And Then Comes Marriage

by Celeste Bradley

  Poll stared at him in sudden horror. “Yesterday?”

  Cas looked up sharply. “Yes. I told you, she followed me into the alley. We nearly blew her up!”

  It was Poll’s turn to rub at his face. “I went to Miranda’s last evening, before I attended the party. She … she was different, more open, more…” The remembered delight made his throat close now. “She almost kissed me, at last.”

  Cas’s expression cleared. “Then I was first,” he stated calmly.

  “What?”

  Cas folded his arms. “I was first to kiss her, so it is you who should step down.”

  Cas knew he wasn’t making much sense. Yet as quickly as he realized what he’d inadvertently done, he decided he just didn’t bloody care.

  Mira was his and he was going to keep her.

  Poll stared at his brother as if he were a stranger. “You … you can’t! You know now—I am courting her! She is mine. You can’t keep seeing her!”

  Cas shrugged. “I don’t know that she is yours. I don’t know what would have happened if you had saved her yesterday instead of me,” he pointed out. “You might have missed her meaning, you might have decided to wait a little longer.” He lifted his chin. “But I didn’t hesitate. I took her home and I kissed her first. She is mine.”

  “Yours! You stole her!”

  Cas held up his hands in defense. “I didn’t know—I swear I didn’t!”

  “I’m sure!” Poll scoffed. “You just happened to trip and fall onto her lips, I suppose. Have to watch out for those troubling carpets and all.”

  He saw anger flash in Cas’s eyes. Good. Bastard.

  Cas unfolded his arms and straightened. “It was you who couldn’t get the merry widow to sign on the dotted line!”

  Poll flinched. “I was building her up,” he retorted. “Of course, now you’ve ruined all that work—”

  “Done you a favor, you mean! I was the proud recipient of her first kiss,” Cas taunted. “That will make a woman lean toward gratitude.”

  Poll frowned. “Her first? Ever?”

  Cas grimaced. “Yes, poor thing. That husband of hers was too bound up to do more than peck her on the cheek!”

  The fact that Mira had enjoyed his brother’s attentions did not actually help. A red fog flirted with the edge of his vision. Poll’s fists clenched. Then they eased and his eyes narrowed. “Ha. She has better taste than to settle for a bounder like you.”

  Cas snorted. “I’m a bounder? When every woman you get involved with ends up thinking you’ll love her forever, only to see the back of you by month’s end!”

  Poll snarled. “That’s right, they’re begging me to stay. Yours are begging you to leave, or they would be if you ever stuck around long enough!”

  Cas’s face darkened. “Mrs. Talbot wasn’t begging me to leave. She practically dragged me home yesterday!”

  Again, Poll flinched. “She thought you were me! And you neglected to tell her differently!” Poll turned away, running his hands through his hair. The image of Miranda, lolling on the settee, her arms outstretched for him—

  Not him. Cas.

  For the first time since they were lads and figured out that they were stronger together, he rounded on his brother and swung his fist.

  The fight didn’t last long. They were too equally matched. Poll was a little faster. Cas was a tad more vicious. In a short time, they were tangled on the floor, each with the other in a stranglehold.

  Cas felt his vision going a bit fizzy and tapped out. “Pax!” he wheezed.

  Poll released him and rolled away. Standing, he brushed off his trousers. “I’m glad you see it my way, Cas.”

  “I said ‘Pax,’ not ‘Uncle.’” Cas ran a hand through his disheveled hair. “While I was trouncing you, I had an idea.”

  Poll eyed him warily. “I’m listening … for now.”

  “We let her choose.”

  Poll wrinkled his brow. “If you think she’ll choose you after one mistaken kiss—”

  Cas shrugged carefully. It wouldn’t do to let Poll know how important this was to him. He could barely admit it to himself! “So we confess all. We lay our suits before her and beg her to let us both court her.” Cas wasn’t terribly concerned that Poll would last long. His passions waxed and waned as quickly as the moon itself.

  Poll frowned. “She might throw us out.”

  Cas smiled slightly. “Scared she’ll choose me right off?”

