That Kind of Woman (16 page)

She rose abruptly, and the room swam a little, causing her to stumble. Well, she would show him! So he had a few hours’ head start. How hard could it be to catch up? She took a step forward and felt the floor pitch underneath her. And he had told her something, something important, but her head still felt so fuzzy! Damn the man for slipping her laudanum!

She looked up and caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. What a ghastly mess! Her hair hung in limp knots, her face was ash white, her gown looked like, well, like she had slept in it. Just then, her stomach gave a fierce rumble.

Reggie would have a few more hours’ head start to London to book passage, but she could catch up over the several days it would take both of them to reach the city. Right now, she needed a change of clothes and breakfast.

Mary, the maid, tapped softly on the door and stuck her head into the room. “Oh, you’re up, my lady,” she said with a smile. “Would you like me to send Lizzie in to help you dress, or will you take your tea in here?”

“Tea? I was hoping for breakfast.”

Mary smiled a little wider. “You’ve slept right through breakfast, and luncheon as well, my lady. I could have Mrs. Applebee put a bit of meat and cheese on your tray. Something a little heartier to see you through till dinner.”

“Thank you, Mary. Please, bring it in here, and while I eat, I’ll need you and Lizzie to pack my things. I was hoping to leave tonight, but since it’s so late, I suppose I’ll stay until morning.”

The maid shuffled her feet and cast a wary glance over her shoulder. “Um—his lordship said you might be making some plans to travel.”

Miranda looked at the maid in confusion. “George?”

“No, m’lady. Lord
Andrew
.”

“Oh, of course,” she murmured. “What was I thinking?”

“I’m so sorry, madam,” Mary said, genuine sympathy in her voice. “I am sorry for your loss, and I am sorry I cannot help you. His lordship has made it very plain we’re not to pack anything and that you’re not to leave until he has had a chance to speak with you.”

Miranda felt the color rise back into her cheeks and the last of the cobwebs clear from her brain. “What? How dare he?”

Now it was Mary’s turn to go ashen. “Forgive me, m’lady! Please don’t be angry!”

“You may inform Lord Danford that I will meet with him in the music room after tea.”

Barbara Henley stuck her head in the door, and Miranda stifled a groan. If her mother noticed her dismay, she didn’t acknowledge it. She just swept into the room and sat at the dressing table, settling her pale skirt around her. She gave her reflection in the looking glass a quick survey and patted her perfectly coifed brown hair.

“Are we taking tea in here today?” Barbara asked.

“I’m really not feeling well, Mother,” Miranda began, hoping to convince her that she just needed a bit more time alone.

“I should think not after that display yesterday. Andrew hasn’t a speck of his brother’s grace and sensitivity. It’s just as well you’ve stayed up here all morning. There has been quite a parade of condolence calls. Dreadful people wanting to satisfy their morbid curiosity, that’s all. And they call me shameless!”

Barbara glanced down at the trunk on the floor. “Oh, good. You’re ready to pack. You’ll just travel back to London in our coach tomorrow.” She frowned at Mary, who still stood by the door. “I thought you were fetching the tea,” she prompted.

“Yes, m’la—uh—mistress—oh! I mean, madam.”

Barbara only laughed at the maid’s bumbling. Thinking more clearly than Miranda had been the night before, she pulled a black gown from the wardrobe. “Here you go, dear. Put this one on and we’ll pack the others. You can send for the rest of your gowns later, if you wish. Of course, your father will buy you all new ones next year if you’d rather. He’s traveling to Montheath until after the holidays, so for a while it will just be you and me. Won’t that be nice?”

“Excuse me?” Miranda asked, not following her mother’s tumble of words.

“His yearly visit to the estate, you know. I do get so lonely without him.”

Her mother had always referred to Montheath’s other life as “the estate.” If, under extreme duress, she were forced to speak of his wife, she called her “the duchess.”
Nothing
could move her to speak of his sons to any extent.

“I’m not staying in London, Mother.”

Barbara blinked at her for a moment. “Then why the trunk? Where are you going?”

Miranda began to pull the pins from the ruin of yesterday’s hairstyle. Barbara stood and gestured her daughter into the chair in front of the mirror.

“I thought I’d travel some.”

“We are at war, Miranda.”

