgive her.”
Jason made no answer.
Miranda emerged from her bath wrapped in a Turkish towel to find a maid spreading a blue satin gown across the bedspread. In the flickering light of the beeswax candles, the material shone like water.
With a deep sense of foreboding, Miranda looked around for her own clothes and shoes.
“Where are my things?” she asked after the maid indicated her name was Harriet.
“I’m sorry, miss,” said Harriet, flushing as she hurried forward, “but Mr. Blakewell ordered me to burn it all. He didn’t think anything would be worth saving.”
Miranda closed her eyes. “And where did this dress come from?”
“He sent me to Madame Beaumont’s to fetch a gown for you,” said the maid. “This was the only one Madame had finished tonight, though there wasn’t time to alter it. The lady it was meant for won’t like it, but Mr. Blakewell gave Madame fifty extra pounds for it. Shall I help you dress, miss?”
<
br /> Miranda had grown accustomed to dressing herself, ever since her aunt had dismissed her maid nearly a year ago, but she nodded mutely and allowed the girl to help her towel dry and pull the gown over her head.
“It’s a mite too big,” said Harriet, looking doubtful. “But the sash should hold everything in.”
Miranda studied her reflection in the tall cheval glass. Harriet was right. The woman for whom Madame Beaumont had made the gown was tall and generously endowed, but Miranda was not, and the front of the dress dipped scandalously low while the sleeves made every attempt to slip down her shoulder to her elbow. Tying the sash did help, but Miranda was unhappily aware she looked like a little girl playing dress-up in her mother’s gown.
She also had no shoes.
She ought to be grateful for the fresh gown, but she wanted her own clothes back. She wanted the familiarity and the protection of shoes and her own dress, perhaps even her cloak, when she faced Jason again. Peeking out from beneath the hem of her borrowed gown, her bare toes looked disturbingly vulnerable.
“Did Jason…Mr. Blakewell mention when he would return?” Miranda asked, raising her hem and padding to the fire.
Harriet cast her a quick, curious glance. “No, miss. He only said I was to help you dress for supper. He had the footman set a table for two in his sitting room.”
Miranda thanked the girl, dismissed her, and went to dry her hair by the fire. Unlike the huge ancient hearths of Thornwood, the one in this room had been modernized. She noticed the difference immediately. At home, the fireplaces always managed to dispel any warmth with astonishing efficiency, while allowing smoke to linger and choke anyone foolish or audacious enough to attempt breathing. Here, however, the plain marble grate both radiated heat back into the room and forced the smoke upward through the flue.
She was sitting before the fire, feeling warmer than she could remember being in years, when the door opened.
She turned as Jason entered the room, and her heart caught in her throat. He looked dark and sleek and impeccably groomed.
“Miss Thornwood,” he said. One brow quirked mockingly as he appraised her. “You look considerably improved, I see.”
“Yes, thank you,” she said, rising to her feet, the thick rope of her hair hanging heavily over one bare shoulder. She had hoped the long soak in the hot water would calm her nerves, but the ill-fitting dress and her bare feet made her feel defenseless.
She did not like the sensation. She was Miranda Thornwood, descended of bloodlines older than the king’s, and trained since infancy in the etiquette and protocol suited to a woman of her rank. These weapons, the only ones she had left, she now gathered to her.
Her spine stiffened and her head came up as he held the door for her. She trailed before him into the sitting room, the skirts of her gown dragging on the thick rug. The footmen had pulled armchairs and furniture aside to make room for two chairs and a small carved table set with silver and china. As one of the footmen seated her, the impossibly long skirt of her gown caught twice beneath the chair. Miranda flushed and murmured an apology, keeping her gaze fixed on the portion of the table directly in front of her.
“I thought you would prefer privacy, and elected not to dine a la russe,” said Jason. “You don’t mind, I hope?”
“No, I don’t mind,” she said. She wished desperately to know what he was thinking. In their shared childhood, she had been so closely attuned to him she found his moods and his expressions easy to read, but he was now as illegible to her as a book written in another language.
The footmen laid out the meal, a process which she pretended to study with interest. The food was finer than any served at Thornwood Hall, even when her father had been alive. Jason had certainly come a long way in the world. First the soups, turtle and jardinière; followed by the turbot, lobsters and trout a la genevoise; and finally the desserts. Pineapple jelly, cherry tarts and soufflés au chocolat. Then, the footman set down the last dish.
Her stomach lurched sickeningly.
A bowl of wild strawberries.
Her gaze flew upward to Jason’s expressionless face. Even above the savory scent of the other dishes, the scent of the berries filled the air, subtle and yet piercing in their sweetness. Did he, too, remember the first strawberries of the year, the ones they had always shared in the secret grottos of Thornwood lands? Or were these summer berries, served in the depths of winter, only one more way to remind her of the wealth and power he now held?
“You find the menu satisfactory, I trust?” murmured Jason.
