Elektra drew back slightly at that, and considered her own hands in her lap, unconsciously mirroring Miranda. Then she looked back up with a new light in her eyes. “Mrs. Talbot, I don’t think I’d mind at all.”
Miranda blushed and made herself busy with the tea tray. Elektra, who despite Mr. Worthington’s contention that she could make a saint into a shrew in a week’s time, seemed to be a sensible and sensitive young woman, delicately changed the subject.
“I must tell you about my new gown! I’m terribly excited, for there’s a marvelous ball coming up—”
After a moment, Miranda realized that Elektra was speaking of the Marquis of Wyndham’s ball. She longed to join in on the girl’s excited plans, but she’d promised Mr. Button not to say a word!
However, it was nice to know that tomorrow night she might have a friend in the hall.
* * *
Button held up his latest creation to the morning light from the window and peered closely at a beaded detail on the bodice. It was, of course, perfect. He smiled.
Miranda would be the second most beautiful woman at tomorrow night’s ball. Button felt that to be fair, since Lady Wyndham was a dear friend and a natural redhead, to boot—an opportunity not to passed up, creatively speaking.
This was very good, for Attie had informed him that matters between the twins had become strained to the point of actual violence. There was not a moment to lose in the quest to provide adequately handsome and wealthy distraction for Miranda’s seeking heart.
The door to Button’s sanctuary opened. Without turning around, he felt Cabot come into the room. Cabot, ever-present, even when Button was all alone. Beautiful, untouchable Cabot.
Button pasted on a cheery grin and whirled, flipping the gown out in an elegant swirl. “Well, what do you think?”
This was an important question. Cabot’s taste was unerringly elegant, his judgment severely, ruthlessly stylish. Button, on the other hand tended to overdo, just a touch, on the delightful dramatic possibilities in every outfit.
Button created freely, confident that Cabot would edit him flawlessly.
Cabot eyed the gown. “This is for Miranda?”
Button nodded. They had all become quite familiar, referring to her as Miranda. Once past her initial—but considerable!—reserve, she was delightfully friendly and warm.
Cabot walked around Button slowly, then the other way. At a twirl of the younger man’s finger, Button flipped the gown to reveal the back.
Cabot pursed his lips slightly. Button glanced down at the gown. “What? Too much? Or too little?”
Cabot shook his head. “It is perfect.”
A smile creased Button’s puckish features. “I know.”
Cabot took the gown from him to pack it carefully in layers of tissue for the journey to Miranda’s house. As he opened the door, Button remembered. “Ah, Cabot, how did your little reconnaissance mission go?”
Cabot halted with one arm braced high on the door to keep the gown from touching the floor and his torso twisted back toward Button. It was an unbearably romantic pose, made all the more dazzling by Cabot’s complete lack of awareness. Button concealed the way his breath caught at his assistant’s unearthly beauty, his effort assisted by years of practice.
Cabot reported dutifully. “The Worthingtons Squared are most definitely expected to attend Mrs. Blythe’s Midsummer Madness orgy tonight instead of the Marquis of Wyndham’s ball. They confirmed many weeks ago.” He paused. “The young ladies present were very happy to hear it. The young men were slightly annoyed.”
“Ah, youth.” Button smiled. “I’m surprised you did not get an invitation in the post.”
Cabot regarded him evenly. “Mrs. Blythe invited me personally.”
Smiling through the twinge in his chest, Button nodded. “Well, of course. You’ve been a very popular guest in the past.”
Cabot’s face became as expressionless as marble. “That was a very long time ago, sir.” Then he spun on his heel and left the office.
Button, sans witnesses, set aside his perpetually energetic demeanor for a moment and sagged wearily into his chair. Cabot.
Always there. Always gorgeous. Always at his right hand, presciently aware of his every need. Always waiting for him to notice.
What on earth was he going to do about Cabot?
* * *
Miranda rolled over in her warm, sumptuous bed and snuggled deeply into her pillows. She cracked her eyelids just enough to verify the hour by the light coming in the window.
