She walked slowly, almost unseeingly back up the stairs to her bedchamber, Lord Devereaux’s words echoing in her spinning thoughts. She may not have had the experience in society that her mother-in-law had, but she was not the disaster her father-in-law portrayed her as. Carter knew that. Surely he had more confidence in her than his father did.
“And he promised,” she whispered to herself in the silence of her room. “Carter promised, and he knows how much this means to me. He won’t go back on his word.”
She convinced herself of that somewhere in the early hours of morning and even managed to sleep a little. She dressed in her traveling clothes after taking a breakfast tray in her room, and the footman came for her bags and carried them down.
Her heart settled more with each passing minute. Carter hadn’t broken his word. They were going on their journey together. He had the confidence in her that his father lacked.
All would be well.
With her bonnet firmly tied and her heavier boots laced snugly on her feet, she met her abigail at the door. Miranda’s coat was on and buttoned against the breeze outside, and she couldn’t keep her smile entirely tucked away.
She glanced out the open door. The footman who had only a few moments earlier carried her luggage down to the waiting carriage was carrying it back inside. A lump of apprehension started in her throat.
Carter stepped into the entryway.
Miranda didn’t need to ask her question out loud. She looked from him to her luggage, now sitting beside her in the entryway, and back again.
“It would be best for you to stay here, Miranda,” he said.
She stood like a prisoner at a mark, knowing she was about to be dealt a painful blow but unable to so much as speak for herself. She simply looked at him, silently hoping he didn’t mean what she feared he did.
“The pace in London will be frantic,” Carter continued. “There is a great deal that has to be accomplished. It wouldn’t be the holiday we thought it would be.”
“I don’t expect you to spend every minute of every day with me, darling,” she insisted. “I know you’ll be busy. I’ll be grateful just to have you near, to see you in the evenings, to have breakfast with you before you leave for the day.”
“I underestimated how much time I will need to spend away from home and away from you.”
That wasn’t the reasoning she’d overheard the night before. “And that is the only reason you’re leaving me behind?” she asked. “Because you will be so busy?”
As much as it would hurt to hear him say he worried about her lack of experience in society and the mistakes she might make, she knew that a half-truth would hurt more. Carter had, as far as she knew, never lied to her before. She held her breath, waiting for his answer.
“I wouldn’t want you to be lonely in London,” Carter said. “I shouldn’t be so busy next time.”
He didn’t quite meet her eyes as he said it. The footman walked past, carrying her luggage back up the stairs to her room. Carter didn’t change his mind, and he never admitted to the real reason he left her behind.
Her heart never fully recovered. She didn’t entirely stop loving him, but that moment and so many others that followed taught her a painful lesson: she simply couldn’t trust him.
Chapter Six
THE DUKE AND DUCHESS OF Hartley, with their small children, and Lord and Lady Percival Farr had been at Clifton Manor for three days. The staff had performed their duties flawlessly, and Miranda was doing admirably as hostess. Carter doubted anyone but himself had noticed Mother’s occasional corrections and reminders.
The tentative peace he and Miranda had found in those first days was holding. They didn’t speak much, and when they did, their conversations were unexceptional and short. As near as Carter could tell, Miranda didn’t intend to make a scene in front of the guests. And though he knew she didn’t feel comfortable in his or the guests’ company, he was almost certain she wasn’t going to run off again.
For the first time since realizing Miranda was at Clifton Manor, Carter began to relax.
He knew Miranda had no experience with being a society hostess, having been raised away from the ton—that aspect of their marriage had concerned him in the beginning. Mother would have been a good mentor for Miranda, walking her through the first few soirées and political dinners until she found her footing. It would have been difficult, especially for someone as shy as Miranda had always been, but she would have learned. And he would have helped.
But Miranda left before they’d hosted a single gathering. They hadn’t even been married six months.
Carter walked past the door to the book room and happened to glance inside. Hartley sat in one of the leather wingback chairs, a book open in his hand. He looked up and gave a quick nod of acknowledgement.
“Is there anything you need?” he asked, stepping inside.
Hartley lowered his book. “I’ve found a comfortable chair, a warm fire, and a quiet room. I haven’t been this content in some time.”
“Good.” Yes, the house party was proving a success.
Hartley glanced past Carter then met his eye once more. In a lowered voice, he said, “Adèle and I were surprised to see Lady Devereaux here. I’ve known you nearly three years and have never once met the lady.”
“Miranda prefers the country,” Carter said.
Hartley set his book on the nearby end table. “You’ve worn that explanation to shreds over the past three years, my friend.”
Carter didn’t ever talk about his problems with Miranda. Not with anyone. Keeping up appearances was essential to surviving in society. It was more than that though. Talking about Miranda meant thinking about her. Remembering what they’d once been to each other, the dreams he’d once had for their future together, and it was too painful and too maddening to bring up.