Miranda sat and picked up her brush. “One English woman wandering the Continent won’t tip the scales, Mother.”

“You can’t travel,” Barbara protested. “You’re in mourning.”

Miranda laughed out loud. “Surely
you
aren’t lecturing me on propriety!”

Barbara refused to acknowledge the irony. “You’re the widow of an earl, now, not just the daughter of a whore. Don’t squander it. You’re young yet. You can make another match, a fine one.”

“For pity’s sake Mother, you are so mercenary.”

“And you are such a dreamer! George will have left you with a tidy inheritance, no doubt, but as you have already learned, a widow is very much dependent upon the next heir to her husband’s title. Is it just my imagination, or is the new earl not terribly sympathetic toward you?” Barbara stopped short, apparently a bit abashed by her own cruel sarcasm.

Her face softened, and she shook her head in puzzlement. “Perhaps I am mercenary. I knew what I wanted, and I have stopped at nothing to get it and keep it. God knows, I never meant to force a child to live with my choices.”

“I know,” Miranda interrupted. She had heard it before. “I was a ‘miscalculation.’”

“But I have tried to make up for it. I’ve never held back the truth from you, never told you silly fairy tales. I have given you every tool you need to get what you want from life.”

Miranda smiled sadly. “And therein lies the problem: You have never understood what I wanted.”

*

Even Lettie was hard pressed to make conversation over tea, so the drawing room was silent, save for the occasional delicate clink of a china cup on a saucer. Andrew cast a wary eye toward the Duke of Montheath, who glowered at him from underneath dark eyebrows and a thick mane of silver hair.

“Hardly an afternoon for this stuff,” Henry said, setting his cup on the tea table and rising. “Have a cognac with me, Your Grace?”

“Finally,” Montheath exclaimed, “someone has a good idea! Be generous, lad,” he added when Henry had stopped pouring.

Henry filled the glass further, then handed it to the duke. “Do you suppose Barbara’s having any luck with Randa?”

“Barbara can be quite convincing,” Montheath replied. “She kept me from making you the new Earl of Danford last night.”

Henry laughed. “Oh, no, you mustn’t kill poor Andy there. I have no use for the title. At Danford, the earl is actually expected to work at running the estate. I prefer London, myself.”

It was easy for Henry to laugh. It seemed to Andrew the duke had spoken without much humor, and he had the sense Barbara really had saved his life last night.

Emma’s insolent voice interrupted his silent brooding. “That’s quite a face you’re making, Father.”

“I’m not in the best of moods,” he retorted.

“I should say not,” Henry taunted with a smirk. “Think nothing of His Grace’s wrath. Andy’s been summoned to an audience with Lady Miranda, and he knows full well he has committed an unpardonable offense. I rather imagine he’s shaking in those perfectly polished Hessians of his.”

“Shut up,” Andrew replied.

Lettie squeezed her words through her tightly pursed lips. “You’re the one who behaved badly, Andy. It’s hardly fair to take it out on the rest of us.”

He rose quickly, spilling his tea and cursing loudly. Henry laughed, Lettie gasped, and his daughter feigned wide-eyed shock. The duke simply looked down his nose in haughty aloofness.

“By all means, continue to enjoy Henry’s witticisms at my expense!” Andrew snapped. “I’ll be in the music room, if anyone needs me.”

He stalked out the door and heard everyone break into simultaneous commentary behind his back, but he refused to care. He hadn’t slept in days, had barely eaten, and yes, damn it all, maybe he was shaking a bit. God, he’d rather go before a firing squad than face his sister-in-law after everything he’d done.

She was already there, sitting at the piano and staring blankly at the sheet music in the stand. The only sign of his reluctance to enter was the slight hitch in his stride when he saw her. That cursed second of hesitation, the old desire to flee. He shoved it harshly out of mind and said simply, “My lady.”

She inclined her head slightly. “My lord.”

Somehow the fact that they were in the music room made the next few seconds of silence all the louder. He cleared his throat uncomfortably.

“Do you have something to say to me?” she asked.

“I?” Her question took him off guard. “I believe it was you who requested this meeting.”

“And I believe it was you who insisted that we must meet before I leave.”

He stepped carefully to one of the chairs and sat down gingerly, as though he expected it to give beneath his weight. “I thought we should talk before you do anything you’ll regret.”

