Mr. Worthington climbed up to sit atop the wall, dangling his legs on the decidedly illegal side of the wall. “Oh, it’s a private garden. The owner doesn’t want a lot of people stomping through it.”
“But … but it’s so lovely! The layout, the graceful proportions … those marble statues look as if they came from the Parthenon itself!”
Mr. Worthington pursed his lips. “Umm…”
Miranda leaned forward, holding on to a thick strand of ivy for balance. “I’m so glad you showed me this, and I do appreciate the sentiment, Mr. Worthington, but this is too grand! I wouldn’t dream of violating someone’s privacy this way.” She caught sight of the picnic basket, lying on its side, still firmly latched, tumbled down the slight hill sloping down from the wall. “Oh dear, your basket! Perhaps if we went to the door of the house and explained, a servant could fetch it for—”
She slipped.
Chapter Thirteen
Clutching at the ropes of ivy did Miranda no good at all, unless it was what gave Mr. Worthington time to grab her wrist. One moment, she was sitting demurely on the wall; the next she was swinging from one wrist in midair, her skirts and her hair and her hat snagging in the bushy ivy that threatened to tear her apart.
“Hold on, Miranda!”
She looked up, struggling to see past her askew bonnet and her snagged hair. Mr. Worthington sat straddling the wall now, holding tight to a thick ivy branch with one hand and holding her by the wrist with the other.
“Find a branch with your feet,” he told her. “You’re fine, everything is fine. Just feel around for a good thick one.”
His soothing, coaxing voice melted the panic from her spine, soothing the air back into her lungs. “Yes, of course, the vines.”
A few moments later, she stood quite firmly on a hefty vine and had a good grip on another with her free hand. The only problem was, she couldn’t climb up. Her skirts were twisted so tight about her, snagged firmly by the ivy branches all around her, that she couldn’t hike them up to step upward.
She could only climb down.
She couldn’t help sending Mr. Worthington a foul look. “If I didn’t know better, I would think you’d planned this.”
He grinned down at her. “You credit me with far more evil genius than I deserve. This is just random good luck as far as I can tell.”
Good luck, my shoe! Muttering imprecations all the way down, Miranda descended her vine-ladder until she stood precariously on the small ledge of earth before the slope angled down from the bottom of the wall. “I’ve made it! You can let go—”
Mr. Worthington released her and jumped down. Of course, he immediately lost his balance on the brief ledge of damp ground, which gave beneath them both.
Miranda might have caught herself if not for her skirts, still twisted about her like stripes on a candy-cane. Mr. Worthington laughed uproariously as he rolled all the way down the hill. Miranda covered her head with her arms and held her breath—and yes, secretly giggled her way down the slope, feeling like a child.
They sprawled simultaneously at the bottom, flung out on the soft, green grass like discarded dolls. Mr. Worthington landed on his back, arms out flung, still laughing. Miranda rolled half across him, lying over his lap.
“A dream come true,” Mr. Worthington commented with a breathless chuckle. “This must be heaven.”
She slapped at his helpful hands and somehow unwound herself from her ruined, smashed bonnet, her crumpled, muddy, grass-stained skirts, and her tumbled hair, snagged and tangled with torn ivy. Despite the fact that she had never been a more ridiculous mess—no, not even when facedown in a fountain!—she managed to stand with some shred of dignity. Using that smidgen of poise, she gazed contemptuously down at her villainous tormenter.
“This—” She spread her hands grandly. “Is. All. Your. Fault.”
It was a priceless moment. He actually started to look a little ashamed of himself.
It was too bad she laughed.
* * *
Having now broken the law most thoroughly, Miranda gave into Poll’s reasoning that enjoying their picnic anyway couldn’t possibly get them into any more trouble. Besides, he pointed out, no servants raced toward them with pitchforks, ready to drive them away. No one seemed to realize they were there at all.
Miranda began to let Poll’s charm, lemonade, and cheese and pickle sandwiches ease her fears. It did stand to reason, he reminded her coaxingly, that being caught red-handed picnicking would seem to convince the mysterious owner that they’d not meant any harm by their rude invasion.
