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“Oh, surely, not,” Joseph protested immediately. “Why, there’s, uh…”
“Cards, later, in the drawing room,” Rachel supplied. “I believe Lady Ravenscar promised your father a game of whist.”
“Yes, that’s it. Whist. Quite looking forward to it.”
“Very well, then,” Miranda said reasonably. “I shall take the carriage home and send it back for you later.”
“Please.” Rachel reached out impulsively and took Miranda’s hand. “Can I not persuade you to remain a few minutes longer? My brother is rude, I agree, but he is a good man at heart, I promise you. He is, as you doubtless are, reluctant to enter into this sort of relationship.”
“I must think the more highly of him for that,” Miranda agreed. “However, if he is reluctant and I am reluctant, there seems little purpose in our meeting. No doubt he realized it, and that is why he did not come tonight. But it would be foolish of me indeed to linger here in that case.”
Rachel sighed. Miranda squeezed her hand and smiled. She had liked Lord Ravenscar’s sister from the moment she met her. The young woman had a pensive, lovely face, her big green eyes touched by a hint of sadness, and there was a quiet warmth in her manner that made her seem approachable despite her beauty, and her fashionable hair and attire.
“Lady Westhampton, I truly do like you,” Miranda went on. “And I think more of your brother that he is reluctant to attach himself to any rich woman who comes along. However, like him, I have no desire for this marriage, and it seems quite useless for me to remain.”
“I would so like for him to meet you. Now that I have met you myself, I—I am even more in favor of his marrying you. He is a very charming man, really. You would be bound to like him. And he would be so sur—well, pleased to meet you.”
“Surprised, you started to say?” Miranda asked, a smile curving her mouth. “Why? Did he think I was an untutored rustic?”
Color rose in the other woman’s cheeks. “It’s…well…possible. You see, we didn’t know.” She sighed and raised her hands in a gesture of surrender. “I am sorry. I am making even more of a hash of it. But I admit, I had not expected you to be…so fashionably dressed or to speak so, well, almost like an Englishwoman.”
“My stepmother is English,” Miranda replied. “She always made certain we spoke correctly and behaved politely.”
“Oh, I see.” Rachel colored even more. “Now I feel even more the fool. I—is your stepmother here? I don’t remember meeting her.” Rachel glanced around the room.
“No. She wasn’t feeling quite the thing this evening. She is often a trifle ill, I’m afraid.”
“I’m sorry.” Rachel looked at her for a moment, then said, “Miss Upshaw, may I be quite frank with you, as you were with me a while ago?”
“I prefer it.”
“I am afraid that we seem very different to you, this way we marry for alliances rather than for love. It is somewhat cold, I admit. But that is the way it has long been among us—the aristocracy, I mean. We have a duty to our family, our name, the very house where we were born and all the people who work there, who live there. We are not always able to do as we choose. I, too, married as my parents wished.”
Miranda wondered curiously how that marriage had worked out. She had not met a Lord Westhampton here tonight.
As if seeing Miranda’s thoughts on her face, Rachel added, “You have not met my husband. Lord Westhampton resides at our country estate most of the year.” She hesitated, then went on, “Surely you can see that sometimes it is a necessity to marry well, not to marry as one desires. It seems that you would encounter the same sort of thing in the United States. Your father’s business will need someone to take his place when he dies, will it not? If you did not have a brother or uncle or whoever to run the business, then wouldn’t you feel the obligation to marry someone who could take it over?”
“I have no brother or uncle. But when my father dies, I will take over his business. I will not need a husband to do so.”
Rachel stared at her for a long moment. “You will run it?”
“Yes, of course. There is no one who knows more about it than I. I have been helping my father with his work since I was seven years old and totted down the numbers and prices for furs when he was trading with the trappers. I know the fur business from the ground up, and now that he has sold it to Mr. Astor, frankly, the business that he has now is more my doing than his. I invest the majority of his money for him in real estate and businesses and such.”
“But I—You deprive me of speech, Miss Upshaw. I am amazed.”
