Glimmer of Hope

Cover image : Photography © Lee Avison / Trevillion Images

Cover design copyright © 2013 by Covenant Communications, Inc.

Author photo © 2013 by Claire Waite Photography

Published by Covenant Communications, Inc.

American Fork, Utah

Copyright © 2013 by Sarah M. Eden

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any format or in any medium without the written permission of the publisher, Covenant Communications, Inc., P.O. Box 416, American Fork, UT 84003. The views expressed within this work are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect
the position of Covenant Communications, Inc. or any other entity.

This is a work of fiction. The characters, names, incidents, places, and dialogue are either products of the author’s imagination, and are not to be construed as real, or are used fictitiously.

ISBN: 978-1-62108-526-3

Dorset, England

Late December 1807

Chaos. That was the only
word for it.

Miranda Harford was unaccustomed to chaos. Clifton Manor was a place of serenity and quiet. She preferred it that way. But in returning from her daily walk, she found an unfamiliar traveling coach outside the front entrance of her home and a scene of utter disarray when she stepped inside.

She stood in the familiar entryway draped with the greenery brought in only a few days earlier in honor of the Holy Season. Her eyes quickly took in the white stone floor, the sweeping stairway to the left, an alcove with a replica Greek statue to the right, and, finally, luggage she had never seen in her life in a pile directly in front of her. Servants moved in every conceivable direction, not all of whom she recognized. They pulled luggage from the pile and carried it upstairs, along with linens and furniture polish. They came and went in such a turmoil of movement that Miranda was at a loss to keep up with them.

Where was the quiet stillness she’d left behind only an hour earlier? For three years, she’d returned from her walks to the sound of a clock ticking, perhaps a maid humming happily as she went about her work. She was always greeted by either Timms, the butler, or Joseph, the footman. But not today.

Miranda watched for a few short minutes, pulling her light-blue kid gloves from her cold, aching hands before untying her bonnet. No one stood at hand to collect them, so she held her belongings as the ceaseless movement continued in front of her.

“Fanny.” Miranda stopped the first maid she recognized as the bright-faced young woman hurried past.

Fanny curtsied.

“Kindly explain to me what is happening here.” Miranda motioned around the entry with the hand that held her gloves as the footman Joseph trudged by, bent almost in half with a traveling case flung across his back.

“We was—”

“
Were
,” Miranda automatically corrected.

“—were told to take these things to the rooms we was—”

“
Were
.”

“—were told to take them to.”

“By whom?”

“Whuzza?”

Miranda recognized the question, though she doubted many others would have. She explained her inquiry in more detail. “By whom were you told to take these things”—again she motioned around the room at the shrinking pile of traveling bags and cases—“to the places you have been told to take them?”

“Oh.” Fanny nodded her dawning understanding. “By him.” She curtsied again and continued up the winding staircase with her pile of freshly laundered linens.

“Him?” Miranda asked no one in particular.

A footman she knew she’d never seen before passed in front of her with a valise under one arm and an overly wide package under the other.

“I do not believe I know you.” Miranda stopped him and assumed her mistress-of-the-manor air.

He must have recognized it. The footman, six feet tall at least, set down his burden and bowed quite correctly. “Henry Helper, ma’am.”

“You do not work here, Henry Helper.” Miranda tried to sound authoritative, but her voice shook with uncertainty.

“I do now, ma’am,” Henry insisted.

“Now?”

“For the house party, ma’am.”

Miranda tried to hide her surprise at his answer. “By whom were you hired?” Any additions to the staff would certainly not have been made without her approval.

“By me,” came a deep voice to her left.

Miranda felt her heart thud to a momentary halt. She closed her eyes and waited through an interminable moment for it to resume its normal pace. She knew that voice. Indeed, she would have recognized it in a crowded room. She probably could have picked it out on a battlefield if she’d needed to.

Slowly, eyes closed, almost afraid of what she’d see, Miranda turned toward the stairs and that hauntingly familiar voice. She managed to swallow, despite feeling her throat swelling shut. She knew she was facing the right direction, knew the minute she opened her eyes she would see
him
.

With one last fortifying breath, Miranda opened her eyes. There he stood, not quite as she’d remembered him, but there was no mistaking
him.
Coal-black hair and flashing green eyes, the easy air of a London gentleman, with the build of the veriest Corinthian. He was, perhaps, more formal, less relaxed than she remembered him. He was older. Three years older, in fact. And he wasn’t smiling. That was the most startling difference.

He hadn’t been smiling the last time she’d seen him, but somehow, in her mind, she still imagined him the way he had once been: easy, companionable, smiling. Nearly always smiling.

“Carter,” she heard herself quietly say and knew her shock and dismay were clear in her tone.

“Miranda,” he acknowledged with a sophisticated, if slightly curt, inclination of his head.

He was obviously unhappy to see her. Why, after over three years, did that still hurt?

“You’ve come, then?”

“As you can see,” Carter replied with something like a shrug and a smirk.

Years’ worth of desperate hopes died in that instant, with that look. Carter had never looked at her that way before. The Carter she’d known would never have laughed at her. He might even have been happy to see her. He would at least have pretended to be.

