by Julia Quinn
I had to dance with him once. Lady Rudland insisted upon it. And then, as if the evening could not get any worse, she pulled me aside to comment on my sudden popularity. The Duke of Ashbourne danced with me! (Exclamation point hers.) He is married, of course, and very happily, but still, he does not waste his time with little misses just out of the schoolroom. Lady R. was just thrilled and so very proud of me. I thought I might cry.
I am home now, however, and I resolve to invent some sort of illness so that I do not have to go out for a few days. A week, if I can manage it.
Do you know what disturbs me the most? Lady Pembleton is not even considered beautiful. Oh, she is not unpleasing to look at, but she is no diamond of the first water. Her hair is plain brown, and so are her eyes.
Just like mine.
Chapter 9
Miranda spent the next week pretending to read Greek tragedies. It was impossible to keep her mind focused on a book long enough to actually read one, but as long as she had to stare at the words on the page every now and then, she figured she might as well choose something that suited her mood.
A comedy would have made her cry. And a love story, God forbid, would have made her want to perish on the spot.
Olivia, who’d never been known for her lack of interest in other people’s business, had been relentless in her quest to discover the reason for Miranda’s morose mood. In fact, the only times she wasn’t interrogating Miranda were when she was trying to brighten her mood. She was in the midst of one of these cheering-up sessions, regaling Miranda with the tales of a certain countess who’d thrown her husband out of the house until he agreed to let her buy four miniature poodles as pets, when Lady Rudland rapped on the door.
“Oh, good,” she said, poking her head into the room. “You’re both here. Olivia, don’t sit like that. It’s very unladylike.”
Olivia dutifully adjusted her position before asking, “What is it, Mama?”
“I wanted to inform you that we have been invited to Lady Chester’s home for a country visit next week.”
“Who is Lady Chester?” Miranda inquired, setting her now dog-eared volume of Aeschylus down in her lap.
“A cousin of ours,” Olivia replied. “Third or fourth, I can’t remember.”
“Second,” Lady Rudland corrected. “And I accepted the invitation on our behalf. It would be rude not to attend, as she’s such a close relation.”
“Is Turner going?” Olivia asked.
Miranda wanted to thank her friend a thousand times over for asking the question she didn’t dare voice.
“He had better. He has wormed his way out of his familial obligations for far too long,” Lady Rudland said with uncharacteristic steeliness. “If he doesn’t, he’ll have to answer to me.”
“Heavens,” Olivia deadpanned. “What a terrifying thought.”
“I don’t know what is wrong with the boy,” Lady Rudland said with a shake of her head. “It is almost as if he is avoiding us.”
No, Miranda thought with a sad smile, only me.
Turner tapped his foot impatiently as he waited for his family to come down. For about the fifteenth time that morning, he found himself wishing that he were more like the rest of the men of the ton, most of whom either ignored their mothers or treated them like pieces of fluff. But somehow his mother had managed to get him to agree to this blasted week-long house party, at which, of course, Miranda would also be in attendance.
He was an idiot. That fact was growing clearer to him by the day.
An idiot who had apparently offended fate, because as soon as his mother arrived in the front hall she said, “You’re going to have to ride with Miranda.”
Apparently the gods had a sick sense of humor.
He cleared his throat. “Do you think that’s wise, Mother?”
She gave him an impatient look. “You’re not going to seduce the girl, are you?”
Holy bloody hell. “Of course not. It’s just that she has her reputation to consider. What will people say when we arrive in the same carriage? Everyone will know we’ve spent several hours alone.”
“Everyone thinks of the two of you as brother and sister. And we shall meet up a mile from Chester Park and switch everyone about so that you may arrive with your father. There won’t be any problem. Besides, your father and I need to have a word alone with Olivia.”
“What did she do now?”
“Apparently she called Georgiana Elster a silly widgeon.”
“Georgiana Elster is a silly widgeon.”
“To her face, Turner! She said it to her face.”
“Lack of judgment on her part but nothing that requires a two-hour scolding, I think.”
“That’s not all.”
Turner sighed. His mother’s mind was made up. Two hours alone with Miranda. What had he done to deserve this torture?
“She called Sir Robert Kent an overgrown stoat.”
“To his face, I suppose.”
Lady Rudland nodded.
“What is a stoat?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea, but I can’t imagine it’s complimentary.”
“A stoat is a weasel, I think,” Miranda said as she entered the hall in a creamy blue traveling dress. She smiled at them both, annoyingly composed.
“Good morning, Miranda,” Lady Rudland said briskly. “You’re to ride with Turner.”
“I am?” She nearly choked on her words and had to cover for it with a few coughs. Turner took a rather juvenile satisfaction in that.
“Yes. Lord Rudland and I need to have a word with Olivia. She has been saying rather inappropriate things in public.”
A groan was heard on the stairs. Three heads swiveled around to watch Olivia as she descended. “Is that really necessary, Mama? I didn’t mean any harm. I would never have called Lady Finchcoombe a miserable harridan if I thought it might get back to her.”
