Oh, hell. This was bad—worse than lust, worse than intimacy. He’d missed her. He wasn’t used to missing anyone.
But he traced his fingertips down her cheekbone, followed the curve of her jaw until he touched her chin. He tipped up her face to his, and then he kissed her.
Her lips were soft and welcoming. Kissing was different with real intimacy present. He didn’t have to think about where she was putting her hands; he knew she’d not touch his face. He could lose himself completely in the taste of her, the scent of her. The feel of her body, melting into his.
It was the first time he’d kissed a woman without feeling wary.
And then her stomach growled. He pulled away.
“I’m starving,” she said apologetically. “There’s roast pheasant. I’ve been smelling it the entire afternoon. Did you know I’ve never had pheasant?”
“Good. We’ll eat, then.”
Her cheeks pinked. “I asked them to lay the covers in the bedchamber. It’s not the usual arrangement, but—”
“Usual arrangement.” He met her eyes. “I don’t have usual arrangements, Miranda. I just have you.”
If she heard what he’d betrayed there, she let no sign of it show. Instead, she took his arm and they walked slowly up the stairs.
A small table before the window had been set for an intimate meal. From this high, they had an extraordinary view of the city. Evening was coming, and Bristol was doused in the hard reds and dusky pinks of sunset. Streetlamps sprang to life like glowing jewels. At the base of the hill, the graceful arches of the Bristol Cathedral were scarcely visible. Beyond it, a forest of masts from the Floating Harbour disappeared into the oncoming gloom.
He seated Miranda, and then sank into the chair across from hers. Cucumber soup came first. She chattered away about her day, asked him questions about his. She knew what spoon to reach for.
After they’d exchanged a few sentences and the soup had been cleared, he set his hand atop hers. “You didn’t grow up in the bad part of Bristol,” he remarked.
She slanted a glance at him.
“In fact,” he continued, “I’m not sure you were raised in the bad part of anywhere. The finishing-school accent is quite convincing. I would say you have a hint of Oxford in your tone. And your manners are flawless.”
“I should be convincing,” she said. “I’ve been practicing since I was a child.” She put a bite of pheasant into her mouth and closed her eyes.
“Good?”
She chewed thoughtfully and then swallowed. “It tastes like chicken. I feel disappointed.”
He tried again. “So you were raised in a family that spoke the King’s English and used proper etiquette. Just like me. How did you end up alone in Bristol?”
As he spoke, he took a small plate from the table and filled it with scraps of pheasant. She made no comment when he set this on the floor for Ghost.
“My parents were always terribly busy. During the day, they handed off care of me to the rest of the troupe. Everyone had a hand in my upbringing, but I was mostly raised by Jasper and Jonas. Jasper was from Yorkshire, and he was our lead actor. He was very handsome, very debonair and very good with accents. The ladies were constantly showering him with flowers. He taught me to read so that I could help him practice his lines.”
“I can’t believe a Yorkshire man taught you your accent.”
“No. That was Jonas. Jonas was… He wasn’t an actor, actually. He helped us put together our scenery, moved heavy boxes, that sort of thing.” She frowned, and chewed more pheasant. “He also argued with Papa about what the plays really meant.”
“Your porter taught you your accent?”
“Jonas wasn’t a porter.” Miranda had a dreamy little smile on her face. She looked up and away, as if recalling that happy time. “It happened before I was born, but Jonas used to be a fellow at Oxford before he ran off with my father’s troupe. I gather it was quite the scandal. His family disowned him. He used to study classics. In any event, he taught me how to speak this way.”
“You had an Oxford fellow moving your scenery?” Smite asked in disbelief. “Wait—you cannot mean Jonas Standish?”
Her eyes widened. “You know him?”
“By reputation only. He was well before my time. Jonas Standish,” he repeated, feeling slightly dazed. “But he’s brilliant. I saw some of his work when I was there. No wonder you’ve heard of Antigone. I can’t believe he walked away from everything to join a traveling troupe. Your father must have been quite persuasive.”
