And Then Comes Marriage

by Celeste Bradley

  Depositing the entire pile over Poll’s head was childish but satisfying. As a seething Poll bent to gather them up again, Cas snatched up his first wrinkled cravat and turned back to the mirror. Another time he might have asked Philpott to press it again. However, the flustered housekeeper was already overwhelmed with preparing everyone else in the family for the fancy do at Lord Wyndham’s.

  In the mirror, he watched as Poll carefully smoothed the weskits and turned slowly to leave the room. He would not lose control. He would not slip in the slightest manner.

  For if he did, he was rather afraid of what he might do to the man who used to be his best friend.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  In the mistress’s bedchamber in the house on Breton Square, Attie was having a marvelous time, unpacking and dumping Button’s boxes of pretties as fast as Cabot could follow behind her busy fingers and set them aright.

  One day she would likely bother with all the ribbons and corsets and powder and go to balls and such—but in the meantime, putting Miranda together would do. It was very much like building a suspension bridge out of candles and string. Everything had to go together in the right order or, like that ill-fated construction, Miranda might list to port and not be able to hold up under the weight of Attie’s wooden horse and cart that Poll had made for her when she was just a child.

  So there was no call for the strain in Miranda’s voice when she turned from the mirror to help Tildy rescue the long blue-green hair ribbons from Attie’s fingers, which were truly only a tiny bit sticky.

  “Attie, I don’t believe Mr. Seymour stayed long enough to eat his tea cakes. If Twigg is being his usual dubiously efficient self, they will still be downstairs in the parlor.”

  Attie’s eyes narrowed. She knew perfectly well she was being ousted from the proceedings. Still, tea cakes.

  “What kind are they?”

  Miranda frowned, thinking back. “Almond and poppy seed, I believe.”

  Tildy nodded helpfully. “Yes, missus. And Cook put on some of those little ginger biscuits from yesterday, too.”

  Cabot perked up. “Far too good for the likes of Mr. Seymour.” He looked at Attie. “I call rights on the biscuits.”

  Attie folded her arms. “Fine. I’ll go, but only because I feel like it.” She flounced from the room, followed by Cabot.

  As she left, she heard Miranda breathe a sigh of relief. “I do love that child, but I am as nervous as a cat as it is!”

  Cabot smiled down at Attie as they went down the stairs, just a quirk of his perfect lips. “I heard it. You cannot deny it now.”

  “I know. I can’t help being lovable.” Attie grumbled. “She’s all right—and she can be friends with Ellie, if she likes. It would do Ellie’s vanity good to have someone around who is nearly as pretty as she is.”

  Cabot tilted his head, considering. “But not friends with Cas and Poll?”

  Attie wrapped her arms about herself and followed Cabot into the parlor, dragging her feet a little. “I suppose it isn’t Miranda’s fault, how those two carry on—but they never fought before she came along and now they’re fighting all over again!”

  Cabot listened intently as he munched a ginger biscuit—despite his claiming them all, he ate only one to keep her company, she knew—and Attie allowed herself a full confessional, the kind of thing she kept from her family at all costs.

  “(Sniff) And Ellie said that Cas’s face was the color of ice—except that ice doesn’t have a color, but that’s Ellie for you—and (sniff) she didn’t know what they said because she lost her nerve—Ellie!—and she ran for it!” She poked miserably at the tea cake on her saucer. She was so distraught, she’d eaten only four-fifths of it. She’d barely been able to choke down the first one at all. “But Philpott told me that neither Cas nor Poll are going to Wyndham’s now—and they won’t even see Miranda get all those new beaus, because they’re both going to that party at the House of Pleasure—”

  Cabot choked on his biscuit. “Attie! How do you know about that place?”

  Attie chewed, absently finishing her second cake after all. “Mama told me. She said it’s like a garden, full of flowers, that gentlemen come and pluck whenever they need to relax—although I’ve never known Cas and Poll to be all that interested in botany. Orion, perhaps, but—Cabot, are you quite all right?”

