The Price of Indiscretion

by Cathy Maxwell

  “I can’t?” Miranda asked.

  Her Ladyship held out a calling card. It was ivory vellum, and on its face was the word “Colster.”

  “His Grace, the Duke of Colster, called upon us,” Lady Overstreet said. “He said you had forgotten this book of poetry at the Scripps’s and he wished to return it to you.”

  Isabel was holding the book His Grace had been reading when he and Miranda first met.

  “And I, being quick-witted,” Lady Overstreet bragged, “said you should thank him personally, and upon that note asked him to your debut tomorrow night, and he said he’d be honored to attend.” She clapped her hands together. “Can you imagine? I’ve snagged you the Duke of Colster!”

  Alex sat in his cabin, frowning at the stack of bills that had been just been delivered to him from more dressmakers. How many frocks did Miranda need? Or shoes? Or gloves? She spent his money as if it were water.

  The day Miranda had recovered consciousness, he had told his men to prepare for a voyage to Ceylon. Provisions were laid in, sails mended, and the bow scrubbed. After weeks of work, the ship was more than ready, but Alex wasn’t.

  He couldn’t bring himself to leave port.

  He acted busy. He went through the motions of his day. He told himself that leaving was the right and noble thing to do. But he didn’t leave.

  A knock sounded on the door, but before Alex could yell for the intruder to go away, it opened, and in strode Michael.

  The two men hadn’t seen each other much over the past weeks. The offices of Severson and Haddon, Ltd., were located close to the Old City gate, whereas the Warrior had to be moored with other ships farther out from the vicinity of London due to the depth of the Thames.

  Without so much as a hello, Alex held up the crumpled bills. “Stockings—twelve pounds?”

  “Women’s frills are expensive.”

  Alex grunted his agreement. “What is it you need?” he asked. He knew he sounded abrupt. Since Miranda had gone to live under Michael’s roof, the two of them had not talked much. Michael knew him too well, and Alex was uncomfortable with what he might unwittingly reveal. A man, especially a Shawnee, had his pride.

  “I want you to come to a rout at our house tonight,” Michael said.

  “A what?” Alex asked.

  “What happened to your sextant?” Michael picked up the brass instrument that was dented from Alex’s throwing it across the room and Miranda’s attempt to clock him with it.

  Taking the sextant out of his friend’s hand, Alex set it aside. “It had an accident. What is this about a rout?”

  “Isabel and I are hosting a party to introduce Miranda to society and the very eligible gentlemen who will fight for the honor of her hand. I thought you might like to come,” he said, a challenge in his voice.

  Alex crumpled the bills in his hand. “I can’t. We’ll be sailing for Ceylon on the tide.”

  “You’ve been ‘sailing’ for Ceylon for a long time,” Michael countered. “What is the matter with you, Alex? Why are you being so ridiculous about this woman?”

  “I’m not being ridiculous.” He tossed the bills aside.

  “You are when you consider you are paying for her to marry another man.” Michael shook his head. “Miranda means something to you. Why are you acting like such an ass?”

  Alex was on his feet in an instant. His hand went for Michael’s throat. Michael stood still and said quietly, “She’ll end up with someone else, man. Don’t you see?”

  “She deserves someone else,” Alex answered. He stepped back, lowering his arm. “She doesn’t want to be a half-breed’s wife.”

  “Did she say that?”

  Alex nodded.

  “I don’t believe it. I like this girl. Maybe she thought that way in the woods; people have animosity toward Indians—and not without justification,” he said as if daring Alex to argue. “However, the two of you are in England now. If you’d cut your hair, no would even know what your ancestry was.”

  “She does,” Alex charged.

  Michael shook his head. “I think you are wrong. The two of you are too intensely aware of each other and yet as prickly as hedgehogs whenever anyone speaks the other’s name.” He narrowed his gaze and then hazarded, “Did she have something to do with those scars on your back?”

