And Then Comes Marriage (19 page)

Once, having Poll in the room would have been of great benefit. Ideas always became ideas more exciting. Notions became drawings became reality, if not always functionally. Cas loved the process of working with Poll. Poll was the one who made truly fine pieces, for he was infinitely patient—once he was working, anyway—and would spend days perfecting the smallest, most insignificant part.

Cas was more often more interested in power than beauty. As he looked down at the plans of the machine he had come up with, he wondered how he was going to make it look appealing without Poll’s help.

He ought not to need Poll for this. It was his idea and his alone. He wanted to do something, anything, to take his mind off Miranda. He was confused by his own actions today; first the avoidance, then the secretive pursuit. He’d never followed a woman in his adult life. He’d rarely even thought about one once he’d left her presence. Miranda had him tied up in twisted ropes of his own feelings and her lovely, generous soul.

She was, quite simply, astonishing. He didn’t want her body—well, he did, but he didn’t want
only
her body. He wanted to see the world through her cool, deep sea eyes. He wanted to immerse himself in her clean, unsullied soul.

But most of all, for the first time in his life, he wanted to be a different sort of man. He wanted to be the kind of man she deserved.

I wonder, would the world stop spinning if, just once, you did something other than play?

It didn’t matter that she’d not said those words to him. He was no different from his brother. They had both forgone serious thinking at about the age of … well, always.

Does she believe that this is all I am fit to offer humankind? A handsome place card at a dinner, an amusing companion for an evening of cards, or drinking, or wenching?

It seemed a very small suit to wear, fit for a small man with a small world. It had choked him for some time. He had finally outgrown it, outgrown the need to flee the darkness within him with asinine, shallow pursuits.

Forcing himself to ignore the scratching of Poll’s pencil from across the dead silent workshop, Cas rubbed a hand through his hair and narrowed his vision to the next line of his sketch and the next and the next.…

Chapter Sixteen

Far above their heads and carefully out of their sight, Attie perched in the rafters of the workshop and watched her dearest brothers split apart at the seams. The workshop was one of her favorite places in the world, as much as her book cave or her under-bed hideout or even Lementeur’s Cluttered Cubicle of Coruscation.

She’d sat on those worktables a hundred times over the years, swinging her legs and gently guiding—or sometimes bellowing at the top of her lungs—her brothers to new and greater heights. They never actually credited her ideas as such, but she didn’t mind. She had scroll after scroll of her own designs hidden in various nooks and crannies of the house. Someday she would create them all.

She was closer over Poll, so she lay down on her belly on the great beam and hooked her heels together beneath it to keep her balance as she peered at his sketch in the dim light of his single lantern.

It was quite pretty, and Attie always had a great appreciation for a secret compartment … but the ivy was boring. Why not a hunting scene? Or better yet, a battle scene! Vikings with broadswords, beheading hapless Britons—that would be much more the thing.

And jewel cases were just jewel cases, in the end. Of course, Miranda would like it, certainly, for she liked good pieces. Attie could tell exactly which pieces Miranda had chosen in her house and exactly which pieces had been there for ages and ages. It was like an Egyptian archeological dig, or like trying to sort out a room in Worthington House. Just layers of people and time and dust and more time.

Once Attie had found a mystery corner of a carpet in an unoccupied servant’s room. No one had lived there for years, yet there had been a circular area of white fur embedded into the wool, just as if some large white beast had slept there for months.

The family had never owned a dog for as long as Attie could remember, although there were some cats mousing their way through the jungle of objects filling every room. Sometimes Attie would catch one and hug it until it stopped struggling, obviously deciding that tolerating her would get it freed sooner. They reminded Attie of Ellie that way.

But in that high attic room Attie pictured a secret polar bear, captured by her father on some long ago adventure and concealed there until he could present it to her mother for a grand wedding gift. Attie wasn’t sure why she always imagined a wedding, but—white bear, white dress—it made sense, didn’t it?

As she pondered the enigma of the great white mystery beast, she had risen to her feet and strolled easily down the beam as it if were a sidewalk and not a ten-inch-wide catwalk above a twenty-foot drop. It was dark, but she didn’t need any light. She could, and had, performed cartwheels on these beams, though that had been with Cas and Poll holding a blanket stretched tight beneath her. The fall had been the best part.

Reaching the spot above Cas, she dropped down to straddle the beam and leaned over, just as she had with Poll.

Cas sat in a great circle of bright light, so she could see his drawing very clearly. He wasn’t the draftsman that Poll was, though that was mainly because Poll had more practice. Attie refused to feel any sort of preference for either twin. Such a thing, she felt strongly, was the first step to some great and terrible rift.

A rift like right now. Attie chewed her lip for a moment, feeling the tension in the silence like a tangible barrier down the middle of the room.

Tomorrow she ought to work on the Miranda end of the plan a bit more. It was time this nonsense ended!

*   *   *

“You ought to have more beaus.”

Miranda looked at little Attie, who lay upon Miranda’s bed with her head hanging off the edge so that their eyes met upside down. It was a rainy afternoon and they’d already had their fill of tea and cakes.

Sometimes Miranda wondered how it was that Attie never visited when her brothers were in attendance. However she managed it, Miranda was grateful that she could be Attie’s obviously much-needed friend—and not just her brothers’ … ah, whatever it was that she was to them.

She watched Attie closely without seeming to. “More beaus? Why would you say that?”

Attie rolled over onto her stomach and propped her chin on her fists. “You’re pretty. You’re almost as pretty as Elektra. She has scads of beaus, and she’s only just out.”

Since Elektra, according to her brothers and sister and even Button, was considered entirely breathtaking, Miranda dipped a little sitting curtsy from her perch on her dressing table stool. “Why, thank you, dear child.”

