That Kind of Woman (18 page)

“Send Mary with clean rags!” Miranda called after her, and Lettie humphed her response.

Andrew turned to Miranda, suddenly tongue-tied with embarrassment. “I’m sorry to be placing you in such an awkward predicament,” he began, fumbling for the right words.

Like her mother had earlier, she rolled her eyes and shook her head. “‘Such an awkward predicament’? For pity’s sake, Andrew, this is a natural process with a very simple, straightforward explanation.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” he stammered, feeling like a bumbling idiot. “Perfectly natural, quite simple.”

“Yes, well, that simple explanation often leads to questions about other natural processes that have straightforward explanations. Some parents tell their daughters about all of that, some wait. Which would you prefer I do?”

Andrew cast a helpless look in Barbara’s direction, but the smile on her face said she was clearly enjoying his discomfiture. “You mean tell her about …”

“Men, women, babies? Yes. Shall I tell her all that, as well?”

Suddenly Andrew realized he had tied his cravat far too tightly that morning, and it was very hard to breathe. Surely Miranda wasn’t suggesting that a child Emma’s age needed to know about lovemaking. “Well, that can wait until she gets married, can’t it? I mean, I told Caroline, and surely George told you …”

At that, Barbara broke into gales of laughter.

Miranda’s dark brown eyes went wide in disbelief. “
You
told Caroline?”

He looked back and forth between them, feeling utterly over his head. “I’m not going to stand in the hall and discuss my wedding night!” He looked back at Barbara, who was wiping tears of mirth from her eyes. “When did you tell Miranda?”

“Oh, I think she was ten or eleven.”

“Not about the today thing,” he snapped. “About the other thing. The wedding thing.”

Barbara started to laugh again, and Miranda joined in. Andrew thought the top of his head was going to explode.

“I told her about both ‘things’ at the same time,” Barbara explained between giggles. “You see, I really couldn’t explain it as a ‘wedding thing,’ since, in my case, there had obviously been no wedding.”

Oh, God, why could the floor not open up and swallow him?

Barbara turned to her daughter. “Of course, I think all the more detailed ‘things’ can wait until she’s engaged, don’t you agree?”

Miranda squealed with laughter and nodded her head, too breathless to speak. As mortifying as the whole discussion was for Andrew, it was a relief to see Miranda sharing what seemed to be one of her few happy memories with her mother. One thing was sure, if this event, this discussion could bridge the rift between Miranda and Barbara, he would trust Miranda to handle it the same way with Emma. Perhaps then his daughter would not face her wedding night with the same fear her mother had felt.

“Do as you think best, then,” he said at last.

Miranda caught her breath and finally took off her pelisse to hand it to her mother.

“Shall I intercept your maid and send her back for a bottle of wine and two glasses?” Barbara asked.

“Yes, thank you,” Miranda said, a few small giggles still escaping as she retreated down the hall to Emma’s room.

“A bottle of wine?” Andrew asked, aghast.

“In many ways, Lord Danford,” Barbara admonished, “I was not a perfect mother. But this, I believe, I did right. Don’t worry, if it didn’t turn Miranda into a whore, it won’t hurt your Emma any.”

“Miss Henley, I assure you, I wasn’t implying …”

She put her manicured finger to his lips. “Shh! It’s all right,” she whispered, then set off to find Mary and order the wine.

He stared after her in dumbfounded silence.

*

“How did it go?” Barbara asked her daughter. Rising from the table where a chessboard sat between her and Montheath, she waved Montheath away with a fluid gesture.

“Definitely not a conversation for me,” he said, standing obediently to leave.

“Oh, please, Monty,” Barbara scoffed. “When did you suddenly become such a prude?”

He grinned at her, pulled her to him, and kissed her thoroughly. Miranda stood awkwardly by. Even two glasses of wine at ten in the morning, followed by some very frank discussion, had not left her with any tolerance for her parents’ antics. Honestly, neither one of them had ever had the slightest concept of appropriate behavior in front of other people! Finally, she cleared her throat. “If you’d rather I left …”

Barbara broke the embrace. “Not at all. Actually, Monty, there’s something else I want to discuss with Miranda, and you’re right, it is not a conversation for you. I just couldn’t resist teasing.”