“It will be mine one day, mine and Veronica’s. It would seem very foolish not to know all I can about it. Besides, it’s quite a bit more interesting than paying calls all day. Oh! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply…”
“That what I do is useless and boring?” Rachel finished her sentence for her. “Don’t worry. I’m not angry. It’s the simple truth. What I do is rather useless and often boring.” She smiled, a dimple popping into her smooth cheek. “But I am afraid I would not have the slightest idea how to run the estate or how to make money to repair it. And, besides, here it would not be considered proper.”
“Oh, I doubt it is considered proper where I live,” Miranda replied cheerfully. “But if I lived my life by what society matrons considered proper, I would scarcely ever get to do anything I enjoyed. I am not a very proper person, I’m afraid, so you can see that it is just as well that your brother does not marry me, for I would doubtless be forever doing things that would shock everyone.”
Rachel smiled. “But life would be much more entertaining for us.”
“Perhaps.” Miranda smiled back and rose to take her leave.
Lady Ravenscar came over at her daughter’s signal, smiling in her rather stiff way and saying, “Oh, no, you must not leave us so soon, Miss Upshaw. Why, you have not yet met my brother. Rupert…” She turned and gestured toward an older gentleman standing a few feet away. “Do come here and meet Miss Upshaw. This is my brother, Rupert Dalrymple, Miss Upshaw.”
Rupert Dalrymple was an affable gentleman, far more genial than his sister, a trifle portly, with an almost completely bald pate, which he strove to make up for by cultivating a luxuriant white mustache that curved down far past his upper lip. He, too, strove valiantly to convince Miranda to stay, offering card games and more music as amusements and assuring her that his nephew Dev was one who tended to lose track of time—“no insult intended to you, I can assure you”—and would soon appear.
Miranda smiled but stood her ground, and a few minutes later she was outside Lady Ravenscar’s door, waiting for her carriage to pull up in front.
Lady Ravenscar’s house, for all her complaining about its inadequacies, was a pleasant white house of the Queen Anne style, and, while not large, it sat on a crescent-shaped street, the other side of which held a small park, protecting the little street from a larger thoroughfare. After the carriage pulled up and Miranda climbed into it, they drove forward, curving around the crescent and joining the large thoroughfare, empty of traffic at this time of night.
Miranda pulled back the curtain to look out into the night. Most people, she knew, preferred the privacy of the curtains, but on such a pleasant night as this, warm and not rainy, it seemed a shame to sit in a stuffy, enclosed carriage. She would frankly have preferred to walk the few blocks home and enjoy the balmy evening up close, but the sort of soft evening slippers she wore were not made for walking, and, besides, she knew that her stepmother would suffer a collapse at the thought of Miranda walking alone at night amid the dangers of London.
As her driver turned right at the next street and started up the block, Miranda saw a man strolling down the street toward them. He was dressed in elegant evening attire, his hat set at a rakish angle on his head. Miranda noticed that as he walked along, his steps were less than straight. Though he did not stagger or lurch, he was, Miranda decided, definitely “bosky.” There was something about the overly careful way he strode along, his steps meandering first one way and then the other.
A gentleman coming home from his club, she thought, and wondered if he was walking in the hopes that the evening air would sober him up a bit before he had to face his wife. She had noticed the propensity of the aristocracy to drink, but it was a trifle early for a gentleman to be quite this far in his cups. He must have started rather early.
He passed a narrow strip of black that indicated a passageway between two of the houses, and as he did so, three men erupted from the little alley and launched themselves at him. He fell to the ground under their attack, the others on top of him. It was scarcely a fair fight, even if the man under attack had been sober, and Miranda’s innate fairness was aroused. Sticking her head out the window, she shouted at her driver to hurry toward the knot of men.
“But, miss!” the driver exclaimed, shocked. “They’re fighting. You don’t want to—”
“Do as I say,” Miranda replied crisply. “If you favor keeping your job.”
Having driven the Upshaw family for a week now and having a fair idea how things stood with them, the driver did not hesitate to obey Miranda. He shouted to his horse, slapping the reins, and they clattered forward. Miranda glanced around the inside of the carriage for a weapon, and her eye fell upon an umbrella in the corner, kept handy for the inevitable rain. She grabbed it, threw off her light shawl, and, when the carriage pulled to a halt, she opened the carriage door and leapt down, shouting to the driver to follow.
