George shook his head. "Now that's not true. I only said that to try to—"
She squeezed his fingers weakly. "The only difference between me and an orange wench is where we stand in the theatre and how much we get paid. He didn’t care about me as a person, he just wanted to swive me like I was some sort of animal."
George winced at the dreadful tale coming from Miranda’s lips. He had ruined her completely in more ways than one, he could see that now. Oh why had he ever allowed her to stay with him that first night they had met? He should have seen then just how dangerous his world was for a tender young girl like her.
Miranda gave a bitter laugh. "Aye, he taught me a few other words, a few other things that whores like me should know, he said. And even if I wasn’t married, since it had all been a lie, a trick to get me in his power to do with me what he would, he would still leave me with a lasting wedding present.
"He said it wasn’t the pox, thank God, though of course he could be lying. He said I could get a really high price at The Three Bells as what I really am, and if the child was a girl I could sell her as a whore too when she was old enough—"
George had put one finger over her lips to stop the flow of words, every single one like a dagger piercing his heart. "No, not that, ever. Not the theatre either, since it’s made you so unhappy. And no child of yours will ever want for anything, I swear."
She pressed on as if she hadn’t even heard him. "I can’t believe I had my head turned by all his talk of dying for love of me. He’s a far better actor than I could ever hope to be.
"Oh God, what am I going to do if he’s left me pregnant? And what are my family going to say when they find out I’ve turned whore?" The tears began streaming down her cheeks in runnels.
George bit back several execrations in English and French, and dared to stroke her cheek. "Now you are never to say that again, do you hear me? You are not a whore. You were deceived. He pretended to offer you decent marriage. As soon as he told you the trick and you discovered what he really was, you fled. Damn near killed yourself doing it. You jumped out the window rather than endure what he was doing to you. You never did anything willingly, Miranda. Never. If you’re pregnant, we’ll deal with it when the time comes. In fact, we’ll deal with it now," he said firmly.
She gasped and cowered away from him. "Oh please, no, I couldn’t bear being taken to one of those horrible old women!" she said almost hysterically. "I’ll go to Hell for sure. I don’t want to die on someone’s kitchen table."
George choked. "No, no," he protested fiercely. "What sort of man do you take me for!"
He stood up and paced for a moment, watching her quail in fear. "I meant I can marry you safely and respectably right now, with no one any the wiser."
She shook her head. "Oh no. A marriage of convenience to cover up my sins? That’s almost as bad as turning tricks."
"Not a marriage of convenience if the two of us could like each other well enough, given time," he said quietly, his cheeks flaming.
"No, no, never," she gasped. "I could never submit to anything so grotesque, painful, savage, ever again," she whispered in a barely audible tone filled with recollected horror.
George felt his heart plummet into his boots.
"Darling, do you want to tell me—"
Her eyes widened and her whole body shuddered visibly under the sheet covering her.
"It’s all right. You can tell me. Maybe I can help."
"I couldn’t possibly—" she said with a sniff.
He tried again. "Some pain is natural the first time, you know, but with a good man and some patience, it can be—"
"Please, just go. Leave me now. I’m very tired and I need to rest—"
"I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you." He sighed and tried again. "We’re friends no matter what. You can tell me anything and I will love you regardless. The truth is, Miranda, I feel responsible. This should never have happened to you, and it’s all my fault."
She shook her head. "Don’t be silly," she said wearily. "I was the one who decided I wanted a grand adventure. Wanted to tread the boards. Be a career woman, see the world on my own terms, write novels about it. Now I know how daft I was. How long did I think I was going to keep my virtue? Especially working in the theatre, which for most men is the same as being a whore."
"But you did keep your virtue!" he shouted in exasperation. "You are not a whore! You've done nothing wrong. Your being raped was not your fault, do you hear me, lass?"
"I should think the whole of London heard you," she said with a grimace.
He reached for one curling tress of hair and stroked it. "I'm sorry, I'm not shouting at you, I'm just outraged that you should blame yourself for being so badly deceived and abused. You did nothing wrong, Miranda, do you understand?
"You thought you were lawfully wed. How were you to know he had tricked you? It’s not your fault, Miranda. I will not have you reproach yourself for something you didn’t do. You put yourself innocently into the power of a man you thought was going to be a loving husband. He certainly played the role of the besotted swain to perfection.
"Instead you got a cruel seducer and woman beater who betrayed you. If he could only get into your petticoats with a fake marriage contract, and by using a hired actor pretending to be a vicar, what does that say about your character, as well as his?"
"That I'm a fool who nearly wed herself to a deceiving fiend and madman. I wish I were dead."
