Now that she thought about it, Miranda remembered that Daniel hadn’t been close friends with the other three when he’d been halfheartedly pursuing Alyssa Carrollton three years ago, either. He’d been very much the outsider then. So much so that Griffin couldn’t remain in the same room with him for long. His close association with the other three men had come after Griffin returned home from the war in the Peninsula, after Daniel had lent his support and had had a hand in helping Colin’s new viscountess avoid a nasty scandal.
How was it that Daniel had formed so close an attachment to Griffin and Colin’s friend, the Marquess of Shepherdston, within three years that they would venture into business together? And what sort of business was it that would make a sitting duke like Daniel willingly defer to a marquess?
Was it possible that Griffin and Colin didn’t know about Daniel’s and Shepherdston’s joint venture?
Miranda nodded. It was possible. Anything was possible in the world of business, but it wasn’t very likely. Abernathy, McElreath, and Shepherdston were as close as brothers—closer than brothers. As far as Miranda knew, they didn’t keep secrets from one another. If Daniel was reporting to Shepherdston, it was very likely that the other two friends were not only aware of it but equal partners in the venture.
A venture in which Daniel had managed to get shot.
Miranda found the idea of a partnership among the four men as intriguing as it was unsettling. What venture could attract four of London’s most industrious peers of the realm? A great many ventures. But what sort of venture would get them shot?
Snatching Daniel’s trousers from the floor once again, she determined to find out. She unbuttoned the buttons, stepped into the superfine breeches, and drew his trousers over her hips once again. She stuffed the tails of her borrowed nightshirt inside the trousers, then grabbed Daniel’s cravat and threaded the linen through the top buttonholes, wrapped the length of cloth around her waist, cinched in the waistband, and secured it with a deftly crafted four-in-hand. Her feet were large for a woman’s, but Miranda knew they wouldn’t fill Daniel’s shoes. Retrieving her dancing slippers, Miranda shoved her bare feet into them, tied the ribbons, and shrugged into Daniel’s bloodied coat and waistcoat.
Glancing at her reflection in the mirror hanging over the massive chest of drawers, Miranda saw that she made a rather odd-looking gentleman wearing her father’s nightshirt and Daniel’s jacket, waistcoat, and trousers and using Daniel’s cravat as a belt to hold them up. She smiled, certain she’d be the only gentleman on Park Lane wearing a four-in-hand at her waist instead of at her neck and dancing slippers on her feet instead of black leather shoes. Reaching up, she removed the diamond clips from her hair, dropped them on the top of the chest of drawers, then twisted her hair into a tight knot, pinned it into place, and settled Daniel’s silk hat atop it.
Miranda took an experimental step and decided she could learn to enjoy not being encumbered by skirts. She could learn to enjoy wearing trousers. So much so that she was seriously considering having a pair tailored for her to wear in the privacy of her home. The servants would be scandalized, of course, and her mother might raise an eyebrow, but they would keep her secret. Trousers suited her. She was tall and long-legged and a marchioness in her own right, equal in rank to any marquess. It was a shame women weren’t allowed to wear trousers. What would Daniel think if he saw her dressed like this?
She glanced over her shoulder at the bed. Daniel was sleeping soundly once again, and while Miranda was glad that his tossing and turning had come to an end, she couldn’t help wishing she could see his reaction to her unconventional costume. It would prove that while she might not be a featherweight, she wasn’t in the Duchess of Devonshire’s league either.
The fact that she was taller than most men of her acquaintance might work in her favor during this, the most imprudent undertaking of her life. Miranda shook her head, dislodging Daniel’s silk hat in the process. It wasn’t enough that she had helped Daniel escape from his mother’s party, now she was about to walk through the streets of London at night on what was likely to be a wild goose chase in order to keep her word of honor to Daniel. And if she was lucky and no one looked too closely at her strange attire, she might make it as far as the Marquess of Shepherdston’s unscathed.
