Lily Lang (3 page)

Miranda had grown accustomed to dressing herself, ever since her aunt had dismissed her maid nearly a year ago, but she nodded mutely and allowed the girl to help her towel dry and pull the gown over her head.

“It’s a mite too big,” said Harriet, looking doubtful. “But the sash should hold everything in.”

Miranda studied her reflection in the tall cheval glass. Harriet was right. The woman for whom Madame Beaumont had made the gown was tall and generously endowed, but Miranda was not, and the front of the dress dipped scandalously low while the sleeves made every attempt to slip down her shoulder to her elbow. Tying the sash did help, but Miranda was unhappily aware she looked like a little girl playing dress-up in her mother’s gown.

She also had no shoes.

She ought to be grateful for the fresh gown, but she wanted her own clothes back. She wanted the familiarity and the protection of shoes and her own dress, perhaps even her cloak, when she faced Jason again. Peeking out from beneath the hem of her borrowed gown, her bare toes looked disturbingly vulnerable.

“Did Jason…Mr. Blakewell mention when he would return?” Miranda asked, raising her hem and padding to the fire.

Harriet cast her a quick, curious glance. “No, miss. He only said I was to help you dress for supper. He had the footman set a table for two in his sitting room.”

Miranda thanked the girl, dismissed her, and went to dry her hair by the fire. Unlike the huge ancient hearths of Thornwood, the one in this room had been modernized. She noticed the difference immediately. At home, the fireplaces always managed to dispel any warmth with astonishing efficiency, while allowing smoke to linger and choke anyone foolish or audacious enough to attempt breathing. Here, however, the plain marble grate both radiated heat back into the room and forced the smoke upward through the flue.
 

She was sitting before the fire, feeling warmer than she could remember being in years, when the door opened.

She turned as Jason entered the room, and her heart caught in her throat. He looked dark and sleek and impeccably groomed.

“Miss Thornwood,” he said. One brow quirked mockingly as he appraised her. “You look considerably improved, I see.”

“Yes, thank you,” she said, rising to her feet, the thick rope of her hair hanging heavily over one bare shoulder. She had hoped the long soak in the hot water would calm her nerves, but the ill-fitting dress and her bare feet made her feel defenseless.

She did not like the sensation. She was Miranda Thornwood, descended of bloodlines older than the king’s, and trained since infancy in the etiquette and protocol suited to a woman of her rank. These weapons, the only ones she had left, she now gathered to her.

Her spine stiffened and her head came up as he held the door for her. She trailed before him into the sitting room, the skirts of her gown dragging on the thick rug. The footmen had pulled armchairs and furniture aside to make room for two chairs and a small carved table set with silver and china. As one of the footmen seated her, the impossibly long skirt of her gown caught twice beneath the chair. Miranda flushed and murmured an apology, keeping her gaze fixed on the portion of the table directly in front of her.

“I thought you would prefer privacy, and elected not to dine a la russe,” said Jason. “You don’t mind, I hope?”

“No, I don’t mind,” she said. She wished desperately to know what he was thinking. In their shared childhood, she had been so closely attuned to him she found his moods and his expressions easy to read, but he was now as illegible to her as a book written in another language.

The footmen laid out the meal, a process which she pretended to study with interest. The food was finer than any served at Thornwood Hall, even when her father had been alive. Jason had certainly come a long way in the world. First the soups, turtle and jardinière; followed by the turbot, lobsters and trout a la genevoise; and finally the desserts. Pineapple jelly, cherry tarts and soufflés au chocolat. Then, the footman set down the last dish.

Her stomach lurched sickeningly.

A bowl of wild strawberries.

Her gaze flew upward to Jason’s expressionless face. Even above the savory scent of the other dishes, the scent of the berries filled the air, subtle and yet piercing in their sweetness. Did he, too, remember the first strawberries of the year, the ones they had always shared in the secret grottos of Thornwood lands? Or were these summer berries, served in the depths of winter, only one more way to remind her of the wealth and power he now held?

“You find the menu satisfactory, I trust?” murmured Jason.

He had forgotten. Her throat tightened.

“Yes, of course,” she said.

The footmen departed at last, leaving them alone in the candlelight, with the sound of the rain against glass like beads of pearls slipping free onto a marble floor. Jason filled her goblet and set it in front of her, his hand perfectly steady.

“I know you have no wish to see me,” she said in a low voice. “I would not have come here. Only I had nowhere else to go.” She lifted her glass blindly to her lips and swallowed. Now that the moment had come, she could not remember a single word of the speech she had rehearsed so carefully. At last she said simply, “You remember my brother William?”

He nodded, his face impassive. “I remember.”

“Yes. Of course. Well, three weeks ago, William struck my uncle with a poker in the head. I’m afraid Uncle Clarence is dead, and William will be charged for murder.”

A long silence passed. She still could not bring herself to meet Jason’s gaze, but she studied his hands and the white cravat stark against his dark evening clothes. His shoulders had broadened considerably in the last ten years, and he looked strong enough to bear the weight of the world. She wished she might lean against him, as she would have done when they were children. She had been alone for so long.

“You’d better begin at the beginning,” said Jason at last.

“Yes,” she said. “I suppose I had better.” She picked up her fork and stared down at her plate. Though she had eaten little more than crusts of bread in the last week, her stomach felt too knotted for food.

At last, she said, “You are aware, I think, that my father died a little over a year ago.”

“I had heard. My condolences.”

His voice was without inflection, but his hand tightened on his wineglass, the knuckles whitening, the strong veins raised and pulsing. So he was not as indifferent as he pretended to be. He had never stopped hating her father and was perhaps even glad the older man was dead, but he had tamed the impetuousness of his youth, and the control he exercised over his emotions was complete.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “He was a difficult man, and we did not always agree, but he was my father.”