“Not my father,” Miranda replied. “They quarreled over everything. My father only tolerated him because Jasper would have walked off, had he sent Jonas on his way. I followed Jasper and Jonas everywhere from the moment I could walk. They taught me half the accents I know how to do.”
“Did Jonas also teach you proper deportment?”
Miranda shook her head. “That was Mama. She said if anything ever happened to her, I’d need to take her place. She and my father had this act they would put on whenever there was a disagreement with anyone outside the troupe. He would bluster and shout about aesthetics; she would timidly explain that my father was a temperamental man of art, and couldn’t be made to see reason. So perhaps the theater owner would just consider a small, tiny alteration…?”
“Putting on an act—that worked well, did it?”
She must not have heard the hint of disapproval in his voice, because she grinned. “Like a charm. They would laugh and toast each other with cheap wine every time they succeeded.”
He might have criticized, but her eyes were alight, and he couldn’t bring himself to do it. “You had a happy childhood,” he remarked instead. He couldn’t imagine what that would be like.
“I’m sure someone could point out the many imperfections of my childhood, but I loved it. I loved it all.”
In fact, her eyes seemed suspiciously bright. He remembered what she’d told him last night about her father. “So when the troupe fell apart, you lost everyone. Not just your mother.”
“Yes,” she said softly. And then after a pause, “Well, no. Jasper and Jonas had already left a few years back. Father found a patron, and so we’d been in London for a good space of time, see.” She looked to the window, dark as it was. “They didn’t like staying in one place too long. People talked. The last I’d heard, they were in Bristol. It’s why I came here with Robbie—I’d been hoping to find the two of them. But they’d moved on, and I’ve never had the means to search them out.”
He’d never wondered why she was alone with Robbie. Perhaps he should have. But he was so solitary by nature; it often slipped his mind that others naturally were not.
“Besides,” she continued, “Robbie was ship-mad. And when I thought of him crawling about some mine in Yorkshire…” She shook her head. “But enough of me. Tell me more of you.”
“I’ve talked of myself enough for today.” He gave her his most repressive cold glance.
His most repressive cold glance bounced ineffectually off her sunny smile. She helped herself to a second serving of carrots and said, “No, you haven’t. Tell me about your brothers. There are three of you in your family, are there not?”
Four.
But he didn’t correct her. “Ash,” he said. “The eldest. He’s a damned nuisance.” But he could feel himself smiling despite his words. “I would say that he’s like Midas, turning every enterprise he touches to gold, but it’s not that. He’s just one of those men that brings out the best in everyone.”
“Everyone except—I am guessing—you.” Miranda took a bite of carrots.
“Except me. I am his brother, after all. He went to India at the age of fourteen. Five years later, he returned, conversant in several languages and with a fortune in the thousands of pounds. Which has only grown since. He has some of the most incredible stories.” He shook his head. “Then there’s Mark, my younger brother. For a while, he was the most popular fellow in all of London. He wrote a book, for which the Que
en knighted him.”
“Mark Turner,” she said. “Sir Mark is your brother?”
Smite gave her a repressive nod.
“Sir Mark of the Practical Gentleman’s Guide to Chastity?”
“Yes,” he growled.
“Oh, you do have disagreements with him, then.”
“No. We are in perfect accord.” He glanced at her. “Mostly because my letters to him have made no mention of you.”
In any event, he suspected that even Mark might thank the Lord if he found out about Miranda. You’re too solitary, Mark had said a few months ago. Smite shook his head.
What he said instead was, “Mark makes no mention of my affairs. I believe he harbors hopes that one day I’ll fall in love. Always the damned optimist.”
The tiniest intake of breath across the table betrayed what Miranda thought of that disclosure.
She held the fork too tightly and didn’t look him in the eye. If she’d burst into tears or leveled accusations, it would only have annoyed him. But her stoic acceptance of his cavalier words—that he was never going to love her—befuddled him more than any overt emotional display.
