“I—” Button hesitated. “I have made it worse in my attempt to find you more appropriate suitors. At one time, you were invisible enough that you might have simply slipped away unnoticed from the fire, anonymous until the stories faded. No one would have likely cared. Until last night.”
Miranda turned her face from him. “As of last night, I am an Original. As of last night, all of Society will watch my every move.” She let out a long breath. “Button, I don’t think I can survive much more of your help.”
Cabot stirred. “Mrs. Talbot, that isn’t fair—”
Button hushed him. “It is my fault that I didn’t investigate my own instinct that something was not as it should be. Neither Miss Atalanta nor I truly believed you were an evil seductress, bent on shattering the bond between brothers—”
Miranda made a tiny sound of pain. “Attie, as well?”
“—And I certainly ought to have remembered how the twins used to play their careless games with people.” He sighed. “I never would have thought this of them. Never.”
“Oh heavens!” Miranda opened her eyes to send him a look of exhausted horror. “Cas. I thought myself in love with—but that Cas doesn’t exist, does he? I am in love with a mirage.”
Her breath came faster. “He is gone, as surely as if he had died—yet how can I mourn losing him? He is nothing but a bit of trickery, a shell game!” She grabbed Button’s hand. “It hurts so that I will never see him again—even as I loathe the man who deceived me!” Real tears flowed at last.
Button wrapped his arms about her and let her weep. Cabot looked at him with alarm at the force of Miranda’s sobs, but Button reassured his assistant with a nod. Fury and rage and pain might be dangerous, but true grief was something that would help heal Miranda’s wounds.
If anything ever could.
* * *
It lacked but an hour before dawn when Cabot closed the door of the room where he’d settled Miranda and sent Button’s little housemaid back to her usual duties. He found his master still in the parlor, sitting before the fire, gazing thoughtfully into the glow of the coals.
Button looked up as he entered. “Is she sleeping at last?”
Cabot nodded. “I put her in the yellow room.”
Button leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees. Dropping his head, he rubbed both hands over his face wearily.
Cabot ached for him. “You should try to get some sleep. I can manage your morning appointments.”
Button raised his head and smiled slightly. “Ah, to be young. You’ve had even less sleep than I.”
Pain laced through Cabot, a needle he’d felt too many times to count. “Don’t do that,” he said with an edge to his tone.
Button widened his eyes. “Don’t do what, pray tell?”
“Don’t take advantage of every opportunity to mention how young I am, or how young you are not.” He needed to stop. He needed to stop talking right now!
Button stared at him warily. “Cabot, I—”
“Stop.” Cabot astonished himself by striding across the room and dropping to his knees next to Button’s chair, his hands gripping the rosewood arm until his knuckles went white. “You are not an age. You simply are, as I simply am, and age is what we make of it.” A wild desperation would not allow him to shut his mouth. “Sometimes I would even swear that you are the youth and I am the elder!”
Button was pulling back, leaning back in the chair, regarding him with that terrifying expression on his face, the one Cabot had seen years before, the one that had kept him from saying these things for so damned long.
The expression that said, I should send you away.
Icy fear did what self-control could not. Cabot dropped his forehead to rest on his rigid knuckles and stopped talking, biting his cheek so hard, he tasted blood. Breathe, he’d told Miranda, as if he knew what he was speaking of, as if he had any idea how to survive an impossible love.
Breathe.
He felt Button stir, then inhale as if to speak.
Cabot flinched. “Don’t say it.” His voice felt like shards of glass in his throat. “Don’t.”
Before he could hear the terrifying words, he leaped to his feet and strode from the room, his long legs outracing the sound of Button’s voice.
Button leaned back into the cushions, his heart pounding. The hand that had hovered over Cabot’s shining head, not daring to touch, fell to the arm of the chair.
It was a good thing that Cabot had left the room before he’d given in to temptation.
It was a good thing.
It was.
Chapter Twenty-nine
In her drafty little house in her unfashionable neighborhood, Constance sat drinking her morning cup of tea and reading the London scandal sheets piled next to her plate. She’d sent that lazy slattern of a maid out all over the city to find them.
Constance cackled with glee at the description of the brothel in flames and fairly swooned with pleasure when the gossips described the “disheveled” and “indecent” condition of a “certain Wicked Widow” who was named after Prospero’s daughter.
Usually, Constance didn’t hold with plays and theaters and other useless fripperies, but even she knew that Miranda had been named after some wanton stage creature by her no-better-than-she-should-be mother!
Oh, it was all coming along just as she’d planned, except even better!
All had come to fruition, better than Constance’s wildest dreams. Since Miranda had done nothing to blackmail, despite Constance’s well-placed spy, Constance had been forced to grow resourceful and create a trap.
Of course, only idiotic Miranda would take a simple indiscreet appearance at a place of ill repute and turn it into a roaring public scandal!
Of course, it didn’t reflect well upon the Talbots, but the family name could withstand it.
After all, Miranda had only married into it. She wasn’t born a Talbot. She’d been one of those … what was their name? Oh yes, such a story in the day. It would help to remind Society that Miranda wasn’t really a Talbot after all. It was too bad the tale couldn’t come out all over again.
