And Then Comes Marriage (27 page)

Miranda set down her tea. “Now that the examinations are over, is there anything else I may assist you with?”

Elektra tilted her head at the faint challenge in Miranda’s tone. “You’re even-tempered as well. I should have broken something over someone’s head by now.”

“Probably mine,” Attie muttered.

Orion abruptly stood. “Thank you for the tea, Mrs. Talbot.” Before Miranda could respond, he turned and strode from the room, no doubt nearly running over Twigg in the hallway.

Elektra, who seemed to find nothing unusual about her brother’s abrupt departure, turned to her little sister. “Attie, go with Rion.”

A fearsome scowl commenced formation. Miranda cleared her throat. “Atalanta, your sister and I wish to discuss shoes and hair, now that there are no men in the room.”

At the very thought, Attie sagged with incipient boredom. She grudgingly slid off the sofa, trudging after her brother.

Elektra smiled conspiratorially at Miranda, her expression tinged with respect. When Attie suspiciously slowed her pace further, hoping to overhear some adult conversation, Elektra began with, “Don’t you think the new heel height is ridiculous? I shan’t be able to dance in them at all!”

Miranda nodded. “Outrageous. Why, I shall be as tall as my partners!”

Miranda could practically feel Attie rolling her eyes as she sped up to race out the front door after Orion.

Then Elektra turned to Miranda. “Out with it!”

Miranda raised a brow. “Out with what, pray tell?”

“How did you do it? How did you get Attie to pour tea without requiring three hours of cleaning afterward?” Elektra gestured at the perfectly unharmed tea set in disbelief.

Miranda smiled. “Why, I asked her to.”

An impatient frown crossed Elektra’s brow; then it faded and Miranda could see that the young woman was truly considering her words. “You asked.”

Miranda nodded. “There are so many of you and she is so much younger. I think it is all she can do to not be trampled in the herd. She feels she must fight, fight to be noticed, to be heard.”
To be loved,
but Miranda couldn’t say that. Besides, she could see the affection Elektra had for her wayward sibling. It was a great deal to ask of an eighteen-year-old woman to mother a child not hers. Poor Elektra didn’t seem to have much opportunity to simply be a girl with Attie and all those brothers.

“I have always wished for siblings,” Miranda said shyly. “I have been told your family is a mad lot, but still I envy you your closeness.”

Ellie looked away with a shrug, but Miranda could see her expression soften. “’Tis bedlam, that’s what it is.”

Elektra glanced around the silent parlor and tilted her head to listen to the complete absence of noise in Miranda’s house. “In contrast, it is so peaceful here.”

Miranda tilted her head to listen, too. “Yes, it is a quiet house,” she said sadly. “I have often wished for more humanity within it.”

Elektra snorted. “I’m up to the tip of my nose in humanity. I should be happy to share!”

Miranda smiled, something inside her warming at the very concept of sharing the Worthingtons. “My dear, do not make promises unless you intend to keep them.”

Elektra drew back slightly at that, and considered her own hands in her lap, unconsciously mirroring Miranda. Then she looked back up with a new light in her eyes. “Mrs. Talbot, I don’t think I’d mind at all.”

Miranda blushed and made herself busy with the tea tray. Elektra, who despite Mr. Worthington’s contention that she could make a saint into a shrew in a week’s time, seemed to be a sensible and sensitive young woman, delicately changed the subject.

“I must tell you about my new gown! I’m terribly excited, for there’s a marvelous ball coming up—”

After a moment, Miranda realized that Elektra was speaking of the Marquis of Wyndham’s ball. She longed to join in on the girl’s excited plans, but she’d promised Mr. Button not to say a word!

However, it was nice to know that tomorrow night she might have a friend in the hall.

*   *   *

Button held up his latest creation to the morning light from the window and peered closely at a beaded detail on the bodice. It was, of course, perfect. He smiled.

Miranda would be the second most beautiful woman at tomorrow night’s ball. Button felt that to be fair, since Lady Wyndham was a dear friend and a natural redhead, to boot—an opportunity not to passed up, creatively speaking.

