Guilt.
He had done this to her. By offering her a devil’s bargain. By pursuing her over her sexual boundaries. By demanding her pleasure over and over again. By pushing his needs into her home and asking for more and more and more.
She blinked, dazed. “I—I must go find her. I must speak to her,” she said as she turned and moved unsteadily toward the door.
“Wait, wait Miranda!” He caught her in three long strides. Grabbing her arm, he pulled her back. “What are you going to say to her about what she saw?”
“Oh God,” she moaned as she pulled at her arm. He held fast.
“Perhaps I should talk to her. You cannot know how to explain what she saw.”
Miranda locked gazes with him and something he’d never seen in her before flickered in her eyes. Experience and knowledge. In fact, when she looked at him like she was right now, he felt like the foolish student and she the master.
“You think not, Ethan? I know far more than you might think. In fact, I think I’m the perfect one to explain what she saw. After all, I used to watch you with your paramours beside the lake on your property every summer. Each week I snuck away to see what shocking thing you would do next.”
Ethan let her go and stumbled back in shock. “You did what?”
A tinge of color filled her cheeks, but she kept her chin high and nodded. “I know exactly what seeing a scene like that can do to a girl. What thoughts it puts in her mind. It could change her forever.” Her face fell. “It has changed her forever.”
Her confession sunk into his consciousness, overwhelming him with a tangle of wild thoughts, both erotic and shameful. No wonder Miranda had always seemed so open to all the pleasures he wanted to share with her. She’d seen them all before. Seen all his sensual habits. And she’d also seen how little those other women had meant to him.
“Miranda,” he breathed, questions rioting in his mind.
She shook her head and turned away. “Penelope is my sister and I need to be the one to try to explain all of this to her. If I don’t, the consequences could be dire.”
He wrinkled his brow. Was she saying she regretted watching his sensual escapades? That it had changed her adversely?
“Miranda—” he began again.
She spun on him with wild, tearful eyes. “Please, Ethan. No more. Just go. Just go home. Please.”
Before he could respond, she ran to the door and left him alone with tangled thoughts that assaulted him with a thousand questions, a thousand memories, and a thousand emotions he had never wished to feel.
Fourteen
Miranda hurried through the winding corridors and hallways of the house, searching for her sister. Her emotions were ragged and wild, she could actually feel hysteria building in her chest, threatening to rise up and overcome her with guilt and regret. What in the world had she done? What was Penelope feeling? Doing?
No, she couldn’t let her feelings overwhelm her. But as Miranda looked in every secret spot and dark corner they had ever hidden and whispered in as girls and found no trace of her sister, her emotions roared louder. With each failure to find Penelope, her fears threatened to take her to her knees.
She knew her sister all too well. Penelope wouldn’t simply go back to the party and be able to pretend everything was normal after what she’d seen.
Oh God, what she’d seen!
Miranda leaned against the wall for a moment to compose herself. That encounter with Ethan had been the most animal, the most passionate since they began their bargain. There had been a desperation in both of them. She’d felt it in Ethan’s kiss as much as she fought against it in her own heart. It had shaken her, changed her.
She would have welcomed that change, except that in the moment her world shifted, she had undoubtedly altered her sister’s world as well. Penelope was an innocent, she was likely shocked and perhaps even shattered.
Miranda forced herself to remain strong and continued her search. She could hear the tinkling of music in the distance and prayed she wouldn’t be caught by her mother. Not when she was so disheveled and upset. It would be too difficult to face that censure and opinion.
She slipped to a servant’s door that led outside. If Penelope ran away from the parlor, she would have gone past the little stairway and hidden secret door. It would be just like her sister to want to be outside, away from the stifling confines of the house and the potential grasp of their meddling mother.
Miranda stepped into the cool night air and looked around. If she went left, she would find the main gardens behind the ballroom terrace. Unlikely Penelope would go that way and risk coming into contact with other people when she was upset.
Miranda went right and headed toward a gazebo across the lawn, away from the main house. It looked out over the rolling hills that were part of Ethan’s adjacent estate, although the dark night would prevent Penelope from witnessing their fresh beauty.
Not that Miranda for one second believed that her sister had scenery on her mind while she bolted. Miranda hurried across the lawn, her pathway only lit by the sparkling light of the full moon above. As she neared the little open gazebo, she heard the sounds of a person moving, of harshly drawn breaths. Then she was close enough and could see the shadowy outline of her sister, sitting on the bench in the middle of the gazebo, her shoulders hunched.
Relief filled her, followed close behind by fear. What would her sister think of her now?
“Penelope?” she called out when she was still a few steps away.
The harsh breaths came to a sudden stop and the shadowy figure straightened up with a start.
“Dearest, I can see you,” Miranda said softly as she stepped up into the building. “There’s no use in pretending you’re not here.”
“Go away!” Penelope said as she got to her feet and spun around to look at Miranda.
The moonlight hit her sister’s face and Miranda flinched. Penelope’s cheeks were streaked with tears and her mouth twisted with the force of her upset.
“I can’t,” Miranda sighed. “I know what you saw and we must speak about it.”