  This was too close. “What would make you believe that?” Alex responded stiffly.

  “Because you don’t like talking about them, either.”

  The air seemed to be sucked out of the room. For a long moment, Alex stared at his friend who saw too much.

  Michael was the first to move. “The party is this evening at half past nine. It’s turning into quite an affair. Put aside your pride, Alex. Someone is going to win her if you don’t.” With those words he walked out of the cabin, leaving the door open.

  Alex didn’t move. Did Michael think he wanted Miranda to go to another man? No. But Alex did want what was best for her. What would make her happy. This was what she had wanted from the very beginning.

  Besides, if she’d wanted him, she would have sought him out. He wasn’t hiding. He’d been waiting for her for weeks.

  Oliver stuck his head in the door. “Are we sailing tonight, Cap’n?” he asked. It was the question he had asked every day since they’d first docked in London. His mate knew the answer. He often wondered whose side Oliver was on.

  “I don’t know yet,” Alex answered, his voice brusque.

  “Aye, sir.” Usually Oliver went on his way. Today he lingered.

  “What is it?” Alex barked.

  “Are we ever going to go out?”

  Alex could have cursed the man. Instead, his voice formal, he answered, “We will when I say we will.”

  “Aye, sir.” He started out but stopped. “With all due respect, Cap’n…” He waited a moment.

  “Say it,” Alex ordered. “I know you will anyway.”

  Oliver drew a breath and released it before saying, “I just want you to know that sex is easy, but it’s love that’s hard. I don’t think you should back away from the fight.” As if realizing he’d said too much, he left, closing the door behind him.

  Alex stared at the door. So there it was. The two men closest to him both thought he should battle for Miranda. That he should once again humble himself and go to her.

  They didn’t understand how much his love for her had already cost him.

  In the end, it was the crumpled bills on his cabin table that decided him. He picked one up. It was from “Madame Evangeline, dressmaker.”

  He placed the bill under the sextant, reaching his decision. At the very least, he should go to see if he was getting his money’s worth.

  Thirteen

  It was close to eleven by the time Alex presented himself at Michael’s house. He was shocked to see the line of coaches still waiting to discharge their passengers. Guests who had not yet gotten into the front door milled about on the steps.

  As Alex edged his way around them, working his way toward the front door, he could feel the curious stares and appraising gazes. They took in his silver collar and his long hair. They noticed that his black coat, a new one since his other had been ruined during the fight in the Azores, didn’t quite match the fabric or color of his breeches and that, in defiance of convention, he wore tall boots that he’d polished himself.

  However, he was forgotten the moment one woman confided to another that Lord Arnaut was present inside and that no less of a personage than His Grace, the Duke of Colster, was said to be standing by the sideboard in the dining room.

  A whisper went up as people repeated the intelligence that Colster was inside.

  Alex was impressed. Even he had heard of the powerful Duke of Colster. He hadn’t known that Michael had made contact with him. The duke’s presence tonight would be good for their business.

  But Alex could give a care if Colster was present or not. He’d come to see Miranda. He slipped through the front door around a couple waiting their turn in line.
The front hall was even more crowded. He caught sight of Michael standing next to Isabel in a receiving line. Miranda must be close at hand. He didn’t see her immediately, and then the guests going down the line shifted and there she was smiling into the face of an ancient gent who had too tight a grip on her hand.

  She looked beautiful.

  Her silvery gold hair was piled high on her head in loose ringlets. She’d lost a bit of weight from her illness, although she looked well and healthy enough. In fact, she actually appeared too well, as if she were enjoying herself immensely. Her blues eyes sparkled with lively interest. The dress she wore—and he had presumably paid for—was some sort of white gauzy thing that flowed along the lines of her body, nipping in when it should to accent her narrow waist and full breasts. No wonder the old codger couldn’t let go of her hand.

  Alex’s first impulse was to step forward and physically move the gentleman, but the man’s wife did that for him. Another couple took their place in front of Miranda. Alex noticed she didn’t look at him. She carried on as if she wasn’t aware of his presence, and he didn’t believe she was.