Hartley’s comment made Carter realize even more intensely that he’d been wound tighter than a pocket watch the past days with no way to release the tension. There hadn’t been time for a bruising ride, and Gentleman Jackson’s boxing saloon was all the way in London, too far for working out his frustrations with a bout of fisticuffs. He couldn’t talk to Mother of his distress, and Father had always listened, but he had passed on over a year earlier, leaving Carter without a confidant. He’d felt for some time that he had nowhere to turn.
“Shut the door, Carter,” Hartley instructed. “It’s time you spilled your budget.”
He didn’t need to be invited twice. If he didn’t talk to someone, he was likely to explode.
With the room cut off from the ears of any passersby and only the two of them inside, Carter dropped down into the chair across from his friend’s. “I didn’t know Miranda was here,” he confessed.
Hartley looked a little surprised but didn’t say anything.
“She has been living with her grandfather in Devon, though it seems she has come here before or is on an extended visit. I haven’t determined which.” In all honesty, he hadn’t put any effort into sorting it out.
“How long has it been since you last saw her?” Hartley asked.
He didn’t even have to think. “Three years and two months.”
Surprise crossed Hartley’s face. “You haven’t seen her at all? Not even once?”
Carter shook his head.
“But you knew where she was?”
“Of course I did.” Carter stood again and crossed to the mantel. “If Adèle had gone missing, wouldn’t you have made every effort to discover where she was?”
“I would scour this entire earth if I had to.”
Carter looked down into the crackling flames. “Yes, well. I tracked her to Devon, and she told me not to come.”
Speaking the words out loud gave them such finality. He could still see in his mind with perfect clarity the letter he’d received from Father’s man-of-business: Lady Gibbons has sent word, through Mr. Benton’s estate manager, that she is in receipt of your letter of inquiry and does not wish to see you. Sh
e further insists that she does not believe these feelings will change and advises you to leave her to enjoy the life she prefers.
The life she prefers. A life without me.
“She told you not to come,” Hartley repeated Carter’s words. “And you . . . didn’t?”
Carter pushed out a tense breath. “I wrote to her dozens of times after getting her request that I take myself off. My father was indulgent of me, never said a word about having to frank so many letters. And when I finally received an answer telling me she’d had enough, he didn’t say, ‘I told you so’ or call me foolish.” Carter remembered that moment well: the pain, the heartache. “He set a hand on my shoulder and told me how sorry he was. After a day or two, he gave me a few tasks to oversee, some party business.”
“A distraction,” Hartley surmised.
“Indeed. He saved my sanity.” Father had been beyond understanding, the greatest support Carter could have imagined.
“All this time I’ve known you,” Hartley said, “you’ve never once told me how things really sat between the two of you. I, obviously, knew yours wasn’t a love match by any means, but I didn’t realize the animosity there.”
Not a love match. The declaration pierced like a sword. Theirs had been a love match once upon a time. Father had warned him that love was not enough for a successful marriage, that it required more than just that. Until Miranda’s defection, he’d thought his father was wrong.
“I was trying to make the best of a difficult situation,” Carter said. “There was nothing I could do if my wife inexplicably decided to hate me. But I didn’t have to advertise that to the entire world.”
“I’m not ‘the entire world.’”
Carter paced away from the fireplace. He didn’t quite know how to explain his reasons for hiding the difficulties between Miranda and him. He wasn’t even sure what those reasons were.
“Plenty of men, quite a few I can think of off the top of my head, in fact, would have wasted no time decrying the ill turn their wives had paid them,” Hartley said. “Why didn’t you?”
Carter stood with his back against the wall, looking out over the book room but not really seeing any of it. “I don’t know,” he muttered.
“There has to be a reason,” Hartley insisted. “Were you ashamed?”
He answered with another shrug. Ashamed? That wasn’t it.
“Embarrassed?”
“Perhaps a little.” There was something a bit humbling about being run out on.
“Do you mind if I propose a theory?” Hartley asked.
Carter’s gaze narrowed a touch. He wasn’t sure he wanted his personal life laid out for scrutiny. But he’d started the conversation. It seemed a little late for objections.
Hartley apparently took his silence as agreement. “I would wager that, at least at first, you still cared for her too much to denounce her in front of everyone.”
There was a ring of truth to that. Society would have wasted no time slaughtering Miranda’s reputation for turning her nose up at a husband they didn’t see as her equal.
“And,” Hartley continued, “as time passed, you grew a little angry and your pride took a beating. So you kept up the amicable separation ruse for the sake of your dignity.”
And more than a mere ring of truth to that.
“What do you intend to do now?” Hartley asked. “Have you talked to her about any of this?”
Carter allowed a single, humorless laugh at the ridiculousness of the question. “Anytime we have come remotely close to discussing personal things, we’ve only ended up fighting or back to the tense silence we had the first few days I was here.”
Hartley gave him a sympathetic look. “That does make talking rather difficult. And at the end of the house party, do you simply pack up your bags and go? Pretend the two of you never crossed paths again?”
“I have no idea.” Carter rubbed his hand over his weary face. “We are managing to get along relatively well but only because we don’t talk about anything. Silence is the foundation of our current interaction.”
