And Then Comes Marriage (10 page)

It was merely, she decided, a certain lack of life. Mr. Seymour wasn’t attractive, because Mr. Seymour wasn’t vigorous.

Mr. Worthington personified the word
vigorous
. Whether in a dark intense mood like recently, or a laughing, playful one like before, his life shone from him, heating her blood and warming her heart. He would attract her even if he were not so handsome.

Mr. Seymour commenced to speak in educated tones about current events that had been in the newssheets. Interesting topics all—and, if Miranda was not mistaken, recited in the precise order in which they’d appeared in the London newssheets.

He’d memorized things of interest to provide interesting conversation. This was very thoughtful, for Miranda dearly loved interesting conversation.

So why was she not interested?

She stifled a yawn. It was nearly three o’clock in the afternoon. Mr. Worthington often came to her around three or four o’clock.

Her mind wandered to the memory of early that morning, when she’d done such a shocking thing, all by herself, in the privacy of her own bedchamber … would a lover touch her there? Would a lover touch her everywhere?

A lover like Mr. Worthington?

A fantasy bloomed in her mind of making love during the day, draperies wide open, sunlight spilling over them both as they rolled naked on the carpet … on her back, sprawled unashamed before him as he caressed her wet, throbbing—

“—crevice, but I hardly think that the Prime Minister should leave the condition of our streets to a committee. Mrs. Talbot? Is something wrong? You look a bit flushed. Is the room too warm? I shall ring for your maid to bring your fan.”

Miranda focused her vision and saw, to her surprise, that it was Mr. Seymour, fully clothed (thank heaven!) sitting across from her. She pressed her palms to her hot cheeks. “My goodness! I.…”

Mr. Seymour’s unexceptional eyes narrowed in concern. “I believe you must have caught a chill. My dear Mrs. Talbot, I recommend a dose of castor oil and a day in bed—”

Miranda choked. Bed, where Mr. Worthington had sat beside her, where he’d caressed her softly when he thought her sleeping—

“—you should have your man call a physician at once! A fever can burn for days—”

God, yes, let me burn for days!

Tildy entered the parlor with concern on her freckled features. Lost in an overwhelming wave of maddening, formless desire, Miranda shot her maid a helpless glance.

Tildy blinked, then rolled her eyes behind Mr. Seymour’s back and set about fussing ridiculously over Miranda, going on about how her mistress needed her bed right away and goodness, with the illnesses rampaging through the streets of Evil London, it was a miracle they all weren’t dead in their beds and she wasn’t going to let her mistress move a muscle for at least a week and—

Mr. Seymour couldn’t help but back away a few steps, visibly appalled at the apparently unrealized potential for contagion. Tildy ushered him out, thanking him earnestly for his heroic ringing of the bell before her mistress expired on the spot—

The door shut and the house went quiet. Miranda sat in her pretty feminine chair in her still-not-quite-to-her-taste parlor and covered her face with her hands.
He is right. I am ill. I am infected with lust.

She remembered the heat in Mr. Worthington’s eyes as he came into her bedchamber this morning.

And yes, Mr. Seymour, this fever does seem to be contagious—but you have nothing to worry about.

*   *   *

Cas didn’t press Poll for conversation as they rode to Miranda’s house on Breton Square. Poll alternated between obvious fuming and glum resignation, a state he’d been in since their agreement the day before.

As for Cas, he’d gone around and around the issue in his mind all night. Was this advisable? He meant to prove himself to the Prince Regent. Royal patronage, for pity’s sake! Adding a woman to the matter certainly wouldn’t help matters.

Cas tried to tell himself that he meant only to keep an eye on Poll’s activities. He tried to convince himself that keeping a possible lady on a string for the next month would curb his own tendency toward fleshly distraction. Simply look at what had happened the other evening at Blythe’s! He, Castor Worthington, had walked away from an orgy.

It still boggled his mind a bit.

However, even as he listed all the reasons why embarking on this odd wager with Poll would in fact further his ambitions, he did rather feel like both the master of misdirection and its willing dupe.

Mira.

Sea-green eyes and silken skin and lips that tasted like sin dipped in crystal sugar, all wrapped about a creature crafted of radiant decency.

The hack pulled up to the respectable address of the respectable lady.

Cas was the first one out.

Mira.

*   *   *

Miranda had been waiting for Mr. Worthington’s call for the entire morning and well into the afternoon.

She felt like a nervous cat, unable to sit, unable to stop restlessly moving about the ornate, stuffy drawing room, rearranging horrid china dogs and adjusting paintings of insipid shepherdesses that were already entirely level.