This was very good, for Attie had informed him that matters between the twins had become strained to the point of actual violence. There was not a moment to lose in the quest to provide adequately handsome and wealthy distraction for Miranda’s seeking heart.

The door to Button’s sanctuary opened. Without turning around, he felt Cabot come into the room. Cabot, ever-present, even when Button was all alone. Beautiful, untouchable Cabot.

Button pasted on a cheery grin and whirled, flipping the gown out in an elegant swirl. “Well, what do you think?”

This was an important question. Cabot’s taste was unerringly elegant, his judgment severely, ruthlessly stylish. Button, on the other hand tended to overdo, just a touch, on the delightful dramatic possibilities in every outfit.

Button created freely, confident that Cabot would edit him flawlessly.

Cabot eyed the gown. “This is for Miranda?”

Button nodded. They had all become quite familiar, referring to her as Miranda. Once past her initial—but considerable!—reserve, she was delightfully friendly and warm.

Cabot walked around Button slowly, then the other way. At a twirl of the younger man’s finger, Button flipped the gown to reveal the back.

Cabot pursed his lips slightly. Button glanced down at the gown. “What? Too much? Or too little?”

Cabot shook his head. “It is perfect.”

A smile creased Button’s puckish features. “I know.”

Cabot took the gown from him to pack it carefully in layers of tissue for the journey to Miranda’s house. As he opened the door, Button remembered. “Ah, Cabot, how did your little reconnaissance mission go?”

Cabot halted with one arm braced high on the door to keep the gown from touching the floor and his torso twisted back toward Button. It was an unbearably romantic pose, made all the more dazzling by Cabot’s complete lack of awareness. Button concealed the way his breath caught at his assistant’s unearthly beauty, his effort assisted by years of practice.

Cabot reported dutifully. “The Worthingtons Squared are most definitely expected to attend Mrs. Blythe’s Midsummer Madness orgy tonight instead of the Marquis of Wyndham’s ball. They confirmed many weeks ago.” He paused. “The young ladies present were very happy to hear it. The young men were slightly annoyed.”

“Ah, youth.” Button smiled. “I’m surprised you did not get an invitation in the post.”

Cabot regarded him evenly. “Mrs. Blythe invited me personally.”

Smiling through the twinge in his chest, Button nodded. “Well, of course. You’ve been a very popular guest in the past.”

Cabot’s face became as expressionless as marble. “That was a very long time ago, sir.” Then he spun on his heel and left the office.

Button, sans witnesses, set aside his perpetually energetic demeanor for a moment and sagged wearily into his chair.
Cabot.

Always there. Always gorgeous. Always at his right hand, presciently aware of his every need. Always waiting for him to notice.

What on earth was he going to do about Cabot?

*   *   *

Miranda rolled over in her warm, sumptuous bed and snuggled deeply into her pillows. She cracked her eyelids just enough to verify the hour by the light coming in the window.

The room was still dark. Marvelous. She had hours left to sleep. Her body had had two days alone to recover from her athletics with Cas, but she thought she might never catch up on her sleep!

The next time she opened her eyes, her room was still very dim, yet she could tell she’d slept many hours. She sat up and looked again at the window.

The draperies were tightly drawn, when she knew perfectly well she’d left them open. “Tildy!”

As if magically conjured, Tildy entered the bedchamber with a breakfast tray that also held a steaming pitcher of water for washing.

“Don’t you fuss, missus. That dressmaker bloke gave me strict instructions that you weren’t to have black sacks under your eyes and see there, you don’t!”

Miranda relaxed a bit when she saw the time on her mantel clock, for it was still early afternoon and yet more when she saw in her looking-glass that she indeed looked most refreshed.

She ate sparingly, however, for the butterflies in her belly refused to rest. Both of her Mr. Worthingtons meant to attend this evening, along with their sister and parents. She could not wait to see Cas’s expression when she stood before him in her delicious, new Lementeur creation!

