But with Adrian, she just couldn’t bear any uncertainty.
She had wanted to see what he would do or say.
Well, she had seen, hadn’t she?
Now she didn’t know what to say or do to make the situation better.
“You need to eat,” he said.
She sat in the bed, all too aware of him, his strong yet elegant body moving behind her. The scent of his cologne wafted down to her as he fluffed the pillows and made a backrest for her.
Beneath the cologne, she detected a strong scent of brandy. So, he’d been drinking, heavily, again.
Because of her.
The door clicked softly closed as the maid left them.
Full of unease and regret, she watched him pour her a cup of tea and add two lumps of sugar. She accepted it with hoarsely whispered thanks. And then he watched her while she sipped it.
The sun continued to brighten the chamber, making the blue lights in his still slightly damp black hair glisten. He held a teacup himself but did not drink. His gaze was full of tenderness. Openness.
“We fell in love very quickly,” he said.
She tipped her cup and drank deeper, attempting to hide. It was one thing to discuss love in the heat of the moment. It was an entirely different thing to speak of it so cold bloodily.
Especially after a night like the one just past.
She had faced her deepest fears in loving a nobleman and also had her own failings lain open where she couldn’t deny them. She could hate a man for that. Yet, there was no denying that she loved Adrian.
Madly.
Deeply.
“I did not expect to ever fall in love like this,” he continued.
“Like this?” she asked, her throat still stinging from the long gulp of slightly-too-hot tea, her voice still shaky with her conflicting emotions.
He made a gesture with his palm up. “So passionately, so mindlessly.” He smiled, just a little. “So recklessly.”
Recklessly.
Memories of herself, crying and railing her anger and fear at him the night before played with in her mind, vivid and disturbing. Her heart pounded jarringly in response.
Last night. God. No wonder he had sought solace in brandy.
With a trembling hand, she lowered her cup. “We do bring out a reckless side in each other.”
“We do indeed.” He laughed softly and reached out to caress her hand with his fingertips. “A sweet, yet bitter, recklessness. I never expected love would be so piquant.” He paused again. “At least not for me.”
She had known that love could be this way. But she had thought herself too cold, incapable of loving any man. She had thought that Winterton had ruined her in that way. But her tongue had not been oiled by strong drink, as Adrian’s so obviously had been, and she found it hard to speak deeply about such a topic.
Or did it have something to do with him being older, having fathered sons and lost a wife? Maybe he was more comfortable with his emotions because he had not been able to run and hide from them as she had.
The thought made her reconsider herself in comparison with Adrian, but before she could come to any deeper conclusions, he began speaking again.
“I married Jane knowing she was only my friend. But I did expect us to learn to love each other.” He paused for a moment, his smile becoming more self-mocking. “A rational, sane love.”
Something in that self-recriminating glance made her put her teacup down on the tray. She immediately leaned closer to him and reached to touch his hand.
He didn’t seem to notice, his eyes now distant.
“Despite all my expectations, our early marriage was…” He paused to take a deep breath. “Jane and I remained friends but that bond became progressively strained. She found the marriage bed… difficult.” A flash of pain crossed his face. “She said it was too awkward to bed with a friend. Once she had given me my two sons, she changed the lock on her bedchamber door and she bade me to find my pleasures where I would.” His look turned grim, hard. “Elsewhere.”
“Oh Adrian!” The lump forming in her throat made her voice a little hoarse and she squeezed his hand more firmly. Love and sympathy for him filled her and made tears prick at her eyes.
She could feel his pain, his rejection as clearly as though they were her own.
Weakness?
Maybe.
She couldn’t help it. She was too attuned to his every mood.
“Jane and I failed to make a connection as lovers because we had been friends too long.” He paused for a moment. “I don’t want you and me to make the opposite mistake. You don’t trust me because we have fallen in love so quickly. We became lovers before we knew each other as friends. I don’t want to fail with you as I did with my wife.”
She studied his darkly handsome, if rather brooding visage, and her eyes caressed his elegant, leanly muscled body, displayed to such perfection in his well-tailored clothes. Painful longing swept through her. Longing to feel his touch, to taste his kiss, to hear his soft, somewhat poetic words in her ears…
How could the late Lady Danvers have possibly found the self-restraint to have barred this man gorgeous, tender, maddening man from her bed?
Miranda was consumed by a wave of indignant anger for her lover.
She had never been fond of Lady Danvers, seeing her as a feckless girl who had driven Carrville to his wits end with worry and angst too often. Now Miranda saw her as increasingly too self-consumed to care about the people around her.
Lady Danvers had died, due to careless actions and left her father suffering under a crippling weight of guilt and grief.
Previous to becoming intimate with Adrian, Miranda had always believed him to be too cold and arrogant to have felt much over his wife’s death. Now she saw that Lady Danvers had left Adrian just as wounded and self-blaming as Carrville had been. What a pity that Jane Sutherland’s tragic, violent demise had put a wedge between the two men. They might have offered each other comfort. That comfort might have prevented Carrville’s unexpected death.