Twigg followed her after a time, subtly readjusting the phalanx of china dogs so that their snouts aligned with military precision, putting tilting shepherdesses upright and replacing sofa cushions restlessly tossed aside.

Miranda ignored his aggrieved hauteur, preferring instead the slightly petty enjoyment of making him fix everything in the room at least three times.

Twigg had not been her personal choice for butler. He was part of the previous era of the house and Miranda suspected where his loyalty truly lay. Unfortunately, one couldn’t fire a member of one’s staff simply because the individual had performed too well for their former employer!

Finally, she turned to him with her arms crossed over her bosom.

“Twigg, is that a china dog you hold in your hand?”

He eyed her warily, then nodded. “Yes, madam.”

Miranda raised a brow. “Is it
your
china dog?”

Twigg drew back cautiously. “No, madam. The china dog belongs to Talbot House.”

To Talbot House, not to her. Miranda lifted her chin. “Drop the china dog, Twigg.”

His brows rose sky-high. “Madam?”

“You heard me perfectly.” She tilted her head. “Drop—the—blasted—dog—now.”

Twigg swallowed and looked down. Directly beneath the defenseless ceramic spaniel’s little china feet was a long fall to a shattering death on the tile of the hearth. Twigg looked at Miranda, then back at the floor. She almost felt sorry for the butler—until she recalled his tendency to sneer at her callers and sigh heavily at her every request. And there was that little matter of Constance knowing her every move.

Twigg let go of the dog … after swinging his arm until his hand was over carpet.

China spaniels can really take a spill,
Miranda thought sourly as she looked down at the entirely whole dog lying on the woolen rug.
Smug little monstrosity.

Oddly, she wasn’t sorry that the figurine was unbroken. Smashing things wasn’t a constructive method of resolution, although she secretly suspected that it might be quite satisfying, at least in the short term.

Still, she ought not to let Twigg get away with his continual subversion. “Very ingenious. Once again, I am obeyed in the letter, if not in the spirit.”

Twigg very carefully stared over her left shoulder. “Madam?”

“Pick up the dog, Twigg. Pack it in a box. Pack them all in a box and send a message to an auction house that I have an apparently endless supply of china canines I wish to part company with.”

Twigg picked up the dog and cradled it carefully in his hands. “Miss Constance Talbot sets great store by her grandmother’s china collection.”

Miranda inhaled slowly.
Steady. Consistent. Fair.
And then, of course, she utterly lost her temper. “Twigg, if Miss Constance Talbot wanted to take her grandmother’s pack of glassy-eyed curs with her to preserve for eternity, she had every opportunity to pack them off with her. Instead, she left them for me to tend! Now, box them up and dispense with them or you’ll be sweeping shards from the hearth for the rest of the day. I refuse to run this porcelain kennel for
one more blasted minute
!”

From the doorway came a feminine cough. “Ahem … Missus? Mr. Worthington and—”

It was Tildy, poor thing, wide-eyed at Miranda’s uncharacteristic fury. A tall dark form emerged from the shadows behind the little maid.

Oh, for pity’s sake!
Miranda turned quickly away to compose herself.
Not only does he finally appear to find me screeching like a fishwife, but I am likely the color of a blotchy beet as well!

Before turning back to the door, she pressed her fingertips to her temples in an attempt to cool her bad humor and her pounding head. Then she turned with the best smile she could manage in her mortification.

Mr. Worthington entered the room, looking a bit embarrassed himself. Then Mr. Worthington entered the room … again.

Miranda gazed blankly at the second man, who gave her a wry twist of his lips in return. Then she stared at the first man, who widened his eyes and gave her an uneasy shrug.

She forgot all about tardy callers and china dogs and undermining butlers and her own peculiar outburst.

“You … he … I…” She blinked. “… seem to require a chair.”

*   *   *

Miranda sat in her chair, like royalty on a throne.

I am Queen. In this house, I am Queen.

Except that at this moment, she felt more like a criminal on trial.

Resilience.
She would not allow anything to rob her of her newfound confidence and stature. She was a wealthy, independent woman. She could handle anything that came down her road.

Even prepared as she was, when she raised her eyes at last to look at the two men seated across from her on her putridly puce sofa in her ludicrously dog-infested parlor, she gasped slightly.

One of them sardonically lifted a corner of his mouth at her small sound of surprise. The other only gazed at her earnestly.

She looked down again, pressing her damp palms to her lap, sliding them over her skirt, smoothing what did not need to be smoothed.
I need to be smoothed! I am feeling rather ragged at the moment!

Because she’d known, of course. She’d realized it the instant she truly accepted that there were two of them.

She had kissed the wrong man.

Unable to suppress a small recoil at the notion, she twined her fingers together on her lap to keep them from flapping wildly in the air like wings broken by sheer mortification.