“I was under the impression I was no longer welcome here.” Her voice quivered slightly, but she showed no other sign of any emotion.

“I never meant that. I didn’t express myself clearly that morning at breakfast, and we never had a chance to clear things up before George died.”

“Trust me, Lord Danford, you made everything crystal clear yesterday.”

“No, no, I didn’t. I fouled things up terribly. I heard bits and pieces of things and jumped to conclusions, conclusions I had no right to draw. Believe me, Reggie set me quite straight on that account.”

“Did he?”

“Oh, yes, very. That’s another reason you and I had to talk. He was adamant that you not follow him.” At that, he saw her back go rigid, her nostrils flare in indignation.

“I see. Well, then, I won’t. I’ve been invited to my parents’ house in London. I’m sure you’ll feel much better. You’ve dutifully delivered your message from Reggie, and you no longer have to feel as though you drove me from my home. I’m leaving quite by my own choice.” Her voice broke, and she turned her head sharply away from him.

“Miranda,” he said, rising to go to her, but she put her hand up to stop him.

“Please, go away.”

He couldn’t leave her. She looked so pale and fragile in her black silk gown, and her shoulders trembled when she drew a ragged breath. Sitting next to her on the piano bench, but careful not to touch her, he said softly, “It’s all right to cry, you know. You’ve lost a great deal.”

He expected grief, but was surprised to hear bitterness when she replied, “You have no idea.”

She desperately wanted him to leave before she disgraced herself by giving in to another bout of hysterics. Miranda had envisioned herself a far more stoic widow. After all, she had lost more of a friend than a husband. But with him, she had lost her only other friend and her home, as well. It wasn’t that her parents were difficult to live with. They were just always so … distracted. And living with them had always made her feel profoundly lonely.

She silently chided herself for her self-pity and had nearly contained her emotions when Andrew put his arm around her shoulder and turned her face to his.

“Tell me what to do, how to fix it,” he said, his deep green eyes pleading. “The last thing I wanted to do was to hurt you.”

And then it hit her, with all the force it should have had when she’d heard it last night through her drug-induced haze.
One more thing. Try not to hate Andrew. He’s in love with you.

It was an absurd statement! Reggie was a hopeless romantic, and he’d always felt so guilty about his role in the state of her marriage. But there was something there in Andrew’s eyes. Something that wasn’t disdain or obligation or pity or guilt. It wasn’t even lust. She’d seen that often enough.

Miranda had not wanted for affection with George and Reggie. They’d embraced her, danced with her, told her a thousand times how beautiful she was, and she had almost convinced herself that it was enough. Now, looking at her late husband’s brother, she knew that it wasn’t. She wanted to be kissed, made love to, to have a man look upon her unclothed body and speak of her beauty then. Not just
a
man, she realized.
This
man.

He pulled her to him and wrapped her tightly in his arms, and she let him. She permitted him to bury his face in her hair while she breathed in his scent of sandalwood and starch. For a moment, his strength and warmth suffused her, soothed her raw and aching soul.

She didn’t know how long they sat together, but when he finally pulled away, she recognized the look on his face with painful clarity. How many times had she seen that same expression in her mirror over the last three years? It was the look on her own face whenever she allowed herself to think of all that she had lost when she had married George. It was a look of desperate longing for something one could never have. Did he see it in her, as well?

“I have to go to London,” she said. “It will be much better that way.”

He looked away and seemed about to speak, then paused before he finally said, “You can take the townhouse, if you’d like. Henry and Lettie will be living here, with Emma and me, so it’s empty.”

That offer gave her pause. It would solve one of her immediate problems, her reluctance to live with her parents. “I hadn’t thought of that,” she said.

Andrew rose from the bench, looking sad but relieved. “I’ll send word to the London staff in the morning. We’ll give them a day or two to prepare while we wait for the solicitor to arrive and read the will. I’m sure George left you a generous stipend, but I’ll be happy to supplement.”

Miranda nodded. She would be in mourning, so it would be easy enough to avoid the
ton
and all their nasty gossip. Perhaps Reggie was right. Perhaps she did need to distance herself from her life, up to this point. Maybe with a little perspective, she could decide what to do next.