The old, clean horse blanket was a welcome shield between them and the damp grass. The sunlight, so missed for the last few days, glowed warm and soothing down on their bumps and bruises. She relaxed enough to lie with her head upon Poll’s folded surcoat while he fed her raspberries.
The basket was almost empty of food, for Miranda had rediscovered her appetite recently, which Poll encouraged her to indulge. “You are too thin.” He tickled her elbow with a long blade of grass. “Pointy Miranda. Have another Tildy-seedcake, Pointy Miranda.”
She did, rebelliously licking her fingers clean of the sweet icing, then relaxing back upon her pillow with a sigh of replete pleasure. Their little glade was tucked between two great evergreens, with the high wall behind them. Before them was visible the uppermost windows ranging the back of a great house, but it was quite far away and Poll managed to quench her fear that anyone could see them from such a distance.
Forgetting about that danger, she tilted her head back and peered up through half-closed eyes at the blue, blue sky of summer, listening to the distant cries of the peacocks strutting about the great lawn.
“Miranda?”
“Hmm?” She rolled her head to regard her companion sleepily. His expression had gone quite serious, his green eyes as dark as the evergreens behind him.
“I wish to address something between us. I feel quite slighted.”
Oh. He wanted to “talk”! Miranda blinked herself awake and sat up, curling her feet beneath her skirts and assuming a listening posture.
He watched her, amusement flickering through his serious demeanor. “You are entirely adorable, do you know that?”
Miranda looked down at herself in vague dismay, but she didn’t find anything amusing, other than her general ruined disarray, which he shared, and which he had caused, so had no call to be amused by.
Frowning, she looked back up at him. “Which is it—adorable or slighting?”
He laughed softly. “Miranda, you never cease to amaze me with your directness. It is damned refreshing, to always know what you are thinking! So I will return the courtesy.”
He tilted his head, regarding her seriously. “You kissed Cas.”
“Oh.” Miranda folded her hands in her lap. “Yes. Well, he kissed me—but I truly did think it was you, although I ought to have realized something was amiss when he—”
Poll winced and held up a restraining hand. “Please, spare me the excruciating details.”
Miranda bit her lip. “Sorry.”
“Do you think it is fair that my brother and I fight it out for your attentions when he has such a vast advantage? You have kissed him. You have not kissed me. It is obligatory that you rectify the situation before you can truly consider yourself impartial.”
Miranda drew back and stared at him. “Mr. Worthington, is this your romantic notion of angling for a kiss?”
He shot her an embarrassed glance, though a grin threatened to break through his somber mien. “I spent all of yesterday considering tactics. I decided upon applied logic.” His smile flashed ruefully. “Is it working?”
Her own smile grew slowly. He was, without a doubt, completely endearing. And, despite her resolution not to indulge in any more kissing until she’d decided, she had to admit that he did have a point. Curiosity sank its claws in a little deeper. How could she make a sure judgment unless she had all the facts?
“Mr. Worthington, your rea
soning is sound.” She licked her lips and leaned closer. “I have heard your appeal,” she murmured, “and I have decided to grant your petition.”
His eyes flashed green fire and his jaw hardened. “I thank the court for its indulgence.”
He leaned in as well, until Miranda could feel the sweet warmth of his breath on her lips. Yes, it was high time she kissed the right man!
“Oy!”
At the rough shout, they drew apart quickly to see a fellow in gardener’s gloves and a wide-brimmed hat stomping their way, his features twisted in irritation. “What are you up to there? This be not a bedchamber, you wicked things! Get ye gone!”
Miranda scrambled to her feet, her heart thumping in alarm. Mr. Worthington, however, merely snatched up the basket and blanket in one arm, grabbed her hand with the other, and pulled her away. They ran like naughty children, snickering at their portly pursuer, who clomped after them in his heavy gumboots but fell quickly behind.
