Glimmer of Hope (3 page)

A maid, no older than eighteen, he’d guess, looked wide-eyed at Miranda, asleep in his arms. One would think he’d come in with her bloodied corpse draped over his shoulder.

“She fell asleep by the fire.” Carter left out the “while I was talking to her” that hovered on his lips.

“Well, set her down,” the maid instructed. “I’ll see to her.”

“Gladly.” Carter kept most of his perturbation out of his voice. Having Miranda in his arms after three years had begun to undermine his anger. Without anger, Carter had no idea how he was going to survive the next few weeks.

Miranda stood at a window
in the north sitting room, watching the light rain continue to fall. It had been raining when she’d awoken that morning, and she’d been a little confused at not being able to recall going to bed the night before. By midmorning the rain had let up, but the ground would still be quite wet. Now it was past teatime, and she ought to have been out walking. Trudging through the mud had, in the past, made her walks difficult and unpleasant, so she’d decided to forgo her daily exercise.

She pressed the palm of her hand against the cold glass of the window. There would be no escaping the house today, nor would she be escaping Carter and his critical words and glances.

He now sat near the fireplace, presumably reading a London newspaper only a couple of days out of date. She had felt his gaze turn toward her several times, had even spied his perusal out of the corner of her eye. He was looking for faults, flaws, the way he had every minute they’d been together since his arrival.

Though neither had spoken the agreement out loud, they were avoiding their past and their painful separation. But she felt his condemnation just as surely as if he’d declared it from the rooftops.

“Is there someplace you are supposed to be, Miranda?” Carter’s deep voice interrupted her thoughts.

She shook her head, watching the tree just outside the window sway in the breeze.

“You seem anxious over the weather.” She had the distinct impression he was laughing at her.

“I told you last night I am an avid walker.” Miranda kept her voice even with tremendous effort. What she would have given for a kind word from him three years ago!
What I would give now
, a traitorous voice whispered in her head. “Wet weather interferes with that hobby of mine.”

“Perhaps an invigorating dozen or so laps around the conservatory.”

There again was that contemptuous tone.

Miranda turned to look at him and studied his face for any sign of the loving gentleman she’d married. “Why must you mock me with every word?” Miranda quietly demanded, determined to salvage her pride if nothing else.

“You would prefer empty compliments? Come now, Miranda. There will be plenty of time for playacting after our guests arrive. I prefer to deal in honesty until then.”

“Honesty?” Though she spoke quietly, there was tension in her voice. His dishonesty had torn them apart. How could he sit there in the home she considered
hers
and speak to her of honesty? “You wish for honesty?”

He folded back the next page of his paper with arrogant indifference. “If you can manage it.”

He questioned
her
honesty? His broken promises and betrayals had caused her no end of grief, and yet he suggested she was the duplicitous one.

Miranda blinked back the sudden stinging at the back of her eyes. He had grown so cold during their separation. “You have changed, Carter,” she whispered.

“Perhaps you simply didn’t know me very well.” Carter shrugged as he refolded the newssheet.

“Sometimes I wonder if I knew you at all.” Miranda turned back to face the window and the downpour that had started outside. She’d promised herself four months after arriving at Clifton Manor that she would never cry over Carter Harford again. She had admittedly shed an occasional tear but had always kept herself under control. She had no intention of breaking down now, not when he was intent on being cruel.

If you can manage it.
How could he accuse her of dishonesty when everything he’d pretended to be when he was courting her—thoughtful, tender, dependable, compassionate—had proven utterly untrue?

She heard the door to the sitting room open and turned her head in anticipation. Had one of the guests arrived? Timms held the door open as a gentleman stepped inside.

Mortified, Miranda heard a sob escape her throat as she realized the identity of the new arrival. “Grandfather,” she whimpered before nearly running across the room into the arms he held open for her.

“This is a very agreeable way to be greeted.” Grandfather’s rumbling laugh shook them both. “Makes a grandfather grateful to have returned a day early.” His smile twitched his white mustache. “Did anything noteworthy happen during my absence?”

