And Then Comes Marriage

by Celeste Bradley

  Oddly, the moment turned awkward. Poll considered Miranda. She answered his sallies congenially, although as the conversation went on, her replies became less and less expansive.

  Then suddenly, she burst out. “I’ve spent all day thinking of you kissing me!”

  Poll didn’t need a second invitation. In a flash he was next to her on the settee, taking her hands in his, kissing her palms and wrists. She smiled at him then, her expression so open and passionate that she took his breath away.

  Miranda tangled her fingers in his hair and lifted her face up to his.

  “Miranda,” he whispered. At last. He bent closer—

  A perfunctory tap came on the parlor door and the little maid Tildy scuttled in. “Missus, it’s Miss Constance come calling!”

  Miranda sprang back from Poll so effortlessly that one might think she might have been engaged only in intimate conversation and turned to smile at her maid graciously. “Thank you, Tildy. I’ll be along at once.”

  She shot Poll a pleading glance and, after giving Tildy a quick signal to clear away the tea things, went to the front hall to greet her late husband’s sister, Miss Constance Talbot.

  Poll straightened, willing his pulse to slow, ordering his lust back into its cage of civility. It was a damned shame, for it had promised to be a most delicious first kiss.

  Bloody bad luck, Miranda’s sister-in-law dropping in at this hour!

  Not to worry. Something had changed tonight. Poll was quite sure he would have many more such opportunities in the future. When Miss Constance Talbot entered the room, he smiled and made nice bows to the stout spinster who eyed him with trenchant suspicion, then made his escape as quickly as possible.

  Another time, Miranda, I shall claim that kiss.

  * * *

  When Mr. Worthington left—and who could blame him for his speed?—Miranda inhaled deeply and turned to face her sister-in-law, Miss Constance Talbot. The name might conjure a sweet-faced young girl—if one had never met her.

  Miranda was quite sure that Constance had never been that. Small and round and bustling even in youth, if the portraits in the upper hall didn’t lie. Even as a girl, her snub features had held an expression of self-righteous disapproval.

  The Talbot height and hawkish profile had completely passed Constance by, a fact that Miranda was sure Constance regretted.

  Constance would have dearly loved to loom.

  Instead, the Constance of the present was a petite, solid ball of thinly veiled animosity toward Miranda.

  “You’ve let the house go,” Constance snapped. “There’s dust on the newel post in the hall.”

  Very thinly veiled. In fact, hardly veiled at all.

  “Hello, Constance.”

  Remember to smile.

  Why?

  Oh, simply smile and get this over with. “What might I do for you … this evening?” Miranda carefully implied that it was just a tad late for afternoon calls.

  Constance sniffed, in her turn implying that Miranda had nothing better to do with her days than to wait on callers, since she surely wasn’t doing her duty of monitoring the staff with eagle eye and pennypinching fingers.

  Ah, the stealthy context between women who had lived together for too many years.

  But Constance didn’t live here any longer. The house belonged to Miranda, fair and square. If Gideon had wanted Constance to have it, he ought to have outlined that in his exhaustively detailed will. Miranda had scarcely been able to remain awake during the reading of the hefty, meticulously comprehensive document, in which every stock pin and pair of shoe buckles had been parceled out to acquaintances and favored retainers.

  Not friends. Gideon had not had true friends. Colleagues, perhaps. Other desiccated men whose minds were wrapped up in debating the fine points of this document versus that record, this letter versus that missive, until the richness of history became as dry and lifeless as the dust of the past.

  Dust that had unhappily ended up on her newel post the very moment Constance chose to make her call. Miranda’s smile felt like paint on her face. If she wasn’t careful, it would begin to chip.

  Constance drew off her gloves and snapped them impatiently. “Well? Aren’t you going to offer me tea?”

  Not likely. If I feed it, it will never leave. Miranda blinked. “But it is so late! I know you drink nothing but boiled milk after six o’clock.”

  Constance narrowed her eyes. “I take tea on occasion. I will take some now.”

  She turned to Twigg, who straightened or perhaps stiffened in anticipation. Oh no. I give the orders here. Miranda stepped smoothly between Constance and her former butler. “Twigg, please see to Miss Talbot’s tea.”

