Back to the question at hand. “I propose that we continue our ‘courtship’ for now. I fear that if I withdraw, Cas will use my defection as an excuse to end his own pursuit of you.”
An air of distraction had taken over her expression. “Poll?”
“Yes?”
“Do you think if Cas saw me looking particularly fine—say, at the Marquis of Wyndham’s Midsummer Ball—that he might find himself more inclined to want to love me?”
Poll frowned. “Well, it couldn’t hurt. Er, how fine?”
She smiled slightly. “I have made a particular friend of Lementeur.”
Poll whistled, impressed. “If you’ve somehow won that fellow over, I rather doubt the Prince Regent himself could resist you. In fact, never mind. Avoid Prinny. He always did have an eye for the ladies. But Wyndham’s ball is perfect timing. That might do it—to see you at the ball with all the inevitable admirers, it might push Cas to admit his heart. Here is the bargain. If you keep seeing me, and do not tell Cas the truth of your feelings, I shall make sure he attends and then I shall dance you right off your feet!”
Miranda frowned. “Bargain? I suppose … if you truly think it will work.”
“It will work.” He grinned. “As long as I stay in the wager, he will feel obligated to continue, despite his inner fears. He would never simply let me win!”
Miranda narrowed her eyes. “Wager?”
Oops. “Ah … well … I suppose I left that part out, didn’t I?”
She tilted her head and regarded him rather like the way Attie regarded a poisonous insect—wondering whether to keep him alive or stick a pin in him and call it a day.
“Let me guess … the first one to become my lover? No, for then Cas would have already won, correct?”
Poll sighed. “Salt in the wound, Miranda?”
Her expression continued to be unsympathetic to his not-so-greatly disappointed heart. “So what great milestone must be reached in order to win?”
“Er … well, it seemed like a good idea at the time, you understand.…”
“Poll.”
With a sigh, he gave in. “The prize would go to the one who convinced you to accept a proposal of marriage.”
Frowning, she drew back. Poor Miranda, even the very word made her flinch!
“But I will never marry again!”
Poll nodded. “Well, yes, I knew that.” He shrugged. “It was merely a ploy to buy time. I’d hoped that Cas would lose interest and move on, the way he always has in the past.”
She gazed at him with her lips parted in mingled admiration and irritation. “You cheated!”
He quirked a proud smile. “But, of course! You were at stake.”
“Worthingtons!” She frowned at him but her scolding expression didn’t quite stick. “Mad, the lot of you!”
* * *
It was not until Poll had seated Miranda upon her horse blanket and plied her with what he now realized was an exceedingly odd breakfast—pickles—what had he been thinking?—that he truly relaxed and began to enjoy her company.
Miranda eyed her pickle with a wrinkled brow. “Is this a usual part of a Worthington House breakfast?”
Poll laughed and started in on a long, convoluted tale involving Attie, pickles, and Elektra’s pet monkey. “Although the monkey only lasted a week before Elektra decided she’d rather just keep three-year-old Attie as a pet. More dangerous, but slightly less likely to fling poo—”
He kept Miranda laughing. It was good to see her at ease again. This double courtship had nearly ruined a perfectly good friendship!
Any pangs of anything else could most certainly be buried deep. It wasn’t as though he still wanted Miranda, really. What he wanted was a Miranda of his very own, he realized as he amused her by staging The Tempest with the blanket as the island and a pickle as Prospero—or Prospickle-O, as the warty green thing was promptly dubbed.
What he felt, and what he hid from her, was the loss of the dream of thinking he might have found the one—The One—and that the search that begins in adolescence might actually be over for him.
Lucky Cas, to have stumbled upon the dream of love in a stinking London alley! Foolish Cas, if he allowed his own fears to ruin it for him now.
Miranda clapped as Prospickle-O recited his final speech, exhorting his audience to send him on his way by thrumming their bellies. Then she reached out, plucked the miniature actor from his stage and popped him into her mouth.
“Pickles,” she murmured around her mouthful of briny Shakespearean, “make a perfectly marvelous breakfast.”