“You never could, darling,” he rejoined.

“Oh, for pity’s sake!” Miranda said.

Her mother frowned at her. “Leave being a prude to our daughter, here. Wherever did she get it?”

Montheath gave Barbara another, briefer kiss, bowed formally to his daughter, and left them alone.

Miranda took a deep breath, but before she could say anything, her mother said, “So, you’re staying here, then?”

“How—how did you know?”

Barbara only smiled. “You love that silly little chit, don’t you?”

“She’s really not a bad child.”

“I should say not!” Barbara exclaimed. “She’s very like me at her age. Funny, isn’t it? I think I would have understood a daughter like her.”

“Was I so strange?”

Barbara studied her with one brow arched, like she was studying some new species of insect. “You were so earnest, so serious, so quiet. You were impossible.”

Miranda smiled. “So you never knew what to make of me. But I was raised by you, and so I’m well prepared to deal with a girl like Emma.”

Barbara didn’t smile back. “Yes, you were raised by me. Tell me, after all of these years of hating the life I built, are you quite sure you’re ready to live it yourself?”

Miranda frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You are fully in love with that young woman, and you are already half in love with her father. Where do you think all of this will lead?”

“Her father? Mother—”

“And he is madly in love with you. How did I raise a girl so blind?”

“You think all men are like Montheath, ruled by their …” Miranda stopped.

Smiling again, Barbara asked, “Their what? How ever did you explain the facts of life to Emma if you can’t even say the word
cock
? And for your information, there is a good deal more between your father and me than lust. Lust does not last nearly thirty years.”

Miranda had the grace to feel ashamed of herself. “I know that, Mother. That was uncalled for.”

“Yes, it was,” Barbara agreed, without malice. “Poor darling,” she continued, “you were never in love with your George, were you?”

Miranda kept her face carefully neutral. “Not like you and Montheath, no.”

“If you stay, you will find yourself in Andrew’s bed. You realize that, don’t you?”

Miranda’s heart began to pound. Her mother sounded so certain. “People can choose whether or not to act upon their feelings, you know,” she protested.

“For a certain length of time and over a certain distance, but not indefinitely and not under the same roof. Oh, you two are a pair, both of you with your steel backbones and stiff upper lips. But sooner or later, Miranda, it will not matter that you are related by law and that marriage between you would be virtually illegal. By then, my dear, you had better have ensnared him well, for a mistress is far more easily disposed of than a wife.”

Outside the music room window, once bare trees sent forth tiny green buds. Miranda stood alone in the chamber, coaxing sweet melodies from the strings of her violin. She had come here hoping to escape the feelings that had been building inside her. If she didn’t know better, she would swear the heat generated by her living under the same roof with Andrew Carrington had caused winter’s demise.

There had been brief respites from his irresistible presence. He spent hours at a time in the library and began taking long rides out to check on farms the moment the weather showed signs of thawing. He even went to London several times to conduct business, though most of it could just as easily have been conducted by messenger.

She appreciated the distance, but they couldn’t avoid each other entirely.

To play music as she had been taught required her full concentration. She must banish foolish fantasies of kisses, kindle a fire for nothing but the strains resonating from the instrument tucked beneath her chin, allow the music to fill her, pulse through her veins, saturate her thoughts.

And yet, the sonata could not drive images of Andrew from her mind. Somehow she could read every note on the page and still envision him absorbed by accounts in the library or riding across the estate. Just the recollection of him savoring a bite of some delicacy at dinner did things to her that made her draw the bow across the strings all the more ardently, creating a vibrato tremulous with emotion.

Then she imagined him abandoning his accounts and pressing her to the threadbare couch in the library. She dreamed of him dismounting his horse to take her in the hay in the stable. She fantasized of the two of them supping in her bed, pouring wine over each other and lapping it from each other’s bodies.

By the time she finished the piece, she was warm and breathless.

“I once promised not to eavesdrop on you here, so may I come in and listen?” Andrew asked.