  Twigg fled, probably reluctant to decide which mistress to obey, the one he’d known or the one who now paid his wages.

  Constance tilted her head. “Too late for tea, but not too late for a gentleman caller, Miranda? If he’d stayed any later, I would have accused you of keeping company … and you still in mourning!”

  “Half mourning,” Miranda pointed out. Half mourning that had actually ended a few months previously, but Miranda didn’t have the spinal strength needed to go through that argument again with Constance, who seemed to feel that any woman lucky enough to have wed a Talbot owed that husband a lifetime of black gowns and impenetrable veils. Nor would periodic bursts of weeping be considered amiss.

  Not that Constance had wept. At least, Miranda had seen no sign of it. Constance had been very nearly smug, after the first shock of Gideon’s sudden demise wore off. It was not until the reading of the will that Constance had realized that it was Miranda who would hold the keys to the kingdom, not her.

  Miranda’s smile firmed, thinking of that lovely moment.

  Constance trailed the toe of her slipper on the carpet. “These look swept, at least. You mustn’t forget to keep the draperies closed. The sun will fade the carpets.” She reached into her sturdy, practical reticule. “I’ve made you out a list of the household matters. I suggest you attend to them at once.”

  Miranda’s smile was definitely beginning to crack a bit around the edges. “How very kind of you when I know perfectly well that you have your own household to manage now.” Yes, yours, as opposed to mine!

  “My house is in perfect order, thank you.” Constance snapped. She drew in a breath, as if reaching for her deepest patience. She held out a folded piece of paper, the threatened list. “As you know, midsummer has always been an important time in our house. There will not be a better time of year to have the carpets treated with benzene. It will do wonders for their longevity—”

  “Oh, but the smell.” Miranda wrinkled her nose. Constance’s insistence on this annual ritual nearly drove Miranda off to the soonest ship to the Americas. The stink of the chemical treatment was enough to kill fleas—and people!

  Constance’s jaw hardened beneath her round cheeks. “You think too much on your senses, Miranda. You always did. There is a proper way to attend to matters. See that you don’t neglect it!”

  Keep smiling. Smile until your face aches.

  Miranda smiled and took the list, though she thrust it into her pocket without reading it. “Oh, dear, where is Twigg with that tea? Should I run down and see to it myself?”

  Running was good.

  Constance sniffed and cast her gaze scornfully about the room. “Lax, that’s what it is. That’s what happens when you coddle the staff.”

  “Hmm.” Not that Miranda blamed Twigg for fleeing, but without the ritual of tea to serve, she had no idea what to do with the woman standing before her.

  Offer her a seat.

  Well … but then she might stay.

  Miranda, knowing perfectly well that she was being very rude, simply stood there with the idiotic smile on her face and blinked her eyes. Childish, perhaps. Maybe if she projected empty-headed tedium for long enough—

  “Oh, well, never mind!” Constance pulled on her gloves with such force that Miranda half expected t
he kid leather to part at the seams.

  The gloves survived. Miranda rather thought they dared not do otherwise. No such flimsy trimmings for Constance!

  Miranda followed Constance to the door, nodding like a simpleton at the continuing list of instructions for the care and feeding of the house—oh, for pity’s sake, please leave—and shook her sister-in-law’s hand good-bye with decided enthusiasm.

  Shutting the door at last, she closed her eyes. “Oh, but you didn’t have your tea,” she murmured, now that she was certain Constance couldn’t hear her. “What a shame you have to go so soon.” She giggled, too relieved to be quite sane.

  As she turned from the door, she felt the list crackle in her pocket. Drawing it out, she opened it as she walked slowly down the hall.

  Carpets. Benzene.

  Chutney canning.

  Silver counting.

  The letter contained more in that vein. Constance was still trying to run the house, even while residing a mile away.

  Miranda refolded the list with precision, then strolled into the parlor, which was laid, as it was every day, for callers. The coals glowed, for it was a damp, rainy day. The letter, somehow, ended up falling into the fireplace, where it immediately smoldered on the coals.

