Glimmer of Hope
Page 21
(You see, dearest, I was a fool, but I missed you enough to have gone wherever you were when my sojourn in Town was over. I wish I’d had the intelligence to have gone even before the two weeks had ended.)
I think of you every day and love you more with each passing hour. I pray you are well and safe and enjoying your visit with your grandfather.
All my love,
Carter
All my love. She would have given anything to have received those words three years earlier. But she had him with her now.
“Carter?”
He looked up from his papers. “Yes, love?”
She indicated the letter in her hands. “You were rather thick.”
He chuckled. “I was, indeed. You enjoyed the letter?”
Miranda nodded.
“I’m glad, because I mean to write you more. I owe you quite a few, as you well know.”
Sweet Carter. “You did send letters. I simply never received them.”
“All the more reason to write them now.” He flashed a bright smile. “I predict I will grow far less stupid with each letter.”
“What will you do when you catch up in your letter writing?” Miranda asked. “Will you stop writing to me?”
Carter pushed back from the desk, stood, and walked to the chair where Miranda sat. He lifted her feet from the footstool and sat on it, resting her feet in his lap.
“I will write you letters for as long as you want me to,” he said. He rubbed her feet, something she had learned to greatly appreciate over the last weeks.
“Will you write to me while you’re in London?” How she hoped he would. She would miss him when he eventually had to make a trip to Town.
“If you’d like.” He looked a little confused, a little surprised. “Won’t that be redundant?”
“Redundant?”
Carter nodded. “What would I write? ‘Dear Miranda, As you know, Almack’s was a terrible bore tonight and the patronesses were as tedious as ever.’” He gave her an amused look. “I would have to begin every letter that way. ‘As you know . . .’”
His meaning became instantly clear. “I’ll be there with you.”
“Of course you will.”
They hadn’t discussed London in great detail since her heart episode. She had assumed he would, after assuring himself she was recovering, make his trip to Town alone while she remained behind, regaining her strength. “I may not be strong enough to go for quite some time.”
He shrugged as though it didn’t matter in the least. “We’ll go when you’re ready. I’m in no great hurry.”
“But the things you have to do there are so important.”
He rested his arms on her legs. “I know we decided not to dwell on the past, darling, but I need to for just a minute. I broke promises to you, important, crucial promises. And I know full well that the trust you once had in me will take time to regain. So I will tell you this as often as you need me to: I love you, Miranda Harford, deeply and completely. I am more grateful than I can possibly say that you are in my life again. And there is nothing in all this world that is as important to me as you are. Nothing. Not trips to London. Not Parliament. Not the fickle opinions of society. Nothing. I only hope that, given time, I can provide you with enough evidences of that for you to trust it is true.”
Their relationship would indeed take time to fully mend. Trust no longer came easily to either of them. But Miranda felt safe and content in his care in a way she never had before. She had found during the years she’d spent without him an inner strength she’d not known before. And in the weeks since his return, she’d discovered in him a man of dependability and goodness.
Life was far from perfect, but there was hope.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“MIRANDA. WE’RE HERE, LOVE.”
Carter’s gentle voice woke her from a surprisingly deep sleep. She had anticipated an uncomfortable journey and was grateful to have been wrong.
She opened her eyes. A London street, dim with approaching nightfall, lay just beyond the windows of the Devereaux traveling carriage. They pulled to a stop at the front steps of what must have been Devereaux House—as fine and elegant a home as any lady could have hoped for.
“Cook should be here already.” Carter leaned closer to her and looked out the window as well. “Hannah arrived this morning, I am sure.”
Miranda took a deep breath. She’d dreamed of coming to London with Carter for years, and now that she had arrived, it still felt like a dream.
“There is no need to worry, my love,” Carter whispered then kissed her tenderly on the cheek. “Mother is as far from us as possible without actually living in the slums. The household is not only aware of our desire for a quiet life but is actually grateful for the change. You, and you alone, will set our schedule. And MacPherson has recommended a physician in Town should you need one.”
Miranda turned her face to look up at him. “I was not worried, Carter. I am just so happy to be here. It hardly seems real.”
“Do you know? I feel precisely the same way.”