Lementeur!

“Tildy, hurry! Mr. Button will be here in less than an hour and I still haven’t had my bath!”

Would Cas think she was beautiful? Would he realize that she was a woman he could possibly …
love
?

Chapter Twenty-four

Cas rummaged in Poll’s wardrobe for a decent silk weskit. A man had to keep up appearances, especially at a do like Wyndham’s ball.

He wished Miranda could accompany him, but Poll had reminded him that an occasion of this magnitude came with sartorial expectations—expectations that a woman still wearing her drab, half-mourning gowns could not meet.

If he’d thought of it in time, he would have had Button whip something up for her—something green or perhaps blue. Wispy and flowing and serene.

“I saw it this morning when I went to pick up my dress,” came Elektra’s excited voice in the hallway. Her distinctive step—half authoritative stride, half childish skip, as if she hadn’t the patience to actually walk anywhere—sounded down the boards of the hall, coming toward Poll’s room.

“Will it suit her, do you think?” Poll’s voice.

Cas grabbed three possible weskits and thrust them behind his back, whirling to stand innocently next to the swiftly shut wardrobe. He didn’t want Poll to—

“Miranda is going to be the most beautiful woman at Wyndham’s,” gushed Ellie, coming closer. “The plot is going marvelously. Cas won’t know what hit him—”

Ellie turned into the doorway of Poll’s room and stopped short. “Oh.”

Poll stumbled to a halt behind her. “Ellie, do watch where you—” His eyes widened. “Oh.”

Cas straightened, forgetting his casual pose, letting the weskits fall to the floor behind him. “What plot?” A chill twined in the center of his gut.

“Cas!” Ellie assessed his frozen face and swallowed hard. “I—oh, bother!” Giving up on trying to out-Worthington a Worthington, she simply turned and fled, dashing around Poll before he could do more than raise a hand in protest at her desertion.

Cas breathed in and out. Again. Poll watched him like a rabbit before a fox.

At last, Cas unfroze his lips enough to speak. “What. Plot?”

Poll gave him a sickly grin that faded quickly. “It isn’t so much a plot as—well, Attie got it into her head, you know how Attie can be—”

Cas felt the ice spread, hardening his belly, spreading upward and out.

Poll ran his fingers through his head. “She got Button to give Miranda a new wardrobe, all that sort of stuff—thinking that if Miranda had some rich beaus to choose from that she would lose interest in us poor, bedraggled Worthingtons.”

Cas tilted his head. “I find it hard to see where you fit in there—being one of the poor, bedraggled ones.”

Poll shrugged. “I came in later—actually, just recently, really—”

“Poll.”

“I’m not really courting Miranda!” Poll blurted. Then he ran a hand over his face. “I’m glad to get that one out, actually. It’s bloody hard to keep anything from you—”

“You’re lying.” The ice was turning to stone, like walls around him, a labyrinth, turning him this way and that, tricking him. “I saw you kissing her, in her window.”

Poll threw out his hands. “I know! A bloody awkward kiss it was, too!” He had the nerve to beam at Cas. “Just awful, like laying one on Aunt Clemmie!”

“You were putting on an act?” He felt raw. “You knew I was there?” No secrets in the dark for him, then. He felt foolish, thinking himself private when all the world seemed to be watching.

Poll rolled his eyes. “No, not then, actually, but I did catch you outside the house and then at the children’s home—”

Cas flinched. He’d looked the fool truly, then, hadn’t he?

“And Miranda told me she thought you cared for her. From the sound of it, I thought so, too—”

Ice. “Miranda told you?” Stone.

Poll opened his eyes wide in protest. “It isn’t like that! It’s only that I know that after what that Quinton woman did to you when we were lads—”

The blow was nearly physical, so much so that Cas stepped back and away from that truth. “You know—you knew all this time?”

Naked. He was stripped, raw and naked before the world, thinking himself clothed, thinking his secrets safe, his darkness hidden deep inside. All the while it had been sitting on display in the middle of the street with its hands over his eyes.