“What are you doing up so early?” her father asked, strolling into the breakfast room to select a stack of sliced ham and toast before he sat at the head of the table where the ironed morning newspaper awaited his perusal.
“I thought I would risk calling on Eloise and Amy unannounced,” she improvised. “I need to go to the milliners, and hoped we might make a morning of it.”
“Calling without first making an appointment?” Her father put a hand to his chest. “That’s deuced daring of you.” He glanced toward the doorway. “Don’t tell your mother I said ‘deuced.’”
Miranda grinned. “Your secret is safe with me, Papa.”
She adored the way her parents adored each other, and once she’d reached marriageable age, she’d determined that she would have that for herself, or nothing at all. But now, when under other circumstances she might think she’d found that very thing, people owed people debts, and one man demanded her hand while the other declined to ask for it. Perhaps Aden meant to be honorable, to not make her choose when she was trapped, but she wanted to hear the words, to have him say aloud what she thought she saw in his eyes.
Or was that just what she wanted to see in his eyes? Eloise had called her middle brother “elusive” back before she’d even met him. Did that mean he would never declare himself? He’d promised he would free her from Vale, and thus far, nothing else. Could that be enough for her? Miranda frowned. What if that had to be enough?
“Well, you look very serious, suddenly,” Albert Harris commented around his cup of tea. “But then you’ve got two men pursuing you. That’s a subject for some serious thought, I would imagine.”
“I have been pursued before,” she quipped, trying to look amused rather than horrified at the conversation. After all, one of the men was blackmailing her, and the other had ruined her.
“That, you have, and more times than I can count. This is the first time you’ve allowed it to be known that two men are pursuing you, however. And it’s also the first time I can recall that one of them managed to make it as far as a private dinner with the family.” He slathered butter on his bread. “Is it to be him, then? Captain Robert Vale? Your mother swears that you prefer the Highlander, but Mr. MacTaggert doesn’t seem to have received a dinner invitation. He did send some delightful strawberries, though. Those must have cost him a pretty penny.”
She wanted to shut her eyes for just a moment and think. Eventually, if Aden’s plans didn’t succeed, she would have to agree to Vale’s terms. Therefore, she couldn’t simply dismiss his so-called suit out of hand, however much she wanted to do so. But neither was she ready, yet, to let her parents think she’d made her choice. Not until all hope was gone. “I haven’t decided anything yet, Papa. And you’re the one who wanted the captain to call for dinner, if you’ll recall.”
He smiled. “I do recall. Very well, my dear. Keep your own counsel, then. Just know that if you ever do want my opinion, I have several of them.”
Now she didn’t know what would be worse—if her father approved more highly of Vale, or of Aden. For heaven’s sake, what if her preference for Aden disappointed her father? Or what if he disliked Vale, told her so, and then she had to marry the man without telling her father the true reason why?
Oh, she needed someone with whom she could talk. Someone she could trust. Not a parent, or a maid, or a lover. She needed a friend, one who would not repeat any of the secrets she carried, and who wouldn’t judge her for them. One who could help her untangle the mess of her thoughts and hopes and fears.
“I hope I haven’t distressed you, my sweet. You know your mother and I will support whatever choice you make—including spinsterhood. I’m not so very anxious to see your smile gone from my table.” He sighed. “Alas, I know not even my silly doting can come between you and a new hat. I’m off to meet Tom Blaisdale and look at a steer he fancies. I’ll drop you at Oswell House if you’ll give me but a moment.”
“Of course I will.” And now her imaginary destination had just become real. Hopefully her prayer for a friend—or a pair of them—had, as well.
Once she’d disembarked from her father’s phaeton at Oswell House and waved goodbye to him, she took a deep breath. She hadn’t decided yet. She could still make this about nothing more than hats—if Lady Eloise and Mrs. MacTaggert were even home and available for an outing this morning. That in itself would be something of a surprise with the Season now in full swing.
“I shall inquire,” Smythe the butler said when she conveyed her request and he’d shown her into the morning room to wait.
