by Liz Tyner
When the eternity of the night ended, they left, travelling to his house, with him hoping he would still find Miranda inside.
As his mother left him at the top of the stairs, she gripped the railing. Her knuckles shown white. ‘Think about your promise. You’ll have lovely children and, if you aren’t fond of them, you’d hardly have to see them until they became well mannered. Which might not be until the grandchildren arrive. Could happen.’ She beamed. ‘I will see you married to the right woman.’
When the door shut, he just had to be thankful his grandmothers weren’t alive and still making their plans. That many meddlers would be too much for any one man to handle.
He had to make a decision.
Miss Manwaring. Miranda.
The word kept floating through his mind, unable to be shoved aside. Miranda. Now he knew of her past and he cared even more for her.
He didn’t want to be away from her any longer. He’d promised he’d tell her when he found the woman and he would.
* * *
Miranda heard the knock on her bedroom door and opened it.
Chalgrove stood on the other side. She took his hand and pulled him into the room, closing them in together.
‘You’ve been to see the old woman?’ She knew even before he answered.
He gave a short nod.
‘And what did she say to you?’
‘She said she spouts nonsense more than a cloud gives rain, but that you are her finest creation.’ He held out his hand, palm up, and she moved closer.
He clasped her and she held close the sensation of having him near. Without her planning it, she rested against him, complete in the feeling of his arms being around her. Basking in the safety his presence gave her.
This was someone she could find shelter with, in a way she had never known, but two little faces popped into her mind. Two faces that she’d given comfort to, time and time again. They had to come first. She had to give them the family she’d only had briefly.
‘Tell me what she said.’ Her words were little more than a whisper.
‘Apparently, she needed a duke and a governess to complete her scavenger hunt and she wanted a prize for you.’ His arms tightened.
She assessed him. ‘I had guessed that. What did she win?’
‘She planned to win you a family.’
‘I’m not surprised. She said she was bringing me a husband. My grandmother does as she wishes and to the devil with all else.’
Miranda could see intensity in his face, hesitation and words he didn’t want to say. She waited.
‘The fortune-teller claims you’re not her granddaughter.’ His voice roughened. ‘Your true mother left you before she died and the old woman kept you.’ He spoke softly. ‘You, a babe. Alone. With no one. If what she said is true, she saved your life.’
‘She’s not my grandmother?’ Instead of flying into the air with happiness, the ground seemed to dissolve beneath her. Nothing, no one, had been her own. The childhood memories had been a lie. The grandmother she knew was someone else’s grandmother, or maybe even no one’s grandmother.
‘Claims she’s not related by blood.’
‘Who knows if that is a lie? And my name? Did she tell you what I had been named?’
‘Drucie. She called you Child because she didn’t like the name. She planned, she said, even from the first on getting you a new name and a new family. It just took her longer than she expected. She finally told me it was hard to give you up on the day she left you, but she knew she must for your sake.’
She didn’t know what was true. Except her grandmother possibly was adding more lies to the mix in order to keep Miranda safe. Better to be an orphan than be a grandchild of a fortune-teller, a fraudster and a swindler.
She searched her memory.
She could remember several other people calling the old woman Grandmother, but she couldn’t feel they were her relatives. She couldn’t recall why she called her Grandmother, or if she’d ever been told anything about her history. Her true relatives. She’d been given the notion that she could have a real doll and it had been described over and over so that when her grandmother had left her at the road, she’d not cried...right away.
And it was true. The china doll came first.
Years later, she had explained to Willie that they were going to get a little doll in the family, but it would cry and wet and some day laugh and play and he was to be the biggest, best thing of all in the world, a big brother. Willie had taken one look at the baby and called her Dolly. The name stuck. Miranda had truly received a doll.
She couldn’t lose her.
‘All I can count on with her is my memory of the cold. In the winter, the cold made my feet hurt so badly, the fire could never warm them. They would ache from the cold and sting when I tried to warm them by moving near the flames. I’ve never once been as cold since I left. Never once.’
‘Winter doesn’t last for ever.’
‘It does when you’re a child. When my grandmother had so little fuel to burn to keep us warm.’ An image she’d lost returned to her mind. Of her grandmother huddling in front of the little fire, Miranda clasped in her arms for warmth and a cover from the bed wrapped around them, while her grandmother blew out breaths and showed her how they could see them in the air.
‘In her own way, I believe she loved you. Loves you still.’ Chalgrove released her.
She stared into his eyes. ‘You think she does?’
‘Yes.’
He ran a fingertip across her almost ringless hand, a stark contrast to the weighty cheap jewellery on the old woman, then he held her against his side and considered her palm, seeing the lines, wondering if there was any truth to being able to see what was inside a person by looking at their hand. ‘You don’t like jewellery, do you? Only one ring. One hair pin.’
‘If it doesn’t have sentimental value, it seems to get in the way.’
‘What if it were something for this finger? Would it get in the way?’ He touched the third finger of her left hand.