She ran to the knot of men, who were rolling across the sidewalk, punching and kicking. Without hesitation, she raised her umbrella, grasping the shaft with both hands, and brought it down hard, handle side down, onto the back of the nearest assailant. He let out a cry of surprise and pain and whirled around, rising to his knees as he did so. It was a foolish move, for it exposed his front without giving him the leverage of height, and Miranda quickly took advantage of his move. She whipped the umbrella around so that she held the heavy curved handle and thrust it hard into the attacker’s midsection. His initial expression of outrage was quickly followed by one of astonishment upon seeing that it was a well-dressed woman who had hit him and then by one of intense pain as the pointed end of the umbrella poked into his belly.
He rose with a howl of pain and grabbed for the umbrella, but Miranda stepped neatly backward and whacked the umbrella shaft across his outstretched arm. At that moment the carriage driver, having paused to secure his horses, arrived at the fight, carrying the short, thick club that he always kept tucked beneath his seat. He used it now to good effect, bringing it down on the back of Miranda’s opponent’s head just as he managed to grab the other end of Miranda’s umbrella. The ruffian’s eyes rolled up, and he slumped to the ground without a sound.
Meanwhile, the drunken gentleman landed a fist in the gut of the third man, who rolled away, gasping for breath and holding his stomach, while the gentleman was able to pull away and stagger to his feet. He reached down and jerked the man up by the front of his shirt, punching him in the stomach and finishing it with a quick right to the jaw. The man crumpled and went down. The gentleman turned toward the first assailant, as did the coachman. The ruffian, seeing the two of them coming toward him, quickly jumped up and ran off.
The gentleman grinned at the other man’s flight. He dusted off his clothes as he turned to the carriage driver. “My thanks, sir.” His voice was deep and well-modulated, only a slight slurring indicating his inebriation.
He turned past the coachman to face Miranda and stopped, his expression one of comical surprise. “A lady!”
Quickly recovering, he swept her an elegant bow. “My deepest gratitude, madam, for coming to my rescue. You saved my life.”
She had not seen his face clearly before, and now Miranda stared at him, stunned by the jolt of feeling that ran all through her. She was at once breathless, tingling all over, and so giddy she wanted to giggle. The man was undeniably handsome. His thick black hair, tousled from the fight, dangled down over his forehead; that, coupled with the twinkle in his eyes, gave him an undeniably rakish look. His face was strong, with a firm chin and square jaw, and cheekbones that looked sharp enough to cut paper. The almost fierce lines of his face were softened, however, by a full, sensual mouth, curved now into a grin, and by the thick black lashes that framed his eyes. He was tall and leanly muscled, his shoulders inside the black evening suit impressively wide. A red mark blazed on his cheek where one of the men had hit him, and blood trickled down from a split lip, but even those marks could not detract from his appeal.
However, it was not just the fact that he was handsome that made her feel as if she had been hit by a bolt of lightning. She had seen good-looking men before. But never before had she felt that sizzle of excitement, that elemental pull of lust—or the strange, deep connection, as if somehow she knew him. Crazily, the thought that had come into her mind was that this was the man she wanted to marry.
That, of course, was absurd, she knew. It was just a strange quirk of thought. However, he was certainly intriguing. He was unlike any aristocrat she had met so far in Europe or England. He was as handy with his fists as any man she had met among the trappers in the backwoods, and there was an impish humor that gleamed in his eyes. He was dressed fashionably but with none of the extremes of a dandy, and the admirable set of his clothes on his body owed more to the firmness of his muscles than to the padding of shoulders and legs that she had seen on other gentlemen. Obviously surprised to find that he had been rescued by a woman, he had managed not to spoil his thanks with any remark about the impropriety of her doing so.
“You seemed handy enough with your fists,” she replied, glad to find that her voice came out more casually than she felt.
“They caught me unaware, however, and, I confess, not at my best.” Again the charming smile lit his face, encouraging her to smile back. “I am fortunate that you were gallant enough to stop.”
“I could scarcely drive by when there were three of them to your one,” Miranda pointed out. “Hardly fair.”
“Indeed. I think that was the idea.”