But Smite suffered from no illusions about himself. It was best that she avoid them, too.
He chose his next words carefully. “I suspect he thinks that the cure for all my troubles is the love of a good woman.”
She speared a piece of turnip, none too gently.
Smite continued. “He thinks that I need only meet The One, and all my little foibles will be cast aside, healed by the magic of her pearly white hands.”
“I don’t believe in magic,” Miranda said. But her gaze cut away from his.
For all the faults of her upbringing, she’d grown up around love. She’d spoken of a sunny, effervescent companionability that he could never give her.
He couldn’t bring himself to smile. “As you may recall, I’m already married to Lady Justice. There’s little room in my life for anything else.”
Her lips pressed whitely together. But she lifted her gaze to his and gave him a nod of understanding. “So I’m just your bit o’ muslin on the side.”
“Yes.” And she was: a departure from duty, a holiday from his responsibilities. He was cheating on sobriety with her. The thought should have filled him with horror.
One month of companionship. One month of warmth. One month of her smiles. A one-month vacation from the coldness of his solitary existence. That was all he could let her be to him. Any longer than that, and he’d never give her up.
“Well, then,” she said, extending her hand. Her smile was brilliant and harshly beautiful. “I’d best make use of you while I still can.”
THE NEXT DAY, SMITE did, in fact, send a gift.
It wasn’t emeralds. It wasn’t pearls. It wasn’t any sort of jewelry—just a few sheets of paper, folded, and his note scrawled across the bottom: I’m sorry.
After what that report indicated, sending jewelry would be a travesty.
When he entered her home a few hours after he’d sent that message, he didn’t know what to expect. But what he heard surprised him: voices drifted from the parlor in the back. Their murmur made a gentle, reverent noise. He walked back and peered into the room.
Miranda sat on the sofa next to another man. The fellow was handsome and young—close in age to Miranda, Smite would have guessed, although he looked youthful to Smite’s eye. Miranda was holding his hands.
If Smite had happened on her cuddling with another man on any other day, he might have reacted differently. But then, he knew what he’d sent her about George Patten, and it didn’t take much to tell that Miranda wasn’t flirting with another man. She was in need of comfort.
Nothing wrong with that. Still, his hand formed an involuntary fist at his side.
“I can’t believe it,” the man was saying. “I just can’t believe it. I can’t bring myself to believe that this is true.”
“Oh, Jeremy.” She rubbed his arm. “I know it’s hard to comprehend.”
“Impossible.” The other man—Jeremy—pulled his hands from hers and shook them out. “It’s impossible to comprehend, not hard. George is out there somewhere. And maybe we don’t know where he is, but I refuse to believe that he could have died in so senseless a fashion.” His gaze was trained inward; his eyes rested on some far-off point. “Miranda,” he said slowly, “am I a terrible person if I refuse to honor my mother’s dying wishes?”
Miranda did not seem to think this last question a complete non sequitur. “What, because you’re thinking of George instead of contemplating marriage?”
The other man folded his arms about himself. “What she wants me to do is utterly foreign to my character.” And then his voice did crack. “Oh, George. What am I going to do? It’s my fault. I did this to him.”
“It’s nobody’s fault. You can’t blame yourself. It could have happened to anyone.” She leaned toward him.
Jeremy made a rude noise. “The man who claimed to know what transpired said that George took a knife to the gut the night before his release. But no body was ever found, and the murder was not reported in any of the official proceedings.” Jeremy shook his head. “If you think that could happen to anyone, you are sorely mistaken.”
Smite had harbored similar doubts about the matter.
But Miranda reached out. “A fight in gaol. A gaoler who didn’t want to admit he’d been remiss in his duties, and so hid the matter. George was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Jeremy shook his head, and Miranda didn’t say anything in response. Instead, she looked up—and as she did so, she caught sight of Smite, standing in the doorway of the room. She didn’t startle. She didn’t let go of her friend.
