Page 47

With her modest means following the divorce, the lone domestic had been all Miranda could afford for her home. Now that she had the funds from Rhys, however, the temptation to replace the perpetually Friday-faced woman with a servant who was more congenial was strong.

“Thank you,” she told White, stomach flipping with a mixture of worry and anticipation.

Rhys was here. And he was earlier than she had anticipated. Oh, what had she been thinking in the midst of the night when she had agreed to such a nonsensical request from him? Paying a call upon her as if he were a suitor.

It was dangerous.

Foolish.

Stealing about under the cover of darkness was one thing, but at least they could be covert and surreptitious. Calls by the light of day could be cause for wagging tongues, particularly given Rhys’s reputation and Miranda’s own past scandal.

Miranda removed her hat, wrap, and gloves whilst the maid of all work lingered, unsmiling.

“The guest in question is a gentleman caller,” White added, her disapproval evident.

“Indeed,” Miranda said, feigning a lack of concern she didn’t feel as she hung up her wrap.

“I warned him it was most unseemly, his presence here in an unmarried lady’s residence,” White added sharply.

Miranda almost reminded the other woman that she had been married once, but mentioning her divorce seemed counterproductive to White’s bilious constitution.

She smiled instead. “Thank you for your forethought, White. I do believe he is here to discuss some business related to my school. Nothing untoward, I assure you.”

Ha! If she only knew. Thank heavens White was a heavy sleeper. Miranda had become adept at sneaking in and out of the house to the sound of the maid of all work’s rhythmic snores.

“As you say, madam.” The maid of all work gave a stern sniff of disdain.

Miranda truly did not think she could carry on with such a supercilious woman in her household, but that was a matter for later. For now, Rhys was awaiting her. “I will see to him, then.”

“Shall I bring a tray of tea?” the maid of all work wanted to know.

“I’ll ring for it,” she decided, knowing Rhys well enough by now to understand that despite what he had promised about behaving, anything could happen.

She had no wish for White to walk in upon a tableau that would set her tongue wagging. He was a rogue to the core after all. And Miranda was woefully incapable of resisting him, particularly when he plied his rakish charm.

Leaving White at the door, Miranda made her way to the sitting room at the hall’s end.

As she crossed the threshold, she halted, shock washing over her.

For the familiar figure awaiting her within—tall, dark-haired, and blue-eyed—was decidedly not Rhys.

Rather, he was a dear friend who had sacrificed much on her behalf so that she could escape her hateful union with Ammondale.

“Waring,” she greeted, astonished.

“Miranda.” The Marquess of Waring offered her an elegant bow that seemed better suited to a formal gathering than to her modest private sitting room.

In the clutter of her books and pictures, her writing desk and scribblings and models for ice caves and working prototypes, he was decidedly out of place. And far more serious than her dear friend ordinarily was.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, still astonished at his presence.

Following her scandalous divorce, he had decamped across the Atlantic. He had business dealings that took him there, and he had graciously wished to distance himself to quiet the salacious gossip concerning the two of them, none of which was true, had the gossips but known it.

Waring gave her a small smile, clasping his hands behind his back. “You are not pleased to see me, then?”

“Of course I am,” she reassured him, moving deeper into the room.

For she was happy to see him. His letters had been few and concise. She had missed his steadfast presence in her life, which had begun during the misery of her new marriage and had lasted the duration.

She reached him and opened her arms. Waring embraced her as he always did, with tenderness and yet reverent care, as if she were fine Sèvres porcelain he feared might break lest he grow too exuberant.

Miranda rejoiced in the familiar, comforting warmth of his strong arms, noting he held her just a moment longer than strictly necessary before releasing her and stepping away.

His light-blue gaze roamed her face, as if searching for signs of change. She wondered if he found any and treated him to the same. His hair was longer than fashionable, and he had grown a beard in his absence. Perhaps his new hirsute appearance was down to his time in America.

“You look well,” he said at last, breaking the almost awkward silence.

“As do you,” she returned politely. “You have a beard now.”

He scrubbed a hand over his jaw, and she noted for the first time that the dark hair was stippled with hints of silver. “You don’t like it?”