He had forgotten. Her throat tightened.
“Yes, of course,” she said.
The footmen departed at last, leaving them alone in the candlelight, with the sound of the rain against glass like beads of pearls slipping free onto a marble floor. Jason filled her goblet and set it in front of her, his hand perfectly steady.
“I know you have no wish to see me,” she said in a low voice. “I would not have come here. Only I had nowhere else to go.” She lifted her glass blindly to her lips and swallowed. Now that the moment had come, she could not remember a single word of the speech she had rehearsed so carefully. At last she said simply, “You remember my brother William?”
He nodded, his face impassive. “I remember.”
“Yes. Of course. Well, three weeks ago, William struck my uncle with a poker in the head. I’m afraid Uncle Clarence is dead, and William will be charged for murder.”
A long silence passed. She still could not bring herself to meet Jason’s gaze, but she studied his hands and the white cravat stark against his dark evening clothes. His shoulders had broadened considerably in the last ten years, and he looked strong enough to bear the weight of the world. She wished she might lean against him, as she would have done when they were children. She had been alone for so long.
“You’d better begin at the beginning,” said Jason at last.
“Yes,” she said. “I suppose I had better.” She picked up her fork and stared down at her plate. Though she had eaten little more than crusts of bread in the last week, her stomach felt too knotted for food.
At last, she said, “You are aware, I think, that my father died a little over a year ago.”
“I had heard. My condolences.”
His voice was without inflection, but his hand tightened on his wineglass, the knuckles whitening, the strong veins raised and pulsing. So he was not as indifferent as he pretended to be. He had never stopped hating her father and was perhaps even glad the older man was dead, but he had tamed the impetuousness of his youth, and the control he exercised over his emotions was complete.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “He was a difficult man, and we did not always agree, but he was my father.”
“And you, of course, have always been a dutiful daughter.”
She flinched at his tone, but did not rise to the bait. “My guardianship, and William’s, fell to my father’s younger brother, my uncle Clarence. He and his family—my aunt Beatrice and cousin Laurence—arrived in Hertfordshire for Father’s funeral, and, they said, a brief visit to comfort us in our bereavement. But it rapidly became apparent none of them had any intention of ever leaving Thornwood again.”
She picked up a roll and bit into it without tasting it. “William started at Eton some years ago,” she continued, “so he returned to school soon after the funeral, but I was left with my uncle and his family at Thornwood. Before long, Uncle Clarence began to act the lord of the manor. He moved into Father’s suite and interfered with my decisions regarding the management of the land. Aunt Beatrice took over the running of the house and confiscated Mother’s jewels—for safekeeping, she said, but she would wear them when she called on the neighbors or attended the local assembly. Laurence, at least, moved to Town almost immediately and began to spend from our inheritances.”
“And you did nothing to stop them?” Jason asked, raising an eyebrow. “That seems unlike you.”
“I tried,” said Miranda. “I trie
d everything I could think of. I wrote to Father’s lawyers, but they said nothing could be done. I demanded my uncle and his family leave, but they had replaced all of our servants with their own. I tried to go to the local magistrate, but he dined with Uncle Clarence every Thursday.”
She set down the roll she had been mechanically shredding.
“Uncle Clarence was to be my guardian until I wed, or reach the age of thirty. As it is…” she took a deep breath, “…As it is exceedingly unlikely I should marry, there would be nearly four years until I come into my inheritance, though I fear by then there should be nothing left. As for William, he does not reach his majority for another nine years.”
She could not even pretend to eat any longer. Pushing her plate away, she folded her hands in her blue skirts and forced herself to sit very still.
“Then, a month ago, William came home for the holiday. I don’t think he’d realized how bad things had gotten at Thornwood. He’d spent the last two holidays with a friend, you see, and it had been some time since he had come home. He was angry—oh, he was very angry, but he’s only a boy still. He and Uncle Clarence quarreled and William—William picked up the poker and struck him in the back of the head.”
Miranda did not look up. Her hair had dried in a long, lustrous sheet over her shoulders. Loosened, it fell to her waist, and she furled and unfurled the ends between her fingers.
“How did you find out William had struck your uncle?” Jason asked.
“I was in the room with them when it happened,” Miranda said. “I knew immediately we had to leave. If my uncle died, they would hang William for murder. I took him to Hannah—you remember our old nurse Hannah—in Middlesex. He wanted to come with me to London, but I persuaded him to remain behind. I did not know if they would be looking for him on the roads.”
“And how did you get from Middlesex to London?”
“I walked.”
Another long, awful silence passed. Then Jason set down his fork.
“You walked? Alone? From Middlesex?”
“I didn’t have sufficient funds to buy a ticket on the coach,” she said. “I didn’t see any other alternative. It wasn’t far—perhaps thirty-five miles. It only took a few days.” She tried to smile. “I was raised in the country, you know.”
Lily Lang Page 2