What would happen afterward was anyone’s guess. Because whatever the nature of the venture in which Daniel and Shepherdston were involved, Miranda knew it wasn’t for the purpose of increasing their wealth. Daniel, Griffin, and Jarrod had been born with more money than they would ever need, and Colin had fallen in love with and married an heiress, so their venture had to be something more important than the mere making of money.
Miranda knew that Griffin, Duke of Avon, had purchased the Knightsguild School for Gentlemen and was renovating the building and grounds in preparation for a new sort of college and training ground for officers and gentlemen. Griffin’s experiences fighting in the Peninsula Campaigns had taught him a great deal about the nature of war and the men who fought it. Bonaparte had not only changed the map of Europe, but he was rapidly changing the way wars were fought and won. There was nothing romantic, chivalrous, or gentlemanly about the Peninsula Campaigns.
War was dirty and brutal and deadly, and Griff was convinced that in order to defeat Bonaparte and the tyrants that would follow him, the British Army had to modernize not only its weaponry but its entire method of operation, and that meant educating its officers. He intended to use Knightsguild as a training center for British officers and their support staffs.
Miranda had heard Griff speak of his plans many times, but she’d never heard Daniel’s name mentioned in conjunction with the plans for Knightsguild. In all the time she’d spent with Griff and Alyssa, she’d never heard either one of them breathe a word about Daniel’s financial or physical participation in the venture.
And if it wasn’t making money or spending money on the renovations at Knightsguild, in what venture were Daniel, Griffin, Colin, and Jarrod engaged?
What sort of venture would attract those four extraordinary men?
Miranda grinned. Not venture, she decided, at last. Adventure. What adventure had attracted them? What adventure involved the delivery of cargo and leather dispatch pouches and included gunfire?
Miranda sucked in a breath at her incredible naïveté and at Daniel’s reckless, foolhardy, stupid, and endearingly romantic sense of adventure.
Great Mars and Jupiter! What was she waiting for? Her new husband was a smuggler—and she was about to join the adventure and become an accomplice in order to make certain that Daniel had completed his mission.
Chapter Nine
“The day shall not be up so soon as I,
To try the fair adventure of to-morrow.”
—William Shakespeare, 1564–1616
King John
She was a fool.
A fool married to a smuggler. A fool who’d forgotten about the rain when she’d hurried out of the house on Curzon Street and begun her mission. Now she was standing in the shadows beneath the eaves of Viscount Walcott’s town house, hidden against the branches of a massive early blooming lilac bush, staring across the street at the Marquess of Shepherdston’s house and shivering inside the shoulders of Daniel’s jacket. She’d forgotten about the rain when she’d slipped out of the Curzon Street house and made her way to Park Lane, and now she was wet, cold, and miserable. Daniel’s hat offered protection from a vertical downpour, but it provided no protection from the horizontal rain, or the wind that had been blowing rain in her face ever since she’d embarked on this foolhardy mission. Her borrowed costume was soaked, and for the first time in her life, Miranda could truly say she no longer had a thing to wear.
The brocade robe she’d found in the armoire in her father’s room was the only dry garment left at Curzon Street that would fit her or Daniel, and Miranda had been saving it for him. Now she was going to be reduced to donning her sheet toga and going barefooted until Ned returned with fre
sh garments for her. Miranda frowned. Daniel, at least, would have the brocade robe and dry shoes. Everything she’d worn tonight was ruined, including her green silk dancing slippers.
In fact, the only good to come from the cold, soaking rain was that it had washed the blood from Daniel’s clothing and dispersed the crowds that had filled Park Lane and made the street impassable only hours earlier. Miranda listened as the Tower clock struck the hour. Three quarters of an hour past three in the morning, and the streets were all but deserted—except for the hooded figure hurriedly making its way to the Marquess of Shepherdston’s front door…
Miranda squinted through the rain and brushed the raindrops from her eyelashes with the back of her hand in a futile attempt to get a better look at Shepherdston’s early-morning visitor.