* * *
In the great house that had seemed oddly familiar to Miranda, two men strolled down an ostentatious and glorious gallery, one with gilded marble pillars and frescoed canopy ceilings.
One was a stout, older fellow dressed in all white with gold trim, but for his garish high-heeled shoes. George IV, Prince Regent and ruler of the British Empire, paused at one of the tall graceful windows to admire his garden. It was an excellent view, for the royal gardeners worked hard to keep it so.
How he longed to be out of doors. Summer was George’s favorite time of year—a time of warm days and soft breezes, of lush growth and sweet perfume, of stirring blood and languid laughter, of lovers on a blanket on the grass, of trespassers fleeing the gardeners—
He squinted. “Who is that?”
His Captain of the Guard, a vast-shouldered expressionless force of nature whom George called “Wolfhound” in his head, and occasionally out loud, whipped out a spyglass and trained it on the distant couple. Wolfhound stared for a long moment—long enough for George to wonder if he might be missing something rather good—and then relaxed his giant shoulders and lowered the spyglass.
“No need to worry, Your Majesty.” His voice was so deep, it sounded as if it rose from the bottom of a well. “It’s only one of them. I can’t tell which one—you know they both look like trouble to me.”
“Ah.” George rolled his eyes. “It’s best to ignore it. Arrest only encourages them.” The Prince Regent leaned one pudgy knee into the embrasure and squinted at the distant fleeing couple. “Yes, but which one?”
The captain lifted his brows. “Sire, I fear I cannot tell you, for I cannot tell them apart even when within arm’s reach.”
The Prince Regent made a small sound of disappointment. “Can you not? I find them nothing alike, myself. That—” He waved a hand. “—was the harmless one, I think.”
The Captain of the Guard nodded. “Yes, Your Majesty. I shall take note. Ah, does that imply that the other one is … er … dangerous?”
George smiled slightly. “Does it indeed?” He peered one last time out at the landscape, wondering if the fleeing lady was as pretty as they usually were, then resumed his leisurely ramble through St. James’s Palace with a sigh. “Spawn of Worthington.”
Chapter Fourteen
Dream hands.
Hands both gentle and rough, both giving and demanding.
Hands, hot and tender, moving over my skin. Warm palm smoothing my arms, my shoulders, my throat, fingertips brushing tenderly over my cheekbone, pulling down my hair to veil us both in silken darkness.
I catch at those hands, sliding my touch upward. My fingers follow powerfully built arms, feeling the prickle of manly hair, caressing the bulge of biceps, the furrowed dome of a rippling shoulder.
Then on to a muscular neck, the crisp curl of hair on the back of the neck, the bristling erotic touch of unshaven cheek on mine.
His mouth, hot and sweet on my lips, on my throat, on my temple.
I pull him down atop me, loving his hard weight as he covers me, the way his lean, commanding thighs press my willing ones far apart.
I love him. I love.…
A sound like a broken sigh awoke Miranda, and she realized that she’d made it herself.
Rolling over abruptly, she pressed her damp and forlornly ready body down into the feather bed and buried a frustrated sob in her pillow.
Her body, always so obediently detached from any unattainable sexual wishes, was rebelling now. Her sleep each night was plagued with the touch and feel and taste of a man with green eyes and curling brown hair.
She only wished she could be sure which man she dreamed of.
If she knew which man haunted her sleep, then she would know which one she ought to choose, wouldn’t she? It would be lovely to have the question decided for her thus.
That tiny, never-entirely-repressed voice spoke in her mind.
Why choose? You could have them both. They are twins. Likely they have learned to share.
Wicked, unworthy voice. Scandalous, depraved voice.
Yet … she was so very fond of Poll. On some deep level, she empathized with Cas. They both wanted her. Was she so wrong to wonder how to conduct affairs with two lovers? Would it be so terrible?
Yes. It was terrible. She wanted to kiss two men. Was she truly taking after her scandalous mother after all?