Smite knew damned well that nothing untoward was happening.
He was an ass. Not because he believed she had been unfaithful; there was no hint of lust in their embrace. Besides, Miranda had been anything but casual about their lovemaking. No; he was jealous for the most petty of reasons. He envied their rapport, their intimacy. He wanted her to turn to him for support, not this other fellow.
He was being fist-clenchingly irrational.
“Jeremy,” Miranda said slowly. “I ought to introduce you to someone.”
Jeremy looked up. He took in Smite, and his eyes widened.
Beside him, Miranda was still speaking. “Jeremy Blasseur, this is Smite Turner. Turner, this is Jeremy—he’s one of my best friends.”
“Lord Justice,” Jeremy said dazedly, scrambling to his feet. “You’re Lord Justice. Miranda, you little devil, you never told me the man in question was Lord Justice.”
A small smile curled the corner of her lip. “Yes. I rather wanted to see your response the first time you met him.”
She’d wanted to introduce him to her friends?
“This was not the sort of person I expected you to—” Jeremy stopped abruptly.
“Do you know something about Mr. Patten’s death?” Smite heard himself ask. “Something not in those papers?”
Jeremy took a long moment to shake his head—perhaps too long a moment. One couldn’t enlarge on the length of a second, Smite told himself. And if this Jeremy didn’t seem overly upset, grief took different people in different ways. Jeremy didn’t hold Smite’s gaze. He looked at the floor instead. “I just heard this story half an hour ago,” he mumbled. “How would I know anything about it?”
“If you think of anything that might assist the authorities in finding out who killed him—any enemies he might have, any rumors that come to your ears—justice might be served.”
Mr. Blasseur shook his head. “No,” he said in subdued tones. “I don’t believe there can be justice. Not for this.”
AFTER JEREMY LEFT, MIRANDA wasn’t sure what to say. Turner hadn’t pushed Jeremy out or made him feel unwelcome. Nonetheless, he stood now and looked out the window of her parlor. She stayed seated on the sofa, watching him.
He turned his head slightly. “I suppose you’d prefer to be alo
ne?”
Miranda shook her head. She almost never preferred to be alone.
He didn’t move toward her. “Do you…you don’t want to talk, do you?” He made no effort to hide the unsubtle horror in his voice.
Miranda shook her head once more. Her grief was rolled up inside her—more for Jeremy than herself. It was Jeremy, after all, who grieved most for George. It was Jeremy who hadn’t yet comprehended that one of his best friends was gone forever. Miranda had known George only through his friendship with Jeremy.
Still, young people weren’t supposed to die.
“Smite,” she asked softly, “do you have any idea what to say to me in a situation like this?”
“Of course I do,” he retorted. “I have plenty of ideas.” He met her gaze ruefully. “Of course, they’re all wrong, and so I’m totally at sea.”
She patted the cushion next to her. He crossed the room and lowered himself down. And then, because he didn’t seem inclined to do it himself, she picked up his hand and slid it around her shoulders. His muscles stiffened for a moment, but she leaned her head against his chest and he relaxed. His other hand came up to stroke her shoulder in a light caress, and Miranda shut her eyes and melted into him.
“I feel cold,” she said.
It wasn’t a cold that could be driven away by fire. The only warmth she found was in the butterfly-light touch of his fingers. He seemed hesitant to hold her, as if afraid she might break. But when she leaned into him, he grew bolder. Tiny caresses gave way to broad strokes of his hand, covering her arm from shoulder to elbow. After long minutes of that, she looked up at him.
He was watching her intently. She gave him a tentative smile, but he didn’t return it. Instead, he shifted. His breath touched her cheek. His hands continued to stroke her arms, and Miranda let herself fall back onto the cushions of the sofa. When he paused, she pulled him atop her. He levered himself over her gingerly, his weight neither heavy nor stifling, but comforting. The warmth of his breath touched her cheek.