Poll did not laugh. In fact, his easy smile had disappeared the moment Miranda had leaned across the picnic blanket and outstretched her arm.
On the pale ivory skin of her upper arm, Poll clearly saw the marks of a large hand held too tightly. The skin was merely pink, not black and blue, yet clearly some force had been applied.
Miranda gazed at him innocently as she munched, her eyebrows raised in a question.
Fury swept Poll. What the hell kind of game was Cas playing? If he loved her, how could he hurt her?
If he didn’t love her, why didn’t he just leave her the hell alone?
Miranda blinked as her playmate went instantly as still and icy as stone. Then she felt him slip away, though he yet sat across from her. He’d gone away from her, although he’d been laughing softly with her only a moment before. She’d never seen him so withdrawn.
Untangling himself from his untidy sprawl with rigid care, he left her there on the floor. He rang for her maid and ordered her a pot of tea, then walked away from her with nothing more than a brief hesitant moment at the door, where it seemed he’d almost turned back to tell her something.
Then he was gone.
Miranda was left staring down at her half-eaten pickle and wondering what she’d done wrong.
Chapter Nineteen
“You rotter!”
Cas looked up from his morning newssheet—the one he was not reading, for the words simply swam into memories of sea green eyes and sweet moans of desire—just in time to see Poll’s fist headed for his jaw.
Ow. That was all he had time to think before the blow sent him out of his chair and splayed on the carpet of the breakfast room.
He was back on his feet in a split second, dabbing at his lip with the back of his wrist, his hands already fisted. Rage at his brother roiled up from some white-hot place within him.
Poll had just come from Miranda’s. What had he done while there?
He could do no worse than you.
Cas’s vision reddened. Fists were good. Cudgels would work, too.
Weapons were in short supply about Worthington House, due to a regrettable incident last year between Attie and Callie’s new husband, Sir Lawrence, so Cas was going to have to beat the hell out of Poll with his bare hands.
His fingers curled more tightly as a snarling smile lifted a corner of his lips. Looking forward to it.
Poll stood before him, pale with fury. “You are an animal!”
Cas flinched, but he didn’t let Poll see it. Last night had been unbelievable. It had perhaps been the most intimate moment of his life. He’d never before been with a woman who wasn’t frightened by his intensity. That was why his dalliances never lasted long, why his lovers were swiftly exchanged for the one after, and the one after that. When he felt the darkness welling up, he walked away rather than subject himself to their shocked rejection.
When Miranda turned herself over to him so trustingly, it had expanded something within him. He’d been freed, and yet at the same moment, held more closely than ever. Deep within her warmth, in the sweet cavern of her, he’d at last been allowed to be his true self. He’d felt closer to her than he’d ever felt to anyone outside his own family.
More so, for none of them truly knew of that flawed and injured part of him. Even to his family, he kept up the facade of the jokester, the carefree lad-about-town. To hear Poll judge him so went directly to that hidden, lonel
y place, piercing Cas like a knife.
So he let his snarling smile widen. “Oh, she liked it. A lot. She actually thanked me afterward. What are you doing wrong that you aren’t getting thanked?”
It was Poll’s turn to flinch. Pain and jealousy and old boyhood hurts shone from his eyes. Cas knew that it had always bothered Poll that when people finally did manage to tell them apart, they usually seemed to prefer Cas’s company to his, though Cas seemed to give not a whit for their time.
Poll didn’t understand it, so he continued to be winning and charming and courteous in an effort to win others over.
Cas could have cynically explained it to him, but not in a way that Poll’s whole and loving spirit could comprehend. Like dogs that followed after humans who mistreated them, ordinary people longed to please—and if someone appeared harder to please, they longed all the harder to do so. A little arrogance, a little disdain, and one suddenly became someone such people wanted to win approval from.
It meant nothing. It was a shallow win. In the end, people usually tended to gravitate back to Poll, for his friendship was of the generous and warm variety. Yet the damage had already been done with Poll. He saw himself as someone less preferable.