“I suppose I’m not accustomed to it.”

“I thought it rather dashing.”

“I think it very American.”

They shared a laugh, and suddenly, it was as if he had never been gone, the initial uncertainty of their reunion shattered like an unwanted pot tossed into the dustbin.

“I’ve missed you, Ran.”

His words were tinged with emotion she didn’t recognize, even if his old, familiar endearment for her was.

“I have missed you as well.” She gestured to the settee behind him. “Shall we sit? I’ll ring for tea. How long are you staying in England?”

“Tea would be just the thing.”

Miranda moved to the bellpull and gave it a tug before she turned back to the seating arrangement.

“And as for how long I’m staying, forever, I should think,” Waring added.

He said the last as Miranda settled in an overstuffed chair opposite the settee. The act was undertaken with a distinct lack of grace, thanks, in part, to her renewed surprise.

“You mean you won’t be returning to America?” she asked.

Just prior to his departure, Waring had been considering the move a permanent one, pleased to leave his estates in the care of his capable younger brother.

He shook his head now. “I discovered there was something of great import I left behind.”

The look he gave her was meaningful, and just as quickly as the mood between them had lightened, becoming familiar, it shifted yet again.

There was a new intensity in his eyes, in his voice.

Almost as if… But no, surely not. Waring considered her a sister.

He had always said so, and she felt for him as if he were another brother, only one to whom she was even closer than George.

“I expect you must have missed your brother and your estates,” she guessed.

“I missed more than that,” Waring told her quietly.

She blinked, thinking she was misreading the expression on his face, one of such honed concentration.

It was a look he hadn’t given her since he had volunteered himself as sacrificial lamb in the matter of her divorce from Ammondale.

One that had been so fleeting at the time that she had decided she must have imagined it.

“What else did you miss?” she asked, fearing she knew the answer.

“Do you need to question it, Ran?”

She was spared from having to answer by the discreet tap on the door signifying White had arrived with the tea.

Apparently, White must have had it at the ready, and Miranda had never been so thankful for her disapproving maid of all work as she was in that moment.

The bustling presence of the steel-haired domestic broke the subtle tension of the room.

When she had excused herself and Miranda and Waring were once more alone, Miranda prepared tea for them.

The distraction was a welcome one, for there were emotions in her old friend’s eyes she had never thought to see. Emotions that made her belly tighten with dread, because she could not return them. Not after Rhys.

In silence, she presented Waring with his dish of tea.

“Just as I like it,” he said. “You always remember.”

“It is a small thing,” she protested. “I remember the way everyone takes their tea.”

“Is it small?” he returned, his expression unsmiling. “I do not find it so.”

“Perhaps you should,” she cautioned, fraught with the expectations she suddenly sensed in him.

Expectations which made no sense. He had never treated her as anything more than a sister. Had never expressed a masculine interest in her. And yet, here he was in her sitting room, staring at her with a far too warm regard, saying things that her old dear chum would never have said.

“Tell me how you have been in my absence,” he urged, seemingly content to change the subject for now as he sipped at his tea. “I understand the scandal has withered on the vine.”

“And yet the vine persists.” She couldn’t keep the bitterness from her tone as she thought of the wagging tongues that continued to whisper about her, the threats from people like Lord Roberts that were never far.

“It will, in a way, until you marry again,” Waring said, his voice solemn.

“I have no intention of marrying again, so I suppose I shall always be forced to endure it.” She managed a smile she didn’t feel.

It wasn’t that she wanted to wed, she reminded herself sternly, tamping down the traitorous twinges in her heart that had become more insistent over the course of the last month she had spent as Rhys’s lover.

But there were times when she wished she didn’t have to face the fear of losing everything she had struggled to build because of her past and the way it would forever taint her future.

“Perhaps you might be persuaded to change your mind on the matter,” Waring proposed mildly. “Enough time has passed since the divorce. You are a young and vibrant woman. Everyone will expect you to marry again.”

She settled her tea in the saucer with a rattle. “They can expect whatever they like. It doesn’t mean that I shall do so.”