  She banged Cabot on the back, most helpfully, she thought. He had no call to wave her off like that. And then he sort of covered his face with his handkerchief for a moment. If it were anyone other than Cabot, she might have suspected him of laughing at her.

  But Cabot never laughed.

  Poor Cabot.

  A sound came from the doorway, the clearing of a male throat. Attie turned. It was that Twigg fellow, the one who looked like he didn’t know whether to cross the street or go home. That’s what Philpott called it when someone couldn’t make up his mind about what to do, except that Twigg always looked like that, in Attie’s opinion.

  “If the young miss is finished with the tea tray?” Twigg looked at Attie for permission, but not at Cabot. Cabot was no better than a tradesman, it was plain on Twigg’s face, and ought not to sit about in parlors with young ladies eating the household’s ginger biscuits.

  Which wasn’t fair, really, for Cabot had only had one.

  Someone sneezed, a man sneeze, but it wasn’t Cabot or Twigg.

  Twigg looked up, his face growing quite sharp and suspicious. Cabot and Twigg looked at each other. Twigg shook his head, quick and short. Cabot rose to his feet and joined Twigg as he started toward the other door in the room, the one that led to Miranda’s little library, her “reading room” as she called it. Attie liked it for its deep windowsills with cushions upon them, although Miranda’s books were mostly old Mr. Talbot’s stuffy history books, but for the ones that Poll had given her.

  Cabot waved Attie back to her seat, which of course she didn’t return to, and he and Twigg crept carefully up to the door, Attie right on their heels. She might not be very big, but she could trip anyone, fast and dirty—and did it really matter how someone hit the floor, as long as they did so?

  But when they pushed open the door, it was only old Seymour, sitting at a table with a book open before him, apparently lost in his reading.

  When the door opened, he looked up, blinking. “Oh dear. I fear I’ve lost track of time. I just meant to check for a volume I lent Mrs. Talbot some weeks back, for I wished to search in the footnotes—” He drew back when he saw the two men staring at him and Attie scowling at him from between. He snapped the book shut and stood, pulling his dignity about him sternly.

  “I must go. My, it grows late. Please beg Mrs. Talbot’s pardon for me.” More of that, blah-blah, heavens the man was a bore, and then he left with the book under his arm, mostly hidden, but Attie was short enough to read the binding.

  She sneered as old Seymour let Twigg show him out. “He didn’t give that book to Miranda,” she told Cabot. “Poll did. Sneaky old sneak-thief!”

  * * *

  Miranda clapped her hands as Button opened the final, largest box—which Cabot had earlier secured against Attie’s curious, sticky fingers—and lifted the exquisite creation from it, flicking away the folds in the fabric with an expressive gesture.

  “Oh, Button! For me?”

  Miranda stepped forward to touch it, although she nearly drew her hand back like a child tempted by breakables. Which was ridiculous, for she would not only wear it on her skin, but she would also dance and whirl in it tonight.

  Abruptly, she couldn’t wait!

  It was crafted in the most beautiful shade of Turkish-blue silk, with a pattern in sapphire blue and emerald green glass beads twining sensually up one side and branching across the bodice like vines growing up a statue of a goddess. A wide sapphire velvet ribbon banded the high waist, and Button displayed a daintier version that would go about her neck, holding a single, perfect pearl pendant in a teardrop that she could already imagine would rest perfectly
in the hollow of her throat.

  Then she noticed some other details. The gown streamed down from the waistline in a sleek column. It lacked the fullness in the skirts that Miranda had become accustomed to in the demure and practical gowns Constance had ordered for her.

  There would be no striding about in this glorious creation. I shall have to drift like a ghost!

  Button climbed onto a ready chair and held the gown over her head. She dived upward into it, for he did not wish to pool it on the floor for her to step into.

  “It will crease, darling. In fact, from this moment onward, you probably ought not to sit, other than the carriage ride. Of course, if you could manage to lie flat?

  Miranda frowned. “It is a ball. May I dance?”

  From his perch, Button pondered her for a long moment. “You ought to manage a waltz well enough. Mind you, no country reels.”

