Twice now Miri had attempted to sneak out of the house to call upon Will, only to be caught in the act by Sarah. Once she had been caught by her brother and he might have been inclined to let her leave if she'd had the chance to explain herself. Except that Sarah had appeared at the worst possible time and the three of them had argued.
At one point, Miri had been under the impression that Rayne actually approved of Will but she must have been mistaken. For now he was not willing to allow her to get within a massive ballroom of the man. It made no sense and was yet one more thing in a long line of things that made no sense. Unless, of course, Sarah had somehow managed to put a flea in her brother's ear on the matter. In which case, everything would make perfect sense. Miri would have asked Rayne about the matter - if she had ever been able to get him alone without Sarah barging in on them.
Usually disparaging Will in the process.
Will. Even now it hurt to think of him, and of how many different ways she had attempted - and failed - to contact him.
Notes to Will went undelivered, no matter how much she paid the messengers, and she suspected that if Will had attempted to contact her, he likely would have been turned away at their door. Even Aunt Beanie had been of no help, though she had only sent a letter to Rayne as she was unable to leave her home, having taken a turn for the worse health-wise after Miri's visit.
Perhaps if Miri had admitted to her family that she was in love with Will - that she had been and still was, to be more specific - that would have helped her situation but each time she tried to speak, Sarah cut her off. Miri had tried yelling. Then she had applied logic. When that failed, she went back to screaming, but that had only upset her brother and at that point, Miri doubted that he would believe a word she said anyway.
More than that, Miri had still been unable to say the words that might have helped her in her cause. She had been unable to tell her brother that she loved Will - for, by this time, rumors of what Will might or might not do for coin had spread rapidly through the ton until Will's name and the word "prostitution" were linked on just about everyone's lips.
If Miri told her brother now that she loved Will and that they had been betrothed, in a fashion anyway, would it matter? After all, the man was something of a walking scandal now, the very thing that the entire Bexley household seemed determined to avoid. If Miri was to wed Will, what then? Would the entire family suffer for her sins, just as Sarah had said? Or would they stand by her? If they didn't support her, then what? For Miri wasn't certain exactly how much more pain she could endure. As it was, she cried herself to sleep every night, praying for the strength to do the right thing where all were concerned. If only she knew what the right thing was.
Her brother, of course, was growing tired of the constant upheaval in the household and his infamous calm demeanor was being sorely tested. Never more so than last night when Sarah had attempted to actually lock Miri in her room, and Miri had threatened to remove herself to Aunt Beanie's and never return.
At that point, Brook had suggested they all take a few day to let tempers and emotions subside - which was the period they were supposedly in now. However the more time that passed, the more Miri could feel Will slipping away from her - at least if the stories in the gossip rags were any indication - and any love he still felt for her was likely slowly dying as well. Just as Miri herself was dying inside each time she imagined a life without Will in it.
In short, Miri felt as if she was a prisoner in her own home and she was running out of options. Short of using her bed sheets and shimmying down the side of the townhome in the middle of the night, she was uncertain as to how she would be able to see Will again and make amends for what she had said and done.
And that had made Miri extremely depressed. And moody. And more than a little teary as well. Which was why, when a footman placed a plate of eggs and toast in front of her that morning, she had burst into tears as her mind conjured up happy, warm images of Will sitting across from her at some breakfast table somewhere in the future as they gazed lovingly into each other's eyes. A future that, unless something changed, would never come to pass.
"Enough of this moping, Miri," Rayne snapped over the breakfast table as he threw down his napkin, his own plate of eggs forgotten. "It has been four days since you chose to break things off with Lord Blackthorne. A man that I thought you liked to the point where I sought him out to let him know that I approved of his courtship of you. I gave you what I thought you wanted, despite near-constant nagging from my wife! What has changed? Enough is enough! Especially over a man you have yet to claim that you love or even care for! This is absurd and I can't take it any longer!"