Inquiring meant that at least one of the young ladies was still home, but not that either of them didn’t have previous plans. It would no doubt be better if their time was already spoken for this morning. How could she tell her friends something she hadn’t even dared tell her own parents? How could she tell Eloise that one of her adored older brothers had ruined her—even if it had been at her own request? She couldn’t. Silence was better. Silence and perhaps some hat shopping.
The morning room door swung open. “What very good timing you have, Miranda,” Eloise exclaimed, sweeping into the room and arm in arm with her new sister-in-law, pretty, blond-haired Amy. “We were just debating whether to go shop for hats, or take a morning stroll in the park to show off Amy’s lovely new walking dress. It’s embroidered with hummingbirds!”
Miranda stood and tried to add her vote for shopping, but instead only managed a strangled sob. Then tears began running down her face willy-nilly, so she plunked back down onto the couch and covered her face with her hands. All the tired, frightened bits of her broke loose at the same time. Wonderful. Now she was a weepy, soggy lump.
“My goodness!” Arms went around her shoulders. “Whatever is the matter, Mia?”
“Nothing,” she wailed, her voice broken now, too.
More arms surrounded her from the other side. “Tell us or don’t,” Amy soothed. “We are here for you.”
More frustrated, worried bits softened into mush. “It’s a secret,” she managed thickly.
“A sad secret?” Eloise asked, rocking her now like a babe. “Did Aden do something horrid? I’ll box his ears.”
“Not Aden,” Miranda sobbed, though of course Aden was directly at the center of it all. “I’m in … so much … trouble!”
“Smythe, fetch my mother and some peppermint tea, and close the door, please,” Eloise stated.
By the time Miranda had enough control of her voice to protest that she didn’t need either tea or Lady Aldriss, one was cupped in her hands and the other stood in front of her, a gorgeous multicolored dressing robe knotted around her and her always-perfect salt-and-pepper hair loose down her back. The countess still managed to look elegant, competent, and, for her, very curious.
“I … don’t…” Miranda sniffed.
“Have a sip of tea, dear,” Lady Aldriss urged, pulling a chair close to sit a few feet in front of her.
Miranda sipped the hot tea and tried to gather in her thoughts and her scattered broken bits. She couldn’t tell them anything—if they knew what sort of debt Matthew was in, the countess would definitely call off the wedding. Eloise and Matthew would be heartbroken, and while it wasn’t her fault, they would both blame her for it.
The countess regarded her with cool green eyes. “Your brother has been wagering, and it has caused you some difficulties,” she said after a moment.
Eloise gasped. “Matthew wouldn’t! He knows—”
“My dear,” her mother interrupted, “Matthew is an amiable young man who joins in rather than standing back and observing. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but that Captain Vale he’s befriended is rather … how shall I put it? Self-absorbed. And insistent on being so.”
“But Mama, he’s courting Miranda. You shouldn’t—”
“Aden is also courting Miranda. I believe I’m supposed to be prejudiced in his favor.” She clasped her hands in her lap. “But that isn’t presently the point, is it? Or shall
I continue to speculate?”
Shaking her head, Miranda took another gulp of tea before she set it aside. Everything she knew screamed at her not to tell anyone, not to risk damaging her family’s reputation by gossiping about it. But she also remembered what Aden had said, that Vale knew the rules, too, and that he used them against her. She liked the idea of playing by her own rules; she certainly enjoyed where it had led with Aden. This, though, was different. This was telling people who could ruin her without any effort at all. People Aden hadn’t told … Except that he’d told the countess something, enough for her to know that her troubles had something to do with Matthew and Captain Vale.
Could she trust them? Or was it that she wanted to so badly? Miranda made herself take a deep, slow breath. “What I’m about to tell you, you cannot tell anyone. My parents—they don’t even know. They would be so … mortified.”
Eloise clasped her hand and squeezed it. “We’re MacTaggerts, Miranda. You and Matthew are part of our clan. And clan comes before everything.”