The blood drained from Lady Rudland’s face. “You called Lady Finchcoombe a miserable what?”
“You didn’t know about that?” Olivia asked weakly.
“Turner, Miranda, I suggest you leave now. We will see you in a few hours.”
They walked in silence to the waiting carriage, and Turner held out his hand to assist Miranda as she climbed up. Her gloved fingers felt electric in his own, but she must not have felt the same, because she sounded singularly unaffected as she muttered, “I hope my presence is not too much a trial for you, my lord.”
Turner’s reply was a cross between a grunt and a sigh.
“I didn’t arrange this, you know.”
He sat down across from her. “I know.”
“I had no idea we’d—” She looked up. “You know?”
“I know. Mother was quite determined to get Olivia alone.”
“Oh. Thank you for believing me, then.”
He let out a pent-up breath, staring out the window for a moment as the carriage lurched into motion. “Miranda, I don’t think you’re some sort of habitual liar.”
“No, of course not,” she said quickly. “But you did look rather furious when you helped me into the carriage.”
“I was furious at fate, Miranda, not you.”
“What an improvement,” she said coldly. “Well, if you’ll excuse me. I brought along a book.” She twisted around so that as much of her back was facing him as possible and began to read.
Turner waited about thirty seconds before asking, “What’s that you’re reading?”
Miranda froze, then moved slowly, as if completing the most odious of chores. She held up the book.
“Aeschylus. How depressing.”
“It fits my mood.”
“Oh dear, was that a barb?”
“Don’t be condescending, Turner. Under the circumstances, it’s hardly appropriate.”
He raised his brows. “And what, precisely, might that mean?”
“It means that after all that has, er, occurred between us, your superior attitude is no longer justified.”
“M
y, but that was a long sentence.”
Miranda let her glare be her reply. This time, when she picked up the book again, it covered her face entirely.
Turner chuckled and leaned back, surprised by how much he was enjoying himself. The quiet ones were always the most interesting. Miranda might not ever choose to place herself at the center of attention, but she could hold her own in a conversation with wit and style. Baiting her was great fun. And he didn’t feel the least bit guilty for it. For all her disgruntled behavior, he had no doubt that she enjoyed the verbal sparring every bit as much as he did.
This trip might not be quite so hellish. He just had to make sure he kept her engaged in this sort of amusing conversation and didn’t stare too long at her mouth.
He really liked her mouth.
But he wasn’t going to think about that. He was going to resume their conversation and try to enjoy himself the way he had before they had become embroiled in this mess. He rather missed his old friendship with Miranda, and he supposed that as long as they were trapped together in this carriage for two hours, he might as well see what he could do to patch things up.
“What are you reading?” he asked.
She looked up irritably. “Aeschylus. Didn’t you already ask me that?”
“I meant which Aeschylus,” he improvised.
To his great amusement, she had to look down at the book before replying, “The Eumenides.”
He winced.
“You don’t like it?”
“All those furious women? I think not. Give me a nice adventure story any day.”
“I like furious women.”
“You feel a great empathy? Oh dear, no, don’t grind your teeth, Miranda, you’d not enjoy a visit to the dentist, I promise you.”
Her expression was such that he could do nothing but laugh. “Oh, don’t be so sensitive, Miranda.”
Still glaring at him, she muttered, “So sorry, my lord,” and then somehow managed to drop an obsequious curtsy right there in the middle of the carriage.
Turner’s chuckles exploded into rollicking laughter. “Oh, Miranda,” he said, wiping his eyes. “You are a gem.”
When he finally recovered, she was staring at him like he was a lunatic. He thought briefly about holding up his hands like claws and letting out some sort of strange, animalistic sound, just to confirm her suspicions. But in the end he just sat back and grinned.
She shook her head. “I don’t understand you.”
He didn’t respond, not wishing to let the conversation slip back into serious waters. She picked up her book again, and this time he busied himself by timing how many minutes passed before she turned a page. When the score was five and zero, he quirked a smile. “Difficult reading?”
Miranda slowly lowered the book and leveled a deadly gaze in his direction. “Excuse me?”
“A lot of big words?”
She just stared at him.
“You haven’t turned a page since you started.”
She let out a vocal growl and with great determination flipped a page over.
“Is that English or Greek?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“If it’s the Greek, it might explain your speed.”
Her lips parted.
“Or lack thereof,” he said with a shrug.
“I can read Greek,” she bit off.
“Yes, and it’s a noteworthy achievement.”
She looked down at her hands. They were gripping the book so tightly, her knuckles were turning white. “Thank you,” she ground out.
But he wasn’t done. “Uncommon for a female, wouldn’t you say?”
This time, she decided to ignore him.
“Olivia can’t read in the Greek,” he said conversationally.
“Olivia doesn’t have a father who does nothing but read in the Greek,” she said without looking up. She tried to concentrate on the words at the top of the new page, but they didn’t make much sense, as she hadn’t finished reading the previous one. She hadn’t even started.