Unless, of course, it did.
Constance drank her tea, an uncharacteristic smile creasing her round face. Such a lovely morning
It was only too bad that Gideon couldn’t know that his wise older sister had been right all along—it would serve the idiot right for leaving everything to Miranda in his will.
Her teacup clanked onto its saucer. Constance gazed straight ahead, unholy joy rising within her.
The will!
* * *
Miranda sat in the small, sunny morning room where she managed her accounts. It had once been draped in stuffy brocade and was dark as a cupboard. When her sister-in-law had taken her own little house, Miranda had stripped the draperies and removed the heavy, carved furnishings that hadn’t been attractive even when new.
It was a welcoming room now, with its polished wood and the pale blue figured-paper on the walls. Her desk was delicate and feminine. It was the first new piece she had purchased and it was still her favorite.
Today she felt no pleasure in the pretty room, or in her view of the verdant garden. There was no solace to be found in flowers or foliage or in balancing her accounts. She’d once taken pleasure in it, in her independence and her good management.
Her mind could make no sense of the columns. The numbers swam before her, blurring, becoming the shadows and lights of a man’s muscled chest or shimmering glints she saw behind her eyelids when she exploded into orgasm.
Her body didn’t understand the shattered heart or the tormented mind. It longed for what it used to have: the ecstasy, the satiation. It hummed and throbbed, driving her to sexual restlessness, as if she weren’t miserable enough.
The ache in her heart, however, rang constant and hollow, a black bell tolling with every beat of her pulse. The humiliation and the anger welled and exhausted themselves in a recurring cycle, but the pain itself, the Cas-shaped
hole in her soul, the powerful void where love had dwelt, that simply echoed on and on.
A tap on her door snapped her out of her dark thoughts. “Come!”
Twigg entered the room with a letter on a tray. “The post, madam.”
Miranda glanced at the salver without interest.
“And madam? That family came again, a great lot of them this time. Even the little one was with them at the door.”
Miranda shrank back. “Was he—they—?”
“No, madam. There was no sign of them. That upstart tailor and his little friend were here as well.”
Miranda sighed. “Mr. Button and Mr. Cabot, please, Twigg.” Simply because Cabot had failed to soothe Twigg’s insecurities! The butler’s prickly defensiveness felt like spikes to Miranda’s raw nerves.
Twigg looked at her with a face suddenly lacking in expression. “There’s a letter from Herself.” He held out the salver once more.
Miranda recognized the thick, old-fashioned stationery that Constance favored. Her spidery script on the address was unmistakable. Since she was quite sure that she could not feel any worse today, Miranda did not delay opening Constance’s missive.
She could not have been more wrong.
Miranda,
I write you incensed and indignant!
It seems that my worst suspicions about you have been correct after all, and that you are too ill-born and ignorant of your advantages to properly appreciate the respectable circumstances my brother provided for you.
Therefore, I am forced to abandon my retirement and return forthwith to the home of my family to defend its honor, if I must, with my last breath!
Be prepared, Miranda! You will not succeed in ruining the Talbot name!
There was no closing, friendly or otherwise. The letter was simply signed with a large swooping C that made Miranda think of a butcher’s meat hook. It had been written with such indignant force that the thick paper had taken a deep scratch from the quill.
The paper was quivering. Miranda realized that her hands were shaking with reaction and rage. She let the letter fall to the desk, where it lay, radiating accusation.
Decadent mischief?
That her brief exploration into freedom could be seen in such a revolting and dissolute light made her feel ill. All her life had been an ongoing attempt to live down her family’s past. She’d always been so careful, so watchful. Until little more than a month ago, she had guarded her own behavior like a warden guards a dangerous prisoner—
For she’d known, hadn’t she? Just as Constance had sensed, Miranda had always known that there lived a mutinous rebel within her.
It was only then that the most sinister line of the entire vicious letter rose to her attention.
Therefore, I am forced to abandon my retirement and return forthwith to the home of my family to defend its honor, if I must, with my last breath!
Constance was coming home.
* * *
Poll left Worthington House behind him, taking long strides through the thick summer air. It wasn’t a nice day at all.
There was a nasty damp coming off the river Thames, seeping into every corner and crevice, leaching unwelcome through Poll’s clothing. It was midday and everyone had their coals burning, throwing more soot into the air, which came down and stuck to the damp.
Being out in putrid weather was still better than being inside Worthington House. The trenchant disapproval within made Poll feel like he was wading through a foot of sticky mud. He deserved that blame, for everything had been fine until he interfered with Miranda!
Miranda. He closed his eyes against the sudden aching surge of guilt that welled up in his chest. It was unbearable, spiky and twisting inside him, making him feel foul and decayed—
No. He sent his thoughts sideways, away from the memories of her, away from the imaginings of what she must think of him now.
He pulled his collar tight against the damp. The coldest summer in years, that’s what people had been saying, but until today, Poll hadn’t noticed.
A hot lance of shame went through him. Both he and Cas, laughing it up, two jolly lads, making sure everyone was having a good time, especially them.