The room was still dark. Marvelous. She had hours left to sleep. Her body had had two days alone to recover from her athletics with Cas, but she thought she might never catch up on her sleep!
The next time she opened her eyes, her room was still very dim, yet she could tell she’d slept many hours. She sat up and looked again at the window.
The draperies were tightly drawn, when she knew perfectly well she’d left them open. “Tildy!”
As if magically conjured, Tildy entered the bedchamber with a breakfast tray that also held a steaming pitcher of water for washing.
“Don’t you fuss, missus. That dressmaker bloke gave me strict instructions that you weren’t to have black sacks under your eyes and see there, you don’t!”
Miranda relaxed a bit when she saw the time on her mantel clock, for it was still early afternoon and yet more when she saw in her looking-glass that she indeed looked most refreshed.
She ate sparingly, however, for the butterflies in her belly refused to rest. Both of her Mr. Worthingtons meant to attend this evening, along with their sister and parents. She could not wait to see Cas’s expression when she stood before him in her delicious, new Lementeur creation!
Lementeur!
“Tildy, hurry! Mr. Button will be here in less than an hour and I still haven’t had my bath!”
Would Cas think she was beautiful? Would he realize that she was a woman he could possibly … love?
Chapter Twenty-four
Cas rummaged in Poll’s wardrobe for a decent silk weskit. A man had to keep up appearances, especially at a do like Wyndham’s ball.
He wished Miranda could accompany him, but Poll had reminded him that an occasion of this magnitude came with sartorial expectations—expectations that a woman still wearing her drab, half-mourning gowns could not meet.
If he’d thought of it in time, he would have had Button whip something up for her—something green or perhaps blue. Wispy and flowing and serene.
“I saw it this morning when I went to pick up my dress,” came Elektra’s excited voice in the hallway. Her distinctive step—half authoritative stride, half childish skip, as if she hadn’t the patience to actually walk anywhere—sounded down the boards of the hall, coming toward Poll’s room.
“Will it suit her, do you think?” Poll’s voice.
Cas grabbed three possible weskits and thrust them behind his back, whirling to stand innocently next to the swiftly shut wardrobe. He didn’t want Poll to—
“Miranda is going to be the most beautiful woman at Wyndham’s,” gushed Ellie, coming closer. “The plot is going marvelously. Cas won’t know what hit him—”
Ellie turned into the doorway of Poll’s room and stopped short. “Oh.”
Poll stumbled to a halt behind her. “Ellie, do watch where you—” His eyes widened. “Oh.”
Cas straightened, forgetting his casual pose, letting the weskits fall to the floor behind him. “What plot?” A chill twined in the center of his gut.
“Cas!” Ellie assessed his frozen face and swallowed hard. “I—oh, bother!” Giving up on trying to out-Worthington a Worthington, she simply turned and fled, dashing around Poll before he could do more than raise a hand in protest at her desertion.
Cas breathed in and out. Again. Poll watched him like a rabbit before a fox.
At last, Cas unfroze his lips enough to speak. “What. Plot?”
Poll gave him a sickly grin that faded quickly. “It isn’t so
much a plot as—well, Attie got it into her head, you know how Attie can be—”
Cas felt the ice spread, hardening his belly, spreading upward and out.
Poll ran his fingers through his head. “She got Button to give Miranda a new wardrobe, all that sort of stuff—thinking that if Miranda had some rich beaus to choose from that she would lose interest in us poor, bedraggled Worthingtons.”
Cas tilted his head. “I find it hard to see where you fit in there—being one of the poor, bedraggled ones.”
Poll shrugged. “I came in later—actually, just recently, really—”
“Poll.”
“I’m not really courting Miranda!” Poll blurted. Then he ran a hand over his face. “I’m glad to get that one out, actually. It’s bloody hard to keep anything from you—”
“You’re lying.” The ice was turning to stone, like walls around him, a labyrinth, turning him this way and that, tricking him. “I saw you kissing her, in her window.”
Poll threw out his hands. “I know! A bloody awkward kiss it was, too!” He had the nerve to beam at Cas. “Just awful, like laying one on Aunt Clemmie!”