  Miranda smiled to herself. “Oops.”

  Then she turned to ponder her personal little realm, where the carpets remained benzene-free and the days and nights belonged to her … and just possibly, Mr. Worthington.

  “Constance, you really should take a lover,” Miranda said out loud. “It would do wonders for your longevity.”

  “Ahem.” She turned to see Twigg standing behind her, his hands full of a heaping tray of silver tea things and cakes and little triangle-cut sandwiches.

  “Oh.” Poor Twigg. She giggled again, helplessly. “Oh, dear.”

  Twigg merely glared.

  Chapter Six

  Poll was a bit late to the bash at Mrs. Blythe’s House of Pleasure but no one noticed. The celebration of—well, whatever landed on the calendar this week!—was well under way. Liquor flowed freely, and there was plenty of food, which would come in handy when the patrons required fuel for further fornication. Mrs. Blythe’s ladies were the loveliest, healthiest, most good-natured and enthusiastic in all of London.

  Hence the exorbitant entrance fee charged to the male attendees. Poll, however, merely sent the madam’s head guard—er, butler—a cheery salute as he sauntered in the front door.

  All the Worthington lads had an open invite from Mrs. Blythe. Apparently, someone in the family had done her a favor once upon an age. None of the siblings knew the story and the elders weren’t telling, but Cas and Poll had been delighted to sponge off that debt of honor many times over the past several years.

  To Poll’s knowledge, Dade had never visited the establishment. Do Dade good, it would. However, his eldest brother was wound a bit too tight for that.

  Orion had come with the twins one time, years ago, and had spent his night examining one bewildered but willing lady extensively. Mrs. Blythe had wisely suggested he go back to sticking bugs on a pin and leave her talented ladies for those who could appreciate their many charms.

  Lysander had come once in while, before. Wild horses couldn’t drag him to such festivities now, unfortunately. In Poll’s opinion, a vigorous rogering would do Zander up right!

  Tonight’s event was created around the notion of a Roman orgy. Somehow, white plaster columns had been transported into a very English ballroom, then swathed in silk. There were piles of pillows in the corners, as well as velvet fainting couches where numerous people seemed in danger of losing consciousness. As Poll watched, a giggling buxom creature clad in the shreds of a diaphanous goddess costume was being chased through the room by a rickety old fellow sporting a cane and baggy drawers.

  An unbearably curvaceous redhead in a swath of translucent chiffon that was intended to pass as a toga offered Poll a glass of champagne and, incidentally, herself. Poll took the champagne with a gallant bow, but merely kissed her hand. “Let a fellow catch his breath, will you, darling? Later.”

  She meandered onward after bestowing a sultry pout upon him. God, with a carnivorous mouth like that, she could likely kiss a bloke to death before he got his trousers off!

  Lips made him think of Miranda’s sweet mouth and the almost-kiss. Bloody Constance.

  “There you are!”

  Poll turned to see Cas approaching with—gasp—a twin blonde on each arm!

  “Look what I found. This is Lily and this is Dilly.” Cas grinned. “Mrs. Blythe has offered us a pile of gold to join these two to put on a show for the clientele. It broke my heart to turn her down, but Dade would make life unfit to live if he found out—not to mention what Callie would do!”

  Not a very good example to Attie, either, but Poll didn’t bother to say it. He knew Cas wasn’t serious. No doubt he would mention the thought to Dade, just to wind him up—but Worthingtons were always honorable, in the end.

  Well, mostly. Poll winced as a few best-forgotten moments slid through his memory. A long time ago, certainly far away. And Dade had never learned of those moments, which made them practically not happen.

  Still, Poll raised his glass to the golden-siren beauty of the twins before him. “Ladies, no one would notice us next to you anyway.”

  One of them smirked. “You’d be surprised, you would, sir!”

  The other laughed and trailed her fingers down the buttons of Cas’s weskit. “If you lads are ever short of coin, there are those that would let you wear masks. We’d make a fortune, we would. A private costume ball.”

  They all laughed. “Clever.” Poll pointed to her. “I’ll take that one.”

