Oh Miranda!

by Joan Smith

  After they had left, Miranda asked Samson to send up her trunk. Packing for her trip home would help to pass the dreary afternoon. She declined Samson’s offer of one of the maids to help her. She had a feeling she would not be able to overcome tears as she wrapped her gowns in silver paper. Each gown held a memory. This was the one she wore the first evening she met Bolton. And this burgundy one he had particularly liked. He said she looked like a Spanish lady in it.

  This was the gown she wore on that fateful occasion when he kissed her in the study... She sat, nursing her poignant memories, heedless of the gown that had slipped from her fingers and lay in a puddle on the floor. Why had he done it? Why had he made love to her if he only meant to cast her aside?

  She could not spend the rest of her life wondering and worrying. She deserved an answer. She had told Anscombe she had no message for Lord Bolton, but she discovered that she had a few things she did want to say to him before she left London. While the spirit was on her, she dashed to her desk and scribbled down all the anger and hurt of the past days. She thought he was despicable, and his behavior cowardly, to pursue his wretched ends behind her back. If he hated her, he might at least be man enough to say why.

  At the back of her mind was the idea that she would not actually send the note, but writing down all her hurt was proving a good catharsis. She felt better when she was done. She read it through, and sat, wavering. Should she send it? Well, why not? He deserved a good dressing down.

  She took the note downstairs and asked Samson to send it to Hanover Square, before she lost her nerve. Then she went back to her room and began packing in earnest. She had burned her last bridge behind her.

  At six o’ clock Samson sent up a note on crested paper. Miranda’s hand trembled and her face turned pale as she accepted it silently, wondering what sort of reply Bolton had made. But it was only a note from Mrs. Hazard, using Lady Anscombe’s stationery. She and Dotty were taking potluck dinner at Lady Anscombe’s, and invited her to join them. No need to dress, it was strictly informal. They would tell her all about the wedding.

  Miranda was curious to hear about it, but she could wait until they returned. She sent an answer declining the invitation and told Samson not to have the table set; she would take a tray in her room for dinner. She discovered a loose strip of lace on her best petticoat and spent the interval until dinner making minor repairs to it and various garments.

  The tray arrived at seven, a little early, perhaps because she hadn’t taken any lunch. The servants, feeling sorry for her, had added a late rose in a crystal vase to the tray. That was thoughtful of them. She must leave a generous pourboire for the servants when she left.

  She sipped a little soup, nibbled a chicken leg and drank a glass of wine, while the tomb-like silence closed in around her, until she was overcome with the eerie sensation that she was alone in the world. At seven-thirty, a servant came to take away the tray and ask her if she would like tea. She had had enough of the silent room. She needed a change, some life, some movement around her.

  “Yes, I’ll take it in the saloon, Bess. No need to make another trip upstairs. I shall be down in half an hour.”

  She passed the next half hour filling envelopes for the servants. Even Gibbons, the footman she had scolded the day they arrived, received a guinea. He had shaped up nicely after her reprimand.

  At eight o’clock she took a fashion magazine and went downstairs. She was too distracted for serious reading. All she was good for that evening was looking at pictures. Even that proved beyond her powers of concentration. She sat, wondering if Bolton had received her note yet. He would probably not get it until after the wedding reception was over. Perhaps the butler would hand it to him as he went up to bed.

  He might be making a speech now, inventing fine things to say about that old crook, his friend, Hume. That would challenge his imagination to the limit. She felt the anger begin to rise in her again, making her heart thud and her breaths come quickly. She tried to will it down, but failed. She needed more than tea. She poured a glass of wine and drank it quickly, then poured another.

  That was better. Her fingers were not twitching now but she couldn’t sit still. She rose and began to pace the room. She was at the mirror, staring at her pale face and the dark blur of her eyes, misted with unshed tears, when the door knocker sounded. Any noise from that source immediately called up the image of Bolton. Common sense told her that he could not leave the wedding reception to come here, but still she felt in her bones he had come.

  And he had. Samson came to the door and said in an apologetic manner, “Lord Bolton wishes to see you, madam. I told him you were — indisposed, but he is very insistent...”

  Should she see him? Her pride wanted to refuse him entry, but every instinct craved a last sight of him. While she stood an instant, frozen in indecision, he appeared in the doorway. He looked exquisite in the fine burgundy jacket he had chosen for the wedding. His broad shoulders, his proud head and military bearing gave the perfect image of a hero. His face, she noticed, was nearly as white as his cravat, with the ruby glowing in it. And it was rigid with anger. Samson looked a question at her. She nodded, and he left. Bolton took a tentative step into the room. “I received your letter, Miranda,” he said in a tense, angry voice that was making an effort to be polite.