“And you, of course, have always been a dutiful daughter.”

She flinched at his tone, but did not rise to the bait. “My guardianship, and William’s, fell to my father’s younger brother, my uncle Clarence. He and his family—my aunt Beatrice and cousin Laurence—arrived in Hertfordshire for Father’s funeral, and, they said, a brief visit to comfort us in our bereavement. But it rapidly became apparent none of them had any intention of ever leaving Thornwood again.”

She picked up a roll and bit into it without tasting it. “William started at Eton some years ago,” she continued, “so he returned to school soon after the funeral, but I was left with my uncle and his family at Thornwood. Before long, Uncle Clarence began to act the lord of the manor. He moved into Father’s suite and interfered with my decisions regarding the management of the land. Aunt Beatrice took over the running of the house and confiscated Mother’s jewels—for safekeeping, she said, but she would wear them when she called on the neighbors or attended the local assembly. Laurence, at least, moved to Town almost immediately and began to spend from our inheritances.”

“And you did nothing to stop them?” Jason asked, raising an eyebrow. “That seems unlike you.”

“I tried,” said Miranda. “I tried everything I could think of. I wrote to Father’s lawyers, but they said nothing could be done. I demanded my uncle and his family leave, but they had replaced all of our servants with their own. I tried to go to the local magistrate, but he dined with Uncle Clarence every Thursday.”

She set down the roll she had been mechanically shredding.

“Uncle Clarence was to be my guardian until I wed, or reach the age of thirty. As it is…” she took a deep breath, “…As it is exceedingly unlikely I should marry, there would be nearly four years until I come into my inheritance, though I fear by then there should be nothing left. As for William, he does not reach his majority for another nine years.”

She could not even pretend to eat any longer. Pushing her plate away, she folded her hands in her blue skirts and forced herself to sit very still.

“Then, a month ago, William came home for the holiday. I don’t think he’d realized how bad things had gotten at Thornwood. He’d spent the last two holidays with a friend, you see, and it had been some time since he had come home. He was angry—oh, he was very angry, but he’s only a boy still. He and Uncle Clarence quarreled and William—William picked up the poker and struck him in the back of the head.”

Miranda did not look up. Her hair had dried in a long, lustrous sheet over her shoulders. Loosened, it fell to her waist, and she furled and unfurled the ends between her fingers.

“How did you find out William had struck your uncle?” Jason asked.

“I was in the room with them when it happened,” Miranda said. “I knew immediately we had to leave. If my uncle died, they would hang William for murder. I took him to Hannah—you remember our old nurse Hannah—in Middlesex. He wanted to come with me to London, but I persuaded him to remain behind. I did not know if they would be looking for him on the roads.”

“And how did you get from Middlesex to London?”

“I walked.”

Another long, awful silence passed. Then Jason set down his fork.

“You walked? Alone? From Middlesex?”

“I didn’t have sufficient funds to buy a ticket on the coach,” she said. “I didn’t see any other alternative. It wasn’t far—perhaps thirty-five miles. It only took a few days.” She tried to smile. “I was raised in the country, you know.”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Where did you sleep? What did you eat? It’s freezing, and the roads are absolutely swarming with highwaymen—are you completely insane?”

She stared at him. His obvious anger bewildered her. Why did it matter to him how she had gotten to London?

“I did what I had to do,” she said. “It was a bit brisk, I suppose, but not unendurable.” It certainly had been no chillier than Thornwood with its stupendously drafty windows and smoking chimneys, and she’d spent her nights in unlocked barns and stables, where she’d slept without fear, lulled by the familiar sounds and smells of animals. “Hertfordshire and Middlesex were familiar enough, though London was overwhelming at first. I have never been to Town before.”

“Then how did you know where to find me?”

“The newspapers write about you a great deal.”

He nodded, pouring himself more wine. Miranda forced herself to pick up her fork again.

After a moment, Jason asked unexpectedly, “Your cousin is Laurence Thornwood?”

“Yes,” she said. “You know him?”

“Yes,” said Jason. “He plays here at the club sometimes.” He finished a helping of lobster salad before continuing. “But there is something you have not yet told me. Why did William hit your uncle?”

She kept her face carefully blank. “I told you, they quarreled,” she said.

“Miranda,” said Jason, very softly. It was the first time he had used her Christian name all evening, and the fork dropped from her suddenly nerveless fingers.

“I’m going to ask you again,” he said. “Why did William hit your uncle with the poker?”

“William’s not a bad boy—he had provocation—Uncle Clarence can be perfectly odious.”

He leaned back in his chair and regarded her coolly. “You said William hit your uncle in the back of the head with a poker. It sounds less as though William had acted in the heat of a quarrel, and more like a deliberate attack. No, look me in the eye. Don’t lie to me.”

His dark, steady gaze caught her, made her feel trapped and helpless, a pinned butterfly, a fox brought to bay. She could not remain sitting any longer. Rising to her feet, she pushed back her chair.

Jason stood immediately as well. Without looking at him, she trailed barefoot to the window, where she wrapped her arms around herself and gazed out into the rainy night.

She could remember the night clearly, and she did not want to. She did not want to think of it ever again, let alone to speak of it to this cold-eyed man who had become such a stranger to her. She could not look into that dark, impassive face and tell him what it had been like. Would he even believe her if she told him the truth, when he so clearly despised and mistrusted her?

“William was very angry at the way my uncle had been treating me,” said Miranda at last. It was not a lie. She had never lied to Jason before. She did not think she could manage it now. “The blow left Uncle Clarence unconscious. There was a great deal of blood, though he was still breathing when we left. I was so afraid. I didn’t know what to do.” Her eyes slid shut. “Please. You have to help William.”