And Then Comes Marriage

by Celeste Bradley

  She had little enough breath to face the world outside, but she spared some to turn to the unhappy butler for a moment. “This was not your fault,” she told him. “You did try to warn me.”

  Every one of the man’s efforts to resist commands that might anger Constance was now seen in a clearer light. He’d been trying to protect her, to keep her from pushing her spiteful sister-in-law to enact drastic measures.

  “Of course, I didn’t listen.” Miranda felt numb, too defeated to even sense pain. “I wish you well, Twigg. You are a paragon of service, you truly are.”

  The man sniffed. The familiar sound struck Miranda’s ear discordantly. She suddenly could not wait to see the last of the house that had been her home for more than a dozen years.

  Leaving Twigg, she walked slowly down the steps. Turn left? Turn right?

  Her vision suddenly blurred. Right or left? The decision seemed impossible to make. Her numbness was abruptly swept away by a chill wash of fear. People lied, and plotted, and showed her smiling faces that hid profound betrayal. The world was not safe, no matter if she chose right or if she chose left!

  So when a dainty white-lacquered carriage, drawn by a matching pair of snow-white horses, pulled up before her and a gracious Cabot leaned out to reach his hand to take hers, Miranda did the only thing she could do.

  She stepped forward.

  * * *

  The clock chimed in the hall of Button’s pretty little house. Miranda sat rigidly on the settee next to Mr. Button while he and Cabot discussed arrangements for a small but respectably located set of rooms just outside Mayfair proper.

  She’d be fortunate to get them, even tiny and inconvenient as they were. No one wanted to let to the Wicked Widow, even when offered favor by the great Lementeur!

  It had been all over the scandal sheets yesterday evening. As Miranda and Cabot had ridden in the sweetly well-sprung conveyance across Mayfair, they had heard it shouted out from every street corner, as the newsboys had hawked their latest edition to a fascinated public.

  The Wicked Widow’s Corrupt Past!

  The Wicked Widow’s Wicked Pedigree!

  And Miranda’s personal favorite, Wicked, Wickeder, Wickedest Widow!

  She’d thought that particular newsboy ought to receive hazard pay for that tongue-twister.

  Every moment of her life had been spent making sure that no one recalled her parents’ scandal. She’d learned to speak softly, move slowly, contain her wayward thoughts. She’d hidden her true self under layers of perfect behavior. She’d done everything right.

  Until a green-eyed man had gazed down at her with hunger in his eyes. Until that man had touched her until she burned alive.

  Now she sat, so motionless that her flesh chilled. Moving hurt too much. Breathing hurt too much.

  Cas.

  The clock kept chiming. Miranda shivered at the sweet, relentless ringing. Another hour of her life had passed. Only a few hundred thousand to go.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  In the attic chamber of Worthington House, Cas gazed at his brother calmly.

  Poll scowled back. “Why do you want it? What good is it?”

  “I’m going to get evidence on who sent it. I’m going to prove that Constance Talbot is guilty of blackmail … or at least, guilty of something! Blackmail is against the law, but like all blackmailers, Constance thought Miranda would never accuse her because then her own secrets would come out. But Miranda can now!”

  Poll gazed at him for a long moment, then pulled a small folded paper from his pocket. He gazed down at it unhappily. “It actually does look a bit like my handwriting.”

  Cas snorted. “Well, since we know it is not, we can assume it is a forgery.”

  Poll nodded and handed it over to Cas. “Yes, that is certain.” He shook his head. “I would never have done that to Miranda. God, her face when she saw you holding Lily—”

  “When she saw me pushing Lily off my lap, you mean.”

  Poll shrugged. “I’m fairly sure she missed that part. She was being assaulted right about then by that bloke you angered by monopolizing the twins.”

  Cas stood quite still and let Poll take his shots. It was all true.

  Yes, someone else had tricked Miranda into going to the brothel, but it wouldn’t have happened if Cas hadn’t insisted on going there in the first place. If he’d been at the Ball as he’d promised his sister and Poll, then even if someone had given Miranda such a note, she would merely have turned to him—because he would have been, should have been, right by her side.