“Did you know them, sir?” the coachman asked, going over to one of the unconscious men and peering down into his face. “Aright vicious-lookin’ one, this ‘un.”
“No, I’ve never seen them before.” The man shrugged. “No doubt they were simply thieves hiding in wait for the first person to happen by.”
“Not usually an area for thieves,” the coachman remarked, glancing around at the expensive houses on both sides of the street.
“No,” the man agreed without much interest. “They must be growing bolder.”
He dusted off his coat again, without much success. “I am afraid my valet will be quite perturbed to see what I have done to his careful work.”
“You are bleeding,” Miranda observed, fishing her lace-trimmed handkerchief out of her pocket and stepping forward to wipe away the blood that trickled down from his mouth.
It was unnerving to stand this close to him. She could feel the heat of his body, smell the liquor on his breath. Miranda looked up into his face. She could not see the color of his eyes in this dim light, but they were warm and compelling…and, at the moment, somewhat unfocused. He swayed a little, and Miranda grabbed his arm to steady him.
“Sir? Are you all right? Beldon…” she called to the coachman, and he came up to close his large hand around the man’s other arm.
“Yes. Yes, I’m fine. Just a moment’s dizziness, that’s all.”
“Perhaps you ought to let us take you home,” Miranda suggested. “My carriage is right there.”
“Miss…” the driver said warningly.
“Yes, yes, I know,” Miranda said impatiently. “It wouldn’t be the thing for me to give a stranger a ride. But I don’t think he is going to harm me. I mean, really…”
“You are a woman of warmth and courage,” the gentleman said, “but you need not worry. I can make it without help. I am only going another block or so, to my mother’s.” He looked in the direction from which Miranda had come, then frowned and said, “Well, perhaps not. I am a trifle late. I fear I stayed too long with my friends. And in this condition…But it isn’t far back to my house, either. I shall be fine.”
“I insist on driving you. You have received some blows to the head, I warrant, and even with a hard head, that is bound to affect you.”
He smiled faintly at her jest. “Perhaps you are right. I must admit, it is beginning to pound—though I’m not entirely sure if that is due to fists or to too much brandy.”
He went with them to the carriage, but, agreeing with the driver that it would not be seemly for the lady to ride with a stranger, he opted to climb up beside the coachman. They drove the few blocks to the address he gave them, and as she rode in the carriage, Miranda considered the situation. He had said he was going to his mother’s and had pointed in the direction of Lady Ravenscar’s house. Could the man she had rescued be the man she had been supposed to meet tonight? Was it possible that this handsome, rather charming man who was good with his fists was the Earl of Ravenscar? It made sense. And his state of inebriation would certainly explain his tardiness, as well as match what she had heard of him. And Elizabeth had said he was charming and handsome—though mere words could not convey the intensity of his roguish appeal. There had been a strange moment when her entire being had thrilled to him, when she had thought that she belonged with him…This was the sort of man who could make a woman forget all else.
They came to a stop in front of his house: a small, graceful abode in the fashionable district, just the sort of house a bachelor of means and name might live in. The gentleman climbed down with the coachman’s help, and Miranda opened the door of the carriage and leaned out.
“Good night, sir.” She was reluctant to let him go, she found, another odd sensation for her. If only she knew if he was the Earl of Ravenscar… But she did not want to introduce herself to him. If he was Ravenscar, she did not want him to know that she was the heiress he had spent the evening drinking to avoid.
“Madam.” He bowed again, but she noticed that he was rather more unsteady now. “You are an angel from heaven.”
“That is a rather large exaggeration, but I thank you,” Miranda replied wryly.
He turned and made his weaving way up the steps of the house. A moment later, the door opened, and he went inside.
“Let’s go home, Beldon,” Miranda said, and the carriage rolled forward.
As she drove home, her thoughts circled around the man she had just rescued. Was he Ravenscar? And what would have happened if he had not been late to the party tonight? One thing she was certain of: if this man had been there, she would not have left early.
3
“Good evening, sir.” Carson, Devin’s valet, opened the door. He took in his employer’s disarray, more alarmed by the rumpled cravat and the rent in his coat than by the marks of fighting on Ravenscar’s face. “I say, my lord, are you all right? Did something happen?”