Miranda opened her mouth to reply, only to find herself unable to hold back the floodgates any longer. The shock of Carter’s sudden appearance, his unceasing disapproval, and the burden of hundreds of carefully hidden-away memories came crashing down on her in that moment.

“Tush, dear.” Grandfather’s comforting voice reassured her. “’Twill be all right now. Grandfather will make it all right, you’ll see.”

But she couldn’t seem to bring her emotions under their usually tight control.

“Calm yourself, Miranda.” Grandfather’s insistence grew with every minute she continued to cry into his coat. “What has overset you to such a degree?”

“Unwelcome reminders of her past,” Carter said.

Miranda felt Grandfather stiffen even as her last reserves of endurance began to slip away. Grandfather pulled her ever so slightly behind him so he stood to a degree between Carter and her. “Lord Devereaux.” He acknowledged the younger gentleman, who stood not far from them, with icy civility.

Miranda risked a glance at Carter, only to be taken aback at the flash of surprise she saw there. He apparently hadn’t expected to find defiance in Mr. George Benton. But Miranda’s grandfather, when provoked, could be a hard man.

“I hope for your sake, young man, that you have not been mistreating my granddaughter,” Grandfather said in a tone that was at once authoritative and threatening. “I recall telling you some four years past that I would not abide
any
unkindness toward her.”

Miranda buried her face once more in Grandfather’s coat in an attempt to drown out the memories he unwittingly conjured up. He had told Carter those very words on the day they’d sought Grandfather’s blessing for their betrothal. Miranda had never been happier than she was in those early days with Carter. And it had all come crashing down around her. He had deceived her. He had deceived them all.

She resisted the urge to lean more heavily against her grandfather—she knew very well he was not as strong as he’d once been. He would be eighty years old on his next birthday, and his age had begun to catch up with him.

But he must have felt her sag, for suddenly his attention was all on her. “Have you had your nap, my girl?” he asked tenderly.

“Not yet,” Miranda whispered.

“I daresay you need it more today than usual.” He patted her head as he always did when he didn’t want his concern to show. “I’ll walk you up.”

They left the sitting room without even a backward glance at Carter. Miranda wondered what his reaction was: if he sneered at them as they left or looked smug or perhaps felt the slightest bit ashamed of his treatment of her. He had indeed changed, and not for the better. He once was the kind of man she could trust with her every worry and concern.
This
Carter, however, could not be. Though he heavily hinted she would treat him with dishonesty, she knew full well she would do better to treat him with an enormous degree of caution. She would show him no weaknesses and no vulnerabilities. If she kept her thoughts and emotions and worries hidden from him, he couldn’t hurt her again.

“How long has
he
been here?” Grandfather asked the moment they stepped into her private sitting room and he closed the door behind them.

“Since yesterday afternoon.”

“Fortunate, then, that I came earlier than planned.” Grandfather guided her to her bedchamber, where Hannah waited for her. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have gone to Devon after all.”

“Nonsense,” Miranda said. “You’ve gone without me before. There was no reason not to again. Besides, your business was urgent.”

“Nothing is more urgent than your well-being, my girl,” Grandfather answered with feeling.

She sat in the chair at her dressing table, suddenly weary and in desperate need of her much-despised daily nap. Grandfather stepped into her sitting room while Hannah silently prepared her for sleep. In a matter of minutes, Miranda was tucked warmly beneath her blankets and Grandfather had returned to her bedside.

“Would you prefer to leave Clifton Manor until Devereaux departs?” he asked.

But the words had barely left Grandfather’s lips before Miranda was shaking her head. “I have made this my home. I cannot leave now.”

“Even if he makes you miserable?”

Miranda didn’t have an answer. She couldn’t bear the thought of leaving—too much had happened at Clifton Manor since her arrival to even consider changing residences. She knew on some instinctive level that to retreat now would mean the end of any claim she had to her home.

“I intend to have a talk with that—”

“Please don’t, Grandfather.” Miranda reached for his wrinkled hand. “He will not be here long. I can endure that much.”