  Miranda’s brows went up. She had intended sarcasm.

  Button clambered down from his place on the chair and moved behind her to fasten her up the back. She twisted a bit, wishing to see more in the mirror.

  Button gave her bottom a little spank. “Be still.”

  Miranda blinked at that. Goodness, the world certainly made free with her bottom lately.

  She held her breath as he turned her toward the mirror at last. “Oh.”

  She was beautiful. There was no denying it, no demurring, no waving off of compliments. She was absolutely gorgeous. “I had no idea,” she murmured in astonishment.

  What a simply magical gown. What a strange and magical little man, this Liar.

  “You’ll notice the new waistline,” he went on. “It is a classical line, very Greco-Roman, but the band around is much wider, thus lowering the waist by a few inches. It adds a certain elegance, don’t you think?”

  Miranda bit her lip. Her body seemed terribly well defined in this gown. In fact, she was quite sure her bosom had never been so plentiful!

  The gown was beyond her wildest dreams, however. “The new low waistline,” Miranda murmured. “I’ve truly fallen out of mode, haven’t I? When did that happen?”

  Button, who was still behind her, fastening what was likely number twenty-five of the fifty buttons, straightened to smile angelically over her shoulder into the mirror.

  “Tomorrow.”

  Miranda went still. It suddenly occurred to her that for someone who had always preferred to stand on the sidelines and observe, she was about to become very, very visible.

  To think she might, under Button’s patronage, be one of those astonishing women who set the mode of the day!

  Button seemed to think such a thing routine. Of course, he would. He was the great Lementeur. Still buttoning, he recited a list of all his favorite clients—“Women,” he told her, “who changed the path of our history. After that,” he added, “creating a new bodice line is an amusing little game.

  “You shall be one of those, I think,” he murmured as he took a tiny stitch somewhere in the back with the threaded needle that he’d kept thrust into the lapel of his perfectly fitted silk surcoat. “If you wish, you could quite easily fix the attention of a viscount, or even a duke.”

  Miranda blinked; then a short laugh of disbelief burst from her lips. “Oh, no. Oh, Button, that’s…” Impossible.

  There is only one man’s attention I wish to fix.

  And for the first time she really believed she could—his attention and his heart. Her beautiful, darkly shining Cas.

  She suddenly felt light and joyous, ready to show the world that she was so much more than simply her inexcusable parents’ child, more than her repressive husband’s widow.

  I am Mira. I am beautiful, and brave, and invincible … and in love. I have nothing to fear.

  The past is in the past. At last.

  A slow smile spread over her face, her body, and her soul. With her fingertips to her lips, she gazed in wonder at herself in the mirror.

  Mr. Button watched the joy infuse her features, and his anxious face creased into a puckish grin. “Ah! This is good, then?”

  Miranda made a small sound of disbelief. “Good? It is astonishing! Wondrous!” She lifted her chin, her joy bubbling out of her in a lilting chuckle. “You need not worry over wrinkles from the carriage, dear Button! I do believe I could fly to Wyndham’s ball!”

  * * *

  A short time later, the lovely Mrs. Talbot left the house on Breton Square with a smile on her pretty face. Button was as proud as any papa, or mother duck watching her hatchling take to the water.

  Swim, my dear!

  Oh, when he got his hands about the throats of those two rotters! Really, to spin their wily web around a perfectly nice creature like Miranda!

  There would be no more of that now. Miranda would go to the ball, advertise his genius and her own beauty while he took a well-deserved celebration with his Cabinet.

  Really, the world had no idea of the intricacy involved in launching a legendary beauty! As if one could simply be born fabulous!

  Button helped Miranda into the rented carriage and gave the driver directions to Lord Wyndham’s grand house in Grosvenor Square.

  Once the carriage was lost among the hordes of others heading out to their entertainments, Button turned to reenter Miranda’s house to gather his tools and saw Cabot stepping out with the already packed cases in his capable hands, along with Button’s hat and coat and gloves. Cabot stopped, lifting his head, looking for Button.