"Nay, lass, you are NEVER to say that again, do you hear me?" he insisted, recollecting Antony's insistence a short time before that she should go back to the theatre to resume her work as soon as possible, lest dark thoughts take over her mind. "What happened to you is unspeakable, it's true, but you can't let this ruin your life. You never have to see him again."
"But I'm married to a monster," she wept.
"Nay, lass, that was no real vicar, remember?"
"But he's ruined me. Everyone will expect him to make good on what he's done," she sobbed.
George shook his head. "He can't."
"My family will make him—"
"Do you not understand, love, it was all a fraud, all of it. He can't make restitution. He’s already married!"
She stared at him with blank incomprehension.
He nodded. "Aye! It’s true. Ask Sebastian. Oxnard is wed to a woman he drove mad and locked away in Bedlam. No small wonder she was insane if this is the way he treats his women. God knows how many times he’s worked this trick on other girls. What his reasons are, it’s easy enough to guess. He’s a madman himself. He got a nice plump little partridge to devour. He treated you most cruelly, and for that he is going to pay."
She shook her head. "You’re right. He has done it before. Only his sort never pay. If I go after him in court, they’ll laugh at me. An actress with virtue? They will say I deserved everything I got. My family are not exactly poor, but he’s an earl. None of us will ever be able to hold their heads up again."
"So what do you want to do? Ignore it? Let him do this to other women?" he demanded.
Miranda shook her head. "I can’t think now. Please, George, can I just rest?"
He relented at once, his heart twisting with despair at the thought of having upset her even further. "Of course. You can do anything you like. Just tell me and I’ll do it for you. Do you want to stay here, or go back to Fulham House?"
"Here for the moment. I’m so tired."
"Can you eat anything?"
"I wouldn’t mind some milk," she said with a sniff.
"Anything." He flung open the door, gave the order and shut it again.
"And if you could just, well, talk to me. Do Antony’s lines for me from "Antony and Cleopatra." I think I can fall asleep then. I was so afraid...." Her voice cracked.
"I know."
"So afraid I’d never see you again," she admitted in a tiny voice.
The air left his lungs in a rush. Was she saying...
She squeezed his hand. "But y
ou’re here now. Promise me you won’t let me go."
"Never," he said, his heart surging. He knew then that he had never uttered a truer word in his live. "Never," he repeated. "You've come home to me, and I'll never let you go again."
"You’ve been my friend, George, always. You’ve saved me before."
George felt as though his heart would break. "Oh darling, not this time. This time I’ve ruined you. All this is my fault. I’m not the man you think I am."
Miranda laughed sourly. "And I’m not the woman."
"I don’t care. I love you."
But she didn’t hear the words. "I should have told you. Trusted you. Maybe I could have won your love—"
"You trusted me too much, darling. There are men I work with, men who wanted to make me suffer, and used you to—"
She shook her head. "There’s no one to blame for this except Oxnard."
"Except for the man who put him up to it."
She looked at him in horror. "What sort of sick fiend would—"
George winced again. "It’s all right, love. Here’s your milk. We don’t have to talk about this now."
"It seems like we should have talked before," she said, struggling to sit up. She recalled Philip's warning that she should have told him the truth about who she was before things went too far.
George cringed at her words. Lawrence Howard had warned him to speak to Miranda before it was too late. Whatever had caused her to elope with the earl, it had to have been something serious.
He helped her sit up and forced himself to try to hold the glass steadily to her lips as she drank thirstily.
"More?" he asked when she was finished.
"No. Tell me. Tell me now, George. What happened since you left me at the theatre that afternoon?"
She steeled herself to hear his admission that he loved Viola, but George took a deep breath, and recounted the hell he had been through since she disappeared, leaving out only Castlereagh’s part in her downfall.
CHAPTER NINE
"So when you didn’t come back home to see me as promised, I looked everywhere. Becky and Liz returned, and gave me the clues I needed. I searched all over the district in Surrey, then came back to get more help. Then by some miracle, just when I was giving up hope, you appeared on my doorstep."
He paused for a moment, having reached the end of his tale, and then said, "It's a miracle you ever survived and made your way back to me after all you had endured. When I saw the broken window, well, I truly feared the worst."
"I don't remember everything that happened, but I do remember waking up in a barn after I had escaped, and I recollect being determined to walk all the way here if I had to, just to come back home to the people I care for most in the world."
"A barn? I must go thank them."
"I was helped by a widow who made cheeses. She nursed me, but was terrified. Said a man was going from house to house looking for me."
George nodded. "That was me. Oxnard was long gone. He rode off with the fake vicar."
"So she made me rest, gave me the little she could, and sent me on my way in the cart her older lad took to market to take the cheeses up here to town."