"Brook, perhaps it is best to let her get this out of her system," Sarah offered quickly, once more cutting off anything that Miri might have said in her own defense. "After all, given the gossip as of late, the man is hardly..."
"Enough!" her brother roared and both Miri and Sarah jumped. He never raised his voice like that, at least not any longer. "What is it that you have against Lord Blackthorne, Sarah? He made Miri happy despite the fact that you continually harped on him and now that he is gone, likely partly because of your doing? She won't eat, she won't sleep and she moves through this house like a damned ghost. I cannot take much more. So out with it! This is not like you, Sarah. This is not the woman I love. And if you do not tell me? Then this is the end of us. I swear it! I will not divorce you, but you can return to the country and live your life there since you no longer seem to wish to be a functional part of this one."
Miri was shocked to her very soul. Would Rayne truly give up Sarah? After he had fought so hard to win her? But no. Miri could tell by the almost frantic look in her brother's eyes that he was attempting to shock his wife into an admission of some sort. Though from the stricken expression on her sister in law's face, Sarah didn't know that. Which meant that Rayne's plan - whatever it was - just might work.
At first Sarah sat there at the table for a long moment, not saying a word, her eyes unseeing, and her body almost as still as one of the ancient Egyptian statues in Rayne's study. Then, she rose from the table as if in a trance and moved to a sideboard where she opened one of the drawers and removed a battered and torn piece of paper.
"This is why I protest so strenuously," said stiffly as she handed the paper to Rayne. "This is why I have discouraged the courtship. This family does not need any more scandal and more than that I will not allow anything to damage this love that we have fought so hard for over the years, Brook. I will not be dragged down and lose you if I can help it. Even if it comes at the cost of Miri's happiness. I'm sorry, but that is how I feel."
As her brother quickly scanned the paper, it was all Miri could do not to snatch it out of his hands and read it for herself. Sarah was sabotaging her? And Will? But why? Like everything else over the last few days, none of this made any sense.
"Blackmail?" Rayne all but barked incredulously. "Blackmail? Truly, Sarah? You have turned our home upside down over this?"
Sarah twisted her fingers together in a way that Miri had not seen her do in years. "He's not lying." Rayne's eyebrows shot up nearly to his hairline and Miri worried for a moment that his heart might give out. "He did...touch me. I did not lie with him, as you well know, but he did fondle me against my wishes."
"And you did not think to tell me?" Rayne asked incredulously, his rage close to boiling over. "Me? Your husband? The one who knows far more about you than anyone in all of bloody England?"
"I did not wish for you to be disappointed in me again. Last summer at Hallowby Grange you were almost enraged to the point of murder over Lord Lansdale's rather innocent attentions..." Sarah began but Rayne cut her off.
"They were far from innocent intentions," Rayne snapped, "and you well know it. Sarah, the man wanted to make you his marchioness, for God's sake! How could I not be a little upset over the matter?"
Sarah growled at her husband and despite everything, Miri had to hold in a laugh. "Which is why
I didn't tell you that Randall Witherson was threatening me! I was afraid of how you would react."
"Which would be badly..." Rayne began before Miri cut him off.
"Would one of you please tell me what is going on?" she beseeched both her brother and sister in law. "What does Sarah have to do with any of this? With me or Will or...or anything?"
For a long time, neither Rayne nor Sarah said anything so, taking matters into her own hands, Miri snatched the note from her brother's limp fingers. She read it as quickly as possible and then read it a second time, this time more slowly so that she was certain she understood everything clearly.
"So when you were at Mrs. Witherson's, Randall did the same thing to you as he did to me." Miri fingered the paper distastefully.
Sarah nodded. "Only I did not strike him as you did. I allowed him to touch me for fear of the consequences if I did not. He found me...displeasing and informed me that I was too large for his tastes. He never attempted anything after that and, unlike you, that night I did not fight back."