Now, Poll glared at him with loathing in his eyes. “You hurt her. I saw the marks myself!”
Cas didn’t show a single shred of reaction, although inside him he turned to ice. He’d always held back—always feared to release the wildness within him. He’d worried that he might someday harm someone—
Not her. Oh, God. Not sensitive, gentle Miranda!
Self-loathing ripped at him with claws honed in the exquisite satisfaction he’d felt last night—felt even as he’d hurt her!
“If I thought you loved her, I’d let her make her own decision,” Poll growled, swearing. “Do you? Do you have anything in your heart but ice?”
Cas flinched, but he did not speak. Better ice than fire. Fire would reduce him to ashes, until there was nothing left but emptiness when it was over.
“No?” Poll advanced upon him. “Then you do not deserve her. You’re done,” he pronounced, his tone a growl. “Finished. She’s mine now. I’ll not allow you to ever go near her again!”
“No.” The word was ripped from Cas’s throat before he could take a thought, even as his body assumed an aggressive crouch. He would be more careful. He would hold back. He would do anything he had to do, fight his way through Poll, anything to see her again, to touch her again, to have her again!
Poll snarled, his jaw rigid, his eyes narrowed. It struck Cas—just before Poll’s fist once again impacted his face—that for the first time in his life, he couldn’t tell his twin’s face from his own.
* * *
Breaking glass and broken furniture noises wouldn’t normally cause much consternation in the Worthington household. Philpott might mutter an amusing obscenity without pausing in her task. Iris might dreamily lift her head to listen for cries for help, then hearing none, might drift back to dabbing the finishing touches on Shakespeare with Ostrich or perhaps her latest work, Shakespeare with Platypus.
Archie might look up from the piles of Elizabethan documents on his desk, blinking myopically as he, too, listened for signs of rescue needed—or, depending on what he had just discovered on the topic of Shakespeare’s true gender, he might not.
Attie always ran toward sounds of chaos. Ellie usually ran away. Orion was often the cause of the chaos. Lysander tended to react to anything resembling cannon fire, but ignored anything less. Dade would typically let out a deep sigh of resignation, then troop dutifully through the house to determine the estimated cost of repairs.
Not this time.
This time it was the never-before-heard bestial howls of rage that brought them all running. Dade was last, nearly tripping over Attie, who huddled in the cluttered hallway with her hands over her ears. Ellie shot Dade a look of horror as he approached and stepped around their dithering father and handkerchief-waving mother, who kept pronouncing, “The Wrestling Match! It’s the Wrestling Match!”
Ellie grabbed Dade’s hand and tugged him along. “They’re fighting! I mean to say, really, truly fighting!”
Dade glanced around at his other brothers. Orion nodded. “It’s true.” Lysander looked as if he’d give anything to be anywhere else.
“Bloody hell,” Dade muttered. He pushed open the door of the smoking room, but was immediately thrown backwards when a large, solid body crashed into it from the other direction. Orion caught him and gave him a helpful shove back at the door.
This time Dade kicked it open. “What in the seven levels of hell is going on?”
Cas and Poll ignored him completely, too wrapped up in rage and violence to realize they had an audience. It took all four men to pull them apart and pin them down separately.
Ellie and Iris helped by dashing cold water into their faces. Dade, dripping now, wished his mother had better aim. The water did the trick, shocking the twins from their mindless rage back into actual human speech. Poll came out of it first, sputtering and sitting up, pushing his brothers’ pinioning hands away. “I’m fine! I’m calm! Get off!”
Cas was not so inclined to break out of his fury.
Dade allowed Poll to stand, backing away slowly, ready to tackle him should he make a move at the still-pinned Cas.
Iris pattered forward with another container of water, this one a vase still full of flowers. Poll intercepted her. “Allow me.” He pulled the flowers free and unceremoniously doused his twin further, causing Cas to sputter and choke on his epithets. Poll dropped the dripping flowers upon his twin’s chest, tossed the empty vase to Dade, then turned and walked from the room.