  The simple deception Miranda and Poll had enacted upon him now seemed so trivial. Cas honestly didn’t remember why he’d felt so angry, unless it was that he’d finally allowed himself to be angry about past betrayals, letting them sour the present.

  At any rate, he’d been the reason Miranda had been hurt. He’d been used like a weapon against her, shot out of a Cas-created cannon, directly into her innocent, open heart.

  Poll ought not to have tricked him. Miranda ought not to have gone along with his brother’s mad scheme.

  Cas would never forget her face.

  He’d been laughing at Lily, rejecting her ninth or tenth playful attempt to clamber onto him in some way. He’d taken her by the shoulders and given her a little shake to emphasize his refusal.

  And out of the corner of his eye he’d seen a streak of brilliant blue-green silk high above him, a trick of the light on gleaming satin that drew his eye instantly to the upper landing of the stairs.

  Miranda—just turning away from him, her face pale, her eyes wide, her lips parted in horror, or disgust, Cas wasn’t sure.

  Then, a scuffle. He couldn’t see it all. He’d dumped Lily aside without a thought and ran to where he could observe, just in time to see Miranda nearly fall over the railing. His only thought had been to catch her, but someone, probably Poll, had snatched her back from certain death.

  For that alone he could forgive Poll any amount of brotherly meddling.

  At that point, he’d run up the stairs to tackle the ridiculously large fellow who was pinning Poll down and punching him. It was a good thing the man had been so drunk, for if those blows had landed with any accuracy or force, Poll might well be dead.

  Miranda had stood right there, tugging on the brute’s shoulder and screaming into his ear, pulling his hair and generally making a nuisance of herself, but the man had been too intoxicated to do more than brush her off like a buzzing insect.

  Cas had caught her against his chest. Turning her head, she’d looked into his face, then twisted away from him, shrinking from his touch as if he were more of a monster than the ruffian who had shoved her.

  He’d done it to himself, of course.

  No, he’d done it to her.

  Now he meant to repair the damage. Somehow.

  * * *

  At first Cas tried to find proof in the physical evidence. He carefully examined the note itself—but it was scrawled on ordinary foolscap in the sort of ink that half of England kept in bottles on their desks.

  Not in reality would he discover that it was some exotic paper made from fibers only obtainable in the depths of Africa, written on with ink concocted from berries only grown in the heights of the Andes.

  That sort of nonsense was for tawdry novels, like the ones that Elektra hid from Attie—not that it did any good.

  The note itself being useless, the only thing left was to investigate the people.

  “Honestly, Cas!” Elektra stared at him in exasperation in the mirror as she sorted hair ribbons at her vanity table. “I didn’t tell anyone your plans! I was far too busy getting ready for my evening. Some of us actually went to Wyndham’s ball, you know!”

  “Cas.” Dade gazed at him flatly from his seat behind the desk in his study. “You went to an orgy. That is hardly information that I would wish to share with anyone.”

  “What orgy?” Orion blinked at him when Cas cornered him in his laboratory, which was really the second kit
chen, but no one would dare cook edibles in it any longer—not after the episode with the cobra venom!

  Cas didn’t bother questioning Lysander. All secrets were safe with Zander, for Zander never spoke at all, except to Mama and sometimes Attie.

  Oh. Oh, no.

  Attie.

  * * *

  Cas banged on Miranda’s—er, Constance’s front door—damn it, not for bloody long!—until Twigg opened it.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” the butler greeted Cas stiffly. “I regret to inform you that I have instructions regarding … er, certain callers.”

  “Fine,” Cas snapped, “for I came to see you.”

  Twigg hesitated, then leaned closer to Cas. “Come to the tradesman’s entrance in five minutes,” he murmured. Then he straightened to his haughty butler best. “Sir, if you do not remove yourself, I shall have you forcibly removed!”

  Cas nodded shortly and turned away from the door. Five minutes later, he waited outside the delivery door off the kitchens, down several steps from street level.

  Twigg joined him there and let him in. “No danger of Cook saying a word,” he assured Cas. “She preferred the young madam as well.”

