The Price of Indiscretion

by Cathy Maxwell

  “I’m not a fool, Miranda.” He pushed away from the door to cross over to her. His voice low, he admitted, “I have people who watch for me. A man in my position can never be too careful.”

  “‘Who watch for you’?” she repeated. “Have you bribed one of the servants?”

  His Grace shrugged. He’d not answer that.

  Miranda could have pretended innocence. She didn’t. If he knew she’d left, he could find out the rest, and she wasn’t the sort to evade telling the truth. Perhaps this was the best way.

  “I was with my lover.”

  Dear God, did I truly say those words?

  Yes, she had, and she felt a sense of power. She’d not denied Alex. She held her breath, waiting to be denounced, welcoming it.

  His Grace grew very quiet. He walked up to her until they stood toe-to-toe. He leaned forward to whisper in her ear, “You will never say what you just said to me to anyone else in this world.” The tone was soft, but there was steel behind the words.

  “I know you must be furious with me and you should be,” she answered just as quietly. “I understand your reasons for crying off.”

  “I’ll not cry off,” he said.

  Miranda took a step back. “You won’t.”

  “No.” That one word held all his resolve.

  “Why not?” Miranda shook her head. “You have every reason to. Nor can I marry you. I love someone else. Someone I’d give all for.”

  “All?” he questioned. “What do you have of value? Oh yes, your sisters,” he said, answering his own question. “And your friends, including Lady Overstreet, to whom I’ve already paid a deposit for her services.”

  “She’s very bold,” Miranda observed. “You shouldn’t have paid anything. What did she do?”

  “Nothing. But better to hush her up now than have her start rumors.”

  “I’ll pay you back,” she said. Alex had money. He would help her.

  His brows came together. “It’s not the money that matters.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe I was so trusting. After all these years, and every eligible woman in London pursuing me, I chose you. And now you are saying you don’t want me?” He paused a moment, the line of his mouth grim before deciding, “That’s not the way it is going to work. There are those who would have a field day with comeuppance. No one ever says no to the Duke of Colster. Not even you,” he finished, looking directly into her eyes.

  “But I don’t love you,” she said as gently. “My heart is not my own. I’ll never be able to give you anything but friendship in return.”

  In reply, His Grace picked up one of the elegant chairs at the table and threw it across the room. It broke against the wall, right over one of the lauded landscapes, and fell to the floor in pieces.

  Miranda moved around the corner of the table from him, suddenly wary.

  He turned to her, his expression surprisingly sober. “You created this. I had achieved a certain peace with my life until I met you. You made me long for what I thought I’d lost.” He sounded almost pleasant. “All I’ve had, all that I’ve valued since Elizabeth died was my good name. If you cry off to run away with another man, I will hound you to the ends of the earth for disgracing me. Do you hear? There will be no place you can hide. I can reach that far.”

  From the hall came Charlotte’s voice, “Miranda, are you all right?”

  “Yes, is anything wrong?” came Isabel’s.

  The door started to open. The duke looked at Miranda. “You know what you must do. I expect to see you at my house this evening.” He went to the door just as Isabel and others entered. “We must be going, cousin,” he said to Sir William. “Mrs. Severson, the landscapes are lovely. I shall have to show you the ones I have in my dining room this evening.”

  “Certainly, Your Grace,” Isabel replied, frowning. She had to sense something wasn’t right.

  Charlotte went directly to Miranda and almost tripped over the broken chair. She stopped and looked back to the duke.

  He smiled at her, nodded to Lady Overstreet, who was craning her neck to see what had been the sound in the room, and left without a passing glance at Miranda. Sir William double-timed his steps to catch up to him.

  There was a moment of silence after he left. Charlotte picked up a broken leg of the chair. “He wasn’t sitting in it, was he?”

  Isabel made a soft sound of alarm and hurried over to take a look.

  “I’m sorry about the chair,” Miranda said stiffly.

  Rounding on her, Isabel said, “I don’t care about the chair. He knows, doesn’t he?”

  “Knows what?” Lady Overstreet demanded.