If that statement surprised Lady Aldriss, she didn’t show it. In her own mind, it explained some things about Aden: If he considered Matthew, and by extension her, part of his clan, she imagined he would go to some length to protect what he considered his. Did he think of her as his, or was she a pleasant diversion in his quest to aid Eloise and the man his sister loved?
That thought became entirely too painful to contemplate further, so instead she began speaking. She told them about Vale being Lord George Humphries’s cousin and then not being his cousin, about how Vale had lured amiable Matthew into owing more than he could possibly repay, about Vale’s actual plan to become an instant fixture within the ton by marrying her and using her reputation to shape his own. She told them about going to Aden for advice and that he’d agreed to help her, though she did leave out the main intimate details of their relationship.
When she’d finished, she sat back, drained—and Eloise began to cry. Oh, dear. “What is it?” she asked, squeezing her friend’s hand. “Aden says he has a plan.”
Eloise shook her head. “They’re going to murder Matthew,” she wailed.
“Who is?”
“My brothers! He panicked, and he was so stupid, but they won’t—they won’t care that I love him! Only that he made a horrid, wretched mistake!”
Across from them, Lady Aldriss lifted an eyebrow. “It would seem, my darling, that he does rather deserve a thrashing.”
“I know, but they’re very large! I know they’ll murder him. And I shall be…” She hiccuped. “I shall be widowed before I’m ever married!”
Amy opened her mouth at that quite impossible scenario, but the countess gave a subtle shake of her head. “I believe Miranda said that Aden spoke to Matthew about his lapse in judgment, and that Matthew agreed to help extricate himself. Aden most certainly did not attempt to murder Matthew—which we know for a fact because if he had, Matthew would be dead.”
“That’s true,” Eloise admitted, swiping at her tears as she looked over at Miranda. “And killing your brother would make you cross, so of course Aden wouldn’t allow it. He wouldn’t want you to be cross.”
While Aden seemed to delight in aggravating her, Miranda couldn’t recall him ever, by either his actions or his inaction, doing anything that would frighten or harm her, or allowing any such thing around her—other than the large ghoul that was Captain Vale, who’d dug in his claws well before Aden had become involved. Of course none of this was finished yet, but just the idea that Aden acted as he did to keep her safe felt warm and comfortable and … irresistible. She cleared her throat. “Aden did seem to think that Matthew could be redeemed.”
“Oh, thank heavens.”
“Niall rode out with him yesterday,” Amy added, “with the explanation that Aden needed help resolving a problem. I would imagine Aden told him something about it, or he wouldn’t have gone. Wherever they were headed, they still haven’t returned.”
Aden had gone somewhere? That didn’t sound like the evening of gambling he’d vaguely described. Of course he’d also said, once again, that he didn’t want her to have to attempt to lie. No, he’d simply given her a few suggestions for conversation, ones that seemed to have proved deeply annoying to Vale, and then he’d taken a handful of strawberries and left. “I’m glad he took help with him, but I don’t know where he’s gone, either.”
“Has anyone seen Captain Vale?” Eloise piped in, apparently untroubled by the idea of bloodshed as long as the victim wasn’t her betrothed.
“He was sound when he left my house at midnight,” she returned.
“He still is, as far as I ken.”
The low-pitched drawl came from the doorway, and Miranda whipped her head around to see Aden standing there and stripping off riding gloves, his brother Niall in the foyer behind him. “Aden,” she breathed, every ounce of her wanting to run into his arms. Vale hadn’t killed him and left him in an alley somewhere. At least she could tell herself that was the feeling flooding through her like mulled cider on a winter night. Relief. Yes, that was it.
“Ye decided to share yer story then, did ye, lass?”
Jealousy? Was that what the flash in his eyes, the sharp tone beneath his easy words, had been? Jealousy that he wasn’t the only one who knew her secret, any longer?
“She didn’t intend to,” Lady Aldriss commented, rising. “I have no idea how she managed to go so long without even the slightest hint of the weight on her shoulders, but evidently your sister being kind to her made her cry. We needled the rest out of her after that.”
