So Wild a Heart (26 page)

“I will be happy to help you all I can, Miss—excuse me, Lady Ravenscar," Devin's uncle replied.

"Please, call me Miranda. We are related now."

"And you must call me Uncle Rupert, as Devin does," he responded, a twinkle in his eyes. "But, I confess, I am at somewhat of a loss. Exactly what are we doing? Strong came to me in a tizzy yesterday, saying that you were going to be running the estate? I told him it was a lot of nonsense, but—''

"Oh, I shall not see to the day-to-day running of it," Miranda assured him. "That would be far too time-consuming, and I am confident that Mr. Strong can make sure everything goes smoothly. I shall simply oversee it, of course."

Uncle Rupert stared at her in much the same way the estate manager had the day before. "You are going to oversee the estate?" he asked carefully, as though he had not heard correctly. "But—but you are a girl."

"Thank you. However, I have to admit that I am a good bit older than a girl."

"Miranda...I can assure you that money will help us to put the estate in good order. There is no need to worry about it. You should be enjoying yourself. It's not every day one gets to be a new bride. No doubt there are many things about the house that you will need to get acquainted with first."

"Oh, I shall meet with Mrs. Watkins and Cummings, of course, but they seem to have things well in hand. If one has a good housekeeper and butler, the household takes little of one's time and energy, I find. It certainly won't keep me from getting the estate in order. Don't worry about me, Uncle Rupert. I am used to working. I have never run an estate of this sort before, of course, but I have had quite a bit of experience with other businesses. I feel sure I will be able to get the hang of it."

"But—" Rupert turned in confusion to his nephew "—Devin...I don't understand." He looked back at Miranda. "Perhaps you don't realize I am the trustee of Devin's estate. I will be happy, of course, to try to explain to you about it, but—"

"Well, no, sir, actually you are not the trustee," Miranda said as gently as she could. "I know that you have been running the estate for Devin for a long time now, and I am sure he appreciates it a great deal. But in point of fact, the trust for his property ended over five years ago. There
isn't
a trustee."

It was just this sort of sloppy handling that she feared had helped the estate to its ultimate demise. Uncle Rupert seemed willing and good-natured, but she had seen little evidence yet of his acumen. It was a delicate situation, for Devin was quite fond of his uncle, but she did not see how she could allow the man to remain in charge of a job for which he was vastly unsuited.

"I suppose that that is technically true," Rupert admitted.

“It has been very kind of you to continue to do it for so long," Miranda went on. "But I feel sure that if the truth were known, you would prefer not to have the work and the responsibility. Wouldn't you?"

"Well, yes, of course, but duty called, you know." He coughed deprecatingly.

"If you will be so kind as to give me the benefit of your experience and advice, I would be very grateful. As I said, I have not had dealings with this particular sort of business. Most of what I have invested in has been raw land or city lots. And, of course, there was the canal venture that I entered into in Pennsylvania." At his blank look, she went on. "Connecting coal fields to their markets in Philadelphia and New York. It will revolutionize the industry. But that is neither here nor there."

"Ah..." Rupert looked faintly dazed. "I will of course be happy to lend you a hand, my dear. Indeed, now that I think of it, you are right. It will be a relief no longer to be responsible for the estate." His face brightened visibly as he thought about it "It was rather a hard thing, seeing it sliding down like that year after year and not having the resources to stop it."

"I am sure it was," Miranda said sympathetically. "It is a rather large estate, is it not?"

"Almost ten thousand acres," Strong put in. "Of course, a lot of that is in the Roaches. It's rocky and pretty much useless."

"The Roaches?"

"Yes. A godforsaken landscape," Uncle Rupert said. "It's the tail end of the Pennine range. Hilly and rocky. Not useful for anything, as Strong said."

"It's attractive," Devin commented. "In its own strange way. We'll ride down there one day so you can see it if you'd like."