Dade watched him go with a frown. Then he returned to where Lysander and Orion still held the snarling, spitting Cas to the floor. “Sit on him until he’s human again.”
Then he turned to contemplate the only person present who didn’t seem surprised by the fight. “Attie, what say the two of us stroll down to the kitchen for a snack?”
* * *
Attie wrapped her chilled hands about the mug of hot chocolate that Philpott had made for her—she didn’t really like the bitter cocoa, but Attie made it a policy to always refuse Philpott’s offer of tea.
Dade had seated himself across the battle-scarred kitchen worktable from her, but she fixed her eyes on the spot where she had spent an entire day scraping at the wood with a sharpened spoon. She had been trying to ascertain how long it would take to escape from a locked cabin aboard a pirate ship—but that had been forever ago when she was still a child.
Dade cleared his throat significantly. Attie scowled at him through lowered brows. She didn’t want to tell, but she did worry so, and it was a bit gratifying that everyone else was finally worried with her.
They all perched behind Dade like birds on a clothesline, watching her with sharp, intelligent eyes, just waiting to hear what she had to say—unlike most people, who would be talking, or lecturing, and not bothering to listen to an almost-thirteen-year-old girl.
The fierce love and need she felt for them all welled up painfully within her, making her scowl all the more ferociously.
Iris smiled brightly at Attie’s intensity. “Just tell us, dear. Tell us why the boys are reenacting the wrestling match between Charles and Orlando from As You Like It, Act One, Scene Two.”
A blurred sort of dismay traveled across Iris’s dear, vague features. “They’ve never before showed signs of having a talent for the stage, you know. They were very convincing.”
Mama, Attie decided, could make an exploding workroom into a fireworks display. Most people thought that her mother was a bit fluffy in the mind, but Attie knew that Iris had a will of iron—for no one could be so consistently optimistic unless they worked hard at it every moment of every day.
Ellie, on the other hand, watched Attie narrowly, as if expecting nothing better than a lie to emerge from her lips.
Which was entirely unfair. Attie made it a pol
icy never to lie more than five times in any given day—and she’d already used them all up!
Orion stood a little apart from the others, like the bird who always sits on the end. Attie knew better. She knew that Orion could have gone to University and that he could still be welcome in the house of any prominent scholar as assistant or protégé.
Orion said that he didn’t want to be bothered with thinking another scholar’s thoughts—not when his own were so vastly more interesting, but Attie knew how much he worried for her parents and Lysander especially. Orion and Lysander had been close as boys, almost as close as Cas and Poll.
Lysander—poor Zander!—gazed at her darkly. Lysander didn’t care for strife.
But there was no help for it. Attie again met Dade’s encouraging eyes. Strife was about to erupt but good.
“Cas and Poll are fighting over a lover!” she blurted.
Iris brightened. “Oh, my. How romantic! Is she fantastically beautiful like Helen of Troy?”
Dade nodded. “So it’s not all that serious, then. One of them will lose interest soon and things will go back to normal.”
Attie shook her head violently, which meant that she then had to push back a wad of tangled mop from her face. “It is serious. They’re in love! They’ve been seeing her for weeks! Poll for almost two whole months!”
Everyone gaped at that. None could remember any lover holding one of the twins for an entire month.
Ellie looked thoughtful. “It must be her fault, then. She’s playing them against each other.”
Dade shook his head. “They’re far too to clever to fall for that sort of romantic intrigue.”
Ellie scoffed. “Do be serious. They’re men.”
Even Orion had to lift a brow in agreement with that statement.
Attie nodded miserably. “She’s pretty, too. And smart. And, even though I’m positive she’s evil, she’s rather nice.”
Ellie stepped forward. “What? You’ve seen her? They introduced you to this strumpet? Oh, when I get my hands on those—”
Attie rolled her eyes, though she was secretly pleased by Ellie’s protectiveness. “Of course not. I went on reconnaissance.”
And Then Comes Marriage Page 17