“I think you have endured quite enough from him already.”

She knew that look of his. Grandfather was moments from going back downstairs and boxing Carter’s ears. Despite all she’d been through, she didn’t want him to. Keeping the peace felt far more urgent than clearing the air. Carter would not remain long—London was likely calling to him as it always had. He would be gone soon enough. All that mattered was having the house to herself again once he left.

With a sigh, she said, “I made a mistake, Grandfather. I believed in someone I shouldn’t have. But I have made a home and a life for myself here. I would rather endure two or three weeks of his mockery and incivility than be forced to forfeit the only thing I have left.”

“And what of the painful memories he will undoubtedly dig up?” Grandfather asked. “Are you prepared to endure that? Can you even?”

“We have more or less agreed to avoid discussions of our past.”

“Well,
I
didn’t agree to that.” Grandfather’s mouth tightened in an angry line. “I will have answers from that boy, or—”

“Grandfather, please, no.” She hoped he caught the insistence in her face and voice. “I cannot leave here, not now. But if I am forced to relive all of that, I won’t be able to endure it. If we let that sit, leave it unopened and untouched, he will be gone in a few weeks, and I will still have this home to call my own.”

“But—”

“You have to promise me,” she said. “Promise not to come to blows with him. I’d rather you not even bring it up. Please.”

His brow didn’t unfurrow, but she could see he was thinking.

“Please,” she repeated.

With a sigh, he nodded his agreement. “As much as I would enjoy letting into that pup, I will honor your wishes.”

Miranda smiled in gratitude. Her grandfather was good to her, indulgent even. She dearly loved him.

Grandfather squeezed her hand and looked intently at her. “How are you feeling?” he asked.

She’d needed a little compassion. “Tired,” she answered.

“Have you been taking your tea?”

Miranda nodded.

“And hawthorn berries?”

“Yes, Grandfather.”

“And when was Mr. MacPherson here last?”

“Before you left.”

“You haven’t summoned him since?”

“It hasn’t been necessary,” Miranda reassured him, feeling her eyelids grow heavier.

“You don’t look as well as you did before I left for Devon.”

“I have been tired.” Miranda struggled to keep her eyes open.

She felt Grandfather squeeze her fingers. “You worry me, my girl.”

They were the last words she heard before drifting into a restless sleep.

* * *

“Why have you come?”

It was the most unnerving greeting Carter had received in quite some time. But despite his advancing age, Mr. Benton had always been intimidating. Carter watched the gentleman, who must have been nearing eighty, enter the book room and sit in a chair opposite him.

“There is to be a house party.” Carter faced the obviously upset gentleman with determination. “Clifton Manor always was picturesque. It seemed the perfect choice.”

“Did you never stop to consider the impact your ‘perfect choice’ would have on Miranda?”

“It was my understanding she was with you, sir, in Devon,” Carter answered evenly. He would not be put on trial here.

“And what are your intentions now that you know she is here?”

What are my intentions?
It was so ridiculous a caricature of his first truly serious interview with Mr. Benton that Carter couldn’t help a rueful shake of his head. “I do not intend to humiliate her in front of my guests as you seem to suspect. We will simply have to behave as though there is nothing amiss between us.”

“And was the tense scene I stumbled in on earlier an example of behaving as if ‘nothing is amiss’?” He eyed Carter with obvious doubt. “If so, your guests will never believe it.”

“Yes, well, Miranda isn’t exactly cooperating.”

“And
your
performance was convincing?”

There was no real response to that. If forced, Carter would have to admit he wasn’t making much of an effort to be peaceable. He knew it was petty, but a small, overly loud part of him wanted to see even the tiniest hint of remorse from her. After all she’d put him through, he wanted her to at least realize what she’d done, what she’d lost.

“I will not have my granddaughter overset.”

“Blame for our current circumstances cannot be laid at my feet.” Heaven knew he’d attempted to put things right, at least at the beginning. But he’d been rebuffed at every turn.