“Nae doubt. As ye’re here and have saved me a ride over to Harris House later, Miranda, might I have a word with ye? In private?”
Miranda waited a beat for someone to protest. Apparently all the females in the room could read his expression as well as she could, though, because no one so much as let out a peep. Nodding, she stood. “Of course.”
“The breakfast room, I reckon,” he said once she’d joined him in the doorway. “I’m hungry.”
“As am I,” Niall interjected.
“Ye can wait a bloody minute.”
“Aye. I can do that.”
Niall stepped out of the way, and she followed Aden’s long stride into the breakfast room. The lone footman inside scooted out a side door and shut it after one look at Aden, who let her pass him and then closed the door behind her. Wonderful. Six-feet-plus of angry Highlander whose help she still needed. “I did want to tell someone I could trust about all this,” she stated, lifting her chin and unwilling either to prevaricate or to apologize. “You suggested I abide by my own rules.”
He picked up a slice of beef in his fingers and stuffed it into his mouth.
“I did not, however, mean to tell your mother. Eloise called for her, and I was … I didn’t wish to leave.”
Aden took someone’s half-empty cup of tea from the table and used it to wash down the beef.
“Are you not going to say anything?” she prompted. “I am not going to apologize for wanting to talk to someone who isn’t—”
“Me?” he cut in.
“Someone who isn’t already tangled up in this mess. Don’t be an ass, Aden.”
Narrowing one eye, he went after the bread, tearing off a hunk with his fingers. “Did ye just call me an arse?”
“If you’re the one standing there glaring at me while you attack innocent bits of food, then yes, I called you an ass.”
“Good.” He finished off someone else’s tea.
Miranda blinked. “‘Good’?”
“I’ve been on horseback for fourteen of the past twenty hours. For the last seven I’ve been imagining ye being forced into marrying Vulture Vale this morning before I made it back here, and wondering whether they would hang or transport the second son of a Highlands earl for murder.”
“A—”
He held up one finger. “But ye’re here, and ye’re in high enough spirits to curse at me, and I reckon that’s a good thing. Now c
ome over here and kiss me before I knock the table over to get at ye.”
Chapter Fifteen
The lass was sure of herself, so it didn’t surprise Aden when she marched up to him, took the bread out of his hand, and dragged herself up by his lapels to kiss him on the mouth. For some damned reason she tasted like peppermint. It, she, intoxicated him.
Taking Miranda around the waist, he lifted her to sit on the edge of the breakfast table. She’d told someone else—three someones, actually—about her troubles, and while the idiot white-knight part of him wanted to be the only one to know, the only one who could save her, the more sane and logical bits of his brain realized quite well that she’d be better off if at least one other person had an inkling about her troubles. He’d been gone from London for nearly a day, after all, and if something had gone wrong, only her brother would have known to step in, if he’d had the spleen to do so.
Now that she had more support, however, he wasn’t entirely certain where he stood. Aye, she kissed with enough passion to arouse even a jaded cynic like himself, but everything she did aroused him. Her appearance, her voice, the biting, direct things she said, the swish of her skirts when she turned, the violet scent of her hair.
He wanted to ask her if she’d told her friends about Vale because she was bloody brilliant, or if it had been because she still didn’t entirely trust him. And however much he could tell himself that it didn’t matter, that he’d resolved to aid her whether she proved to be using him or not, he knew the truth. It did matter, and she mattered, and the way she felt about him mattered.
“Where did you go?” she asked, when he lifted his head to take a ragged breath. “You took your brother, and you’ve been riding for fourteen hours, you said. That does not sound like an excursion to go wagering at Jezebel’s or Boodle’s.”
“First tell me ye’re still unmarried and unbetrothed, lass.”
“I am still unspoken for,” she returned. “Your suggestions for conversation and the strawberries nearly gave Captain Vale an apoplexy last night, though.”
Scot Under the Covers Page 25