  Miranda looked at the women. She could see the concern in Isabel’s eyes, a sense of foreboding in Charlotte’s. Constance had an idea, too. She hung back by the door, her expression filled with uncertainty.

  Her poor youngest sister had never had an easy life. She could barely remember their mother or a time when their father had been happy…and sober.

  “It’s Alex Haddon, isn’t it?” Charlotte guessed.

  “Captain Haddon?” Lady Overstreet said, alarmed. “Is that why Colster broke the chair?” She hurried around the table to look at the damage. “Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.” She frowned at Miranda. “You can’t do this to me. You did it once—”

  “What are you talking about?” Charlotte asked.

  “Miranda took up with Captain Haddon in the Azores,” Lady Overstreet said with a sniff. “It would have ruined her if I hadn’t been quick-witted enough to cover for her. I even returned her money.” She came around the table toward Miranda. “But I won’t do it again. Do you hear? You may throw your reputation away, but I won’t let you ruin mine, especially now when I’m in such demand.” She brought a hand up dramatically to her forehead. “You didn’t tell the duke you wouldn’t marry him did you?”

  All eyes in the room turned to Miranda. She released a breath slowly before admitting, “I did.”

  Lady Overstreet almost swooned right where she stood. “I can’t believe this. All my hard work for nothing.” She whirled on Charlotte. “See what an ungrateful hussy your sister is? She ran off with Captain Haddon in the Azores—”

  “I did not,” Miranda interrupted. She attempted to explain to Charlotte, “Alex kidnapped me—”

  “So you say!” Lady Overstreet said and snorted her true opinion.

  Isabel, obviously tired of the histrionics, stepped in. “Please, Lady Overstreet, you are not contributing to the discussion. It is true, Charlotte, that Alex kidnapped Miranda. He admitted as much to my husband and myself.”

  Charlotte pulled out a dining room chair and sat, obviously too overcome for words.

  “He has tried to make it right,” Isabel continued in Alex’s defense. “He paid Lady Overstreet handsomely for her services—”

  This was news to Miranda, who had suspected Alex had done something of the sort to win Her Ladyship’s cooperation.

  “—as well as all of Miranda’s expenses,” Isabel finished.

  “But what did he expect in return?” Charlotte asked, leaning toward Isabel as if unable to face Miranda.

  That hurt.

  And yet the truth would not make her happier.

  “He asked nothing I wasn’t willing to give,” Miranda said quietly.

  Silence met her words. Lady Overstreet crossed her arms and placed a disapproving hand against the side of her face, as if she hadn’t spent the trip across the ocean in Captain Lewis’s cabin. Isabel dropped her gaze to the floor. Charlotte could have been carved from stone.

  The only one who showed any sympathy at all was Constance. “You must love him very much,” she whispered.

  “I do,” Miranda replied.

  “And it will ruin all of us,” Lady Overstreet declared. “I’m leaving. I don’t know if I will be there tonight. Something bad is going to happen. I can feel it in my bones.” She looked to Charlotte and Isabel. “You must dissuade her from following this insane passion for that Ind
ian. Colster is not one you cross!”

  With those prophetic words still ringing in the air, she turned and left the room, pausing at the doorway to say stiffly to Isabel, “I shall pack. I assume I may have use of a footman and coach.”

  “Yes, of course,” Isabel said distractedly, and Lady Overstreet fled so fast, she forgot to close the door behind her.

  Isabel crossed over to shut the door. “You can’t do this,” she said, her tone firm. “Colster will destroy both Michael and Alex. Is that what you want?”

  “No,” Miranda confessed, “but I know of no other way.”

  “No other way for what?” Charlotte asked. She looked down at the wreckage of the chair. “The duke did this after you told him you wanted to cry off.”

  “Yes,” Miranda said.

  Charlotte raised her hands up to her head as if fighting a headache. She closed her eyes a moment, the lines of her face tense. When she opened them, it was to say, “Isabel, may I have a moment alone with my sister? You go, too, Constance.”