  She willed down a sharp retort and answered coldly, “I am surprised you left your friends’ wedding to reply in person. It was not necessary, I assure you. I just wanted you to know my opinion of you, milord.”

  “And I want to thank you in person for that assessment of my character,” he replied, equally cool. But he could not long keep his feelings in check. When he spoke again, his voice was louder, accusing. “After all I have done for you!”

  Shock temporarily robbed her of speech. When she recovered, she gasped. “All you have done for me?” she cried. “That is rich! Upon my word, I can’t believe you have the gall to stand there and say that to me, after what you have done.”

  “I have done what was necessary for us to get married, as soon as possible, and it took some doing I can tell you. I have got Helen and the others out of my house, so that you will not be afflicted by their presence.”

  “You were best man at Hume’ s wedding! You held a reception for him at your house. You put the announcement in the paper, knowing it would make me look a fool and a scheming hussy. If that is your idea of helping me, I wish you would leave me alone.”

  He looked abashed, but soon returned to the attack. “I know how it looks to others, for the moment. Our engagement would soon put the lie to their gossip. Desperate situations call for desperate remedies. What do we care what people say? I had to strike while the iron was hot. Hume was in a fit of pique at your refusal. Helen was buttering him up. Between the two of us, we convinced him that a marriage to her would mend his shattered reputation. I had to rush the thing forward before he changed his mind.

  “It meant chasing after an archbishop for a special license, reserving St. George’s, arranging for a bishop to perform the ceremony. They both insisted on some sort of reception to follow. I’ve hardly had time to breathe. I thought you would understand why I was doing it.”

  She sniffed. “I daresay it was your idea to put that notice in the paper, kindly not blaming me for the first engagement notice.”

  He threw up his hands, as if warding off a blow. “Adelaide gets the credit for that one. I didn’t know a thing about it until I read it. It was a mischievous, spiteful thing to do, but to counter with any other sort of announcement would only blow it into a full scandal.”

  “Why did you not tell me what you were doing? You didn’t call, not even a note.”

  A quick frown seized his brow. “Did Anscombe not give you my message, that I was too busy to call in person?”

  She remembered it, but in a sort of haze. Her tone was defensive as she said, “He gave me a copy of the journal with the announcement outlined in red. What was I to make of that?”

 
; “That Hume was engaged, and we were now free to announce our engagement,” he explained patiently. “You forbade me from speaking to you while you were engaged. I told you I would have to do something about that. Well, I did it.” But soon his patience was gone. “I thought you would understand,” he growled.

  “I’m not a mind reader, Bolton! Three exclamation marks do not convey that much.”

  “I hadn’t time to write a proper note. You wouldn’t believe what the past days have been like. I had to sit on Hume’s tail to keep him convinced a wedding was his only recourse. Then I had to devise a scheme to get Adelaide and Jeremy bounced off. The three of us, Helen, Adelaide and I were with the lawyers for hours getting everything down in black and white. Adelaide gets the Dower House and a larger pension, on the condition that she remove from Hanover Square and not return. I didn’t even eat for two days!”

  “You could have sent a note at least,” she said, but her manner had softened remarkably upon hearing what he had been doing.

  “I asked Anscombe to explain. He must have done a poor job of it. He did mention that you gave him short shrift. I thought we were in this together. You gave me an assignment, I carried it out. The whole plan would have blown sky high if Hume had suspected for a single moment why I was doing it. And don’t think he wasn’t suspicious! He watched me like a hawk. Helen and Adelaide knew, but it was to their advantage to help me.”

  “I didn’t give you an assignment,” she said, but her tone was apologetic.

  “You imposed conditions. I considered it an assignment. You could have trusted me, at least a little. First you accused me of being a lecher. Then you forbade me from courting you while you were engaged. There’s no pleasing you. You’re impossible, Miranda. Would you have agreed to marry me, when Adelaide and Helen and Jeremy were making their home at Hanover Square?” He didn’t wait for an answer. Her sulky silence was an admission that she would not live there under those conditions.

  After a moment, he spoke again. The anger was gone, but his tone now was businesslike, with no air of the lover. “I wanted there to be no possible obstacles in our way, no excuses when I presented the family engagement ring to you.”

  She didn’t object when he reached out rather roughly, drew John’s wedding ring from her finger and set it aside. In fact, she felt a thrill at such masterful behavior, but she also felt a little pang of conscience, and had to remind herself that John would not want her to go on grieving forever. That part of her life was over, and it was time to move on. In her heart, she knew it was no one but Bolton that she wanted to continue her life with.