  Twigg led Cas into a small room off the main kitchen that he recognized as the butler’s pantry, primarily by the familiar scent of spirits of turpentine—except in this house it was used to clean silver, no doubt, not paint brushes.

  Twigg closed the door and stood at attention. “Have no worry, sir. Miss Constance will not bestir herself to enter here, now that she has counted the silver for the week.”

  From the harried expression on the fellow’s face, Cas guessed that Constance had found fault with the state of the plate.

  “Twigg—”

  “Have you seen her?” Twigg burst out. “We’re all terribly worried, sir! Not a peep after that tailor fellow kidnapped her right off the street!”

  “Button is a good friend, Twigg. She is safe with him.” Cas swept away Twigg’s concern with one hand. “I came here to investigate an incident. Attie told me that you witnessed Mr. Seymour stealing about the place on the day of the Wyndhams’ ball. What can you tell me about it?”

  Twigg blinked. “Oh, that Seymour fellow! I’ve seen his sort before. Like wool moths, eating holes in everything whilst you aren’t looking!”

  “Er, yes.” Cas supposed moths would be quite a bother to a butler. “Is it true that Mr. Seymour stayed in the house after Mrs. Talbot had asked him to go? And then when he left, he took a book?”

  Actually, what Attie had said was more in the vein of “the old donkey’s arse nicked Miranda’s Kubla Kahn!” A book that Poll informed Cas had contained a rather long inscription—Poll did tend to wax romantic—in, yes, Poll’s usual hand.

  Twigg pursed his lips. “Oh, I should say so! Hours later, it was. He took that book of verse that the other Mr. Worthington gave her. I ought not to have allowed it, but he claimed it belonged to him. It was only later when I was sorting the books that I noticed it missing. A bad business, that Mr. Seymour. Lurking like that, sitting in the little library, scribbling away, using up the mistress’s paper and ink on a bunch of nonsense words.“

  “What words?” Cas swallowed back his urgency when he saw Twigg flinch. He was alarming the help! “Do you recall what the words said?”

  “Well, no.” Twigg sniffed. “I didn’t read them. That would be inappropriate.”

  Cas sagged in disappointment. So close.

  “Although I suppose it would not be so very indiscreet if you read them. After all, Mr. Seymour did toss them into the grate. I only kept them, you understand, should the mistress wonder if one of the staff was making off with all that fine paper.”

  Cas snapped to attention. “You kept them?”

  Twigg nodded earnestly. “Every one. Habit, I suppose. The elder madam is most particular. She wants accounting of every single thing in the house.”

  A grin slowly grew on Cas’s face. Constance, you miserly wretch, you’ve done it now!

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Miranda sat in Button’s parlor, the one with the sweet-faced shepherdesses arranged on the mantel, and read her diary.

  She had vowed to do it every day, so that she might not forget. She dared not let her thoughts veer into sweet memory, nor to gaze into the coals and imagine a pair of green eyes that burned like peat fire.

  So, to keep her wayward thoughts in line, she kept the leather-bound diary with her, to open whenever she weakened into kindly thoughts of Cas.

  There was no need to read the entire work. There was nothing useful in the dreary accountings of her marriage to Gideon, or in the hopeful burbling of a newly independent widow.

  No, there was really only one page she needed to read. She read it over and over again, her soul flinching every time.

  Cabot entered the parlor. “There’s a Worthington to see you,” he said blandly.

  Attie. “Oh, all right, Cabot.” Miranda realized that she couldn’t turn the child away yet again. None of this madness was Attie’s fault. It wasn’t the littlest Worthington’s responsibility that her brothers were—were—blasted arses!

  “Miranda.”

  The deep voice caught at her heart like a tangle of fish-hooks, dragging it up from the depths of numbness. Her gaze rose to meet the summer green of Cas’s eyes.

  An arse. In the flesh.

  She hadn’t realized she’d said it aloud until Cas snorted a laugh and bowed. “At your service,” he said with a small hopeful smile.

  Miranda stayed very still and gazed at him. It had not been a jest. She had not intended to make him laugh, a fact he seemed to realize as the hope faded from his expression.