Nodding, Miri re-read the letter, her mind churning. If Sarah, with her voluptuous figure, was not to Randall Witherson's tastes, it followed that more willowy women like Miri were to his preferences.
"Miri, he never forgave you for striking him or for not simply doing as he demanded," Sarah continued, though she stated the obvious. "All of the other young women he accosted over the years let him do to them as he pleased. You were the one that fought back and 'got away' so to speak. He had no leverage over Lady Pearl, of course, since she is viewed as a hoyden anyway. But you were different. He thought he could coerce me to get to you."
"So he threatened to expose what he had done to you if you did not keep me away from men - any men - on the Marriage Mart." Miri felt as if she wished to cast up her accounts. "Especially Will since he was the one I clearly favored and was likely to marry. You poisoned my mind against him because of this." She shook the tattered letter for emphasis.
"At first I believed that a marriage, any marriage would suffice to protect all of us, but Witherson did not see things that way. There were other letters," Sarah admitted quietly. "They are filled with far worse things, more demands, more threats, and...well, they are simply horrible. I have them upstairs. In them, Randall expressed his rage that you were the only young woman ever to refuse to allow him to take what he desired. He wanted revenge."
Miri felt sick. "What sort of revenge?"
"If we allowed you to marry, he would claim that he bedded me long ago and that I was not an innocent when I came to the marriage bed with Rayne. He threatened to tell everyone that I bore him a child, that he could pass off an orphan from Lower Puddington as ours and that people would believe him because all of Society knew that your brother and I had spent a week alone together at Hallowby. And that I had been receiving Lord Lansdale at the same time. He would have branded me a whore...or worse. And, given both of our pasts, I thought people would believe him. That my children would suffer for those imagined sins. I could not allow that. Don't you see?" Sarah's gaze flicked to Rayne. "I should have told you, Brook, I know. I'm sorry."
Rayne made a harrumphing noise and he glowered at his wife. He was obviously still angry but doing his best not to show it. "Yes, you should have. As soon as the first note was delivered, you should have come straight to me and no other."
"But I was so afraid that if I did tell you, that you would only see Randall's threats to me and not the greater danger he represented to Miri and the family as a whole. Had the man ever shown his face in London, I would have said something. You know I would have." Tears were freely flowing down Sarah's face now and, despite everything she had done, Miri felt a great deal of sympathy for her sister in law. She had acted out of love, no matter how misguided her actions had been.
Rayne scowled angrily. "That is comforting, I suppose. Though it is not an excuse."
Sarah raised her hands in a gesture of surrender. "I believe the man likes the idea of Miri miserable and unwed more than he actually desires her. So at first, I thought that if I could find her a powerful and wealthy husband, then she would be safe. I even managed to convince your mother of the wisdom of that plan. That a proper lord's respected name and his immense fortune would protect her - and us - from any scandal, that no one would believe anything Witherson said, even if he did go to the papers."
"But he didn't want me to wed any man, did he?" Miri wasn't certain she wanted to know what was in those other letters.
Sarah shook her head. "No. After the first week or so, his demands changed. Witherson wanted you for himself. You were a challenge to him, something he desperately coveted and could not obtain. So once more he threatened to expose me and what we had done if I allowed you to wed anyone. Well, anyone other than him."
"And then I met Will." Miri wanted to cry at the thought of never seeing Will again. But why would he even wish to speak to her? She couldn't take back what she had said, even though she desperately wished to. With distance, she understood she had all but destroyed him that day with her accusations. There could be no forgiveness for her after that.
"And then you met Will," Sarah agreed. "The two of you were so utterly smitten, that I had to stop you from falling in love. Or try to. I honestly did not think this infatuation would last, that you would eventually become enamored of a rich and powerful peer who could protect you with his enormous wealth. Lord Blackthorne, nice as he might be, did not meet those qualifications. I also didn't think....well, please forgive me, Miri, but I honestly did not believe that you and Lord Blackthorne...well, that the two of you..."