“A shaky foundation, that.” Hartley’s eyes wandered to the fire, his expression one of pondering. “It seems you’d do better to build something more closely resembling trust.”
“How can I trust someone I can tell is still lying to me?”
Hartley’s gaze returned to him. “Lying? Still?”
Miranda had said so many times that she loved him and was happy. Those two declarations had to have been lies for her to leave the way she had. And though he couldn’t put his finger on just what, he could tell she was hiding something from him again.
“I don’t know.” He pushed away from the wall. “Maybe it’s just that she’s so changed.”
“Changed in what way?”
“She’s . . .” In what way? “Miranda used to wear her heart on her sleeve. She was full of life and vigor. Now she hides behind this aura of calm that feels . . . It feels like a lie. There is something else going on with her that I can’t put my finger on.”
“Maybe the lady is uncomfortable with your current situation and is trying to hide that.”
“It seems like more than that.” Carter was frustrated and confused. “I simply can’t trust her. Not with our past. Not when she’s so distant.”
Hartley nodded slowly. “That could make a reconciliation tricky.”
“There won’t be a reconciliation,” Carter said.
“Why not?”
Why not? Because I don’t want one. Because I can’t go through that again.
“There just won’t be.” And he would leave it at that. He made his way toward the book room door. “I’ll see Adèle and you at dinner tonight, then?”
“And I’ll see Lady Devereaux and you,” Hartley answered.
Carter gave him a pointed look. “Don’t start.”
Hartley held up his hands in a show of mock surrender.
Carter could almost smile at that. “And, Hartley, what I told you—”
“Won’t go beyond this room,” Hartley assured him.
“Thank you.”
Hartley gave a firm nod and took up his book again.
Spilling his troubles hadn’t made them go away. Carter wasn’t even sure it had helped. But at least the words weren’t still simmering inside. He’d pushed them out, and now he could face his problems again.
Chapter Seven
“THERE IS TO BE A picnic in the conservatory this afternoon, Miranda.” Mother gently reproved Miranda behind the closed doors of the sitting room. Carter pretended to be absorbed in a book, though he couldn’t have said which one he held. Mother and Miranda’s “disagreement” had been ongoing for the better part of a quarter hour. “This was planned several days ago. You agreed to the schedule.”
“I did not agree to the timing,” Miranda insisted in her level, quiet voice. “I asked that the picnic be held at nuncheon as opposed to tea.”
“At this time of year, the weather prevents most activities. It is best to postpone those few that remain possible until later in the day, Miranda. Otherwise, the day will drag for your guests.”
“I would think breaking the monotony of the day would be welcome at any hour,” Miranda countered.
“As hostess, it falls to you to see that all things are done properly.”
Carter was grateful Mother made her verbal corrections in private. He’d already confessed to Hartley more of the dysfunctional nature of his marriage than he’d planned to. He didn’t want the rest of the guests to realize how strained the situation truly was.
“A picnic held during nuncheon would be improper?” Miranda asked.
Carter looked up from his book at the hint of defiance he thought he caught in Miranda’s tone. Mother must have heard it as well—her eyebrows arched in a look of disapproval most of the ton could have identified. Carter enjoyed hearing it despite himself. Miranda used to have more backbone.
“Far be it from me, Miranda, to overstep myself.” Mother laid her hand
over her heart, looking hurt by Miranda’s tone. “I know I am but a guest in this home.”
“Of course you are not—”
“For the sake of my son and the family name, I am simply attempting to guide you through what must be an overwhelming situation,” Mother continued. “I am not one to run from my responsibilities.”
That remark was far too pointed to be overlooked. Mother’s obvious reference to Miranda’s flight three years earlier could only complicate an already tense situation. This was exactly the reason the past was being kept tucked away.
“Miranda.” Carter rose and crossed the room to where the two women were seated opposite one another. “Why is it that you feel the picnic ought to be held at nuncheon? Have you a pressing appointment?”
She didn’t look up at him but shook her head no.
There had to be a reason for her insistence, but she offered no explanation.
“Could you at least tell us why it is so important for the picnic to be held earlier in the day?” Carter tried another approach. She wasn’t being terribly cooperative. He meant to maintain the peace one way or another.
Miranda rose rather abruptly to her feet, her color a little high but otherwise appearing calm and collected. “I am hostess here, am I not, Carter?” she asked.
“Of course you are, Miranda.” Technically, anyway. Mother was the one actually holding everything together.
“Then shouldn’t I be permitted to dictate the schedule?” Still a mild, even voice.
“All of this is simply a fit of pique?” Mother asked, her tone revealing her exasperation.
“I didn’t say that,” Miranda countered, crossing toward the tall, diamond-paned window. Light flurries fluttered just beyond the glass, though Carter doubted Miranda was actually watching the weather.
Carter pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers, telling himself to be patient. He crossed to where Miranda stood. “If Mother says the picnic ought to be at teatime, then that is when it ought to be. Mother is right about these things.”
She kept her gaze on the window. “Is it so impossible that I could be right?” Miranda asked in a tight voice.
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