  Cas handed her off to Poll willingly enough. “Be careful, Dilly. He bites.”

  Dilly didn’t seem alarmed. “I bite back, but it’ll cost him.”

  Poll smiled at the charming creature. “Dilly? I thought all of Mrs. Blythe’s ladies had flower names?”

  “’Tis short for Daffodil, sir.” She pressed closer and breathed into his ear. “But you can call me anything you like, handsome.”

  Poll gave her his best smoldering look. “But will it cost me?”

  She drew back and assessed him. Then she ran her fingers through his hair, arranging it in a maternal fashion. “Not you, pet. Not tonight, anyway. You’ve already got some lucky girl, I think.”

  Poll blinked. “I—how did you know?”

  Dilly laughed. “Didn’t get into the business yesterday, for one. For the other, most blokes would’ve pushed me up against the wall after I blew in your ear. You’re no tea leaf, so that means you’re in love. Your hair still looks like a woman’s had her hands in it.”

  Giving a sigh, Poll regarded her with a slight smile. “Altogether too discerning, pet. The loss is mine, for you’re a sumptuous morsel indeed. I suppose you’ll be wanting to go back to my brother, then?”

  “Glory, no!” Dilly rolled her eyes. “He’s worse than you, that one. He’s got an edge on him like a razor tonight.” She lowered her voice confidentially. “I think he got worked up by some sweet thing he can’t properly get his hands on. Can’t get his mind off her, either. Lily’s about to toss him back. She can’t do a thing with him.”

  “Oh-ho!” Poll twisted his neck to get a glimpse of Cas in the throng. He saw his twin with Lily, standing in a corner near one of the feast tables … talking.

  Cas didn’t talk to women. Talking was Poll’s gambit. Cas didn’t need to do much more than bestow his famous cynical, world-weary smile to get a woman to drop everything—including her pantalets—on a hopeless quest to help him regain his faith in love, beauty, humanity, and so forth.

  It worked every time. Which meant that this time, Cas wasn’t even bothering.

  “I wonder who she is.” Poll thought back over the past few weeks. He’d been so busy with Miranda that he’d scarcely seen Cas except when they were working on the steam engine. “She must be someone I haven’t met yet
.”

  Dilly snorted. “She must be a goddess on a mountaintop, for Lily’s the zestiest bit in the city and your brother’s not so much as given her a good groping.”

  Poll, feeling guilty, turned to her at once. “You’re a vastly zesty bit, Dills.”

  She considered him for a moment. “And yet, here I stand, ungroped as well.” She went up on tiptoe to give him a kiss on the cheek. “Don’t worry. I’ll tell old Blythe that we had a rouser, we did.”

  “You’re a true lady, Miss Daffodil,” Poll said gratefully.

  She parted from him with a little wave of her fingers and a bit of extra wiggle in her walk, just to show him what he was missing. Poll, his head tilted, watched with great appreciation. The view was magnificent. By God, just because he was courting Miranda didn’t mean he was dead!

  Yet, attending an orgy without lust was rather like going fishing without a pole. He might as well be one of the elderly codgers sitting on the sidelines, smoking Mrs. Blythe’s excellent cigars and drinking Mrs. Blythe’s excellent whiskey, talking politics in a room full of nearly naked girls.

  Poll shuddered. Never.

  Still, there wasn’t much else to do, so he asked for his coat and hat from a disbelieving chucker-out—er, footman—who regarded him pityingly as he showed Poll the door.

  Poll only smiled, thinking of Miranda’s sweet lips.

  * * *

  Cas left the captivating Lily behind with mingled regret and relief. Regret that he walked away from what likely would have been one of the more memorable nights of his life. Relief that he might no longer be distracted from thoughts of his mystery woman.

  Miranda Talbot.

  Sedate widow. Breathless temptress.

  Her house, while of good address and well kept, was oddly a bit on the elder-auntie side of decor.

  Young. Old-fashioned.

  Lovely. Lackluster.

  Demure. Bold.

  Prim. Sensual.

  It must be the conflicting impressions that made her linger so in his mind. He’d had prettier women—although delicate Miranda had a certain quality.