“What you must think of me.” To her astonishment, her voice sounded low, smooth, and composed.

Then she frowned and lifted her head, her attention snapping from one twin to the other. “Or rather, what must I think of
you
?”

The earnest one held up his hands. “Miranda, it wasn’t intentional, truly—”

“I see. One of you accidentally tripped and landed on my lips?”

The cool one raised a brow. “That’s just what he said to me,” he commented in a low voice. “Perhaps the two of you have more in common than I thought.”

She watched as the earnest one—the one she was beginning to suspect was
her
Mr. Worthington—er, her first Mr. Worthington—oh, bother it—turned eagerly to his twin.

“That’s just what I was trying to tell you! It is I who belongs here, not you!”

The cool one just looked arrogantly mulish—which seemed to be a rather well-set expression on his handsome features. Miranda suspected that it settled there often.

She decided she didn’t like him at all. Yes, she much preferred the first one—the other one—

“Oh,
bother
!” She shook her head with impatience. “Will you please introduce yourselves properly before I am driven entirely insane?”
Because I am halfway there, I truly am.

The earnest one, the first Mr. Worthington she was sure, confirmed her suspicions at once. He leaned forward. “Forgive us, Miranda. I am Pollux Worthington. Poll. I am the fellow who saved you from a snagged heel in the cobbles and I am the only one you encountered until yesterday morning—”

“—when I saved you from a steam explosion—” The Other Worthington cast his brother an arch glance, as if to claim the superior rescue—which, in all fairness, it had been. “—and you invited me back to your house.”

She scoffed. “I did not! I wouldn’t! I don’t even know you!” She glared at him. Such nerve! “I—invited—” She pointed to his brother.
“—him.”

Pollux nodded. “Yes, that’s what I said.”

The Other Worthington leaned forward to fix her with that peculiarly luminous green gaze. “You may have invited him, but you kissed
me,
” he said softly. Then he leaned back and spread his arms over the back of the settee. “And you know it, Mira.”

Well, yes, her belly trembled a little and she might have pressed her thighs together ever so slightly beneath her full skirts, but she was sure that no sign of her disquiet showed when she lifted her chin. “Sir, we have not been introduced—and I certainly have not given you leave to address me by my given name—” Mira, he called her, as her mother had, disdaining the formality of Miranda. “—nor any versions of it!”

He only tilted his head as he boldly fixed his gaze on her mouth.

Poll elbowed his brother without the slightest attempt at subtlety. “He is Castor. Cas. He is insufferable—but in all honesty, he is still better than most of the blokes I know. And please do not let his general loutishness fool you. He likes you. We both do. Therein lies our dilemma, in fact. We both wish to court you.”

Miranda drew back. She had not thought she would see either of them again after this horrifying revelation. How could they even think she would wish to continue seeing either of them, much less both? It was unthinkable, absurd, absolutely insupportable!

So impossible was the very notion, in fact, that she’d already begun to imagine the endless, culturally enriching, politically educational, deathly boring afternoons with only Mr. Seymour for company.

Fortitude
. She inhaled deeply. She ignored Cas Worthington’s unconcealed appreciation of the general vicinity of her bodice.
Lout.

Then she rose to her feet. Both men stood as one, in movements of such eerie, mirrorlike similarity that Miranda was momentarily distracted from her purpose.

Recovering quickly, she clasped her hands before her. “My most sincere regrets, Mr. Pollux Worthington, Mr. Castor Worthington, but I do not feel that it would be appropriate for a woman in my position to consent to such an outré arrangement. Now, I fear I must bid you good day.”

She was gratified to see that the hand she extended toward the door did not tremble in the slightest.

Poll looked terribly disappointed, and sent her a deeply wounded glance as he turned toward the door. Regret pierced Miranda. She’d so enjoyed his company. Her life had been much brightened these last weeks by his humor and his kindness and—

“Wait!”

Miranda went very still as she realized that it had been she who had spoken. To be truthful, she’d very nearly shouted.

Both men stopped in the doorway and turned back toward her, Pollux standing slightly closer to her than Castor, who remained in the shadows of the hall.

Miranda smiled tremulously at Poll. “Sir, I do not suppose it would be too difficult to put this untoward event behind us. You and I … we might continue our … our friendship, might we not?”

Poll brightened for an instant, but then his expression fell. “No.”

Miranda blinked. No?
Oh, for pity’s sake, why not?

“Oh, for pity’s sake, why not?” she asked sharply. Oh, dear. Her temper had not been improved by the day’s strange turn.

She thought she heard a muffled snort from the man in the shadow of the doorway. Poll was not laughing, however. He looked entirely serious.

