Miracle (49 page)

Several of the men guffawed and blustered in surprise.
Fanshawe
exclaimed, "Damn me, you're going soft as your brother. Never thought
Fd
see you develop a taste for
brandy. Brandy
has always been Clay's drink. Don't tell me he's switched to port."

Clayton stared into
Fanshawe's
face.

"Speaking of your brother," Lord Cartwright joined in, "haven't seen or heard from him in a while. Has he gone off to Paris again with that countess . . . what was her name?"

"
Delarue
-Madras," Earl Stanhope declared, and stared, smiling at the ceiling. "Comely wench. Hot-natured. I knew her myself for a while, back before she was widowed."

The servant reappeared with Clayton's drink. He didn't notice at first, until the manservant cleared his throat.

Fanshawe
leaned toward Clayton and lowered his voice. "Heard you've had a go at the gel as well, Your Grace. Back when Clay was buried up to his ankles in Basingstoke mud. What do you think Clayton would say if he knew you were humping his current mistress?"

Clayton stared down into the brandy, then slowly raised it to his lips.

Earl
Fanshawe
leaned forward then. "I reckon those days are finished, Your Grace. Now that you've got such a pretty piece of stuff for your own."

Mouth curving into a sinister smile, his gray eyes lifting to encompass his leering companions, Clayton replied flatly, "Gentlemen, you are speaking of the future duchess of Salterdon. My wife. I should be very, very careful, if I were you."

Their jaws snapped shut. They sat back in their seats.

"So tell us about your childhood," came the countess's voice, drawing Clayton's attention back to Miracle. Her aqua eyes pinned him; she seemed oblivious to her curious companions.

What had she heard?

Had she witnessed his idiotic blunder with the brandy?

At last, she turned her attention to their hostess. "My childhood?" she repeated.

"Were there sisters and brothers?"

"No."

"Friends? With whom did you spend your hours?"

"My mother."

"Your mother?" The women laughed among themselves. "Yes," Miracle stated more adamantly, "We played crambo and clumps. Charades and consequence. On particularly rainy days, we
ofttime
played slippery hog. Other times, I simply sat and listened to her play the pianoforte. If I remained very, very quiet and patient, she would allow me to sit on her lap, and she would teach me to pick out a tune. You see, she was all I had, and I was all she had, since my father . . . was so often away."

"And where are your parents now?"

Raising her chin, and with a brittle attempt at bravery, Miracle said, "My mother is dead. And my father is . . . dead as well."

"How very sad. But how very fortunate that His Grace has been so kind as to take you under his wing."

"Take me under his wing?" Color bloomed momentarily on her smooth, perfectly carved cheeks. "Yes," she supplied wearily, a little sadly. "I suppose that it is."

"Your Grace?" Lord Cartwright said.

Clayton forced his attention away from the women.

"I was saying to Lord Derby, sir, that there seems to be an escalation of highway robberies of late. Have you heard that Mr. Bowes, half brother of the earl of Strathmore, was recently robbed of a gold watch and purse containing thirty guineas at Epsom races? I fear our love of the horse and race will soon decline if we're consistently disposed to such crimes."

"Racing the beasts will never diminish," argued Derby. "Since man first climbed onto the horse's back, his want to put spur to flesh and whip to lather has consumed him."

"Agreed," Miracle announced, causing every head in the parlor to swivel her way. The men blinked in bemuse-
ment
. The women gaped.

Leaving her chair, moving to the group of men who immediately leapt from their chairs, uncertain of her motives and yet in shock that she should join in on their conversation, Miracle said, "There is a thirteenth-century romance, penned by Sir Beuys of Hampton and printed by W. Copland in 1550 that mentions their love of racing even then:

In summer in
Whitsontyde
,

when knights most on horseback ride

a course let they make on a day

Steeds and palfrey for to assay

which horse that best may run

three miles the course was then

who that might ride should

have one pound of ready gold.

She beamed a smile at each of the men.

Earl
Fanshawe
blinked and shuffled his feet, glanced, discomfited, at his guests, then at Clayton.

Clayton put down his brandy. "Lady Cavendish is quite the equestrienne," he explained.

"You ride?" Lady Derby blurted behind Miracle.

"Certainly. Doesn't everyone?" she replied.

Someone cleared their throat.

Glancing around, noting the women's astonished, obviously disapproving looks, Miracle set her chin and declared, "I also read.
Imagine that.
The English, Latin, and Italian classics are most entertaining, but it's the works of Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, and Thucydides that stir the contemplative sphere of the mind. While it's written that Lord Chesterfield once encouraged his son to study the great philosophers, regarding classical scholarship as proper and necessary to the character of a gentleman, he obviously failed to recognize that women are as capable of intellectual growth and stimulation as are their husbands."

Silence.