“You were putting on an act?” He felt raw. “You knew I was there?” No secrets in the dark for him, then. He felt foolish, thinking himself private when all the world seemed to be watching.
Poll rolled his eyes. “No, not then, actually, but I did catch you outside the house and then at the children’s home—”
Cas flinched. He’d looked the fool truly, then, hadn’t he?
“And Miranda told me she thought you cared for her. From the sound of it, I thought so, too—”
Ice. “Miranda told you?” Stone.
Poll opened his eyes wide in protest. “It isn’t like that! It’s only that I know that after what that Quinton woman did to you when we were lads—”
The blow was nearly physical, so much so that Cas stepped back and away from that truth. “You know—you knew all this time?”
Naked. He was stripped, raw and naked before the world, thinking himself clothed, thinking his secrets safe, his darkness hidden deep inside. All the while it had been sitting on display in the middle of the street with its hands over his eyes.
The hot slide of fury, a knife to cut through the shadows with. “You.” He stared at Poll, feeling shame and pain and hatred boiling up from deep and long ago. “Anyone but you! You set me up—you and Miranda, manipulating me, twisting and turning me—”
Poll paled. “No. No, Cas. Not like that. I just—I simply couldn’t allow you to ruin it—I knew you’d let her get away, just like you’ve walked away from every chance of happiness you’ve ever had!” Poll took a step forward, one hand reaching out. “Cas, you need Miranda. You need love. If you lose her, you’ll just be emptier than ever—”
Too much truth. Too raw. Too open.
Cas spun from it, from the look of pity and love and Poll’s eyes, from the knowledge that once again he’d been moved about like a pawn on the chessboard, thinking himself a free man, all the while naked and blind.
“No.” He turned away from Poll, away from Miranda, away from all of it. “No. I am no one’s puppet! Do you hear me? I will not dangle from your strings!”
He left Poll there, pale and shaken.
* * *
Miranda poured the tea and smiled at Mr. Seymour, trying to conceal her exasperation. There was so much to do and so little time left!
Of course, she ought to have realized that he would keep to his regular—one might almost say “mechanical”—calling schedule. A brief note in yesterday’s post about her unavailability would have freed up her afternoon nicely!
As it was, she could scarcely tell him so now. She only hoped he would drink his tea quickly, recite his usual newsy tidbits, eat a bit of cake—and then leave!
Mr. Seymour took the tea with his usual gravity. “I am most glad to see you are well, Mrs. Talbot. It distressed me greatly when you were abed.”
I will not turn his words into innuendo just to keep from nodding off. I will not.
Instead, she decided to put the bothersome call to good use. Standing, she moved across the parlor. “Mr. Seymour, while I must thank you for this very thoughtful offering—” She took the box containing the dress from a shelf by the door and held it before her. “—I now find myself in an uncomfortable position. I do not wish to offend you, but I cannot accept this gift.”
He blinked and then he flushed oddly. “I am confused, Mrs. Talbot. I had hoped … but it seems that you are not interested in my pursuit of you after all.”
“I apologize for that, good sir. I ought to have made my feelings clear sooner. I was merely distracted—” One could certainly say that truthfully. “—by some unrelated concerns, which have now come to a close.”
With sudden and strange urgency, he reached for her hand. “If I may be so bold, Mrs. Talbot, I implore you to consider my suit one last time. I know I am not the most exciting of fellows but I do like to believe I am a solid contender for any lady’s hand. You should think on this, before it is too late—” He went down upon his knee at once. There was no mistaking the pose or the gleam in his eye. “Mrs. Talbot, I am your humblest servant and I long for your good company for the rest of my life. Will you be my wife?”
One had to give him points for boldness, and she never thought she would say that about Mr. Seymour.
Pulling her hand from his damp grip, Miranda inhaled. “Mr. Seymour, please stop. You have been a fine friend to me, but I am not interested in your suit. And I shall not alter my feelings.”
Mr. Seymour cleared his throat. Slowly he released her hands. “Mrs. Talbot, I am disconcerted.” He stared at her with bulging eyes unblinking.