"Yes, I would." Miranda smiled at him. "I would like to ride around the whole estate. I want to see exactly what I'm dealing with. Meet your tenants."

"All right."

"I shall be happy to take you out on a ride, Miranda," Uncle Rupert said. "Why don't we all go? We can ride along the river, eh, Dev? It's a lovely spot. Have a picnic."

"Of course," Devin agreed.

"Excellent." Miranda favored Devin's uncle with a smile, then turned to the estate manager. "Now, Mr. Strong, I would like first to see maps of the estate. And you must tell me what the main product is. I assume it's agricultural."

"Yes, ma'am. Rents from tenants. They've been dropping steadily the past few years. The land just doesn't produce as many crops."

"I see. We shall have to see what we can do to bring it back. You know, Mr. Jefferson has written extensively on modern farming methods that he used at Monticello. I shall have to send for those—and I am sure there must be Englishmen who have been experimenting with the same sort of thing. Also, I should like to go over the books for the estate. I'll get our assistant Hiram Baldwin to help you there. We will need to see several years, I imagine, to pinpoint the problems. That should do for starters."

"Yes, ma'am," Strong agreed in a faint voice.

Uncle Rupert chuckled and turned to his nephew. "I say, Dev, your new bride is something of a whirlwind."

"Yes." Dev looked at her, and a smile played about his lips. "I would say that she is."

******************

Miranda settled into her life at Darkwater with an ease that surprised even her. Both the architect and the landscape expert arrived, and there were meetings with them about restoring Darkwater. She was pleased that Devin often attended the meetings and even got involved on more than one occasion in the discussion of what should be done. When she expressed her surprise at his participation, he replied in his light way that he had been bored, but she could tell that he had more interest in the old house than he was willing to let on, and he certainly knew a great deal more about it than she would have guessed.

She also was examining the estate finances, though she quickly saw that she made poor Mr. Strong so nervous that she had Hiram Baldwin do much of the research and discuss his findings later with her. It was, apparently, a wearying succession of crop failure and depleted land, of failed tenants and unpaid rents.

But, despite her meetings, she had ample time left over to visit with Rachel, whom she was growing to like more and more every day, and to tramp about exploring with Veronica. Devin sometimes accompanied them, which always made the excursions more fun. He was good with Veronica, teasing her and making her laugh, and he could usually be counted on to come up with something interesting to do even when they were confronted with a wet, miserable day that kept them indoors the whole time.

He did not mention their sleeping arrangements or try again to seduce her, a fact that worried Miranda a little and often left her feeling restless and dissatisfied. Devin seemed to have accepted her decision too easily for her comfort, and sometimes she wondered if he felt so little desire for her that it did not bother him to stay away from her. And knowing that Leona was only a few miles away at Vesey Park, she also could not suppress the fear that Devin was seeking the fulfillment of his masculine needs elsewhere. Neither thought was encouraging.

However, sometimes she would glance over at Devin—in the music room after supper or on a walk in the afternoon, or even sitting across the dinner table from him—and she would catch a certain look in his eyes, a glimpse of a smoldering, banked fire that made her own loins tingle. At those moments the very air seemed to hum between them, and Miranda would be certain that he was not indifferent to her at all.

She would have felt better if she had known that Devin, far from being indifferent to her, was becoming daily more and more consumed by lust for her. At first he had decided to abide by her decision. He wanted to bed her, but, after all, he reminded himself, he had had many women and would doubtless have many more.
He did not need this particular one.
It was a trifle annoying that she was so easily able to turn him down, but he knew that she was right—he was not interested in any sort of marriage but the kind she described, where he was free to do as he chose and sleep with whomever he chose. After a time he would leave Darkwater and return to London and Leona and his life there. Darkwater and his new marriage had not yet started to bore him to tears, but he knew that they would, and when that happened, he would be gone. Bedding Miranda would be a diversion, but it was scarcely important, and the last thing he wanted was for her to become attached to him and turn into a lachrymose, clinging female who got upset every time he left.

