She was relieved not to have to face Jason again today, Miranda told herself now. She was very relieved not to have to see his dark face scowling at her like a villainous Goth out of Titus Andronicus. She had no desire to be threatened, bullied, or-or-or kissed in that most improper—and exciting—fashion.
She had absolutely not looked forward to their next encounter. She had absolutely not looked forward to Jason carrying out his highly ungentlemanly threat of making her his mistress, or of finally experiencing once again all the thrilling sensations she remembered from—
“Argh!” Miranda rolled over in the bed and, burying her over-warm face in the pillow, gave a small, muffled scream of annoyance.
She was an idiot. No longer able to endure the crazed thoughts racing through her mind, she climbed out of the high bed and pulled on the wrapper Madame Beaumont had delivered sometime during the day along with a beautifully made nightgown. Though Miranda had a sneaking suspicion the luxuriousness of the soft material was decadent and possibly indecent, she was unable to stop herself from enjoying the sensual slide of silk against her skin.
Recollecting the books she had seen in the sitting room outside the bedchamber, she decided to retrieve one. Perhaps reading would soothe her mind sufficiently to permit her to fall asleep.
She lit one of the candles at her bedside and carried it out into the sitting room. The weak flame did little to illuminate the room, but she remembered the shelf on the far wall, and accordingly, made her way toward it.
She was halfway there when, unexpectedly, Jason’s voice spoke out of the darkness.
“Good evening, Miss Thornwood.”
She shrieked and dropped the candle. Fortunately, the flame extinguished as it hit the carpet. Her heart pounding a rapid tattoo, she whirled around in the darkness, trying to find the source of Jason’s voice.
What was he doing here? Did he intend, as she had most adamantly not wished for, to claim her tonight?
A match flared briefly and then a lamp was lit. Though the light barely pierced the darkness, she could now see Jason, standing near the windows and gazing out toward the park. He looked dark and saturnine, and in one powerful hand he cradled a glass of something amber. His face had appeared freshly shaven that morning, but already the shadow of a beard darkened the line of his jaw, and he had loosened his cravat around his neck.
He looked tired. She resisted a sudden and clearly insane urge to go to him.
“Mr. Blakewell,” said Miranda, annoyed at herself for the breathlessness of her voice. She ought to retrieve the fallen candle from beneath the sofa, but she did not want to get on her knees before Jason. “I beg your pardon. I couldn’t sleep, and I thought I might look for a book to read.”
“By all means,” said Jason politely, gesturing with his free hand toward the bookcase.
Miranda nodded hastily and scanned the shelves, straining to see the titles stamped on the spines of each book in the dim light. Despite the faint glow from the lamp Jason had lit, the room was dark, but she suspected that even if a thousand suns lit the place, she still would not have been able to read a single letter, so intense was her awareness of him. Would he turn back to her and take her in his arms, as he had done the night before? Would he kiss her again?
She most certainly was not, she told herself sternly, feeling any anticipation.
Before she could stop herself, she blurted out, “What are you doing here?”
As soon as the words had left her mouth, she wished she could snatch them back. She tensed, waiting for him to say something insulting, to fling his bargain into her face once again, but he merely smiled, looking coolly amused.
“This is my suite, if you will recall,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, feeling foolish. “Of course. I beg your pardon.”
Jason studied her for a long moment, his eyes shadowy and watchful. Feeling suddenly rather naked in her wrapper and nightgown, she drew the garment more tightly around her and crossed her arms.
Since Jason made no effort toward conversation, she groped around for something else to say.
“Have your men returned from Buckinghamshire?”
“Not yet,” said Jason. “They should return sometime tomorrow. I’ll inform you the minute I have any news.”
“Thank you,” said Miranda, choosing a book at random from the shelf. “I am exceedingly grateful.”
She leafed through the book, not taking in a single word. She tried to concentrate, but she held the book upside down.
She looked up quickly. Fortunately Jason had not noticed, so she slapped the volume shut and prepared to make her way back to the safety of the bedchamber, but Jason spoke again.
“Monsieur Leblanc seems quite taken with you,” Jason said. “I have never known him to permit someone who is not a member of his personal staff to remain in his kitchen while he cooks, let alone trusted someone enough to allow them to help him.”
Miranda blinked.
“I suppose he had little enough choice,” she said, turning around and looking at him with some surprise. Of everything she would have guessed he would wish to discuss with her, she would not have picked the chef. “With Harriet gone home to visit her mother at Hampstead Heath, Polly had too much work to finish, and with Parliament in session…”
She trailed off. Of course he knew a large supper crowd always came during the Season.
“I am astonished Monsieur Leblanc permitted Harriet to return home,” observed Jason. “He is not known for being generous with his staff. I have tried to persuade him to the contrary, but have generally been unsuccessful.”
“Well,” said Miranda carefully, “he did not, precisely, give Harriet time off. I told her she was to go home, and then I went into the kitchen to tell Monsieur Leblanc she was gone. And it is true he did not want me to stay at first. But when I showed him I knew how to do everything, and I could help Polly with the roasting and boiling, he said I could stay.” She hesitated, then allowed pride to overcome caution. “Then I showed him how Cook used to make his pastry, and he said I was to do the pies tonight, which Polly said was a very great honor because he does not even permit Bruno, who is his apprentice, to do it.”