Mama had been beautiful—that glowing, vivacious beauty that had little to do with cheekbones or hair color. Mama lived. She’d lived so hard that she made others want to live hard as well.
Miranda was raised by her nurse, but she remembered a few occasions of watching her mother prepare for grand evenings with great fascination, almost as if she were observing an exotic bird preening in a menagerie.
Papa had been no match for his extraordinary, effervescent, self-indulgent wife. Her glittering radiance had kept him in shadow, until he virtually disappeared.
Helplessly worshipping his goddess Elise, subject to her every whim—even to the extent of ignoring her many affairs—Papa had beggared himself to please her. Then, when his own funds ran out, he had beggared the clients whose accounts he managed. His legal practice collapsed from within, and all became public.
Papa had gone to prison. Mama, with her choice of willing devotees, found a new wealthy worshipper and left with him for parts unknown. Word came years later that she had died of a fever in some tropical land.
Miranda imagined that her mother had passed on most attractively. She pictured her pale and beautifully languid end, as her limpid eyes turned beseechingly toward the heavens as she musically sighed her last breath.
Miranda had gone to her grandmother, who never let her forget how easily one’s good name could be lost.
I am not like her. I am not.
Yet for the first time she felt a stirring of sympathy for the unfulfilled Elise—vibrant and expansive, wed too young to the wrong man and made wild with resentment at marriage’s repressive constraints.
Miranda’s grandmother had always blamed Elise for Papa’s criminal acts, yet did Society not hold that the husband was the master, if not of his wife, then at least of his own fate?
All the more reason to avoid marriage entirely. Miranda brushed away this tangle of thoughts impatiently. She had two much more pressing problems.
She must choose one or the other.
Or neither.
Her eyes clenched shut against that unbearable notion and she burrowed deeper into the pillow.
She would choose. She would. She just needed a little more time.
And, perhaps, a single decisive dream.
* * *
Cas was finding his increasing obsession with Miranda quite disturbing. He needed a bit of time to think.
Except he couldn’t think … not of anything but her. Miranda was everywhere.
He paced up and down Bond Street, staring blindly into shops, seeing only the way Miranda’s dark, glossy hair fell across her sculpted cheek. He took a stroll along the Serpentine, abse
ntly dodging the obnoxious swans that inhabited the park. Her sea-green eyes shimmered at him from the water of the lake.
He strolled Covent Garden, which filled with quiet during the early hours, for the people who brought the theater district to life were still abed and would be long into the day. The white violets being lackadaisically peddled by a yawning flower girl only made him recall the creamy skin of Miranda’s fragrant neck.
Mira.
The hour rang in a clock tower somewhere nearby, bringing Cas out of his reverie. It was now Poll’s turn.
Cas’s feet turned of their own accord, and he went striding back to Breton Square.
The exterior of Miranda’s house gave Cas no answers to his questions. It sat there, respectable and stoic, mocking him for his burning curiosity. Was Poll inside the house?
Mira’s eyes. Mira’s lips. Mira’s skin, hair, breasts. The twist of her waist when she turned—
Mira with Poll.
Though he’d told himself he only meant to pass by, Cas stayed, lurking in a doorway a few houses down the square, looking as nonchalant as possible with his jaw tight with tension and his hands fisted in jealous rage.
What was Poll doing to her right now?
Miranda’s mouth, opening on a sigh as Poll’s kiss deepened. Miranda’s body melting against Poll’s, her innocent willingness evident in her very suppleness.
This wasn’t imagination; it was memory. His imagination simply put Poll’s face in the place of his own.
That was excruciatingly laughable. Poll’s face. Their face, the one and the same.
Cas had always enjoyed their impostor games before, or at least, had not cared. Poll was the one who enjoyed playing Cas. Cas, in his turn, enjoyed the trickery and the intricacies of keeping up with the fibs. He liked the fast talk, the patter that made people’s heads spin and used their own doubts to confuse them.
Odd. He couldn’t recall ever trying to float one of those chock-full-of-illogic moments past Miranda.
And Then Comes Marriage Page 12