“Bit of a dustup,” Devin admitted. “A cold cloth for my face would be nice.”
“Of course, sir.” The servant hurried off to do his bidding.
Devin sighed and ran his hand back through his hair. He wondered if it had been simple thieves, as he had assured his fair rescuer. The coachman was right in saying that it wasn’t an area where thieves and ruffians were wont to linger. There were one or two of his creditors whom he would not be surprised to find were behind the attack. He suspected that if his rescuers had not routed the fellows, they might have told him to pay up if he didn’t want more of the same.
He would have to be more careful now…perhaps carry his little pistol, though that would mar the line of his coat. Carson would protest.
His thoughts wandered to his rescuers, and he smiled to himself. What an odd sort of woman! He had been somewhat distracted by his own fight, but he was almost sure that she had waded right into the melee and whacked one of the miscreants with her umbrella. A pretty thing, too. He wished the light had been better—and his vision not so impaired by alcohol. Her hair had been brown, and he had been unable to determine the color of her eyes, but they had been large and bright, and she had had a merry, laughing mouth. He remembered more distinctly the generous curve of her breasts above the neckline of her evening gown. He remembered, too, the unmistakable response of his body when he looked at her.
He wondered if she was a member of the demimonde. She had spoken and dressed like a lady, but he could not imagine any lady of his acquaintance wading into a fight like that. And there had been something odd about her speech. He could not quite put his finger on it, but there had been a certain inflection that was not quite right. Perhaps she had taught herself to speak like a lady, and an attractive bird of paradise could easily have a carriage and dress well. It would explain the actions, so unlike a woman of aristocratic breeding.
He toyed with the idea of trying to find out the woman’s name. She intrigued him. In general, Leona didn’t squawk about his brief dalliances with other women. She knew that he would never stray far. But, he remembered with a sigh, there was the lowering thought of the state of his finances. He could never hope to lure some ladybird from her obviously generous patron when his own pockets were to let. And the way to remedy that lay back at his mother’s house where, he suspected, he was something of a persona non grata at the moment.
His failure to appear tonight was something that could be remedied, he supposed, with some effort on his part, but, as always, he rebelled at the thought. Something inside him quailed at the idea of spending the rest of his life shackled to a woman for whom he felt at best indifference…and, at worst, active dislike. He had seen enough loveless marriages made for the sake of name and family—including that of his own parents, not to mention Rachel’s and Leona’s—to know that he did not want that state for himself. He was not, he hoped, such a romantic fool as to wish for love in a marriage—or, at least, he had not been for many years. However, he was fairly sure that it was better not to marry at all than to live in the sort of quiet loneliness that was Rachel’s and Westhampton’s lot.
Carson returned, carrying a cool, damp cloth on a small silver tray. Devin took the cloth and held it against the cut on his lip, remembering as he did so the way the woman tonight had wiped away his blood with her handkerchief. He could smell again the faint scent of roses that had clung to the lace-trimmed cotton. He wondered if she, too, smelled of roses.
“A note arrived for you tonight, sir,” Carson said and went over to the small table in the foyer, where another small salver held a square white piece of paper, folded over and sealed. “Ravenscar” was all that was written on the front, in the bold, loopy handwriting that he recognized instantly as Leona’s.
A familiar sense of anticipation snaked through him as he took the note from the tray Carson offered him. He split the seal and unfolded the note.
Darling,
Tonight after midnight. I have a surprise for you.
It was a message typical of Leona—brief, unsigned and faintly mysterious—and it immediately wiped out all thoughts of the woman he had met earlier this evening.
“What time is it, Carson?”
“Why, a bit after eleven, I believe.”
“Good. We have enough time. I need to clean up before my visitor arrives.”
Both of them knew who that visitor was, but neither would, of course, say it aloud. His relationship with Leona existed behind a veil of secrecy, however flimsy that veil might be. Though every gossip in London society knew about them and whispered about their long-standing affair behind their backs, it was still only gossip and not proven fact as long as they maintained their secrecy. Lord Vesey did not care what his wife did—they went their own ways quite happily—as long as he was not subjected to public ridicule.