And Then Comes Marriage (37 page)

Heavens, she had been so credulous. If nothing else, she’d gained a more realistic perspective on human nature along with her other battle scars.

The bakery still appeared wholesome and honest, with its handsome wooden shelves and cases behind the counter filled with decadent buns and pastries.

Miranda strolled in, looking for all the world like a lady in search of a popover.

Malden stepped smartly up to serve her. He was a short, burly fellow with bushy … well, everything. Among the bushiness, his bright blue eyes gleamed like cold little stones.

Wiping his big hands on his apron, he regarded Miranda without recognition. Of course, she looked very little like the drab and serious housewife with whom he had originally bargained. In a swiftly borrowed Lementeur gown and a stunning bonnet, decorated and sent to her yesterday by Lady Wyndham in a supportive gesture, she looked ruthlessly stylish and very, very rich.

More lies, in a world built on lies.

She smiled sweetly at the baker. He ogled back. It didn’t hurt that she had removed her lace from her neckline and had given her bosom a nice plumping by bending over in the Button’s office and rearranging matters, aided by Cabot’s loan of two bath sponges.

She blinked vapidly at him. “What a pretty shop. What pretty breads! I think I’ll take them all.”

The baker smiled, not quite sure if she were joking or simply idiotic. She leaned forward over the counter—or rather, her bosom leaned forward—as she held out one gloved hand. “Will one of these do?”

Her palm was full of guineas, hastily borrowed from Button, who apparently kept them in jam jars, rolling about amid buttons and thimbles. A single guinea would buy a bakery full of bread, for weeks. Tucked in amongst the gleaming gold coins was a dull copper penny.

The fellow swallowed. “One of them might just about cover it. I suppose I’ll allow it, since you are such a fine and lovely lady.” He leered.

Flirting? Ugh!

Miranda clapped her hands with silly glee. Her conspiratorial bosom jiggled. The baker took the coin she dropped into his hand without so much as glancing at it.

“Children!” she called over her shoulder. “Do come in and help yourselves!”

In an instant, the shop was filled to bursting with children. Like locusts they descended—rather loud, rowdy locusts, swarming madly and voraciously as they filled their hands and pockets and pinafores and arms with bread and scones and buns and sticky sweet iced cakes and then ran out again, shrieking and giggling. There was nothing left but crumbs and a single, trampled loaf in the middle of the floor.

The entire event had taken place in less than ninety seconds. It had been positively
Worthingtonian.

The baker looked shaken, but his fist simply tightened about the coin and he gave Miranda an obsequious bow.

“That’s precious generous of you, madam, given them urchins a treat like that. I would’ve rather delivered it all, for they’ve made a bit of mess in me shop.” Then he shrugged. “Still, I suppose the gold will cover it.”

Miranda smiled at him. “Gold? Did I say anything about gold?”

The baker opened his fist and examined the coin with a frown. It was the round copper penny.

“But … but…”

“You must be more attentive, sir.” Miranda shrugged. “I can’t imagine why you thought I gave you gold. Don’t you know the difference between a guinea and a penny?” She smiled at her little rhyme, righteousness burning in her veins.

The man finally found his voice. “You robbed me! I’ll have the law on you, I will!”

Miranda straightened and smiled with sugary ferocity.

“Oh, do. I wonder who the magistrate will believe: a lady or a cheating tradesman?”

*   *   *

Defying the baker gave Miranda courage. Her heart beat faster. Her lungs filled with air.

I remember this.

She’d found it once already. She’d been living quietly, if one could call it living, hoping that if she held on long enough, someone would rescue her.

Well, someone did. She did, with the help of her lover and her friend, who taught her how to speak and fight for herself.

She’d been wrong to blame Cas for everything that had happened. She’d knowingly stepped out from beneath the umbrella of propriety into the dicey rain—because she’d wanted more.

He’d certainly given that to her. He’d given her excitement, and passion, and dreams the like of which she’d never dared to dream.

The fact that her heart could break was the chance she had taken. She loved him.

She would not undo that love, even though he had so obviously not returned it. That deep and whirling maelstrom had made a woman out of a repressed girl. It had filled her, expanded her, shown her a world that glowed and shimmered and breathed. She refused to unsee that world.

I will never live under anyone’s thumb again. I will never again be afraid. I will be scandalous but free.

She smiled. She wanted to tell someone what she had realized—someone who would understand the dizzying intoxicating freedom that fizzed through her blood.

She wanted to share it with her family.

The Worthingtons.

Chapter Thirty-five

Miranda arrived at Worthington House with her heart bursting, ready to share her brilliant new understanding with everyone, up to and including Cas. She knew that seeing him would be painful, but she was not angry—not any longer. He’d not kept promises, for he’d not made any.

Her love for him would never fade, even were it not fed by his affections. However, there was no reason to deny herself of Poll’s friendship, and Attie’s stubborn loyalty, and Elektra’s bright and vivacious company, or even Iris’s dreamy insight!

However, Worthington House was as sad and drear a place as Miranda had ever seen. Philpott opened the door for Miranda, and answered her greeting with a sob. Tossing her apron over her face, she scuttled from the entrance hall as if she’d seen a ghost.

A pale and furious Attie sat on the bottom stair, staring hard at Miranda.

“I don’t hate you,” Attie said firmly.

Miranda nodded cautiously in greeting. “Nor do I dislike you.”

The child had made a real attempt to dress properly today. Her frock was quite nice, if a bit long and a bit loose in the bodice. She wore proper stockings and shoes, though she’d managed to tear a ladder into her stockings already and her shoes looked a little tight.

Her hair was the most astounding transformation. Attie saw her staring and raised her fingers to touch her elaborate hairstyle.