Then, as he started to recover from his surprise, she saw it. She saw the thing that had been lurking behind the polite mask and the well rehearsed newsy tidbits.
There was no mistaking the gleam of vindictive fury in his eyes. She knew it. She recognized it at once. It had been the gleam in her grandmother’s eyes, and in Constance’s.
A curl of his lip resembled a snarl. She leaned away from his scornful countenance. “Mr. Seymour, it seems it is time for you to leave.”
He drew back, his face gone blank with surprise for an instant. It was a relief to see the sneaky little reptile that was his true self scurry back behind his bland camouflage.
Miranda stood and strolled to the door of the parlor, where she turned to assess him evenly. “Twigg will show you out, sir.”
With that she turned and left the room, her thoughts already turning to her room upstairs, where waited Mr. Button, Attie, Cabot, and an enticing pile of boxes marked with a distinctive looping L.
I am going to a ball! With Cas!
Her feet fairly danced her up the stairs, with not a single stumbled step.
* * *
Cas snapped his cravat about his neck and began to tie it in short, sharp jerks.
Through his open door, he could hear his father reciting. “‘We are such stuff / As dreams are made on, and our little life / Is rounded with a sleep.’”
Involuntarily, Cas’s well-trained memory provided the footnote—in Iris’s voice, of course—The Tempest, Act 4, Scene 1.
Miranda.
Ah, so his parents were in on the scheme.
What of the post-boy? How about the fellow who delivered the produce? Would he walk down the street and see knowing amusement in every face?
His cravat tore from the fury of his tying. The damned Gordian knot he was attempting to tie resisted his best effort—not that he cared. He wasn’t going to Wyndham’s ball, to wait on bloody Miranda like a pet! No, he was going to Mrs. Blythe’s Midsummer Madness orgy, and he was going to plow Lily and Dilly and any other female who held still long enough!
After all, it was what he was best at. What he’d been born for, according to the lovely, filthy Lady Quinton. How had she described him, all those years ago—a great cock with a trivial man attached?
There was
no point in trying to be anything else. There was no point in trying to keep the Prince Regent’s bargain, no point in wishing he were something he was not.
No point in wanting to be more.
He had assumed that Poll would no longer be interested in Mrs. Blythe’s entertainments, that he would go dance attendance upon Miranda at Wyndham’s, but he’d learned an hour ago that Poll had every intention of accompanying him.
Cas had looked around the table at his wide-eyed expectant family and declined to fight about it.
Not that a rousing fight wouldn’t do him good.
He stripped off the mangled cravat and grabbed his last pressed one. Glaring at it in the mirror, he pointed a finger. “You will tie correctly or you will undergo the dreaded iron torture.”
“You can’t torture it. It’s mine.”
Cas turned to see Poll in his doorway, wearing pegged knee trousers and a fine white shirt. At Cas’s hard look, Poll shrugged irritably.
“Mama forced me to rig out. You’d better, too. She said it isn’t respectful to Mrs. Blythe to go underdressed.”
Cas didn’t reply.
Poll wrinkled his brow. “Do you suppose she understands who Mrs. Blythe actually is?”
Cas—who once would have joined him in a highly entertaining rant on the various, hilarious, and incorrect perceptions of Iris Worthington toward Mrs. Blythe, notorious madam and happy corruptor of innocent youth—merely stared at his twin flatly.
“Cas, you shouldn’t do this. Go to Wyndham’s with me. See Miranda. She’ll make you forget all about this—”
Cas growled. Poll held up both hands. “Fine. All right. But don’t betray her, Cas—you know what she’s been through—”
“Get. Out.”
Poll gave up. “I need my cream jacquard weskit.”
Cas turned away. “Not here.”
“You borrowed it, last October, and I haven’t seen it since.”
Cas’s fists clenched, promptly ruining the press of the cravat. With a growl, he stripped it off and threw it at his twin. Then he went to his wardrobe and gathered half a dozen weskits into his arms.
And Then Comes Marriage Page 21