Was it Micah?
She had never seen the man. How would she know if it were he? Miranda took a step closer and bit back an unladylike curse as a stream of cold rainwater rolled off the brim of her borrowed hat and down the back collar of her shirt. Miranda watched as Shepherdston’s visitor glanced over his shoulder, then put his head down and increased his pace, hurrying down the walk the way a woman would do. According to Daniel, the Marquess of Shepherdston was expecting Micah. But there was something decidedly female about the visitor …
Shepherdston’s caller should be a man, but what gentleman would wear a hooded cloak? And what lady in her right mind would travel about town alone in this weather and at this time of morning? Miranda grimaced. Except herself, of course. But then, she’d never claimed to be in her right mind where Daniel was concerned. Why else would she be dressed as a man and standing in the rain in the wee hours of the morning, hoping for the opportunity to pay a call on the Marquess of Shepherdston?
Miranda scrutinized the caller, following his movement, watching as a gust of wind caught the hem of the visitor’s outer garment and lifted it, revealing a delicate white lawn nightgown and a glimpse of a bare leg wearing a black slipper much like her green ones. Miranda widened her eyes in amazement. What gentleman indeed?
Good heavens, but she’d managed to make it to the Marquess of Shepherdston’s town house in time to witness another young lady’s arrival. Miranda almost smiled at the irony. There were, it seemed, two young ladies roaming the streets of Mayfair in the downpour, both intent on calling upon the Marquess of Shepherdston and both attired in scandalous and unconventional costumes—one in a nightdress and one in gentleman’s dress. One intent on business and the other apparently intent on pleasure.
Miranda nearly cried out in frustration. If she’d arrived a few minutes earlier or the other woman had arrived a few moments later or had been turned away at the front door, Miranda might have gained an audience with Lord Shepherdston. But that was out of the question now. The front door had opened, the female caller had been admitted inside, and the Marquess of Shepherdston was suddenly otherwise engaged.
Miranda firmed her lips into a thin line and tasted the bitter taste of disappointment. She had failed. Her journey had been for naught. She was no closer to finding out whether Micah had delivered the pouches, or in what sort of smuggling ventures Daniel and the Marquess of Shepherdston were involved, than she had been before she left Curzon Street.
And Miranda needed answers. Smuggling was a crime punishable by imprisonment or death. Daniel might require protection, but she couldn’t protect him as long as she remained ignorant of his activities.
And he couldn’t protect her if she had knowledge of his activities.
The thought came to her unbidden, but once in her mind, it refused to leave. Daniel professed to trust her, yet he hadn’t breathed a word about smuggling when he’d told her he’d been shot or mentioned returning from the coast in time to attend his mother’s party. Yet that’s what he must have done, otherwise he would have spent the night with Mistress Beekins as she’d invited him to do. Was he keeping her in ignorance of his illegal activities in order to protect her from the consequences should he be caught? Or had he insisted on marrying her in order to protect them both?
Either way, he’d done what he had to do in order to protect her. Thank heavens she’d thought to remove the special license from Daniel’s jacket and place it beneath the cardboard bottom of her reticule for safekeeping. If she hadn’t, the proof of her wedding—the proof they might both have to produce—would be a mass of wet parchment and illegible black ink.
Pulling Daniel’s jacket tighter about her, Miranda shoved her cold hands into the pockets and retreated into the shadows of the lilac bush once again. She watched Shepherdston’s caller enter the mansion, waited until the front door closed behind her, then turned and began the long walk back to Curzon Street, wondering all the while what she would say to Daniel, how she would explain her failure to complete the mission.
Provided, of course, that Daniel remembered the mission … Provided that Daniel remembered what he’d demanded of her … Or that he’d married her …
Not that it mattered, Miranda decided, clamping down on her bottom lip to keep her teeth from chattering. She couldn’t blame Daniel for her current discomfort. He’d made her promise that she’d pay a call on the marquess, but she was to blame for her own state of affairs. She had, after all, willingly taken instructions and given her solemn oath to a man who’d been asleep at the time.