"That we might actually be in love?" Miri finished softly, pain slicing at her heart. "That the cold, unfeeling cripple and the impoverished, morally questionable earl might actually have feelings for each other? Real feelings?" She laughed hollowly. "We didn't, you know. Not at first. In fact, I paid Will to court me so that I might thwart these absurd marriage plans you had concocted for me."
"Paid!" That bellow, not unexpectedly, came from Rayne. "You paid the man like he was some common street whore? Good God, Miri! What in the devil is wrong with you? What were you thinking?"
Miri met her brother's gaze not with tear filled eyes, but with clear ones. "He was desperate, Brook. He needed money or he would likely have ended up in debtor's prison. Lady Colchester offered him money in exchange for sexual pleasure in our library the night of the ball." She was not surprised when her brother blanched white. "I had gone in there to hide from Sarah and Mama and was tucked up in the window seat when I heard them. Lady Colchester's offer was...disgusting. Will asked for time to consider her offer and when she left, I emerged."
"And you made your counteroffer." Surprisingly, her brother was calmer now after his initial outburst and taking this news much better than Miri had anticipated. "How very logical of you. The old you, anyway. Not so much the new one that I like a bit better, by the way."
"He looked so sad. So desperate. So hurt." Miri closed her eyes in memory. "And, Brook, I looked at him and I felt something. For the first time in longer than I can remember, I cared about what happened to someone outside of this family. I couldn't allow him to do that to himself. I simply couldn't! So I made him my offer. In all ways, it was a better offer than Lady Colchester's." She sighed and looked away. "And it was far less degrading. At least I thought that it was. So did Will. At least at first."
"Then you pretended to court and ended up falling in love in truth." That came from Sarah who had been quiet up until this point after her own admissions of guilt. "And I did everything in my power to keep the two of you apart."
Miri glanced down. She really did not wish to reveal the rest but she had come this far with her confession. They needed to hear everything, especially if she had any hope of winning Will back. Well, mostly everything. There were some things her brother did not need to know about her activities. "We did. And it was lovely and perfect and everything I dreamed that I would never experience. Then he bought me that telesc
ope. It is an extremely rare Euler, and I questioned where the funds had come from. It turns out that his family had some art that did not become valuable until a week or so ago. He sold them in order to buy me the telescope."
"The De Clercq pieces?" Rayne asked quietly.
Nodding, Miri sighed and sank back into her chair, resting her head in her hands. "Yes. But I accused him of acquiring the funds in other ways. Awful ways that I know deep inside he would never lower himself to do. Not any longer, anyway." Shame flooded her now. "That morning we fought, I did not give him a chance to explain. I should have, but I didn't, and I destroyed what we shared. And now it is too late to repair the damage. I know that it is. I said things. Awful things. I didn't mean them but I was so scared and I felt things and I did not know what to do, Rayne. So I reacted. Badly. And I ruined things between us. Now I am certain he no longer wishes to see me. I doubt that he even still loves me."
Surprising her, Rayne sank down beside Miri's chair and took her hands in his just as he had when she was a child in need of comfort. "Now it is time for a confession of my own since it seems that we have all been very bad at keeping secrets." He glanced up at Sarah. "Some of us more than others."
"What is it?" Miri asked when her brother finally looked back at her.
"Yesterday morning, a courier brought some papers for you. They were from a bank I was unaware that you did business with." When Miri blinked in surprise, Rayne chuckled. "Yes, my darling sister. I am very well aware that you are an extremely wealthy woman, though how wealthy, I am not certain. Despite what you may think, you have no secrets from me. Or at least not large ones. Especially not when the Duke of Candlewood taught me everything I know."
Miri looked at Sarah. "So you know as well?"
She shook her head. "Unlike your brother, I had no idea."
Turning back to Rayne, Miri refused to allow herself to hope. Not even a little. "So about those papers? What of them? Were they important?"
An Earl For Hire Page 25