“Ellie asked if she could practice braiding on me. I liked the way it looked so I’ve been practicing, too.” Braids, indeed. There were perhaps seven or eight of them, sprouting from all areas of her head like a palm, or perhaps the legs of an octopus. Each glossy, perfect braid was tied off with a different substance. Ribbon, twine, clothesline, wire, sprung springs—it seemed that Attie had raided the infamous workshop Miranda had heard so much about.

Miranda hadn’t the slightest urge to chuckle. She was much too moved by the words “Ellie asked.” It seemed that the lovely Elektra had actually been listening.

Attie’s little freckled face screwed up into a hideous grimace. Miranda thought with some alarm that the child was either going to sneeze or possibly combust.

“I didn’t mean to do it!”

Miranda’s first response was, “Of course, you didn’t!” Then she thought perhaps she ought to clarify. “Ah … what precisely do you think you didn’t mean to do?”

Attie knuckled her eyes for a moment. Miranda saw the tiny child still lurking just under the worldly-wise skin.

“I didn’t mean to make you notorious! I just thought that if you had lots of beaus that you wouldn’t make Cas and Poll fight—because they were fighting and they’ve never fought before—not since they were my age and Dade had to sit on them to make them stop—”

This was obviously a story Attie relished and to be frank, Miranda was a bit curious to hear more, but she stopped Attie with a gentle hand on her bony little shoulder.

“Attie, you didn’t make me notorious. Someone tricked me into going someplace I shouldn’t have gone, and someone who shouldn’t have seen me there did see me there and then they only told the simple truth—so it was really my own doing that I ended up notorious.”

She rather liked that word. She rolled it around in her mind while she waited for Attie’s response.

Notorious.

The Notorious Miranda Talbot
.

And then, because she was in the privacy of her own mind and it was no one’s business what she dreamed of—

The Notorious Miranda Worthington.

“So there,” she told Attie. “Now, you’ve nothing to cry over at all.”

Attie’s face started to crumple once again. “Yes, I do! I do! Because Cas is
gone!
”

Miranda went very still. “Gone? Where has he gone?”

Attie laid her head down on her arms that were crossed over her bent knees. She said something damp and muffled that Miranda was quite horribly certain translated as “The West Indies.”

“Attie,” she said slowly. “I need to speak to Poll.”

*   *   *

Miranda found Poll easily enough. At first she wasn’t quite sure. When the stout housekeeper in voluminous striped muslin showed Miranda to the jumbled workshop, she saw the brooding figure leaning one elbow on the table, his jaw hard and his eyes narrowed as he stared unseeing at the coals in the iron stove.

She had at first glance taken him for Castor. Then, as he raised his gaze to see her enter, the flash of sweetness in his smile identified him as Pollux.

Miranda stood opposite Poll at the worktable and leaned both fists on the scarred and burned—and she wasn’t sure what that violent scarlet stain was but it was probably best to avoid touching it—tabletop.

“Poll, you must tell me everything—and don’t you dare edit it for my tender ears. I am a grown woman. I can handle anything.”

So he told her everything—all about Cas’s big dream, and his bargain with the Prince Regent.

Miranda pressed her fingertips to her lips. “Oh. Oh dear.” It seemed she wasn’t the only one who’d lost something on the night of the Wyndhams’ ball!

Poll told her of Cas’s anger at being manipulated—

“Well,” she reminded him, “I did tell you I didn’t care for the plan.”

Poll nodded, then went on to explain the orgy and Lily—and Dilly—who actually did sound like good sorts if one could overcome the whole prostitution obstacle.

“Do you really believe that Cas didn’t dally with Lily—or Dilly—” Miranda shook her head. So many flower names!

Poll gave her an exasperated glance. “Cas might not tell me everything, but he would never
lie
. Not to me.”

Miranda drew back at his vehemence. “Oh.” Biting her lip, she decided to believe him, for
he
had never lied to
her.
“So you believe that Cas’s, er, overreaction was because he does love me?”

“Love you?” Poll shook his head, laughing sadly. “Miranda, Cas is tearing himself, all of us, into tiny little pieces—and it’s all for you!”

“Me?”
I don’t believe you, my friend.
“I don’t understand. Poll, where is he? Why is everyone acting like he’s gone away forever?”

He shook his head again, sadly this time. “That was the bargain he made, you see. The Prince Regent promised to intercede on your behalf—to negate the Scandal Clause by Royal Order—if Cas took himself off. Permanently. The Prince Regent said that the scandal would never die as long as Cas remained visible in the eyes of Society.”

Miranda couldn’t breathe. Her chest was far too full of her expanding heart to engage in something as tedious as breathing! “He did that? Truly?”

Poll dropped his head into his hands. “God, you’re stubborn. How did someone so sweet and gentle become so stubborn?” He lifted his head and glared at her. “Yes. He. Did. That. For.
You.
”

Miranda straightened and gazed down at Poll primly. Joy spiked within her like luminous crystals quickly growing. “There’s no need to be surly, Pollux.” She tugged her spencer straight and pulled at the fingertips of her gloves, arranging them properly. “Now, where is this ship?”

Chapter Thirty-six

It was a big ship, and the rough men serving upon it eyed Miranda with grim concern as she crossed the plank and made her way through coils of thick, tarred rope and mysterious wrapped bundles.
Do not fear. I am not traveling today. You won’t have to fetch me lemonade or carry my parasol on walks about the deck.
Not that a little coddling would go so amiss, but she was there for only one reason.

Cas.

So as to hurry her on a bit, one of the sailors briskly showed her down to the small corridor of staterooms for those people brave enough to call themselves passengers.

The rather hairy, certainly smelly, man tapped at one door, rumbled out a slurred and accented string of words that had to run through Miranda’s mind twice before decanting to “Your missus is here to see you.”