Carter kissed her again, a quick peck on the lips. She very nearly giggled—she felt like a newlywed all over again. But considering how soon after their marriage they had separated, Miranda didn’t believe they had ever progressed past that stage in the first place.
The staff did seem genuinely happy to meet her and weren’t the least shocked when Carter announced they would not be going out that evening as Miranda knew most couples in society would have. In fact, just as Carter had predicted, they seemed quite pleased with the idea.
After a quiet dinner, they retired, sitting in front of the fire on a settee in Miranda’s bedchamber. She had grown quite fond of settees.
“You have missed a great many weeks of the session,” Miranda said some time after they’d settled in and covered other topics less pressing on her mind. “The party leaders must not have been pleased.”
“I found, actually, they didn’t care one whit,” Carter replied. “There were plenty of other aspiring politicians to take my place.”
“Oh, Carter.”
“Now, none of that.” Carter pulled her closer to him, his arm around her shoulder. “I understood the cost of my decision. I chose what was best for me.”
“I just don’t want you to regret it. You will have your career far longer than you will have me.”
“First of all, my love, I have it on the best of authority that you might very well surprise us and live another thirty years.” Carter pulled her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers. “Second of all, I do not regret my decision to stay in Dorset. Given the opportunity, I would do it again.”
“But you have given up so much.”
“I realized something at Clifton Manor while waiting for you to wake up.”
Miranda sat up a little straighter so she could watch him and hear him better. She had to know, to be sure, he wouldn’t look back on their time together and rue what he’d lost.
“I thought about all of the things I wanted in my life, the things that were most important to me. You, of course.” He leaned forward and kissed her. “My career was on the list too,” he said after a moment. “I felt guilty about that, at first. I wondered if there was something wrong with me for feeling that way when my wife was so ill.”
“Oh, Carter.” He was far too hard on himself.
“Do you know I love the way you say that?” Carter broke from the topic and grinned at her.
Miranda felt her color heighten and smiled back.
“So I thought about why it was important to me,” Carter resumed his tale. “Why I picked politics in the first place.”
“And what did you decide?” Miranda asked when Carter stopped his explanation to kiss the hand he hadn’t yet lavished his attention on.
“Because I wanted to make a difference in the world.” Carter reached up to stroke her hair. It was the gesture he’d offered most often during her convalescence, the one she’d found the most comfo
rting. “I wanted to do some good.”
“You have done a great deal of good.”
She looked up and saw him smiling down at her.
“You told me that before,” Carter said. “Do you remember? When I first came to Clifton Manor, you told me you had followed my career and that I had done a lot of good.”
“It is the truth.”
“That’s what I realized, my dear.” Carter held her face lovingly in his hand. “I don’t have to be prime minister or a cabinet member to do what I have always wanted to do. I have made a difference simply as myself.”
“Then you’ll have no regrets?” Miranda felt a twinge of doubt. “You won’t ever wish you could have risen further in your career?”
Carter pulled her close to him once more so her head leaned against his chest, his arms wrapped around her. “To be perfectly honest, there will probably be days when I will wish I had more influence than I do, days when I might wonder what it would have been like to be prime minister. But I don’t need that. I need you. Having your love and loving you in return will ease any regrets I might momentarily entertain.”
“And you will be happy?”
“Without you, Miranda, nothing I accomplished will make me happy. That will still be true years from now—and it will be years, Miranda,” he said with authority. “I will still love you when you are old and gray and complaining of rheumatism.”
“I do love you, Carter.” Miranda kissed him softly.
“Then I can face whatever comes our way. I will love you, my dearest Miranda, all your life. I will love you after you’ve gone on. And I will love you forever after.”
About the Author
SARAH M. EDEN READ HER first Jane Austen novel in elementary school and has been an Austen addict ever since. Fascinated by the English Regency era, Eden became a regular in that section of the reference department at her local library, where she painstakingly researched this extraordinary chapter in history. Eden is an award-winning author of short stories and was a Whitney Award finalist for her novels Seeking Persephone and Courting Miss Lancaster. Visit her at www.sarahmeden.com.
Other books by Sarah M. Eden
Courting Miss Lancaster
The Kiss of a Stranger
Seeking Persephone
Friends and Foes
An Unlikely Match
Drops of Gold
Table of Contents
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
About the Author
Other books by Sarah M. Eden