  Button’s throat tightened. That jawline … just devastating. Then, as he always must, Button pushed Cabot’s incandescent—naturally born!—appeal to the back of his consciousness and forced himself to see only the useful assistant, who was now striding toward him. “Cabot, you’re a godsend!”

  Cabot looked down at him calmly. “No one sent me. I am never far.”

  Later, at Worthington House—which had never been so quiet!—the three conspirators, Button, Cabot, and Attie, sat down at the kitchen table and lifted their hot chocolates high.

  Cabot glanced askance at the inattentive Philpott rocking in her chair by the ovens. Attie dismissed his concerns with a wave of the lemon biscuit in her hand, which Philpott had prepared for the sole purpose of cajoling another very fine bonnet from the great Lementeur.

  “Don’t mind Phillie. She’s on her second pot of tea. I could chase a cobra about the kitchen and she’d never notice.”

  Cabot slid his gaze toward Attie. “Tell me that never happened.”

  Attie only smiled.

  Button tapped the kitchen table impatiently with the head of his entirely-for-striking-a-fashionable-pose walking stick. “Attention, if you please! We have a dire emergency of the Cas and Poll variety!”

  Attie stopped in mid-chew, a frown skewering her brow. “Mmph-phy?”

  “Emergency?” Cabot translated for Button. “The plan came off swimmingly. Miranda has never been more beautiful. What could go wrong now?”

  Button paused for dramatic effect. “Miranda is in love.”

  Attie’s jaw dropped, crumbs and all. Cabot let out a long breath.

  “Oh damn.” That was Cabot, who never cursed.

  “Oh my.” That was Attie, who often cursed. “Are you sure?”

  Button nodded, obviously much gratified by their shock and amazement. “I told her she could easily angle for a duke. She only smiled dreamily.”

  “So you believe we are too late.” Cabot, who disliked sweets, absently took a lemon biscuit and bit into it. When he noticed, he handed it to Attie, bite-mark and all.

  She dug in at once, for Attie always did think best while chewing. Or hanging upside down. She’d learned long ago not to mix the two.

  Button spread his hands. “My worry, exactly!” He ran his fingers distractedly through his thinning hair, disarranging it madly. “And now I’ve made her one of the most beautiful women in London! What are we going to do?”

  Cabot reached out, but didn’t quite touch Button’s hand where it lay on the tabletop. “Sir, ther
e is nothing we can do tonight—and Miranda is safely in the hands of Lady Wyndham, with the twins safely occupied at Mrs. Blythe’s.”

  Attie nodded. “Ellie and I managed to keep them away from Miranda all day. We can keep it going a little longer, I think.”

  Button let out a breath, then mustered up a smile. “Yes. There is time to think of some solution.”

  In thanks, he reached out to put a hand over Attie’s smaller one and Cabot’s larger one. It was a gesture of relief and friendship. There was no reason to imagine that he felt Cabot’s hand vibrate slightly beneath his.

  No reason at all.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Since Miranda had never been terribly in the know with Society gossip, Button had given her a few clues about the stunning redhead who greeted her in the grand hall of Wyndham House.

  “Lady Alicia, Marchioness of Wyndham. Fallen woman, such a scandal, married very well anyway. No one in Society remembers her past. I know that because they say so every time they mention her. Don’t tell anyone, but she has saved the British Empire at least twice—and goodness knows the trouble she saved our future citizens! Don’t let the fact that she is petite and curvaceous fool you. That ginger hair comes with a temper. She killed the most dangerous man in the world with the very knife with which he had just stabbed her! It’s a wonderful story, which I can’t possibly tell you, because it is a state secret. In addition, she has the most marvelous taste in bonnets. You should see what she can do with a veil!”

  Miranda looked a few inches down at the ridiculously beguiling creature who stood smiling at her in welcome. Lady Alicia’s Lementeur gown was in a rich bronze that made her hair look like flame. The beading swept down over her from one shoulder, making her look as though she stood among green branches. Her gown also sported the “new” waistline.

  Her bosom looked even better than Miranda’s.

  Lady Alicia didn’t look like a killer. Or a fallen woman.