Anything to avoid thinking about the serious state of their family. The family had been skating on the edge of destruction for years. This past year had been both better and worse—better because there had been enough to eat. Worse because without Callie’s sane and practical presence, the clashing personalities had begun a downward spiral that led nowhere good.
Meanwhile, he and Cas played dirty tricks on innocent women.
He hadn’t yet finished the jewelry case. He supposed he might as well. He’d worked so hard on the ivy, inlaying the leaves with ebony and mother-of-pearl, as shadow and light. It was some of his most beautiful work ever.
Cas had been hard at work on something as well, but Poll refused to give in to curiosity and give Cas the satisfaction of knowing that Poll gave a rat’s rump about what he was up to.
He missed his twin.
Poll walked along the Serpentine. The swans were huddled on the bank, their heads tucked under their wings. Poll hated them, hated their legendary monogamy most of all. Orion had once informed the family—he’d been about thirteen at the time—that he didn’t believe in marriage, that if man was meant to be monogamous, then he would be unable to be anything else, just like the swan.
Cas had promptly agreed. Poll had frowned and shaken his head. Even at the age of nine, he’d known he wanted it all. The girl, the marriage, the home and family.
Attie had been a fussy infant then and Callie a girl of sixteen, tending the baby as if it were her own. Ellie had been about six and had mimicked Zander and Cas and Poll when they’d taken exception to Orion’s new and serious bent.
The ridicule had been a bit fierce, now that he thought about it. Rion had become more and more grave in response, until they’d driven the fun right out of him and he’d become the cool man of thought he was now.
Poll wished he were more of a man of thought. He wouldn’t be in this pickle now, aching inside as he walked through the coldest summer in decades.
Poor Miranda.
He’d loved bringing her out of her shell, loved watching her learn to believe in herself, to speak her mind, to gleam like mother-of-pearl, to allow herself shades of light and dark, to be true to her own desires and rebel against anyone who thought she ought to blend herself back into invisibility.
He and Cas had done that for her—and then he and Cas had ruined it all. Miranda likely would never believe in anything, now that her trust had been so betrayed.
Widows were fair game; everyone knew that. Except, Miranda wasn’t like the other widows Poll had known. She didn’t know anything of the world. He’d seen it immediately, that she didn’t know how to protect her heart, yet he pursued her anyway, drawing Cas in as well.
Why hadn’t he taken one look at her wary, naïve eyes and politely bid her good day?
* * *
Cas shut the damned book he’d been holding up before his eyes for an hour. It didn’t matter if it were open or not. The words were blurs, the sentences meaningless jumbles of words. He’d been gazing blindly at it, instead seeing Miranda’s wide, shocked eyes.
Castor Worthington, beloved son of Iris and Archimedes Worthington, beloved sibling to Dade, Callie, Rion, Zander, Ellie, Attie—and formerly Pollux—was hiding in the library because he was completely and most thoroughly in the bog house.
Even Attie was off limits to him. Every time he entered the room, Elektra would stand and sweep majestically out of it, sweeping Attie protectively into her wake. While it was nice to see those two becoming close at last—and nice to see Attie’s hair brushed, even if those odd braids weren’t strictly à la mode—he felt like a pile of horse apples every time.
He was still being fed and no one had locked him entirely out of the house yet, but neither had a single member of his family spoken a word to him or Poll for nearly a week.
He missed them. He even missed Poll, though he would not admit that even under torture!
As for Miranda, the ache was quite physical, radiating out from somewhere in his chest until his entire body hurt with longing for her. Miranda, rolling naked in bed, turning toward him with a soft smile, reaching for him, kissing him as he kissed her back with a driving, hot rise from sweetness to wildness.
He loved to bring her lust on hard, to push her focus down into her body, to make her feel everything he did to her, to make her burn as he did—
Had burned. Past tense.
His thoughts skittered away from Miranda. He could not think of her without recalling the way she had frozen, staring at him, her face growing paler and paler, her lips parted as if to ask, or beg for someone to tell her it wasn’t true.
The problem was, it was true. It was all true.
Miranda. God, hadn’t she looked beautiful? She’d seemed like a magical being, a goddess in the form of an exquisite blue-green lance, so elegant and slender, her breasts pressed high and proud, her marvelous hair piled luxuriously on her head and twined with shimmering beads.
He remembered the beads. Strange how little details became so clear. When she’d dragged him home with Poll, he lost his balance for the millionth time in the front hall of Worthington House. Tiny beads had spilled there in the hall, gritting under Cas’s boots like sand on the stone.
Orion and Zander had carried him into the small parlor. Iris had called for tea and whiskey. He didn’t recall much after that, although there were three stitches in his scalp that implied he was lucky to remember anything at all.
Lucky to remember that it was over. Miranda—that glaze of shock in her eyes, that submerged betrayal in her sea green eyes, the way she’d flinched, her body half twisting away, her hands pressed to her belly as if she felt ill.
Why hadn’t he run from a woman ready to love—aching to love? Why hadn’t he dashed away in the opposite direction? Because, despite his heartless exterior, he wasn’t heartless at all. Because he ached for that love as well.
And Then Comes Marriage Page 25