  Back in the Azores, from the moment he had walked into Esteves’s party, he’d known she was watching him. Now she seemed completely unaware of his presence.

  He reminded himself that was what he wanted, even if it irritated him.

  Michael signaled for the line to end. There was no way they could greet everyone, not with the number of guests still crowding around outside. Alex started forward, but before he could take two steps, a gentlemen offered Miranda his arm as if he’d been waiting for this opportunity.

  The man was lean and tall with meticulously groomed black hair with a touch of premature gray in it. He wore expensively tailored black evening dress and a snowy white neck cloth.

  Alex had been in the company of finely dressed men before, but this gentleman made him conscious that his own evening attire had been haphazardly thrown together. And, for the first time in his life, he wished he had a snowy white neck cloth to wear. He wished he didn’t stand out so with the silver choker around his neck.

  It was at that moment his gaze met Miranda’s.

  Her lips parted as if she was surprised to see him, and then just as quickly she pressed them together, her displeasure clear in her eyes, and looked away. A beat later, she was laughing at something the gentleman escorting her had said. She playfully tapped him on the arm with her fan before expertly flipping it open and giving the man such a coy look, Alex’s blood boiled with an emotion very similar to the jealousy he would not admit.

  The crowd followed the host and hostess into the house’s huge dining room. Alex was carried along with it. There were musicians in a corner, and he realized Isabel was planning on dancing. He didn’t see how it would happen with everyone stacked on top of one another like this.

  Michael stopped his entourage at the halfway point in the room, and people gathered round. Servants wove their way through the crush with trays holding glasses of icy champagne.

  “Everyone will talking about this on the morrow,” one matron standing in front of Alex said to another, the two of them craning their necks, trying to get a better look.

  “His Grace is very taken with her,” another woman confided.

  Alex’s gaze went straight to the man standing beside Miranda. Colster, the most powerful man in England.

  The first matron snorted her opinion. “Where did such an upstart come from?” she asked. “I’m not about to let her sweep in here and claim the marriage prize of the past five seasons.”

  “I don’t know if you can stop her,” her disgruntled friend answered. “He’s besotted.”

  Alex looked. Colster did indeed appear unable to see anyone else in the room save Miranda.

  A duke. Of course, that was what she wanted.

  The woman to Alex’s right shared his cynicism. “Besotted? How can he not be with the way she’s pushed her breasts in his face? Men are to be pitied.”

  Michael was talking now, saying how this party was in Miranda’s honor and that she was from America and that they hoped everyone had a good time this evening.

  Alex barely attended to it. Nor did he pick up a glass of champagne. He was too busy envisioning creative ways to rip the duke’s eyes out of their sockets. The women were right. Colster was boring holes into her breasts—

  A hand gripped his arm at the elbow. He looked down into the Lady Overstreet’s beady eyes. “My lady,” he said.

  “I need a moment alone with you,” she answered in a furious whisper.

  The two matrons looked around. One caught Alex’s eye. She was a sultry redhead of indiscernible years. She smiled, the invitation clear. “We’re met, haven’t we?”

  “No, you haven’t,” Lady Overstreet answered for him. “Now come.” She practically shoved him through the crowd.

  Alex went willingly. What else did he have to do? Michael was telling everyone that Miranda was related to Lord Bagsley. Heads nodded as if they had all known the old bastard.

  Lady Overstreet led him out onto the front step. It was quiet here now. All the guests must have managed to squeeze inside.

  Her Ladyship gave Alex a critical look. “You should cut your hair. Everyone notices you.”

  “I cut my hair for no one,” he answered, “And I don’t care if they notice me or not.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I told Mr. Severson I did not think it a wise idea to invite you. Apparently he did not listen to me.”

  “No, he did not,” Alex agreed. “After all, I’m paying for this.”

