And Then Comes Marriage (6 page)

Poll was beginning to worry that Attie might run out of air by the time Ellie climbed wearily to her feet and dusted her skirts, muttering in disgust. “Poisonous little elf … when I catch her.” Dire threats fell from her lips, but it was obvious that because of her exertions, her rage was running its course.

She left with another suspicious glance at Cas and Poll, who shook their heads in commiseration. When the door slammed on Ellie’s defeat, they each exhaled in relief.

Cas moved to open the bag. Poll held out a hand. “Wait.”

It was a fortunate instinct, for just as Cas straightened, the door flew open yet again. Ellie, tight-lipped and blotchy-faced, glared at them both one last time, obviously surprised to find them doing nothing wrong.

“Hmph!” She turned on her heel and stalked down the hall.

Poll stepped forward and silently shut the door. This time he locked it, taking great care that the bolt slid noiselessly into place.

Cas let out another whoosh of breath and hurriedly ripped at the buckle of the bag. Poll worriedly bent over it as well. It wouldn’t do to kill Attie. She was a righteous pain in the arse, but she wasn’t a bad little beast.

Their little sister lay curled in the cramped space, unmoving. Still. Too still. Then, just as Poll’s heart crawled right up into his throat, she lifted her tangled reddish mop from her face with one hand and grinned up at them. “That was bloody amazing!”

Cas sighed and closed his eyes.
“Worthingtons.”

Poll helped Attie clamber out of the bag. “That was a one-off, pet. We’ll never be able to use it again … unless it’s Mama. It’s good for a half dozen times on her.”

Attie shook out her gangling limbs as she straightened. Then she cocked her head and examined them in turn, her green-gray eyes sharp. “I smell secrets. You two are up to something.”

Cas didn’t look at his brother. “Haven’t the faintest idea what you mean.”

Attie snorted, then shrugged. Holding out her sticky paw, she pumped their hands in turn. “One month pax, as agreed.” Then she turned and strolled from the room, though she did check the hall most carefully first.

“You, too.” Poll laughed and shoved his brother from the room as well. “Get out. Go dig through your own weskits for something to wear tonight.”

“I’d thought to borrow one of yours.”

“Go look in your wardrobe. I guarantee you that half of those
are
mine.”

“Dandy.”

“Thief.”

*   *   *

Poll shut the door on his brother with a laugh, but sobered as he turned back to regard himself in the mirror.

Now he wasn’t to see Miranda tonight after all. It wasn’t as though he were disappointed. No, of course not. The evening promised to be famously satisfying—the sort of night one could relive for simply months, hashing out the details and delights with Cas over brandies during the chill February deprivations, when most of Society had had its fill of midwinter house parties and of extending invitations to useless but entertaining young men to fill out their table settings.

Not that Poll minded being a “place card.” He and Cas made the most of their time in the country, being enthusiastic hunters—and, oh yes, there was all that shooting, too. Mostly they hunted for tigers, the women who’d married men twice their ages and now found themselves still vibrant and alive, yet dutifully attending to their doddering husbands.

That was Cas’s specialty, anyway—mature women with time on their hands and well-honed sexuality to indulge. Women who most definitely were not looking for a husband!

Poll didn’t gravitate toward any particular species, himself. World-weary wives filled the bill, but so did lonely widows and even the occasional saucy housemaid. What Poll looked for was a certain something he found hard to describe, even when laughingly pressured by Cas. It could be described as a grace, perhaps—a cleverness, to be sure. A … quality.

A quality that Mrs. Gideon Talbot held in bucketloads.

He tied the cravat again and donned a loudly colorful weskit, pulling on his best black surcoat over the ensemble. His gaze slid to the clock on the mantel. It was only seven o’clock. If he moved quickly, he could have his widow and his orgy, too.

With a single swift motion, he swept the book off the dressing table and grabbed up his hat. He paused outside the door to Cas’s chamber.

No time for explanations—and no desire for them either. “See you there,” he called through the oak door.

By the time Cas opened his door with his shirt off and his damp hair dripping onto his chest and shoulders, Poll was slipping out the front of the house with an expectant smile on his face.

Miranda.

*   *   *

Poll whistled happily as he sauntered down a street in Mayfair. It was a lovely summer’s evening. He doffed his hat at a pair of slowly strolling ladies who shot him disapproving looks with betraying glints of appreciation in their eyes.

Women. Poll loved all women—from shy, twittering maidens to severely elegant creatures with silver hair and regal postures. His first lover had been two and half decades older than he and she had taught him the foremost important lesson of his life—that time spent on romance was never wasted.

He’d missed the courtship ritual over the past week while he’d been perfecting the steam engine … the one that currently lay in hastily scavenged bits in the workshop, the gears so welded together that they might never part ways again.

Oh, well. Eventually, one of his and Cas’s inventions would pay off and then they would sit back and collect.

Currently, however, no one seemed to have a need for a rotating clothing-drying device, or a child’s toy that careened wildly out of control, knocking into anything in its way. It was too bad. Poll rather liked that one.

It was a child’s India rubber ball with a windup weighted clockwork within. It had been inspired by the epic failure of their wedding gift to their sister Callie last year. Well, best not think about that night. Their brother-in-law was still trying to bring that ballroom back to its former glory.

Philpott really liked the clothes dryer, though.

Poll smiled at another lady, who didn’t even bother to hide her appreciation.

He kept walking, a smile on his face, knowing that the lady had stopped to catch the rear view. Tigers, indeed.

Although at the moment, he was surprisingly captivated by one single woman.

As he mounted the steps to Miranda’s front door, Poll thought perhaps today might be the day when he would tease a little kiss from her. She really was coming along, and he felt it was time to make gentle advances. Nothing too forward, of course, for he didn’t wish to frighten her.