And despite the myriad anxieties preying upon her mind, she felt a faint burst of satisfaction at the memory. More than even her pleasure at being useful again, at having something to do even if it was work like a maid in Jason’s club, she had reveled in experiencing once again the camaraderie she had known in the kitchens of her own home. Until tonight, she had not truly realized how lonely she had been at Thornwood after her brother had left for Eton, and her aunt had removed all the old servants who had been the only true family she and William—and Jason—had ever known.
“I see,” said Jason. “So it was a fait accompli. How very clever of you. And I seem to recollect Cook always said you had a way with pastry.”
She drew in her breath sharply. It was the first time since her arrival that Jason had mentioned the life he’d had at Thornwood, and her heart clenched at this acknowledgment of the good times in their shared past. Unable to stop herself, she glanced at him from over her shoulder, but his expression was as closed and unreadable as ever.
Looking quickly away again, she said, “It did not seem right Harriet should not be permitted to visit her mother when she is so ill. And Monsieur Leblanc is not unkind. Only he is very absorbed in his food. Nothing else seems to exist for him—though he does seem very fond of his own mother.”
“I confess I had been unaware Monsieur Leblanc had a mother,” said Jason, his tone dry.
Despite herself, Miranda smiled and glanced over at him again. “You thought perhaps he had been hatched from an egg?”
The corners of his mouth curved as well, and her breath caught. When she was a child, making the quiet, solemn boy Jason had once been smile had been a game to her, and in the intervening years none of her pleasure had diminished at succeeding.
Then she frowned, remembering something she had lear
ned earlier that day. “By the by, sir, you ought to send a hamper to Bruno’s home. His wife fell and broke her leg, and they have three very young children.”
For a moment Jason was utterly silent, and she thought she had overstepped herself. Flushing with embarrassment for intervening in club business, she said, “That is, of course, if you wish it.”
Jason tilted his head and regarded her for a long moment.
“How did you do it?” he asked at last. “How did you discover Bruno’s wife broke her leg and Harriet’s mother is ill in Hampstead Heath and Monsieur Leblanc missed his mother? They have both worked here at Blakewell’s for years. They never mention anything of the sort to me.”
“I-I talked to them, I suppose,” she said lamely. “People are the same all over, aren’t they? They’re good people, Jason, even Monsieur Leblanc, for all that he shouts and throws things.”
She had slipped and used his Christian name. She flushed, hoping he hadn’t noticed.
“Yes, of course,” he said. He set aside his glass on the table near him and took a step toward her. Her heart leapt in her throat as he reached out and caught her face in one hand.
“I suppose you can’t help it, can you?”
“Can’t help what?” Miranda repeated, her eyes fluttering shut for a moment at the sensation of his skin on her own. How well she remembered the feel of his hands on her, she thought, and resisted the urge to turn her face into his callused palm.
“Can’t help playing the lady of the manor,” he said.
“I…I don’t know what you mean.”
“Come now,” said Jason. He had drawn so close his breath stirred the tendrils of her hair. “Taking charge of the staff, even when they’re not yours. Looking after their well-being. Ensuring the whole domestic operation is running smoothly.”
Her tongue was very dry. “I’m sorry if I have displeased you,” she whispered. “I didn’t intend to interfere with the way you run your club.”
“I rather doubt that,” he said. “But as I said, I imagine you cannot help it. It is who you are, is it not? It is who you were always meant to be.”
She closed her eyes again, hardly able to breathe, wanting to lean into the warmth of him, the strength of him.
“So tell me, Miranda,” he said, his lips very close to her ear now. “Why are you not mistress of your own home somewhere? Was that not what your father wished? That you should be married to a great lord with multiple Christian names and a large estate? You ought to be ‘my lady’ and dangling some rich toff’s heir on your knee by now.”
Because if I could not have you, she wanted to say, I would have no one. But could she bear to tell him the truth? So many years had passed, and he certainly hated and despised her now. What good could come of it? Better to let him think she was heartless and mercenary than to allow him to toss her love back into her face.
But before she could think of anything to say, he bent his head and kissed her.
As always, the unbearable rightness of his mouth on hers swept through her. She wanted to be closer to him. Her hands raised themselves to drape around his neck and she pushed herself onto her toes. One of his arms locked around her waist, the other hand coming up to cradle her head. Her lips parted and immediately his tongue licked delicately against hers and she was lost, she was drowning in the dizzying heat of him…
“I always knew aristocrats were fools,” he said.
He bent to kiss her again, when a fusillade of knocks on the door, followed by a loud, frantic voice, made him jerk up his head.
“Jason! Are you in there?”
It was Oliver Harvey.
Jason turned his head toward the door, and for a brief moment his expression seemed as dazed as she felt. Then, as though she had been turned into hot iron, he sprang away from her, turning so his back was toward her.
“Yes,” he said, his voice very steady.
He went to the door and opened it. Over the broad outline of his shoulder, Miranda could see Mr. Harvey, perspiring into a handkerchief and looking frantic.