  “I had to beg and finally bribe this back from Helen,” he said. As he spoke, he drew a small, worn blue velvet box from his pocket and flipped it open. “It was entailed, but that meant less than nothing to her. It was my mama’s engagement ring, and my grandmother’s before her. I wanted you to have it.”

  The ring glittered in the shadows. As he raised it from its satin nest into the lamplight, the sleeping, iridescent fire shot forth from the facets like concentrated, mini rainbows. It was a large diamond, cut lunette style, a square with rounded corners. The actual band looked too small for her finger. But when he lifted her hand, the ring fit snugly.

  Miranda gazed at it a moment in wonder. Then she lifted her eyes and gazed at Bolton, with the love glowing in his eyes, and her lips quivered. How could she have doubted him? While she had nursed her anger in silence, doing nothing, he had taken hold and made their marriage possible. And when she finally took one step, what she had done was write him a ranting, childish letter accusing him of betrayal, of cowardice.

  Tears welled up in her eyes, when she thought of the things she had written. “I’m sorry, Maxwell,” she said. “I didn’t know what you were doing.”

  He squeezed her fingers, smiling a soft, gentle smile. “It’s all right, darling. I should have remembered that you’re an innocent soul, not used to the sort of scheming that goes on here. Helen and Adelaide understood the first moment I opened my mouth. It’s to your credit that you didn’t. Knowing your usual shy nature, I had some inkling of your outrage to have written such things to me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m glad. Such hostility had to be the other side of love. If you had written a cold letter, I would have feared you were indifferent. Now that would have hurt.” He lifted her hand and brushed a kiss across her fingers.

  “I’ll never understand you,” she said, amazed at his feat of logic.

  “As long as you understand how much I love you,” he said, and drew her into his arms to show her. He wasn’t a gentle lover, like John. His passion was fierce, and as his hot lips plundered hers, she felt an answering, fierce response rise in her. Making love with Bolton would be like riding a whirlwind, but he had a gentle side, too, when he sensed her uncertainty.

  They were on the sofa, enjoying the wine that Samson had brought them, when the Hazards returned.

  As soon as Mrs. Hazard saw the lowered lamps, she suspected what was afoot. Her eye went unerringly to the third finger of Miranda’s left hand and spotted the flash of fire.

  “So you have landed him! Congratulations, Miranda. When is the big day?”

  Bolton put his finger to his lips and said, “Shhh! I haven’t sprung that on her yet. I have the special license in my pocket. Picked it up while I was getting one for Hume and Helen.”

  Miranda laughed. “You did not! Did you really, Max? Show me!”

  He drew the paper from his pocket and handed it to her. “I’ve promised Helen we won’t do it until they are safely out of England. They leave tomorrow for Paris. No one gets married on Sunday. I figure the next day. Adelaide and Jeremy are moving out in the morning. We could get married Monday afternoon. That gives you a whole thirty-six hours to throw together a trousseau, madam.”

  “And a wedding party, here at my place,” Mrs. Hazard said.

  Dotty worried her lip to see Miranda fall into the hands of a man whose mind was warped by the war. “What is the rush?” she asked.

  “You’re right, Dotty,” Mrs. Hazard said. “We had best make it Tuesday. The caterer won’t be open on Sunday. He’ll need a day to prepare the feast.”

  “I’ll need weeks to prepare my trousseau!” Miranda objected. Bolton scowled. “Well, a week at least,” she said.

  After some bickering, the wedding was set for Wednesday at two o’clock. That meant the announcement could go in the journals on Monday, and a few notes of invitation to special friends.

  By the time they had had cocoa and Bolton had told them all the amusing details of Hume’s and Helen’s wedding, Mrs. Hazard’s feet were sufficiently recovered to carry her up to bed, taking a worried Dotty along with her.

  Bolton put down his cup and said, “Well, it was a rough battle, but the course of true love never did run smooth. Are you as happy as I am?”

  “To tell the truth, I’m terrified. I never thought I would marry — someone like you,” she said simply. “I mean, a lord, with estates and — all that,” she finished vaguely.

  “You’re not marrying the estates. I’ll take care of ‘all that.' You’re marrying me. Now, the truth, are you happy, Miranda?”

  “Very happy,” she said primly.

  “And do you love me?”

  “I wouldn’t agree to marry you if I didn’t,” she replied reasonably.

  “Then say it. Tell me. You never have, oyster.”

  She looked at him shyly. “I love you madly, Maxwell. I never loved anyone so much in my life. If you hadn’t married me, I would have—I don’t know.” She looked at him and smiled a sweet, trusting smile. “I’m very happy.”

  “Oh Miranda!” he said, and kissed her again.

  Copyright © 2001 by Joan Smith

  Electronically published in 2001 by Belgrave House/Regency Reads

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  This is a work of fiction. All names in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is coincidental.