  He cleared his throat. “Mira, ah, Mrs. Talbot, I came here to inform you that I have secured proof that Mr. Seymour was the creator of the note that, ah, led you astray.”

  She tilted her head. “It did not lead me astray. It led me to you. I shall write to Mr. Seymour at once to thank him for his helpfulness. I might never have known the truth otherwise. Certainly I would not have had it from a Worthington.”

  Cas flinched. “Miranda—”

  She held up a hand. “Don’t. I saw you in a brothel, in the arms of a whore.”

  Cas swore. “Lily is actually a good sort, if you must know. She was only pretending to—an orgy is a lot of work for a girl! If she pretended to be seducing me, she could rest a bit!”

  Miranda’s eyebrows rose. “A malingering ladybird. Will wonders never cease?”

  He stepped forward. “The point is the note! I can prove that Constance and Seymour conspired to ruin you! You can bring charges against them, for blackmail at the least!”

  She shook her head. “You don’t seem to understand, Mr. Worthington.” She stood, clasping the diary before her bosom like a shield. “I. Don’t. Care.”

  She couldn’t even look at him without seeing Lily draped across his lap. She closed her eyes and turned away. “Constance and Seymour only ruined my reputation. You ruined me.” Her throat threatened to close. She would not weep in front of him!

  Tightening her belly against the tremble that threatened her, she went on. “The only thing I ever did to you was to keep a secret. I did not tell you that I loved you.”

  Cas’s breath left him. Loved. Past tense.

  Oh, I thought I hurt before. I was so very wrong.

  She turned back to him in a swift motion that spoke of urgent bravery in the face of fear. In a quick gesture, she flipped the book in her hands open. It fell to a page as if it had fallen open to it many times before.

  As she read to him, her soft voice had a flat thread of steel in it that he’d never heard before.

  “All through my childhood and beyond, I have never truly felt secure. With my father’s imprisonment and my mother’s death, I learned that nothing is permanent, that no one stays. I learned that the world is full of danger and damage and selfishness—and that I could trust no one completely.

  “Until now. Until him. For th
e first time in my memory, I know what it means to trust. When I am with my lover—” She choked up, then forced the words through her tangled throat. “—for the first time in my life, I feel safe.”

  Cas would not have surprised to look down to find the carpet soaked in his blood. There didn’t seem to be any left in his heart, for each beat was painful and aching and empty.

  Oh, Mira. I did this to you.

  She was broken, like a lovely young filly turned into a shivering wreck by abusive hands.

  My hands.

  She closed the diary with a snap and lifted her flat sea green gaze to his. “I will not defend myself. I am a scandal. Unlike you, apparently, I know that scandal never goes away.”

  He had to try, just once more. “You can’t quit now! The fight has just begun!”

  She turned away again. Her shoulders sagged. “Mr. Worthington, my fight began when I was nine years old. I am too tired to fight anymore. Go away.”

  * * *

  Cas was surprised when the Prince Regent agreed to see him right away. When he was guided to yet another luxurious retiring room padded in velvet and silk, he only paced restlessly, no longer interested in the trappings of royalty.

  Shortly, the portly Prinny sailed into the room, clad in yellow silk, trimmed in snowy white. He looked like a large tropical fruit. “Ah, Worthington! How nice of you to come to allow me to gloat!”

  Belatedly, Cas recalled the bargain he’d made with the Prince Regent to go thirty days without a scandal, a record now most thoroughly lost. “Gloat away, Your Highness.”

  Prinny smirked and ambled across the room to a brilliantly cut crystal decanter. He lifted it in offering to Cas with his brows raised.

  Cas bowed. “No, thank you, Your Highness, though I am honored.”

  The Prince Regent blinked at his formality. “What has you so stuffed, Worthington? You’re not sore about losing our little wager, are you? You did much better than I imagined, you know. What was that, nearly three weeks?”

  “Was that all?” Cas asked faintly. Three weeks, three minutes, three hundred years. Time had turned into a silvery liquid in Miranda’s presence—moments timeless and forever, yet running through his fingers: uncatchable, unabiding, unforgettable.