  Poll narrowed his eyes. Women professed their love to Cas on a weekly basis. “No. Let it be something harder. A challenge.” He lifted his chin. “The one she agrees to marry.”

  It wasn’t fair, for Poll knew from his weeks of actual conversation with Miranda that she considered marriage in the same way another might consider a wolf trap—as in, something she would gnaw off a limb to escape!

  Poll kept the triumph from his face as Cas nodded. Of course, Miranda wasn’t going to accept any proposals at all, but this way Poll knew that Cas wouldn’t win while he, Poll, was working on a way to cut his brother out.

  Cas’s interest didn’t last long. Miranda would be no different for Cas—not the way she was different for Poll.

  Poll nodded. “I’ll take mornings, then. I’ve always been an earlier riser than you.”

  Cas agreed. “I shall take the afternoons.”

  “Evenings for me, then.” Poll smiled. It wasn’t a brotherly smile.

  Cas snorted. “Hardly. I’ll take evens.”

  It was how they had divided the world since they were five. It was just another game, after all. One that Poll intended to win.

  Poll bowed his head slightly. “I’ll take odds.” That meant tonight, actually.

  Cas folded his arms. “Not that I shall need more than one.”

  “Ha,” Poll said sourly. “The usual wager?”

  In answer, Cas reached into his weskit pocket and withdrew a shilling. He held it up and tossed it onto the table, where it spun, ringing in the silent attic.

  Poll matched it with a coin of his own. “‘The game’s afoot.’”

  Cas snorted. “King Henry the Fifth. Act Three, Scene One.”

  Poll didn’t respond. He was already thinking of Miranda and the evening to come.

  Perhaps if they had been raised in a normal household, by ordinary people who didn’t believe that the theater was real and life was but a stage—in other words, if they weren’t Worthingtons—they might have realized that there was something wrong with such a wager.

  Unfortunately, to a matched pair of Worthingtons, such an outrageous venture was just another bit of midsummer madness!

  Chapter Eight

  Poll slammed the door on his way out of the attic study. His jaw set, he trotted down the stairs, nimbly sidestepping the decades’ worth of accumulated flotsam on the way. In his simmering anger, he didn’t notice down the cluttered hallway in a book-lined cave carved out of the hoard, his baby sister’s large alarmed eyes peering at him from the darkness.

  As Poll continued on, Attie wrapped her arms about her bony knees and shivered. Cas and Poll never argued, never even disagreed.

  Ever.

  Mrs. Gideon Talbot, of Breton Square.

  Attie peered down the bottomless divide that had suddenly appeared in her family and scowled. This Miranda woman had best watch herself. If this villainous vixen thought she was going to harm the Worthingtons, she had best think again!

  First thing tomorrow, it would be time for reconnaissance. And, if necessary, a spot of sabotage—or even eradication!

  * * *

  Mr. Seymour called on Miranda that afternoon. Torn from her giddy musings on her early-morning embrace with Mr. Worthington, Miranda had to force herself to smooth her hair and step sedately into the parlor to attend his call.

  The poor man seemed a pale and insipid creature after the virile Mr. Worthington. It wasn’t his fault that he was not a more memorable fellow, after all.

  Miranda smiled sincerely, if a bit exasperatedly, at him
when he presented her with his usual bouquet of roses.

  “Oh, you shouldn’t have!” He really shouldn’t have. She’d mentioned more than once that she preferred other blooms, but sweet Mr. Seymour seemed to think that roses were the best of flowers. How could one argue with someone who believed one deserved the best?

  She gave the blooms to Tildy to put in a vase. She would keep them here in the parlor, for that was where Mr. Seymour would be, and he did seem to enjoy roses so much. She kept the sprightly, more common flowers Mr. Worthington brought her in her bedchamber, for she enjoyed seeing them upon opening her eyes in the morning.

  When they’d seated themselves, Mr. Seymour smoothed his unexceptional dark hair and fixed her with his unexceptional blue eyes. He was not a handsome man, although Miranda would be at a lost to explain why he was not attractive. He was of adequate height. He was neither fat nor thin. He had all the required symmetry of features and no specific unfortunate characteristic.