  Their youngest sister opened her mouth as if to argue, but one look at the set of Charlotte’s face convinced her otherwise. She followed Isabel out the door, giving Miranda a backward glance of sympathy.

  “Our poor sister,” Charlotte said once the door was shut and they were alone. “She dreams of love. We’ve done well, Miranda. We’ve protected her from how cruel the world really is.”

  Miranda didn’t speak. She crossed her arms against her waist, waiting.

  Charlotte did not waste time. “You must marry the duke.”

  “I love Alex,” Miranda said, searching for strength in those words. “The duke doesn’t care about me. He pursued me because I remind him of his dead wife. He doesn’t even see me, Charlotte. It’s not that he is a bad man. He’s very nice…but I don’t love him.”

  “And it is all about love, isn’t it?” Charlotte said flatly. “Family doesn’t matter. Honor is unimportant. Constance and my reputations are completely expendable.”

  “That’s not the way I feel,” Miranda countered, coming around the table to face her. “You know it isn’t. I wish it could be different. It isn’t. I love him, Charlotte. From the moment I first met him, he has been a piece of me.”

  Charlotte came to her feet. “You haven’t seen him for ten years! How can he be a piece of you? How can he be anything to you?”

  “He just is,” Miranda said, pleading with her to understand. “I don’t know why. I know all the reasons why I should not love him, and they don’t matter. It’s as if the heavens had preordained we must be together.”

  “Or your own selfishness,” her sister flashed back.

  “I didn’t ask for this—”

  “Do you think I asked for the life I’ve led?” Charlotte swept the broken chair leg off the table. It clattered to the floor. “It wasn’t enough that no one had any respect for Father, but then you had to take up with that Shawnee. They all called us the drunkard’s daughters. I had one chance for something better, and I gave him up for you.”

  “I’m sorry about Thomas,” Miranda said. She held out her hands. “I hated that he left you because of me.”

  Charlotte shook her head. “He didn’t leave me, Miranda, I left him. When he heard about you and Alex, he told me he was revolted by the idea of a red man and a white woman together. He told me I had to leave my family and not have anything to do with any of you ever again. And I told him he could walk out the door and not come back. I’d not turn my back on my sisters for anything in this world. I thought you felt the same.”

  Miranda dropped her hands, stunned that it had been Charlotte who had rejected Thomas. “I do,” she said.

  “No, you don’t—not if you are ready to take up with Haddon again.”

  “It’s different here,” Miranda said. “No one cares about his ancestry.”

  “Or that his father is a traitor?” Charlotte suggested, reminding her of Sir William’s gossip.

  Miranda dismissed that with a curt wave of her hand. “His father has no bearing in this. Charlotte, it’s different now. For one thing, Alex is very wealthy. He’s offered to take care of my family. You’d never have to worry again.”

  “Money was the least of my worries,” Charlotte flashed back. “I want to be respectable, Miranda. I don’t want people looking down their noses at us. I’ve noble blood in my veins—as do you! Don’t you ever hunger for the deference that comes from respect?”

  “It hasn’t been easy for any of us,” Miranda murmured.

  “No, because we’ve always been on the bottom. Always.” Charlotte walked around to the end of the table before leaning forward and saying, “But you’ve had a chance to make everything right. And not only are you going to toss aside a title, respect, and security—but you are also making an enemy who, from what everyone says, will ruin all of us. Is this what you want, Miranda? Will you ever be happy in Alex’s arms knowing the cost?”

  There was the core of the problem. Miranda couldn’t.

  “You really told Thomas to leave?” she asked.

  Charlotte nodded.

  “Did it hurt?”

  “I felt as if my heart was ripped out of my chest.”

  Miranda remembered lying beside Charlotte in the loft they shared over the trading post and hearing her cry deep into the night. At the time, Miranda had been too lost in her own misery to understand her sister’s.

  “I love him,” she told Charlotte.

  “I know, dear. What I’m asking isn’t easy, but the duke is not an evil man. Someday you will find happiness with him.”

  Miranda glanced at the chair broken into pieces…and came to her decision.

  If she couldn’t have Alex, well, then, what did it matter whom she married?