Could Miranda herself have been able to do something to bring the estranged men together?
She wouldn’t have dared overstep her bounds.
But had she put her fear of societal standards above her fondness for Carrville? What was a mistress’ duty to a protector’s emotional well-being?
What did one friend owe another?
A wave of regret went twisting through her stomach.
Why did she recriminate herself like this?
The past was done. Nothing could change it. All that remained was the here and now. She considered Adrian’s troubled expression.
“What makes you think the failure is yours?” she said.
“I failed to make her trust me as a lover. I failed to connect with her in that way. I cannot deny the role that failure had in ultimately leading to her death.” He took her hand into both of his.
How warm and safe it made her feel to be held by him like that. Miranda’s heart seemed to expand. Previously, she would never have dared to speak disrespectfully to a man of his own deceased wife. Especially not a nobleman and one who was paying her bills. But she couldn’t hold back. “Oh Adrian, you weren’t to blame. She was ever attracted to blackguards. Carrville himself often worried about her taste in lovers.”
She held her breath, with her heart pounding in her ears. She loved him so much. She felt his pain as though it were her own. She wanted to heal all his hurts. That desire to offer him solace and to help him gain new perspective on old wounds made her bold and able to voice truths she never could in the past.
What would his reaction be to this bit of truth regarding Jane Sutherland and her self-centered fecklessness? He gave a lengthy sigh as he rubbed the back of his neck. “If I had been able to give her what she needed, she would never have…” He caught himself, as though voicing the actual words were too painful. “She would never have gone outside our marriage.”
“Perhaps, she selected you, knowing
that Carrville would never approve of her lover but also knowing that you would eventually give her the freedom she needed?”
He froze and then shot her a fierce look. Blue fire reflected by the increasing blaze of sunlight in the chamber. “God, I should not like to think Jane was capable of that type of scheming.”
He assumed the arrogant expression she knew well.
The warmth that Miranda had been feeling ebbed a bit. “Why, because she was noble born?”
His hand went cold against hers.
Or had she only imagined that?
Now he looked hard, closed off from her.
Ah! She had suspected as much. Miranda’s own heart hardened as she slipped instinctively into a self-protective mode. “Or was it because she was plain?”
“I don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Don’t insult my intelligence.” Anger pounded into her, making it more difficult to collect her thoughts, to put thoughts into words. “I know you previously despised me and all courtesans. It is no secret. Just as it was no secret that you have previously selected plain women for your lovers. Everyone says so.”
He turned away from her, partly. But he did not get up from the bed. Instead, he took the tray from the bedside table and put it in front of her.
The scent of cold ham and soft French cheeses wafted up to her, making her a little nauseated.
“You should eat,” he said tersely.
She couldn’t imagine taking even a bite and she sought escape again in her teacup, drinking deeply.
He remained sitting there, so close to her yet now so distant. He drummed his fingers on his thigh. “I didn’t consider Jane plain. At least, she wasn’t when she was laughing and smiling. Her eyes and the curve of her mouth were beautiful then. And she was always so full of mirth.”
Aye, Jane Sutherland was always full of mirth. Not much else.
The thought came unbidden, bitter as acid. Miranda took another deep drink of the sweetened tea. But she couldn’t wash down the sudden rancor. “No one can deny that her sister is as plain as an unvarnished wooden plank.”
The caustically spoken words stunned her when she heard them. Had she really said that aloud? Maybe she had only thought it.
The widening of his eyes told her that yes, she had indeed spoken.
God. She couldn’t seem to stop doing these thoughtless… and cruel?—yes, cruel things.
Why?
Because she had envied Dorothy Chadwick, Adrian’s sister-in-law, her long-term and clandestine sexual liaison with Adrian.
Miranda couldn’t call it an affaire, even in her own mind. That was too painful.
“Christ, Miranda.” Adrian’s voice rang with shock.
Miranda pushed the tray away and arose from the bed. She walked calmly to her wardrobe. But inside, she was cringing at her own wickedness.
But she hated Dorothy Chadwick with a jealousy that bitter and green as bile. Did she like that side of herself?
No, not particularly.
Yet, she couldn’t help it.
She yanked the wardrobe door open and whipped her hand across the dresses hanging there. She laid her hand on one dove gray wool one, something left over from the weeks after Carrville’s death. She pulled it from the rack and then faced him, feeling her cheeks burning with the emotions snapping within her.
“Will this one do, my lord?”
He scanned the garment with its wide black ribbon under the bodice. A wry smile twisted his sensual mouth. “I think you could select something a little more…”
“A little fancier? A little more elegant?”
“Yes.”
“So, you want your ladybird to be elegant but not too…” She paused for effect, trying to remember his exact words. “Not too sparkly.”
“The gray would make you look ill. I don’t expect you to wear unflattering colors and plain garments. I just ask that you not—.”
“You don’t want me to look like a night bird.”
“I wouldn’t have put it like it, Miranda.”
“No, you might not have. But it is what you mean.” She put the gray dress back on the rack and pulled out a dark blue silk day dress with a modest neckline adorned with a broad ivory-colored lace collar and fastened with pearl buttons.