  It was merely, she decided, a certain lack of life. Mr. Seymour wasn’t attractive, because Mr. Seymour wasn’t vigorous.

  Mr. Worthington personified the word vigorous. Whether in a dark intense mood like recently, or a laughing, playful one like before, his life shone from him, heating her blood and warming her heart. He would attract her even if he were not so handsome.

  Mr. Seymour commenced to speak in educated tones about current events that had been in the newssheets. Interesting topics all—and, if Miranda was not mistaken, recited in the precise order in which they’d appeared in the London newssheets.

  He’d memorized things of interest to provide interesting conversation. This was very thoughtful, for Miranda dearly loved interesting conversation.

  So why was she not interested?

  She stifled a yawn. It was nearly three o’clock in the afternoon. Mr. Worthington often came to her around three or four o’clock.

  Her mind wandered to the memory of early that morning, when she’d done such a shocking thing, all by herself, in the privacy of her own bedchamber … would a lover touch her there? Would a lover touch her everywhere?

  A lover like Mr. Worthington?

  A fantasy bloomed in her mind of making love during the day, draperies wide open, sunlight spilling over them both as they rolled naked on the carpet … on her back, sprawled unashamed before him as he caressed her wet, throbbing—

  “—crevice, but I hardly think that the Prime Minister should leave the condition of our streets to a committee. Mrs. Talbot? Is something wrong? You look a bit flushed. Is the room too warm? I shall ring for your maid to bring your fan.”

  Miranda focused her vision and saw, to her surprise, that it was Mr. Seymour, fully clothed (thank heaven!) sitting across from her. She pressed her palms to her hot cheeks. “My goodness! I.…”

  Mr. Seymour’s unexceptional eyes narrowed in concern. “I believe you must have caught a chill. My dear Mrs. Talbot, I recommend a dose of castor oil and a day in bed—”

  Miranda choked. Bed, where Mr. Worthington had sat beside her, where he’d caressed her softly when he thought her sleeping—

  “—you should have your man call a physician at once! A fever can burn for days—”

  God, yes, let me burn for days!

  Tildy entered the parlor with concern on her freckled features. Lost in an overwhelming wave of maddening, formless desire, Miranda shot her maid a helpless glance.

  Tildy blinked, then rolled her eyes behind Mr. Seymour’s back and set about fussing ridiculously over Miranda, going on about how her mistress needed her bed right away and goodness, with the illnesses rampaging through the streets of Evil London, it was a miracle they all weren’t dead in their beds and she wasn’t going to let her mistress move a muscle for at least a week and—

  Mr. Seymour couldn’t help but back away a few steps, visibly appalled at the apparently unrealized potential for contagion. Tildy ushered him out, thanking him earnestly for his heroic ringing of the bell before her mistress expired on the spot—

  The door shut and the house went quiet. Miranda sat in her pretty feminine chair in her still-not-quite-to-her-taste parlor and covered her face with her hands. He is right. I am ill. I am infected with lust.

  She remembered the heat in Mr. Worthington’s eyes as he came into her bedchamber this morning.

  And yes, Mr. Seymour, this fever does seem to be contagious—but you have nothing to worry about.

  * * *

  Cas didn’t press Poll for conversation as they rode to Miranda’s house on Breton Square. Poll alternated between obvious fuming and glum resignation, a state he’d been in since their agreement the day before.

  As for Cas, he’d gone around and around the issue in his mind all night. Was this advisable? He meant to prove himself to the Prince Regent. Royal patronage, for pity’s sake! Adding a woman to the matter certainly wouldn’t help matters.

  Cas tried to tell himself that he meant only to keep an eye on Poll’s activities. He tried to convince himself that keeping a possible lady on a string for the next month would curb his own tendency toward fleshly distraction. Simply look at what had happened the other evening at Blythe’s! He, Castor Worthington, had walked away from an orgy.

  It still boggled his mind a bit.

  However, even as he listed all the reasons why embarking on this odd wager with Poll would in fact further his ambitions, he did rather feel like both the master of misdirection and its willing dupe.

  Mira.

  Sea-green eyes and silken skin and lips that tasted like sin dipped in crystal sugar, all wrapped about a creature crafted of radiant decency.