Attie scowled. “I mean it. You could have lots and lots of lovers.”

Miranda turned, for she’d been having this conversation via her dressing table mirror, to regard the child directly. “Attie! Goodness, what do you know of such things?”

Attie pushed back her tangled mop of hopeless curls and sent Miranda a worldly look. “I know all about it. Mama gave me a book. She said my body is my carriage and I ought to know how to drive it … or was it my body is my driver and I’m the carriage?” Attie shrugged. “Mama gets a bit turned about sometimes.”

Miranda had heard enough about the elder Worthingtons to understand Attie’s meaning. They must be entirely crackers, to let Attie roam the city unescorted—to let Attie leave her room unescorted, especially with her hair and clothing in such a state!

Today Attie wore a too-short, too-tight dress over a pair of boy’s pegged knee-length trousers and clunky country riding boots two sizes too large, which had thankfully been left down in the parlor to dry by the fire.

Her hair … Miranda despaired of Attie’s hair. She wasn’t even entirely sure the mess was recoverable, it had been tangled for so long. She’d never so much as breathe mention of a brush, sensing that Attie would withdraw from her at once.

Miranda didn’t want Attie to withdraw. She wanted her to come closer, so she allowed her to come and go at will, always ready with sugary tea cakes and a decided lack of censure, no matter how hoydenish she was. Like a lonely wild thing, Attie circled closer by the day.

The little girl missed her married eldest sister, Calliope, with a dreadful ache that Miranda could feel emanating from her in waves. Callie had been as much mother as sister. It was evident that while adored, Elektra was most thoroughly a sister, and Iris Worthington was rather more like a beloved but exasperating pet.

So Miranda set out to inspire little Atalanta by example. Even now, she ran her brush through her own gleaming hair, though it scarcely needed it.

Attie rolled off the bed and wandered over to the dressing table. “If you had a lot of beaus, you could go to balls every night. And carriage rides, and plays, and shooting.”

She lifted the lid on Miranda’s powder box and bent to sniff it. When she came back up, she had a white spot on the tip of her nose. Miranda smiled as she noticed the divot in her powder.

Moving casually and carefully, she picked up the rabbit fur powder puff and took a matter-of-fact swipe in the general direction of Attie’s smidgen.

The fact that Attie didn’t duck away or even scowl overmuch encouraged Miranda greatly. However, she had no intention of continuing this inappropriate conversation with a child, driver of her own carriage or not!

Turning on her stool to gaze into Attie’s funny little face—heavens, the girl would be a stunner someday!—Miranda smiled kindly but firmly.

“My beau situation is none of your concern, little Miss Atalanta Worthington.”

Attie screwed up her face. “Yes, it is.”

Miranda tilted her head. “How so?”

Attie tilted her head in the same direction, mirroring Miranda. “If you marry a Worthington, you marry all the Worthingtons. And that is going to be very sticky for you, don’t you think?”

Miranda drew back, stunned. “Attie, I have no intention of marrying a Worthington. I will never marry again. I’m sorry that you have been misled.”

Attie examined her narrowly for a long moment. The child’s odd intensity made Miranda squirm a little inside. Then Attie shrugged. “If you say so. I have to go now.” She skipped to the door and then turned back.

“You are beautiful. Beautiful ladies really should have more than two lovers.” Then she was gone.

Miranda was left sitting openmouthed. “I don’t have any lovers.… I really don’t.…”

*   *   *

Cas couldn’t bear it any longer. He’d avoided Miranda for days—and she had not even realized it! It was ridiculous to stay away. He was only punishing himself, not to mention driving his own confusion and need to unmanageable heights!

After assuring himself that, yes, it was “his” night—and that Poll was otherwise occupied with helping Elektra dig through the chaos and madness for a litter of kittens that were keeping the entire household up at night with their yowling so that they could be moved to a nice warm box by the ovens—Cas allowed himself to do more than lurk.

No, the hunt had become a chase, except that Cas was not sure who was the pursued. He felt hounded by thoughts of her, of memories and fantasies still to come. As he neared her house, his pace increased. He actually ran up the stairs to rap on Miranda’s polished brass knocker.

The butler took his bloody time answering the door. Cas spent that long moment imagining the scene within.

Miranda, dressed in another drab gown, her hair wound simply at the back of her head. His Mira, turning to greet him with a hesitant smile that made her beautiful.

In his mind, Cas was inside the room in an instant. In his imagination, Miranda was up against the mantelpiece in another instant, being kissed as if she were the last woman on the earth.

He remained frozen on the steps. Even as he fought the desire, and hunger, and aching, tormented longing that whirled in a tempest within him, Cas feared that for him, she just might be precisely that.

The very last woman.

When Twigg opened the door of the house on Breton Square, he found no one there.

*   *   *

On one hand, there is Poll. Darling Poll. He is romantic and playful, coaxing and charming. I feel youthful when I am with him, like a schoolgirl with her first suitor. My attraction to him has an innocence that I never had a chance to know when I was young.

He is someone I can talk to, share my thoughts with, someone who will listen and never belittle my oddest remarks.

When I wake each day, I look forward to seeing him, as I always did, before this mad competition commenced. Now, of course, I never know if he will sweep in with flowers and laughter and flirtation, or pull me along on an adventure and make me feel like a carefree child.

*   *   *

Poll had just about enough of interruptions, just when he was about to get his long-awaited kiss from Miranda!

When a Worthington became frustrated, it was time to duck.

In Poll’s case, he’d decided that after genteel courtship and applied logic had failed him, the only thing left was to pull out all the stops. His plan was to sweep Miranda away on a tide of pure unadulterated romance!