‘I’ll—I’ll be leaving in the morning. I need to get back to Dolly and Willie. Even if the old woman does change her mind and come after me again, Mr Trevor has extra staff and everyone will know where to search for me. I won’t leave the household without one of the men with me.’
‘I agree you shouldn’t. But I’ll still be concerned about you. And I’ll wonder. Wonder what our lives could have been like together. With children of our own.’
He understood she intended to be gone in the morning. But he couldn’t walk away from her. She had to be the one who left. He wanted her heart to be beating close to his for as long as he could have it near.
She had moved to the open door, one hand on each side of it, her eyes unwavering. ‘I will go to the children.’
Before she’d finished the sentence, she’d not been able to resist closing the distance between them again.
As gentle as he’d cradle the stem of a goblet, his hand circled her waist and he pulled her back inside his embrace.
His fingers moved up her back, feeling the small buttons as if they were a ladder to her heart.
‘I will—’ He stopped, gathering his words. ‘Memories fade. This was an adventure you can tell your grandchildren some day.’
His slid his hands slowly back down the path they’d come. ‘Yes. It’s best for us if we forget this for a time, but inside me, I’ll never forget it. Forget you.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Miranda.’ His voice almost failed him. ‘You’re Miranda to us all and so much more. The nights we were together, I cannot get them from my mind. Two. One night of us alone on a bed. As distant as the moon, and yet it is as if I touched you then. And I did, when we left. In the cold rain. And I never felt so warm...having you in my arms. When I held you, my life changed for ever.’
&n
bsp; ‘You have a chance to wed Antonia. Someone who will fill the needs of a duke’s wife.’
It didn’t matter how perfect Antonia was, or what her skills were, or even if she were a princess. She wasn’t Miranda. ‘I can’t marry her. It wouldn’t be fair to her.’
‘She’s so perfect. I’m sure you could tell her you don’t love her and without blinking an eye she would agree to marriage.’
‘I don’t need or want that in a wife. I want you. I love you.’ The words sounded as natural as if he’d been saying them every day and he felt them to his soul.
She didn’t move.
‘I so wish we could marry, Miranda.’ He said her name aloud, again. An endearment to him. ‘But I can’t ask you to wed.’ The children. They needed to be in her life. And, if Trevor married again and she could not see them, it would devastate her and it would be because of him.
She stood before him, slim, wavering, voice cold. ‘Do you really want me to give up the children I love?’
‘No. I wouldn’t want you to give up anything that you care for.’
He stepped away, giving her room to think and keeping himself from taking her in his arms.
He wished he could turn back time to the days before she had become a governess. He would have courted her and pursued her and, if he’d not been able to sweep her off her feet, he would have told her over and over again how—But, no, he couldn’t have done that. The children needed her. Their mother had died.
He’d been an adult when his father had finally succumbed and he had lost so much. Without Miranda, and Trevor mourning their mother, the children would have been almost alone.
‘They need you. More than I do. I’m...’ He’d wanted to say he was mature. But his heart felt as broken as a youth’s. There would be no recovering from this, even in the countryside.
He stood against the bookcase, his shoulder touching it, keeping the world from whirling away around him.
‘I’m pleased you understand.’ She spoke softly, her eyes on his feet.
‘Part of me does and I hate that part of myself right now. But you’re right. You’ll not be able to forget and you’ll feel you betrayed the little girl who was left beside the road.’
‘No. It’s the children.’
He straightened. ‘For me, it’s Child. The one who was left and I don’t want her betrayed. Even by her own wishes.’
‘Your mother expects you will court Antonia.’
‘I don’t trust Mother really wishes for me to wed Antonia,’ he said. ‘She’s tossing Antonia my way as a distraction. She really sees you as my wife. And if she doesn’t, that’s too bad.’
He waited a second. Touching her chin, he said, ‘I have a fascination with you. It goes beyond love. Love is a giddy feeling. A feeling of drunkenness. Distraction.’
He wasn’t distracted by Miranda, he was consumed by her. And, he realised that nothing was going to change that. Not distance. Or months or years. In just a few days, she’d woven herself into the fabric of who he was.
Perhaps he’d fallen in love the morning he discovered the wildcat who had clawed back at him wasn’t a beast, and those first few moments of light had illuminated a fragile wisp who hardly emerged as able to stand on her own two feet, much less kick back.
She’d accepted the situation. Studied it. In the darkness, she’d fought for her life. The daylight appeared and he saw a meek lamb. Then, when the old woman had appeared and off had popped the shoes, the delicate wisp had disappeared and the fire had shown in her eyes and her arms.
When he’d pulled her through the roof, the rain beating down on them, and held her in his arms for that second, with all the uncertainty surrounding them, he’d felt complete. She’d not hesitated, running with him into the darkness.
Telling him which road to take. Not complaining. Only going forward. Not back.
He contemplated what it was about her that made her different and it was the direction she took. Always forward. Never back.