  “I will write Alex and explain,” Miranda said. Her throat closed. “I hate hurting him again, Charlotte. He’ll think I’ve betrayed him.” Her knees gave, and she sank down to the floor. The tears came. She couldn’t stop them. She wouldn’t try. They came from deep within her, from her dearest hopes, her secret dreams, and erupted in sobs that racked her whole body.

  Charlotte dropped down beside her and threw her arms around her. Miranda buried her face in her sister’s shoulder and didn’t even try to stop crying.

  She cried because she was losing Alex and because he would never know how much she loved him. She cried for her sisters who had suffered because she’d lacked strength all those years ago to follow her heart. She cried for their parents and for their love that was cruelly ended by the violence of the wilderness.

  A second set of arms came around her. Constance had joined them. “I’m so sorry, Miranda. So sorry,” she whispered.

  Miranda drew back and looked into her youngest sister’s face. She appeared so young, whereas right now, Miranda felt a hundred years old. “It’s not your fault,” she told Constance. “Or yours,” she said to Charlotte. “It’s just never been the right time for Alex and me. It never will be.”

  “I wish—” Charlotte started, but Miranda stopped her by placing her fingers over her sister’s lips.

  “You don’t need to say anything. Just promise that the two of you will make happy marriages. Don’t let what I’m about to do be in vain.”

  She didn’t wait for their answers but rose to her feet and left the room. Isabel was out in the hallway with a look of concern on her face. She held baby Diane, who smiled when she saw Miranda. This was Alex’s godchild. Miranda realized she would not see the child again or Michael and Isabel after she married. “It might be wise if my sisters and I move to another establishment. I’m certain Phillip will approve.” She had no problem using the duke’s given name. He’d become just a man in her mind.

  “You don’t have to do anything quickly,” Isabel said.

  Yes, she did, but Miranda wouldn’t argue that right now. “I need a message sent to Alex.”

  Isabel turned to Bolling, the butler, who had come up the hall toward them. “We need a footman to deliver a message.�
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  “Very well,” he said.

  “There is paper and pen in the morning room, isn’t there?” Miranda asked.

  “Yes,” Isabel answered.

  Miranda didn’t say more, but left to go the morning room. She sat at the dainty secretary in front of the window overlooking the garden. Paper and ink were in a drawer.

  It took a long time before Miranda could put her thoughts together to compose a message. She made several attempts at explanations before she finally wrote—We mustn’t.

  She didn’t even sign her name. She hadn’t the heart. Alex would know what she meant.

  After sealing the note and giving it to the footman, she went up to her room and lay down. She had no appetite for food. She might have napped; she couldn’t tell. She stared at a point close to the blue and white pottery wash pitcher until the footman returned from the Warrior.

  When she answered his knock on her door, he informed her that the message had been delivered.

  “Did he have a response?” she asked anxiously.

  “No, miss, he didn’t.”

  Of course not.

  At the appointed hour to depart for Colster House, she presented herself downstairs, perfumed and powdered, wearing one of the dresses Alex had purchased for her. It was the finest of the group, a white gauzy gown with a deep white embroidered hem. The same embroidery edged the neckline and the area beneath the bodice. She didn’t bother with a fan or scarf, as Lady Overstreet would have demanded, but pulled on gloves made of the same thin gauzy material as the dress.

  Alice arranged Miranda’s hair in a cascade of curls with a white ribbon woven in and out among them. Miranda chose not to wear any adornment around her neck and only pearls in her ears.

  The pared-down effect of her dress was stunning. She appeared her own woman, comfortable with her own fashion.

  When she came downstairs, everyone complimented her on how fine she looked. She smiled, she spoke, but inside, she didn’t feel anything.

  She was aware that her sisters and Isabel watched her with some concern. Michael would not meet her eye. His jaw had a tight set.

  She hooked her arms with Charlotte and Constance. “Come, let me introduce my beautiful sisters to society. Not since the Gunning sisters have they seen anything like us.” Alice had helped dress them in clothes from Miranda’s wardrobe, and they’d never appeared lovelier.