“There you are, Jason,” said Mr. Harvey, hurrying toward him. “Thank goodness I found you. Crockford has been cooling his heels in your study for nearly twenty minutes. He’s furious, as you can imagine, and no one knew where you had gone.”
“As you can see, I was here,” said Jason coolly. “Thank you. I’ll see to the old goat. Go back out and help Mr. Page in the hazard room.”
“Yes, of course,” said Mr. Harvey, and a second later, his hasty footsteps retreated down the hall.
Jason turned back toward her and bowed, very formally.
“Goodnight, Miss Thornwood,” he said. His mouth curved once again into the mocking smile that cut her to the core. “Thank you for a most entertaining interlude.”
She flinched. In the space of the moment it took her to find her voice once again, he had left the room without a backwards glance.
Chapter Three
Jason made his way down the stairs and back to the block of offices on the lower floor, calling himself every foul word he could think of. Fortunately, he knew a great many foul words, thanks to the years he had spent in the hulks, and the activity kept him occupied for a few minutes, allowing his head to clear.
For ten years, the old bitter anger had been his companion, serving as an armor, allowing him to act with mockery and contempt toward the woman who had once destroyed him. But something else had tempered it, some painful, creeping emotion he could give no name. He had never been as savagely aware of the vast chasm between them as he had been watching Miranda crumbling pastry in his kitchens, enveloped in that appalling white apron. This fresh reminder of the gulf separating them had made Jason lash out, wanting to hurt her.
It wasn’t merely their differences in rank, that he had been born a servant and she the daughter of a viscount. Hauteur, aristocratic disdain, the superficial trappings of elegant manners—these were measures he could understand and counter. He could cut through the heart of hypocrisy and social snobbery when he wished to. He had spent the past five years among not only the cream of London, but of all of Europe. He had bedded some of their wives and on occasion even been permitted to court their daughters, and he had learned a noble title or ancient bloodline was no guarantee the lady in question would be worthy of that name.
There had been the spoiled, selfish daughters of a minor Continental margrave, avid and lascivious in their desire to acquire wealthy husbands; the vain wife of a Northumberland earl who left her two sickly young children immured at her country estate under the care of servants while she sampled the delights of the London season; the widowed marchioness who had bankrupted her late husband’s estates to finance her extravagant habits and appalling tastes… He could not imagine any of those highborn women sending a kitchen maid home to tend to a sick mother and then submitting to the demands of a temperamental chef, let alone crossing two counties alone and on foot.
But Miranda had done all that, and more. Though only a single day had passed since she had arrived in London, Miranda already held the members of his staff, usually so quick to reject an outsider, in the palm of her slender hand. She had worked among them like any maid, but they had gone to her, as the servants at Thornwood had once done, with their cares and their worries. They had immediately recognized in her some indescribable quality that was empathy entwined with authority—they had known she would not only understand, but had also the capacity and the willingness to help them.
He reached his office and pushed all thoughts of Miranda aside. He would need all his wits to deal with the man who waited for him. Turning the handle of the door, he pushed it open and stepped inside.
William Crockford, the operator of London’s other great gaming hall, had been pacing the length of the room. He now came to a stop and spun around.
He was a tall, thin, balding man, with a coarse, florid face strongly marked by the pox. His massive bulbous nose resembled nothing so much as a lump of cheese. Like Jason, he was dres
sed simply but expensively, though his signature white cravat contained its usual surplus of cambric. His gaze, as he peered across the room at Jason, was as shifty and suspicious as ever.
“Well, Blakewell?” he demanded in the slurred Cockney accent he had never bothered to conceal. “I don’t enjoy being summoned here like a damned servant.”
“Good evening, Mr. Crockford,” said Jason coolly. “Very good of you to call on me tonight. Won’t you have a seat?”
“Hrmph,” said Crockford, lowering his spare frame into one of the chairs by the fire.
“Cigar? Brandy?” inquired Jason, moving to the mantelpiece where he kept his decanter.
“Brandy’ll be fine,” said Crockford, and accepted the glass Jason handed to him. “Your Mr. Harvey said you had some sort of proposition for me.” He gave Jason a narrow, speculative look. “Thought about my offer, did you? Finally decided to sell this place to me? About time, I should think.”
“No,” said Jason shortly. “In fact, I wish to buy.”
“Buy?” repeated Crockford incredulously. “You wish to buy Crockford’s? Are you mad, sir? I would never sell.”
“Not Crockford’s, no,” said Jason, and explained what he wanted.
When Jason finished speaking, Crockford blinked in astonishment. “Ye want to do what?”
Jason regarded his rival impatiently. “You heard me,” he said.
“I see,” said Crockford, still looking utterly flabbergasted. “May I inquire as to why, sir?”
“You may not,” said Jason.
Crockford shrugged. “’Ave it yer way, then,” he said. “Don’t matter none to me, not if you’ll take it off my hands.”
“I most certainly will,” said Jason. “I will have Mr. Harvey complete the transaction as soon as possible.”
A crafty gleam now lit Crockford’s pale eyes. He leaned back in his chair and swirled his brandy glass.
Lily Lang Page 6