A woman thinking of the future and of the people she wanted in it. Children she didn’t want to desert.
He could only respect that. And her. But he couldn’t ignore the anguish roiling inside him in a life without her.
‘I love the children so. You’ve always had a family, Chal, and known they’d be there for you. I’ve made my family at the Trevor home. I can’t leave them. Do you understand how I feel?’
He reflected on his words before he answered, ‘Almost. Even though Susanna didn’t make me happy, I enjoyed her presence. Having a partner for the quiet times. Someone to talk to after the party was over. But when I discovered she truly wasn’t what I saw...’ His voice became flat. ‘I saw inside myself. I didn’t really care that she was married. It wasn’t as though either of us were innocent virgins when we met. But she couldn’t tell me the truth of her past. And she had betrayed me by telling my confidences.’
None of the things she’d told had wounded him, but that she had told them had been the cutting blow.
From her husband’s words, she still visited him when Chalgrove was at the country estate. As the man knew the times that Chalgrove was gone, he had to believe him. He’d felt betrayed and when the truth had registered—that he was angry with a woman who’d betrayed him...with her husband—that had been a bitter pill.
‘I decided the truth was more important,’ he said, ‘than the lies. To build a life and future based on truths, even if it meant not sharing my life with someone.’
Better to be alone, than together with an illusion.
‘You have a family you can trust.’
He took her wrists, sliding to hold her fingertips. ‘The things you were told might have been lies. But the things you don’t acknowledge are the truths. The love. The old woman loves you. Her eyes sparkle when she mentions you. Your mother loved you. I’m sure Miss Cuthbert loves you. The children love you. Nicky loves you. Trevor loves you. And I love you.’
‘Perhaps I’m making a wrong decision.’ She clenched her hands.
‘No. You’re making the right decision. One based on a family already there and who loves you. I couldn’t expect you to give that up. I’d never want to see two little children lose the only mother they’ve ever known.’
Chapter Twenty-Four
‘Do you recall when I held you in the mud and rain?’ Chalgrove asked.
‘Yes.’
‘I knew then I held someone special.’ His lips moved closer with each word and ended with them against hers.
She moved one foot back, but somehow her body tilted closer to him.
Her fingers slid through his hair, nestling against his head and holding him.
She couldn’t let go. Her fingers wouldn’t move away.
His lips moved lower, caressing her, and his hands cupped her breasts, filling her with warmth.
Miranda felt more tugs at her back, lower. Her words caught in her throat.
She intended to catch his attention and her hands clasped the sides of his cheeks, feeling the roughness of his beard. When his eyes closed, she pulled his face to her lips.
When their lips touched, their bodies aligned.
Chalgrove’s hands had pulled her close and she knew, knew from the way his arms around her lowered, and he held her firmly, then gently slid her against his hardness.
She meant to give him one last chance for reason. One last chance to rescue himself, but his tongue touched against her lips and she didn’t know how to speak in such a situation. And when she tried to think sensibly, her mind became mixed and her body responded by struggling to get closer to him.
He cupped her bottom, pulling her to him. He wasn’t satisfied with only kissing her lips, but trailed along the edges of her mouth, moving lower.
She pulled away, breathing, and rested her head to the side and pulled her chin up so he could graze his teeth against
her neck.
‘The bed,’ she whispered.
He’d turned her from the bed and she faced him as he’d leaned down and the hooks of her dress were undone. The dress had fallen open and his lips were lingering at the slipping bodice, managing to create sensations in her body she hadn’t known existed.
The only wisp of a realisation which floated through her mind was that her clothes were falling away and she’d never known how easy it could be to disrobe.
The chemise moved up her legs.
His hand touched her thigh, and hooked under her leg, with nothing between his fingers and her skin. He pulled her up, so that her knee was bent, and he grabbed the other thigh, lifting her against him. She grasped his shoulders and he stepped forward, lowering her to the bed.
She still wore her corset and chemise and he lay alongside her, breathing in deeply. By his expression, she knew neither of them were in the same world they’d woken in.
She felt the pulls of her corset strings in the back loosening and each tug brushed her breasts against the fabric between them, heightening the sensations.
Arms around her, he tugged and tugged, and she took in his burning eyes.
Miranda realised he’d managed to grasp the shoulders of her chemise and slide it down, taking her corset with it.
She raised her hands to his chest and knew she had to get the clothing from his body. He must be suffocating wrapped in so many layers.
Chalgrove’s shirt slipped easily over his head with the smallest of pulls from her. The boots were removed and she heard a clunk when he slung them to the floor. His trousers hit the cheval mirror.
Skin. Soft skin over hardened muscles accepted her hands better than her own would have.
His hands traced her body and his lips followed, caressing her breasts, her nipples. Then his mouth found hers again and he pulled her close.
He stopped. Completely. With his eyes, he asked and, with her lips, she whispered, yes.
He grasped her hips and the tip of his member pressed against her, moving inside. Filling her with the magic of lovemaking.