It would serve her right if she caught her death of cold. Of all the reckless, foolhardy, stupid things to do, Miranda had chosen this one. Not only chosen it but leaped at the opportunity to pursue it. Why? Because Daniel had asked her. Because Daniel needed her. Because she had married him for better or for worse and Miranda wanted to do everything in her power to help him.
Miranda took a deep breath and slowly released it. And she’d kept her word. She’d gone to Shepherdston’s house. Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only lady paying the marquess a call. Miranda shrugged her shoulders. She was bold, but not bold enough to present herself at Shepherdston’s door and interrupt his tryst.
Shepherdston was entitled to a romantic rendezvous. He was, after all, a handsome bachelor with a presumably normal, healthy appetite for the opposite sex. He was entitled to companionship and entitled to keep his rendezvous and the identity of his partner a secret if he chose to do so. He had suffered enough notoriety to last a lifetime. He deserved whatever happiness he could find.
Miranda wouldn’t intrude. She had a companion of her own back on Curzon Street—her husband, Daniel, ninth Duke of Sussex. Miranda thrilled at the thought. Daniel was hers at last—or at least until he recovered.
She wanted to believe that he would always be hers and that he had meant every word of his wedding vows, but she couldn’t count on it. Daniel had a way of dashing her hopes and disappointing her. Miranda hoped that wouldn’t be the case this time, but the fact that their wedding had to remain a secret troubled her.
Daniel had married her tonight, but would he remember it in the morning? She was his bride, but she didn’t know if he would ever truly allow her to be his wife.
All she knew for sure was that she still had a few hours to spend alone with him before Ned returned, and Miranda intended to make the most of her opportunity.
Squaring her shoulders, Miranda trudged through the rain back to the house on Curzon Street and slipped quietly through the back door. She hurried up the stairs to the room that had been her father’s, stopping long enough to collect the sheet she’d used as a toga before returning to the master bedchamber and Daniel.
He had kicked the covers off once again, and his skin was hot to the touch. Miranda’s heart caught in her throat when he opened his eyes and looked up at her. She waited for him to say something as she placed her hand on his forehead, but he showed no signs of recognition. She slowly released the breath she’d been holding.
He was feverish again. Miranda didn’t think he was as hot as before, but she couldn’t be sure. She’d spent the better part of an hour in the cold rain. She was chilled to the bone and her hands were freezi
ng.
They made a good pair. He needed the touch of her cool skin, and she needed the heat of his.
Miranda removed Daniel’s hat, unpinned her hair, shed her wet garments, and slipped, naked, into bed beside him. She snuggled against his uninjured side, absorbing the excess heat from his body, inhaling the scent of him—a unique blend of Daniel, lime, exotic spices, and a slightly excessive amount of Scots whisky.
Miranda was familiar with the lime and spice cologne custom mixed for him by Taylor’s of Old Bond Street. Daniel had worn that fragrance for as long as she could remember. She had caught a faint whiff of it when she’d donned his waistcoat and jacket, but the fragrance had been overshadowed by the metallic smell of his blood. The rain had washed the blood and the scent of Daniel’s cologne from the fabric. But she now was surrounded by it once again, and the added cachet was the feel of his skin and the not unpleasant aroma of Scots whisky surrounding him. An unconventional blend of fragrances to be sure, but a blend she found strangely comforting and appealing.
Pressing her body as closely as possible against him, Miranda closed her eyes and fell into a deep, dreamless, exhausted sleep.
Chapter Ten
“A few honest men are better than numbers.”
—Oliver Cromwell, 1599–1658
“What do you mean he’s late?” Colin, Viscount Grantham, demanded of Griffin, first Duke of Avon, who announced that the Marquess of Shepherdston had sent a note saying he’d been delayed. “Jarrod is never late.”