Her sister’s cheeks darkened with a blush and she turned her face as she sank back down onto the bench in the middle of the gazebo. Miranda looked at the empty space beside her. She was tempted to take it and wrap her arms around Penelope to comfort her. But everything in her sister’s body language said that she didn’t want that comfort. She was too horrified and confused to be touched, especially by Miranda.
So Miranda stepped back to lean against the gazebo railing instead.
“Why did you come to the parlor?” she asked softly, feeling her way through the situation with great care. Her sister was already distressed. The wrong word could ruin everything.
Penelope stared at the ground beneath her feet. “Mama started grumbling about the fact that you hadn’t reappeared. Talking about you shirking your duties. I slipped away to fetch you and bring you back before she worked herself into a complete frenzy.”
Miranda rubbed her eyes. Her loyal sister had come to protect her. That made everything so much worse.
“I heard noises from the parlor and I thought it might be you. So I opened the door”—Penelope’s breath caught—“and I saw Lord Rothschild with a woman up against the window. At first I was too shocked to say or do anything.”
Miranda pursed her lips. How well she knew that feeling. The very same shock and uncertainty had washed over her the first time she saw Ethan and one of his lovers. That and the knowledge that she should turn away, but just couldn’t.
Penelope’s sharp intake of air brought Miranda back to the present. “And then he moved a little and I saw it was you he was…doing that to. I started to move, open my mouth to stop him. I thought he had to be forcing you. But then you moaned. You smiled. And I realized you—you liked it. You weren’t being forced and you weren’t resisting.”
Miranda bent her head. She was embarrassed by her sister’s words, but she couldn’t and wouldn’t deny them t
o save face. “No, I wasn’t,” she finally whispered.
Penelope looked at her sharply, then darted her gaze away. “The realization stopped me from saying anything. I just watched you. Watched him. I couldn’t turn away. And then he looked up and saw me. So I ran. I didn’t know what else to do. I just”—her voice grew very small—“ran.”
Miranda nodded. “As soon as Ethan—Lord Rothschild—let me know that you saw us, I came looking for you. I am sorry you had to see that, Penelope. I wouldn’t have wanted to shock you like that for anything in the world.”
Penelope held her gaze for the first time since Miranda found her. “You called him by his first name. That must mean you feel some level of closeness to him, beyond just what I saw tonight.”
Miranda bit her lip. She had been lying to her sister for weeks, avoiding her questions, denying her intuitions. Now she owed her honesty. If only to clarify Penelope’s confusion and ease her hurt and shock.
Still, her sister was coming right to the heart of the matter. To places Miranda had been trying to steer away from since the first time she came to Ethan’s home and asked for his help. Penelope was pointing out the deeper feelings she had for him.
The ones she feared more than any touch.
Penelope continued before Miranda was forced to comment. “This wasn’t the first time you did that with him, is it?”
At least that question was simpler. “No,” Miranda admitted. “It is not.”
Penelope sat in silence, pondering that statement. Then her eyes widened and she lurched to her feet. “Is that—My God, that is why he offered to host my Season, isn’t it? That is truly where you have been going each week. Not to Lady Inglewood’s, but to him so he could…could do those things to you!”
Miranda flinched. When put like that, their bargain sounded so cheap, so tawdry, when it had been so much deeper. At least for her.
“I went to Ethan a few weeks ago and informed him of our situation. I asked for his help, knowing full well that he would require repayment of some kind in return.” She sighed. “He asked for payment in…” Hot blood flooded her cheeks. “He wanted me. So I said yes.”
Penelope shook her head. “You did this for me. You surrendered your innocence so that I could have a Season. Oh, Miranda, I’m so sorry. I never would have wanted that. You must feel so terrible.”
Her sister’s voice cracked and she covered her face with her hands and began to cry quietly.
Miranda stepped forward, shaking her head. She couldn’t allow Penelope to believe she’d been forced into a bargain she detested.
“Penelope, no. Don’t cry. Yes, I did enter the arrangement with Rothschild for you and our family. But what I did was never terrible. I did it for us, but I”—she hesitated—“I also did if for myself. I wanted to give him my innocence. I wanted the sinful pleasures he offered. I was never forced into anything. I went into the bargain with no qualms.”
Her sister slowly lowered her hands and looked at her in shock. “No. That cannot be true.”
Miranda’s blush grew deeper. “It is true. There is…there is something in me, Penelope. Something I never told you. For years, I have longed for passion. For desire. For pleasure. It is why I didn’t take any of the offers of marriage that were made to me over the years. I looked at those men asking for my hand and they—none of them measured up to the fantasy in my mind.”
“A fantasy,” her sister repeated, her voice hollow.
Miranda nodded and decided not to mention that the fantasy had always been Ethan and why. “But with Ethan, I knew I would be free to want, to feel, to desire. And I have been. I do regret that you saw us and that you were hurt by that. And I regret lying to you. But I—I cannot regret that I entered into this bargain.”
“How can you say you do not regret it?” Penelope shot to her feet and grabbed Miranda’s hands. Her sister clenched her fingers so tightly that it hurt. “You will either have to engage in deception or tell any man who offers for you the truth about your virginity. Either way, you gave up any chance to marrying well and having a normal life.”