Then Lord Gooch, a pasty-faced young man with eyes as small and black as a wheatear's, stepped forward and announced unsteadily, "Chesterfield also stated that it is the study of Greek philosophy that must distinguish a man;

Latin alone
will not. I, myself, prefer the works of Homer."

"I fear I made a cake of myself, didn't I?" Miracle asked as she accepted Clayton's hand and stepped from the coach, into the rain.

"Yes," he replied, "and the duke as well. But never mind. It'll take a few days to sink in, but within a fortnight we'll no doubt find women scavenging their husbands' literature, not to mention riding their horses."

Without replying, Miracle followed Ellie through the downpour, ignoring Clayton's attempts at chivalry by sheltering her beneath the tent of his cloak.

Gertrude threw open the door as they mounted the steps. Ellie and Clayton tried their best to shake water from their clothes while Miracle searched the rafters for
Samantha.
It had become customary the last days, for the canary to sweep down the stairs and land on Miracle's head with a chirp of greeting. Ironic that Clayton had spent a fortune of his brother's money on the finest clothes, books, toiletries—all the necessary accoutrements that normally made women content and happy—yet Miracle found her pleasure in a solitary skinny yellow bird that pooped on her shoulder at every opportunity.

Why was he surprised?

"Samantha!"
Miracle called, searching up the winding flight of stairs.

Clayton exchanged amused looks with Ellie, then glanced toward a curiously perturbed Gertrude. The plump maid stood to one side of the entrance hall, wringing her hands, her eyes full of tears.

Frowning, he started to speak, then his eyes traveled down
Gerti's
arm, to the hand she extended to the table. A bundle lay there, wrapped in a lace hanky. A yellow feather peaked from beneath the embroidered edge. His heart stopped.

Miracle turned in that moment, caught his expression of alarm, and her gaze followed his.

Her body shaking, Gertrude gently picked up the bundle and extended it to Miracle. "She was
singin
' away one minute, and the next . . . I found her on the windowsill in
yer
room, as if she'd slipped off while
peerin
' out the window. I reckon she was
waitin
' for
yer
return, milady. She just weren't strong enough to hold on. Her little heart just give out."

Miracle stared at the bundle without blinking. While Ellie stood rooted to the floor, hands clasped together, Clayton moved to Miracle's side.

Gently, Miracle took the bird from Gertrude and cradled it in her hands. "Cold," she whispered.

"Aye, miss. She departed not long after you and His Grace left this
evenin
'."

"She seemed so much stronger—" "I reckon looks can be
deceivin
', milady."
"Meri,"
Clayton said. "Let me have her—" "No!" She gave her head an emphatic shake and clutched the pet to her breast. "We'll bury her, of course. In the back, if you don't mind."

"Of course. The first thing tomorrow—" "Tonight. Now," she stressed with false bravado, her voice tight with grief. "Have Thaddeus fetch me a shovel, if you will, sir, and I'll see to it myself." "Don't be daft. It's raining, and—" She spun away, headed toward the back of the house. Clayton moved after her.

He fetched the shovel himself, finding it after a quarter of an hour's search through the garden shed in the dark, buried under rotting grass clippings and discarded weeds—not to mention several apparently greedy mice and as many spiders. With rain pummeling his head and shoulders, forming puddles at his feet, he dug the tiny grave out back of the stables, under a century-old elm tree and a copse of
unpruned
roses.

Unwilling to watch Miracle place the minute body into the
muddly
hole, he directed his gaze toward the dark stables. She was hurting unbearably,
goddammit
. She wasn't just burying her bird, she was burying her mother. Her father, who might as well be dead. Her entire past.

The rain fell harder, so hard he couldn't breathe. At last, he allowed his gaze to fall to the ground, where Miracle, drenched, her white dress splotched with muck, filled in the shallow hole with her bare hands. Only then did she turn her pale face up to his. Only then did he acknowledge the shadows of strain beneath her once luminous eyes. The gauntness of her face. The sadness he saw reflected in her eyes made his chest and throat ache.

"I should have let her go," Miracle confessed through the rain. "Perhaps then she might have survived. Without the freedom to fly, sir, what good is living?"

He closed his eyes, and fell to his knees before her, took her stiff little shoulders in his hands and dragged her up against him. "Cry, damn you," he said through his teeth.

She did, at last. Melting into his chest, the emotions poured from her as thickly as the rain from overhead. Her shoulders shook. Her breasts heaved. She wept until she became too weak to remain upright, so he eased with her to the ground, nestled her wet, shaking body upon his, and wrapped his soaked cloak around her. Lying on his back, he turned his face into the rain, and wept himself for her pain.

Miracle nestled amid the musty bales of fragrant hay and regarded the cozy, much improved confines of the Park House stables as Thaddeus completed his strapping, lacing, and buckling of the racer to the eager horse. The frantic dancing of the lantern flames glowing from the walls only added to the growing anxiousness of the chestnut steed. The horse snorted and stomped its feet.