  Grabbing his arm, Lady Overstreet took him down the few steps to the street. “Keep your voice down,” she ordered. “If someone, even a servant, overheard you, it would be disastrous for Miranda. Especially since the gentleman showing her so much interest is a duke. A very important one.”

  “I’d heard as much,” Alex murmured.

  “She will marry him, Captain Haddon. This is what she hired me to arrange. What she wants.”

  His natural contrariness forced him to challenge her. “Why are you so certain he is what she wants?”

  “Because he is richer than a pharaoh and his title is beyond compare. His family line stretches all the way back to the Conqueror.”

  “Huzzah,” Alex said without enthusiasm.

  “I don’t expect you to approve,” Lady Overstreet answered. “I expect you to realize what is at stake here. You almost cheated me out of my commission once when you kidnapped her. I will not allow it a second time. Now go. Leave. Go on.” She waved her hands as if hurrying him away.

  Alex stood his ground. “She couldn’t have known him long.”

  “Sometimes it doesn’t take long.”

  “And he’s smitten already?” he said derisively.

  “She has the looks to turn a man’s head,” Lady Overstreet flashed back “You know that. You were ‘smitten,’ weren’t you?”

  “I was smote,” he corrected. “Past tense.”

  “Bully,” she said, aping his earlier derision. “The duke is a far better man. I give him two weeks.”

  “Two weeks for what?”

  “To make an offer,” Lady Overstreet said triumphantly. “He’s going to come up to snuff. I can sense these things.”

  Alex rocked back. “This man wants to marry her?” He didn’t know why he was asking. He’d wanted to marry her. He’d thought of himself as married to her.

  “His intentions are very clear,” Lady Overstreet said smugly. “But you should be happy. We will be saving you a considerable sum of money. You can’t imagine how expensive a full season can be.”

  The money meant nothing to him. Miranda married to another man? Would she really do that to him?

  “And she wants to do this?” he asked. “She’s happy with this decision?”

  “It is the best thing for her sisters,” Lady Overstreet said.

  Alex faced her, finding himself stubbornly clinging to the idea that Miranda was being forced to accept the d
uke’s advances. “That’s not an answer.”

  “It’s the only one you will receive.” Her expression softened. “I understand, Captain, that at one time the two of you meant a great deal to each other. But those days are past. Indeed, you are both at your worst when you are together—”

  “Did she say that?”

  “Not in so many words, but I have a good sense of these matters. She has finally come to terms with her responsibilities. Go back to your ship, sir. She’s in good hands. She’ll have a good life, one far different than what you would ever be willing to give her.”

  “What do you mean by that?” he said, his defenses rising.

  “Not what you anticipate,” she answered ruefully. “I know you think it is because of your dual heritage, but that’s not what I see as a threat to Miranda. I know men like you. You are the ones we women always fall in love with and shouldn’t if we know what is good for us. That’s what I told Miranda. I said, your kind is too independent, too handsome, and too proud for his own good.”

  “That’s not true,” he countered, a bit shocked at her assessment.

  “It’s not? Then why didn’t you do what you could to keep her?” She held up a hand. “And don’t give me stories about star-crossed lovers and angry fathers. Or of being of two worlds. Literature is full of such tales, and they make for good drama but play poorly in real life.”

  “Literature imitates life. Not the other way around.”

  She tilted her head. “Very good, Captain Haddon. I never cease to be impressed with you. A good mind, a stellar education in spite of the wilderness, all combined with the ruthlessness of the savage. You are made of heady stuff, sir…but you are not for Miranda, and I don’t say that lightly.”

  “No, you say it because you stand to make a great deal of money in this transaction. You play to the highest bidder, my lady.”

  Lady Overstreet almost laughed. “You misjudge me, sir. It is true, I need money, but I am a somewhat honest woman. I do like Miranda. She reminds me of what I could have had if I’d made wiser choices.”

  “It’s always about you,” Alex surmised, cutting through her nonsense.