Her bed creaked as he left it and his boots sounded on her bare floors as he approached the wardrobe.
“It’s going to rain and the wind is already brisk.” He took the dress from her. “That silk won’t be warm enough.”
She watched him replace the blue dress to the wardrobe. She ought to have been rankled at his just taking control like that. Especially given their conflict last night. But oddly enough, it made her feel warm inside.
He ran his hand over the tops of the garments hanging there then stopped and took out a dress made of soft, fine plum colored wool of much the same style as the blue.
He laid the garment over her bed and then he returned to her, bending to retrieve her wooden hairbrush from the window ledge. He examined it for a moment and then he looked up at her with a questioning look.
“I sold my silver one.”
A frown flitted across his face. Then he motioned for her. “Come here.”
His resolute yet tender tone put more warmth into her belly.
“Sally should be here soon,” she said, realizing how mussed she looked.
He shook his head. “I have sent her on her way. I will care for you today.”
He walked closer to her then moved behind her and lifted her tangled hair off her shoulders.
With no experience of men and hairbrushes, she braced herself for abrupt too-hard strokes and the resultant burn on her scalp.
He gathered the mass of her hair, holding as though his hand were a ribbon and he began working the brush on the bottom and working his way up with firm yet gentle strokes. “Dorothy has an understated prettiness.”
She seethed at his words.
Calmly, he continued to brush her hair, making surprisingly quick progress. “People don’t notice it because of her brisk, practical manner. She rarely smiles.”
“Oh, but she smiled for you?” Only with effort did Miranda keep a civil tone. Why must he spoil this moment with talk of Dorothy.
He took a few more strokes then smoothed his hands over her hair, moving slower and slower as he did.
The sensual motion reignited her arousal, a betrayal by her body that sent her ire soaring. She gritted her teeth and crossed her arms over her chest. “I will not share you,” she said, tersely, even as her jaw began to ache.
“So, you will be a demanding mistress?”
She whirled and faced him. “A most demanding mistress.” She tapped her foot. “Especially when it comes to this.”
He caressed a hand down the length of her hair. “Miranda,” he said, tenderly.
Her heart hammered and a younger, girlish, all-too-hopeful part of herself seemed to leap to the fore. “End it. Put her aside.”
He laughed, softly and he continued caressing her hair. “My tigress.”
His sensual laugh only increased her arousal. But his attitude still rankled. Ire consumed her. She unfolded her arms, rushed at him and grasped the edges of his waistcoat.
She glared up at him. “I mean it, my lord. Put her aside. Do it today.”
She heard the stridency in her voice, aware of how much it revealed of her emotions. She couldn’t help it. She took a deep breath and struggled for control. “I will not share.”
His face contorted with tenderness. “You must learn to trust me, my love.” He leaned down and placed a kiss upon her hairline.
She wanted to hold on to her anger. It was the only thing that seemed safe in this moment. But at the touch of his lips, calmness washed over her.
“I put her aside, already.”
“When?” she demanded.
“Before you and I became lovers.”
She frowned. “But how?”
“She was there, that morning…”
<
br /> “Oh.”
She felt foolish for having allowed her temper to get away with her. She really needed only to ask him. But she seemed to have a way of losing her control when around him.
He gathered her into his arms. His words were still swirling around her mind as he pressed her against his tall, leanly muscled body.
“You’re everything I want. The only woman I want.”
Happiness flooded her.
The feeling was so intense that she released it in a soft laugh.
The sound was girlish, joyful.
She stood on her tiptoes and smiled up into his face. That gorgeous, yet perfectly masculine, face. She lost herself in his blazing blue gaze.
He put his mouth to hers. Firmly. Gently.
His erection throbbed against her belly.
She had not re-buttoned her nightdress since he’d unfastened in the early hours.
The memory of his hand slipping underneath the heavy flannel and caressing her breasts came to mind. Her nipples hardened in reaction and she felt a flush of pleasure suffuse her. Arousal tingled in her belly.
Dorothy Chadwick indeed!
Miranda wanted his attention centered solely on her. And she knew exactly how to do that.
She pulled her mouth away from his then moved away from his body.
On a low growl, he caught her by the waist.
She laughed softly, a purposefully sensual womanly sound. Then she pulled away again, walked a few paces then reached for the hem of her nightdress. She drew it slowly up and over her head. She tossed it to the bed then stood in the sunlight, displaying herself without a trace of shame.
His eyes darkened and he seemed to drink her image in.
She cupped her breasts, lifting them, becoming aroused by both her own touch and his eyes on her. Her nipples hardened, aching for stimulation. She rubbed her palms over them.
He had seemed frozen and now with a low groan, he came to her, his hand instantly cupping her, caressing her nipple.
His hand on her felt so natural, so filling her with delight that it seemed he was meant to be her lover.
She’d been waiting her whole life for his touch.
His love.
Excitement built within her and she began to tremble. She loved him so much that it hurt.
A Most Demanding Mistress (Fashionably Impure Book 2) Page 7