Miranda looked up to find him leaning casually against the opening of the door. Apparently she could play and daydream at the same time, but she could not do those two and pay attention to her surroundings. She lowered the instrument and set the bow on the music stand.

“The music carries to the library and salon,” she said.

“True, but watching you play is half the joy.” Since she hadn’t told him to leave, he strolled in and sat in one of the upholstered chairs.

She raised her hand and touched her hair in a self-conscious gesture. “It is?”

Stretching his long legs out in front of him, he replied, “Don’t you think so? To watch the music’s effect upon the musician makes it all the more moving.”

Lud! She couldn’t play another note with him here. How was a woman to keep her wits about her when a man had such long legs and his trousers were so snug? How could she make her bow obey her when the fingers that held it wanted nothing more than to play in the thick, dark hair that fell over his brow? To hell with the effect of the music!

Andrew watched the color rise in her cheeks and thought of how much more deeply she would blush if she knew that he’d observed her through nearly the entire piece, and that the look on her face had been that of a woman making slow, passionate love.

“That effect is particularly evident in you. You—” He stopped.

“What?”

“What is it about you that loosens my tongue?” he asked.

“It is the music, not I,” she said. “Music is the most honest thing I know. It has never lied to me. Perhaps no one can deceive anyone in a place where music reigns, not even one’s self.”

“Least of all one’s self,” he agreed.

“Then what were you going to say?”

“Only that you seem most at ease in this room, sitting at the piano singing or playing your violin. The only time you ever seem truly comfortable with your father is when you play a concerto together.”

“I suppose that’s true. Music was Montheath’s greatest gift to me. I cannot tell you what it means to me to be able to share it with Emma.”

“I must say,” Andrew said, “I am utterly astounded at the changes you have wrought in that rather recalcitrant daughter of mine in these past months. She carries herself more gracefully. She practices for hours without prompting. I am in awe of your touch with her.”

“She is coming to love the music for its own sake, not merely as a means to please or gain attention. It makes a difference.”

“I heard the two of you conversing in French the other day.”

Miranda picked up her violin case and began stowing the instrument. “Well, those years spent running off governesses have left her with dreadful grammar, but she’s catching up.”

“Last night at dinner, she even quoted Shakespeare,” Andrew added.

“Ah, yes, a
Midsummer Night’s Dream
. You know she only did that so she could say the word ‘ass’ at the dinner table with Lettie unable to chastise her because it was the Bard.”

Andrew’s deep laughter rolled through the music room. “So she is far from perfect. That would be too much to hope for. At least she generally saves her pouts and tantrums for Lettie.”

“I do wish we could convince your stepmother that she must do more to discourage Emma’s histrionics.” She snapped the violin case closed. “The child knows they always work on her grandmother.”

“But never on you.”

Miranda smiled. “Sometimes on me.”

“And then there is Henry,” Andrew continued, his voice dry. As if he didn’t have his hands full with his own unruly emotions! His half-brother often flirted lightly with Miranda, but whenever she wasn’t looking at him, he gazed at her with puppy dog devotion. “You had only to mention once that his tailor would weep to see how he treats his clothes. That single comment did what his poor valet has been unable to accomplish in years.”

“There you are!” Emma greeted as she rounded the doorway into the room. “I thought you’d gone elsewhere since the music stopped. Hello, Papa! Grandmama is on her way. I told her I would play for her, but since you’re here, Randa, we can play a concerto.”

“I’ve put up my violin for the afternoon,” Miranda said. “But I’d love to listen to you play alone.”

Emma flounced down at the piano and played a quick riff. “When can I start violin?” she asked.

“Violin, now?” Andrew asked.

“Not yet,” Miranda pronounced. “Voice and piano are quite enough.”

Henry strolled in next, ever-present glass in hand. “Anything to be just like her Aunt Randa.” He took Miranda’s hand in his and led her to the small settee, pulling her down next to him. “Her playing’s almost tolerable these days.”

Lettie waddled in right behind him. “Oh, Emma will not be entirely like Miranda, I don’t suppose. After all, there’s no blood between them.”