"And the burlap sacking?" he asked quietly.
She moved her shoulders slightly in an attempt to shrug, then winced. "No sense in ruining her only other dress, and I couldn’t take it from her."
"You tell me her name and I shall see she has a tidy sum that will set her up for life." He stroked her forehead and hair and kissed her on the brow. "My treasure."
"Tarnished," Miranda said woefully.
"Never. Just lacking in a bit of lustre at the moment," he reassured her, his heart full. "We’ll bring that shine back to you soon. Sleep now."
"Will you stay?" she asked piteously, not caring if his heart belonged to Viola.
"Just try to stop me."
She clung onto his hand. He folded his long frame into the small chair as best he could, rested his head on the pillow next to hers, and closed his eyes, able to sleep at last for the first time since she had vanished with the Earl.
Three days later, George brought Miranda back to Fulham House. Everyone at The Three Bells had been most solicitous, to the point where George felt he never had a chance to be alone with Miranda.
He had thought that possibly it was a good thing for her though, until she admitted that she found all the company and incessant attempts to help a bit wearing.
"We’ll go back to Philip and Jasmine’s, then."
"Alistair and Viola’s also," she said gloomily.
"Yes, but—"
"Viola hates me."
He stared. "What on earth—"
"She saw us together that night on the stoop, and told me I was a cock tease, leading you on," she revealed in clipped tones.
George's expression turned livid. "She had no right—"
She nodded. "She thinks she did. But I never meant to—"
He kissed her reassuringly. "I know. I was the one who teased you, led you on. I was the one who never followed through, even when you begged me to. Damned if I shouldn’t have. And now it’s all too late." He sighed and shook his head.
"It’s never too late. Not until we’re dead. But I can’t think about the happy times now. It makes me ill."
"Come, then, sweet, let’s pack up your things and go home," he said, as much because he wished to bring her back to her more comfortable quarters as to distract her from her brooding thoughts.
"Can you stay, with me, at Philip’s, I mean? Because if you're not welcome or don't wish to, there’s always your flat."
He nodded. "I can stay. Philip’s been a good friend and I know he and his wife will welcome me. We won’t have anything to do with Viola if you don’t want. But Jasmine will be glad to help with, well, your womanly things. Linens and so on."
Miranda blushed and nodded. "Yes, that’s true. I wouldn’t want to embarrass—"
"My dear, I think I’m incapable of it where any woman except you is concerned. Still, you must never be ashamed or afraid to ask for anything. I love you. All you need to do is tell me. I am a mere ignorant man, after all. I’ll do anything to help you get well, so long as you teach me what to do." He gave her an encouraging smile.
She nodded, and finished folding the personal items which had been fetched from Fulham House. His heart nearly broke every time she winced.
But at last she raised her arms to him. "I’m ready."
George shouted for Emma and Abigail to help with her things and the carriage, and soon, with a feeling of unbearable relief, she found herself back in her own room in Philip and Jasmine’s wing of the house.
George gave orders for a cot to be made up in the corner nearest the bed, and left her in Jasmine’s care whilst he went to fetch some personal items of his own.
"I’ll be back soon, darling. Have some tea and rest."
Miranda nodded, and closed her eyes,
"Any time you want to talk—" Jasmine offered.
Miranda shook her head. "Not just yet."
"Philip’s sent for his cousin Patrice. She’ll come and stay for a couple of days if you want to chat."
"But who— Why?"
"We’ll let her tell you herself."
Miranda lapsed back onto the pillow. She was safe. She would get well. She would be happy with George one day. And she would get her revenge....
CHAPTER TEN
Miranda passed the next fortnight resting most of the time. Each day she felt her body grow stronger, though her mind was often far away in a curious empty space void of sensory input. Often George had to repeat his questions two or three times before he ever got a response, she felt so numb, and her mind kept going in the same circles--Revenge. Revenge. Revenge.
Everyone tried to visit and cheer her, but George only allowed them to stay for five minutes.
Philip and Jasmine were most helpful, and George was grateful when they assigned a little lively dark-haired maid to look after her every need. He wondered
if young Patrice was perhaps a bit too chatty for Miranda, since she often heard them talking even when Miranda had told George she wanted to rest. But anything had to be better than the blank silences he and others were subjected to.
To Miranda’s infinite relief, apart from one visit by Viola, the blond woman stayed away. That was not to say that she wasn’t all over George as soon as he stepped out of her room, but since he slept there night after night with a single candle always kept lit in case she had nightmares or needed anything, Miranda could not suspect him or fault his devotion.
The Rakehell Regency Romance Series Boxed Set 6 Page 63