Miranda extracted her fingers with a sigh. “It may have escaped your notice, but I do not have any men lining up to offer for me anymore. Even if I did, I fear my reaction would be the same. Penelope, I don’t think I’m cut out for what you call a ‘normal’ life. I have no desire for polite affections and distant relationships. When I am in Ethan’s arms, I burn, I ache. I couldn’t settle for less now.”
She was surprised by how true that statement was. Somehow she’d thought that after she purged those desires for a few weeks that they would go away and leave her to accept a more normal, peaceful union if she found a chance to have one. Instead, the more time she spent with Ethan, the less she could imagine a life lived without passion.
A life lived without…him.
“You’re in love with him,” her sister said, her voice flat and emotionless as she stepped away.
Miranda gasped. At first, when Penelope said she and Ethan shared a closeness, that had been uncomfortable enough to face. But now she was throwing out the deepest, most foolish emotion Miranda could associate with a man who freely admitted that she was a mere game to him, a temporary conquest. And again, her sister’s words rang painfully true.
Miranda was in love with him. Perhaps some part of her had been since the first moment he unknowingly awoke her true nature three years before. The time she had spent with him during the last month had only cemented those feelings. Knowing he could be tender, as well as dominant, caring as well as controlling…it only deepened the emotions she’d been trying to ignore even as they overtook her.
“It is complicated,” Miranda whispered as her heart ached.
“Will he marry you now that he’s ruined you?” Penelope snapped, folding her arms.
Miranda shut her eyes and tried to block out the fantasies that question inspired. They could only ever be just that. Fantasies.
“I very much doubt it. He has said again and again that he has no desire to marry.”
“I’ll tell Mother,” her sister said after a cold pause.
Miranda’s eyes flew open. “No! You mustn’t. Penelope, if you did, it would ruin everything. She would make a fuss, she wouldn’t be able to stop herself. If the truth were made public, it would ruin your chances to marrying well and Beatrice and Winifred would be shunned by good society. If you do that, we’ll have no chance to recover from our financial state. We could very well end up on the street and might all be forced into doing far worse than Ethan has ever asked of me.”
Penelope sucked in her breath and Miranda could only hope she was thinking about the implications.
Her sister’s eyes narrowed. “Very well, I won’t tell Mama. But to save Beatrice and Winifred, not you.”
Miranda winced, but she nodded. “I understand.”
Penelope barked out an unpleasant laugh. “I wish I did. All this time, I thought you hadn’t married because you wanted to love someone. But in truth, you were simply selfish and wanted some grand passion. A foolish fantasy.”
Miranda covered her mouth as a gasp of pain pushed past her lips. Penelope, her very best friend as well as her sister, now looked at her with such disdain. “I—”
Penelope held up a hand. “No. I’ve heard enough. I swear to you, Miranda, I will do what you refused to. I will surrender whatever hopes I had for my own future if it means providing security for this family. I’ll accept the first blasted offer of marriage I receive from a suitable gentleman who will be able to help us.”
Miranda shook her head. “No, you can’t sacrifice yourself like that.”
Penelope shrugged. “You gave up your body to offer me the opportunity. I shall do what I choose in order to take advantage of it.” She turned away. “And if you try to stop me, I will reveal what you did and ruin us all. I never want to speak of this again, Miranda. Now I must return to the party and go back to my hunt. I must find a suitable husband and quickly. Before you have noth
ing left to give up to assist me.”
“Penelope!” Miranda called, clenching her fists. But her sister ignored her, stepped down from the gazebo, and walked into the darkness toward the house.
Miranda paced into the ballroom with a false, tight smile forced onto her cold lips. The next few hours were destined to be torture and yet she could do nothing to escape them.
She looked around the room. The guests continued to spin around the dance floor to the gay music. They were still enjoying the overflowing wine. Miranda flinched. How could everyone else’s lives be so unchanged when hers felt like it had been blown apart? How could they not see that she wasn’t the same woman who had crept after her mother such a short time ago?
No, she knew why. It was her deceptions that kept the truth from being obvious. She’d put on this false smile that made her cheeks ache and she’d gone up to her room to fix herself before she returned to the party. The truth was simply one more thing she would bury deep within herself.
“There you are!”
Miranda sighed as her mother came lumbering through the crowd, a scowl creasing her face.
“Where have you been?”
She shrugged. “I needed some air, Mama. But I’m back now and I won’t leave again.”
That seemed to placate her mother, as she nodded. “Good. You and your sister both missed saying farewell to Lord Rothschild when he cried off early. I think little of the man after our horrible encounter earlier, but it would have been better if you’d been here to say goodbye. For appearances sake.”
Miranda nodded, but she was numb to her mother’s continued admonishments.
So, for the first time, Ethan had done as she asked. He had left the party. She should have been grateful. His continued presence would have only upset Penelope, but relief wasn’t what tightened Miranda’s chest.
It was loss. She longed to see Ethan. To take comfort in his presence. To talk to him about her sister’s harsh words in the garden. That she wanted those things all but cemented the fact that she loved him. Considering it wasn’t even shocking to her anymore.
Everything Forbidden Page 16