  The hack pulled up to the respectable address of the respectable lady.

  Cas was the first one out.

  Mira.

  * * *

  Miranda had been waiting for Mr. Worthington’s call for the entire morning and well into the afternoon.

  She felt like a nervous cat, unable to sit, unable to stop restlessly moving about the ornate, stuffy drawing room, rearranging horrid china dogs and adjusting paintings of insipid shepherdesses that were already entirely level.

  Twigg followed her after a time, subtly readjusting the phalanx of china dogs so that their snouts aligned with military precision, putting tilting shepherdesses upright and replacing sofa cushions restlessly tossed aside.

  Miranda ignored his aggrieved hauteur, preferring instead the slightly petty enjoyment of making him fix everything in the room at least three times.

  Twigg had not been her personal choice for butler. He was part of the previous era of the house and Miranda suspected where his loyalty truly lay. Unfortunately, one couldn’t fire a member of one’s staff simply because the individual had performed too well for their former employer!

  Finally, she turned to him with her arms crossed over her bosom.

  “Twigg, is that a china dog you hold in your hand?”

  He eyed her warily, then nodded. “Yes, madam.”

  Miranda raised a brow. “Is it your china dog?”

  Twigg drew back cautiously. “No, madam. The china dog belongs to Talbot House.”

  To Talbot House, not to her. Miranda lifted her chin. “Drop the china dog, Twigg.”

  His brows rose sky-high. “Madam?”

  “You heard me perfectly.” She tilted her head. “Drop—the—blasted—dog—now.”

  Twigg swallowed and looked down. Directly beneath the defenseless ceramic spaniel’s little china feet was a long fall to a shattering death on the tile of the hearth. Twigg looked at Miranda, then back at the floor. She almost felt sorry for the butler—until she recalled his tendency to sneer at her callers and sigh heavily at her every request. And there was that little matter of Constance knowing her every move.

  Twigg let go of the dog … after swinging his arm until his hand was over carpet.

  China spaniels can really take a spill, Miranda thought sourly as she looked down at the entirely whole dog lying on the woolen rug. Smug little monstrosity. />
  Oddly, she wasn’t sorry that the figurine was unbroken. Smashing things wasn’t a constructive method of resolution, although she secretly suspected that it might be quite satisfying, at least in the short term.

  Still, she ought not to let Twigg get away with his continual subversion. “Very ingenious. Once again, I am obeyed in the letter, if not in the spirit.”

  Twigg very carefully stared over her left shoulder. “Madam?”

  “Pick up the dog, Twigg. Pack it in a box. Pack them all in a box and send a message to an auction house that I have an apparently endless supply of china canines I wish to part company with.”

  Twigg picked up the dog and cradled it carefully in his hands. “Miss Constance Talbot sets great store by her grandmother’s china collection.”

  Miranda inhaled slowly. Steady. Consistent. Fair. And then, of course, she utterly lost her temper. “Twigg, if Miss Constance Talbot wanted to take her grandmother’s pack of glassy-eyed curs with her to preserve for eternity, she had every opportunity to pack them off with her. Instead, she left them for me to tend! Now, box them up and dispense with them or you’ll be sweeping shards from the hearth for the rest of the day. I refuse to run this porcelain kennel for one more blasted minute!”

  From the doorway came a feminine cough. “Ahem … Missus? Mr. Worthington and—”

  It was Tildy, poor thing, wide-eyed at Miranda’s uncharacteristic fury. A tall dark form emerged from the shadows behind the little maid.

  Oh, for pity’s sake! Miranda turned quickly away to compose herself. Not only does he finally appear to find me screeching like a fishwife, but I am likely the color of a blotchy beet as well!

  Before turning back to the door, she pressed her fingertips to her temples in an attempt to cool her bad humor and her pounding head. Then she turned with the best smile she could manage in her mortification.

  Mr. Worthington entered the room, looking a bit embarrassed himself. Then Mr. Worthington entered the room … again.

  Miranda gazed blankly at the second man, who gave her a wry twist of his lips in return. Then she stared at the first man, who widened his eyes and gave her an uneasy shrug.