“Miranda, you must understand—Cas
likes
you.”

The feeling is not mutual,
she almost said, but that would be somewhat less than the truth, and after a lifetime of hiding her true feelings, Miranda had vowed to be as truthful as possible, especially with herself.

Instead, she limited herself to a single complete truth. “I do not understand.”

Poll ran a restless hand through his hair. “I like you, so Cas cannot court you. Cas likes you, so I cannot court you. It is … it is an issue of honor, I suppose.”

“It is an issue of life expectancy,” murmured a deep, matching voice behind him.

Poll’s elbow shot backwards, though his earnest attention never left her. Miranda was quite certain he was not even aware of his own motion.

She frowned, trying to decipher the variables of this “honor issue.”

“So, if I am not mistaken, you are saying that one of you cannot court me … unless both of you court me?”

Poll looked relieved. “Precisely.”

Since Miranda had been shooting wildly in the dark—the stormy, windy, flying-debris sort of dark—she wasn’t at all sure she had been precise about anything. “If I desire one caller—” Oh, why had she used the word
desire?
“—then I must allow two?”

Poll nodded. “Yes, yes. You understand.”

She sighed. “No, I don’t.”

Twin suitors? If she was scandalized by the notion, she was sure that the rest of Society would be agog. Constance would have kittens on the spot.

However, she had been very secluded until Mr. Poll Worthington came around … and Mr. Seymour as well, of course. She didn’t care to think about going back to those long, dreary, endless days.

Yet, what of her reputation? What would the world think of her?

Do you mean the world that has forgotten you exist?

Who could blame it if it had?

I had very nearly forgotten that I existed.

She shook off that thought, forcing her mind back to the most important question of all.

What of all the many hard-won years of demure, circumspect caution? Could she risk all of that now?

She had guarded her respectability as if it would keep her company during the long days of her widowhood, a chill but self-righteous companion.

Just like Constance.

“Fine!” She threw her hands wide. “Mr. Pollux Worthington, I choose you!”

Poll looked sincerely flattered, but a glance at his brother had him shrugging in regret. “I’m sorry, Miranda, but I cannot accept your decision so quickly. In order for this to be a fair fight for your affections, you must give Cas a reasonable period of acquaintance.”

He smiled at her so warmly that the back of her neck started to tickle.

“But I thank you for the honor of your preference.” He shot a triumphant glance at his twin.

For his part, Castor looked irritated and a bit … hurt? Blast it, she was going to end up hurting someone, couldn’t they see that?

Didn’t they care that someone was going to get their heart broken in this mad scheme?

It might be me.…

She brushed that thought away. She had no intention of falling in love. What a ridiculous notion. She’d known several gentlemen in her life and she’d never been the slightest bit tempted to fall in love with any of them. Ergo, she did not have the disposition to fall in love.

She could not give a heart to be broken if she couldn’t give her heart.

Entirely simple. Or at least, it ought to be.

Unsure, she frowned at her two tormentors. “I must allow both of you to call—forever? Or until one of you becomes bored? Are there some parameters to this odd arrangement?” Then a horrible thought struck her. “Have you done this before?”

“No!” Poll assured her—

“Well, yes, actually,” Cas interjected.

Poll turned to his brother. “We have not!”

“Remember when Mama forced us to that dancing master—?”

“Yes, the one with the single hair wound seventy times about his pate—”

“And there were one too many fellows—”

“And we had to—oh, right.” Poll turned back to Miranda. “We have done this before, once, when we shared the attentions of one Miss Leticia Montgomery.”

“A porcelain beauty, with hair as black as night,” Cas murmured. “She loved the attention.”

Poll’s smile became slightly fixed as he looked sheepishly at Miranda. “Yes, well … that was rather long ago.”

Miranda narrowed her eyes at him. “How long ago?”

Poll turned back to Cas. “When was that? There was—”

“—that long winter when we—”

“—couldn’t leave the house for the ice—”

“—and it was the year after that—”

Poll turned back to Miranda, who was fast losing patience with their strange method of conversing.

He smiled apologetically. “Eleven.”

Eleven years ago. They would have been about nineteen or twenty, wouldn’t they? Old enough to know better. Shocking. Miranda closed her eyes briefly. “Eleven years ago?”

“Eleven years of age.” That was Cas’s voice, arrogant and amused.

She opened her eyes.
Oh.

Heavens, I’ll wager they were adorable. I’ll wager even more that they were terrors. Little raven-haired Miss Leticia Montgomery in dancing class hadn’t stood a chance against them.

As the smile twisted the corners of her mouth despite her best efforts to remain cool and regal, Miranda was beginning to fear that she herself stood very little chance as well.