For a moment, Miranda was tempted to turn around and run out of the house or head for the servants’ staircase in order to avoid him. Instead, she lifted her chin a fraction and offered Carter a brief curtsy. She made her way calmly up the stairs with as dignified an air as she could manage.

“Dinner will be served at eight, Miranda,” Carter said as she neared him.

Miranda stopped on the step directly below him. “Dinner is usually at six,” she said.

“London hours,” he answered with an authoritative raise of his eyebrow. His expression offered no room for compromise or consideration. Miranda saw no warmth or humor in his distinctive green eyes. Yes. Carter had definitely changed.

“This
is
your home, my lord.” Miranda resumed her climb.

“You remember who I am, then?” Carter asked from somewhere behind her.

She stopped once more and, without looking back at him, said, “Carter Alexander Harford, Seventh Viscount Devereaux.”

“Is that all?”

She took a few breaths in hopes of keeping her voice steady. “And you are my husband,” she said in something barely above a whisper.

“I wondered if you remembered that.”

Miranda heard Carter’s footsteps descend the staircase. Fighting herself with every step she took, she made her way up the stairs and down the first-floor corridor to the room she’d called her own for three years, two months, and nine days. She had found some degree of peace and healing in that tiny corner of the world, away from the home she had once shared with Carter, away from the pain and heartache he’d caused her. Clifton Manor was her hiding place, her refuge.

Hannah, her lady’s maid, was waiting for her as she always was at this time of day. “Come sit yourself down and rest a bit.”

Hannah had said those exact words every day for three years. It was comforting, especially on a day when she felt her entire world had just begun spinning out of control. Miranda sat herself obediently at her dressing table and took a fortifying breath. Hannah started removing the pins that held Miranda’s hair in its simple knot.

“A right hullabaloo there is downstairs.”

Hannah pulled and untied, allowing Miranda’s hair to hang free down to her waist. For perhaps the hundredth time, Miranda silently asked herself why she didn’t just cut her hair short. She understood from the fashion plates that such was the current style. She, of course, knew the answer. But since her reasons had everything to do with
him
, she refused to think about it.

“I noticed,” Miranda replied a little belatedly. “All I could find out was there is something of a house party beginning shortly.”

“In two days, m’lady. Coming for Twelfth Night, they are.” Hannah ran a brush through Miranda’s hair. “I heard Mrs. Gillington say as how she was told just this day to expect seven guests to arrive.”

Mrs. Gillington, Miranda’s ever-efficient housekeeper, must have been beside herself at the sudden upheaval.

“We can be glad we already have the greenery up,” Hannah said. “Maybe ’twon’t be such a trial, after all.”

Miranda looked into the mirror for the first time. She quickly diverted her eyes from her own reflection and, instead, caught Hannah’s eyes in the mirror and waited.

Hannah grimaced. “You seen ’im already, have you?” She began brushing a bit too vigorously. “Always expected he’d be a fine-looking mort—”

“Gentleman,” Miranda corrected. She’d developed the habit not long after arriving at Clifton Manor. She’d taken on a small group of local girls who not only needed employment but also had hopes of improving their stations in life. Miranda schooled them to a degree—basic reading and writing and ’ciphering, as the girls called it. She made efforts to correct their grammar as well. Speaking well went a long way toward moving up in the world of the serving class.

“Gentleman.” Hannah took the correction without comment, as always. “But I didn’t realize he was
handsome
.” Hannah said the word as if it made Carter something of a demigod.

“Yes.” Miranda allowed her eyes to drift back to the image of her own face. “He always was excessively handsome.”

There was a time when Miranda might have been considered something of a beauty. She’d had a creamy complexion with rosy cheeks and a healthy glow. She’d always been, if not slender, at least slim. The reflection that met her eyes now, however, had been changed by life and struggles. There were no rosy cheeks, the creamy complexion had faded to pale, and there was no glow, healthy or otherwise.

Hannah stepped away, no doubt to fetch Miranda’s wrap. It was nap time, after all. She had once easily run through a day with ample energy and enthusiasm for the many joys and activities of life. Now, at only twenty-four, she needed a nap every day.

She noted, leaning a little closer to her mirror, that her eyes had lost something as well. They’d been her finest feature, she’d always thought. Grandfather had often commented that her eyes would be his undoing.

“Underneath your shy exterior,” Grandfather had said, “is an intelligent, witty, and caring young lady. If a young gentleman catches so much as a single sparkle from your telltale eyes, he’ll snatch you up before I have a chance to say a word about it.”

Life hadn’t played out precisely that way. She had married, but Grandfather had been as pleased with her choice as she had been. Orphaned too young to even remember her parents, Miranda had been raised by her paternal grandfather. He’d sworn from the time she was a babe that he would never part with her for anyone he couldn’t wholeheartedly approve of.

Carter had fooled them both.

Now he was back in her life, in her home. Legally, of course, Clifton Manor was
his
house. One of several. But for three years, she’d lived here alone, and it felt like
hers
.

“Up now.” Hannah fussed over Miranda in her characteristic way.