Therefore, he had not attempted again to seduce her into his bed. But he had found, strangely, that staying away from her had been difficult. Thoughts of her occupied his head. He wanted to see her, to be with her. When she was not around, he thought about her, and more than once he sought out pen and paper, trying to sketch her face and finding with frustration that he could not quite get the look in her eyes that fascinated him so.

Nights were the worst times. He would lie awake in his bed, thinking about her, only a door away from him, and his thoughts would become more and more feverish, until he would often get out of bed and begin to pace the room, more than once ending up downstairs in his study, drinking away the thought of her. It annoyed him that he could not turn off his desire for her, that the more he tried
not
to think about her, the more he thought about her.

He sought her out frequently, joining her on her walks or giving her a tour of the village or going to her meetings with the architect. He had even, much to his inner horror, found himself playing charades with her and her stepsister one evening, along with Michael and Rachel. He knew that if any of his usual companions had seen him, they would have laughed 'til they cried at the sight of him engaging in such prosaic and banal pursuits. But, somehow, as long as Miranda was there, none of the times seemed dull or prosaic. She always had an interesting thought or a humorous quip to brighten things up—and there was the physical pleasure of looking at her and remembering how she had felt in his arms. He could remember, too, the taste of her mouth, the smooth texture of her skin, the sweet rose-tinged smell of her—it was these thoughts that plagued him at night, impelling him to leave his bed and seek whatever surcease he could find in books or bottles of liquor.

The turmoil of feelings coursing through him was exacerbated by the faint but persistent sense of guilt that had been gnawing at him since he had told Leona to leave the wedding reception. He had had to do it, of course; he could not have allowed her to ruin Miranda's wedding day. The thing that bothered him was that he had wanted to send her away. He had been angry with her, which was not uncommon; there had been many times when she had irritated him beyond belief, and he had even raged at her. But always before in his anger there had been a thread of lust winding through it, a desire for Leona that thrummed in him. Indeed, the anger had usually been brought about by a desire that she had frustrated in some way, or by the jealousy he felt when he saw her with her husband or witnessed her flirting with another man. Whatever emotion he felt around her, passion was always part of it.

But the other night, he had not wanted her. Even when she had acted seductively toward him, he had been left cold. His anger had been hard and cold, and he had felt not desire for Leona but only a need to protect Miranda from the insult Leona represented. For the first time he could remember, he had put another woman before Leona, and even though Miranda was his wife, he felt guilty about his decision.
It did not mean that he did not love Leona, of course.
He had loved her for years; he could not imagine not loving her.

What he felt for Miranda was a momentary obsession, one that would go away if he slept with her. He had felt such things before for other women, and that had always been the case. He saw a woman; she intrigued him; he pursued and won her. And then it was over. It had never changed how he felt for Leona or even altered the desire that always lay in him for her.

The difference, the odd thing about his obsession with Miranda, was not only that it was deeper and more intense than what he usually felt, but also that it seemed to somehow mask his feelings for Leona. He knew Leona expected him to visit her at Vesey Park, and he had had ample time to do so. No one would question him about where he went of an afternoon, least of all Miranda, who seemed aggravatingly unconcerned about what he did. Yet he did not go. He thought about it from time to time, but his overwhelming feeling when he did so was one of reluctance.

That fact bothered him—and it bothered him, too, that even though he still desired Miranda, he had held off from pursuing her because she had said she did not want him to. He was not the sort to force himself upon a woman, but he had certainly never stopped trying to seduce a female just because she seemed reluctant. But there had been something in Miranda's eyes the other night when she had looked up at him and said that when she cared, she cared deeply. He had glimpsed in her then the possibility of love and betrayal, and he had known that if he seduced her into loving him, he could hurt her deeply. And since then, even though the passion still burned in him, he had made it a point not to try to arouse the same passion in her.