With a smile and with the gift of a book of poetry under one arm, he knocked confidently on his sweetheart’s door.

Yes, a kiss would be just the thing.

Matters commenced just as usual. They sat down over tea in the parlor. She rang for cakes. He bestowed the book upon her.

“Coleridge! Thank you, sir.” She smiled in shy delight at the long, poetic inscription. Poll was rather proud of the sonnet, for he’d actually written it himself.

Poll watched her pour the tea, enjoying her feminine grace. “And how are all your children doing?”

She did not laugh at his little joke, for she took her responsibility to her favorite charity, a children’s home near Newgate Prison, very seriously.

She regarded him soberly. “I fear I am failing them. I know there must be a way to assist the older children into decent employment, but there is so much intolerance toward them—” She looked away, not finishing her thought.

Oddly, the moment turned awkward. Poll considered Miranda. She answered his sallies congenially, although as the conversation went on, her replies became less and less expansive.

Then suddenly, she burst out. “I’ve spent all day thinking of you kissing me!”

Poll didn’t need a second invitation. In a flash he was next to her on the settee, taking her hands in his, kissing her palms and wrists. She smiled at him then, her expression so open and passionate that she took his breath away.

Miranda tangled her fingers in his hair and lifted her face up to his.

“Miranda,”
he whispered. At last. He bent closer—

A perfunctory tap came on the parlor door and the little maid Tildy scuttled in. “Missus, it’s Miss Constance come calling!”

Miranda sprang back from Poll so effortlessly that one might think she might have been engaged only in intimate conversation and turned to smile at her maid graciously. “Thank you, Tildy. I’ll be along at once.”

She shot Poll a pleading glance and, after giving Tildy a quick signal to clear away the tea things, went to the front hall to greet her late husband’s sister, Miss Constance Talbot.

Poll straightened, willing his pulse to slow, ordering his lust back into its cage of civility. It was a damned shame, for it had promised to be a most delicious first kiss.

Bloody bad luck, Miranda’s sister-in-law dropping in at this hour!

Not to worry. Something had changed tonight. Poll was quite sure he would have many more such opportunities in the future. When Miss Constance Talbot entered the room, he smiled and made nice bows to the stout spinster who eyed him with trenchant suspicion, then made his escape as quickly as possible.

Another time, Miranda, I shall claim that kiss.

*   *   *

When Mr. Worthington left—and who could blame him for his speed?—Miranda inhaled deeply and turned to face her sister-in-law, Miss Constance Talbot. The name might conjure a sweet-faced young girl—if one had never met her.

Miranda was quite sure that Constance had never been that. Small and round and bustling even in youth, if the portraits in the upper hall didn’t lie. Even as a girl, her snub features had held an expression of self-righteous disapproval.

The Talbot height and hawkish profile had completely passed Constance by, a fact that Miranda was sure Constance regretted.

Constance would have dearly loved to loom.

Instead, the Constance of the present was a petite, solid ball of thinly veiled animosity toward Miranda.

“You’ve let the house go,” Constance snapped. “There’s dust on the newel post in the hall.”

Very thinly veiled. In fact, hardly veiled at all.

“Hello, Constance.”

Remember to smile.

Why?

Oh, simply smile and get this over with.
“What might I do for you … this evening?” Miranda carefully implied that it was just a tad late for afternoon calls.

Constance sniffed, in her turn implying that Miranda had nothing better to do with her days than to wait on callers, since she surely wasn’t doing her duty of monitoring the staff with eagle eye and pennypinching fingers.

Ah, the stealthy context between women who had lived together for too many years.

But Constance didn’t live here any longer. The house belonged to Miranda, fair and square. If Gideon had wanted Constance to have it, he ought to have outlined that in his exhaustively detailed will. Miranda had scarcely been able to remain awake during the reading of the hefty, meticulously comprehensive document, in which every stock pin and pair of shoe buckles had been parceled out to acquaintances and favored retainers.

Not friends. Gideon had not had true friends. Colleagues, perhaps. Other desiccated men whose minds were wrapped up in debating the fine points of this document versus that record, this letter versus that missive, until the richness of history became as dry and lifeless as the dust of the past.

Dust that had unhappily ended up on her newel post the very moment Constance chose to make her call. Miranda’s smile felt like paint on her face. If she wasn’t careful, it would begin to chip.

Constance drew off her gloves and snapped them impatiently. “Well? Aren’t you going to offer me tea?”

Not likely. If I feed it, it will never leave.
Miranda blinked. “But it is so late! I know you drink nothing but boiled milk after six o’clock.”

Constance narrowed her eyes. “I take tea on occasion. I will take some now.”

She turned to Twigg, who straightened or perhaps stiffened in anticipation.
Oh no. I give the orders here.
Miranda stepped smoothly between Constance and her former butler. “Twigg, please see to Miss Talbot’s tea.”

Twigg fled, probably reluctant to decide which mistress to obey, the one he’d known or the one who now paid his wages.

Constance tilted her head. “Too late for tea, but not too late for a gentleman caller, Miranda? If he’d stayed any later, I would have accused you of keeping company … and you still in mourning!”

“Half mourning,” Miranda pointed out. Half mourning that had actually ended a few months previously, but Miranda didn’t have the spinal strength needed to go through that argument again with Constance, who seemed to feel that any woman lucky enough to have wed a Talbot owed that husband a lifetime of black gowns and impenetrable veils. Nor would periodic bursts of weeping be considered amiss.

Not that Constance had wept. At least, Miranda had seen no sign of it. Constance had been very nearly smug, after the first shock of Gideon’s sudden demise wore off. It was not until the reading of the will that Constance had realized that it was Miranda who would hold the keys to the kingdom, not her.