She tapped a gloved finger against the book as she pretended to read. She didn’t suppose there was any way she could flip back to the previous page without his noticing. It didn’t matter much anyway, for she doubted she’d manage to get any reading done while he was staring at her in that heavy-lidded way of his. It was deadly, she decided. It made her hot and shivery, and it did this simultaneously and while she was thoroughly irritated with the man.
She was fairly certain he had no interest in seducing her, but he was doing a rather good job of it, regardless.
“A peculiar talent, that.”
Miranda sucked in her lips and looked up at him. “Yes?”
“Reading without moving your eyes.”
She counted to three before responding. “Some of us don’t have to mouth out the words when we read, Turner.”
“Touché, Miranda. I knew there was still some spark left in you.”
Her nails bit into the cushioned seat. One, two, three. Keep counting. Four, five, six. At this rate she was going to have to go to fifty if she wanted to control her temper.
Turner saw her moving her head slightly along some unknown rhythm and grew curious. “What are you doing?”
Eighteen, nineteen— “What?”
“What are you doing?”
Twenty. “You’re growing extremely annoying, Turner.”
“I’m persistent.” He grinned. “I thought you of all people would appreciate the trait. Now, what were you doing? Your head was bobbing along in a most curious fashion.”
“If you must know,” she said cuttingly, “I was counting in my head so that I might control my temper.”
He regarded her for a moment, then said, “One shudders to think what you might have said to me if you hadn’t stopped to count first.”
“I’m losing my patience.”
“No!” he said with mock disbelief.
She picked the book up again, trying to dismiss him.
“Stop torturing that poor book, Miranda. We both know you aren’t reading it.”
“Will you just leave me alone!” she finally exploded.
“What number are you up to?”
“What?”
“What number? You said you were counting so as not to offend my tender sensibilities.”
“I don’t know. Twenty. Thirty. I don’t know. I stopped counting about four insults ago.”
“You made it all the way up to thirty? You’ve been lying to me, Miranda. I don’t think you’ve lost your patience with me at all.”
“Yes…I…have,” she ground out.
“I don’t think so.”
“Aaaargh!” She threw the book at him. It clipped him neatly on the side of his head.
“Ouch!”
“Don’t be a baby.”
“Don’t be a tyrant.”
“Stop goading me!”
“I wasn’t goading you.”
“Oh, please, Turner.”
“Oh, all right,” he said petulantly, rubbing the side of his head. “I was goading you. But I wouldn’t have done it if you weren’t ignoring me.”
“Excuse me, but I rather thought you wanted me to ignore you.”
“Where the devil did you get that idea?”
Miranda’s mouth fell open. “Are you mad? You have avoided me like the plague for at least the last fortnight. You’ve even avoided your mother just to avoid me.”
“Now that’s not true.”
“Tell that to your mother.”
He winced. “Miranda, I would like for us to be friends.”
She shook her head. Were there any crueler words in the English language? “It’s not possible.”
“Why not?”
“You can’t have it both ways,” Miranda continued, using every ounce of her energy to keep her voice from shaking. “You can’t kiss me and then say you wish to be friends. You can’t humiliate me the way you did at the Worthingtons’ and then claim that you like me.”
&nb
sp; “We must forget what happened,” he said softly. “We must put it behind us, if not for the sake of our friendship, then for my family.”
“Can you do that?” Miranda demanded. “Can you truly forget? Because I cannot.”
“Of course you can,” he said, a little too easily.
“I lack your sophistication, Turner,” she said, and then added bitterly, “Or perhaps I lack your shallowness.”
“I’m not shallow, Miranda,” he shot back. “I’m sensible. Lord knows, one of us has to be.”
She wished she had something to say. She wished she had some scathing retort that would cut him off at the knees, render him speechless, leaving him quivering in a gelatinous, messy heap of pathetic rot.
But instead she just had herself, and the horrible, angry tears burning behind her eyes. And she wasn’t even certain she could manage a proper glare, so she looked away, counting the buildings as they passed by her window and wishing that she were anywhere else.
Anyone else.
And that was the worst, because in all her life, even with a best friend who was prettier, richer, and better-connected than she was, Miranda had never wished to be anyone other than who she was.
Turner had, in his life, done things of which he was not proud. He had drunk too much and vomited on a priceless rug. He had gambled with money he did not have. He had once even ridden his horse too hard and with too little care and left the horse lame for a week.
But never had he felt quite so low as he did when he looked at Miranda’s profile, aimed so determinedly toward the window.
So determinedly away from him.
He did not speak for a long while. They passed out of London, through the outskirts where the buildings grew fewer and farther between, and then finally into open, rolling fields.
She didn’t look at him once. He knew. He was watching.
And so finally, since he could not tolerate another hour of this silence, nor could he bring himself to ponder what, exactly, this silence meant, he spoke.
“I do not mean to insult, Miranda,” he said quietly, “but I know when something is a bad idea. And dallying with you is an extremely bad idea.”
She didn’t turn, but he heard her say, “Why?”
He stared at her in disbelief. “What are you thinking, Miranda? Don’t you give a damn for your reputation? If word gets out about us, you’ll be ruined.”
