That Kind of Woman (2 page)

Major Carrington looked away from his daughter and straight at Miranda, and for a moment she forgot to breathe. He looked like a younger version of George in the purely physical sense, with striking green eyes and thick hair, but there was something entirely different about him. Something rock-solid and self-possessed in his demeanor, something worldly in his eyes. Where George was gentle and modest, Major Carrington radiated command and confidence.

For the first time that day, Miranda faltered. If Major Carrington decided to make a scene about his brother’s marriage, the whole thing would be ruined. Her marriage, the one thing that might give her a shred of legitimacy, would become only another sham, like her father’s intractable insistence that she and her mother act as his family, when he already had a real one. George could have cared less about the opinions of his stepmother and half-brother, but his full brother meant the world to him.

Major Carrington bowed. “Lady Danford. I do not believe we have met.”

As Miranda stepped forward and held out her hand, George chimed in. “This is Miranda—Henley, until this morning.”

Major Carrington’s eyes widened momentarily, but he only bowed again over her hand. “The Duke of Montheath’s daughter. I had heard you were quite lovely, but the rumors hardly did you justice. My brother may have waited well into his life to marry, but it seems it was worth the wait.”

Miranda’s smile widened, and she nodded to him. “You are too kind, Major Carrington.” In the instant before he released her hand, she noticed his fingers were callused, entirely different from the soft, pampered hands of most nobles.

The Duke of Montheath’s daughter. He had said the entire phrase without that nasty little pause that most insisted on. The Duke of Montheath’s … daughter. The Duke of Montheath’s
bastard
daughter. She sighed with relief, despite the half-whispers of the people around her as they passed along the disappointing news of Major Carrington’s decidedly mild reaction.

“Just like her mother, you know,” said one.

“If a man of Montheath’s power and wealth can fall for Barbara Henley’s wiles, why, it’s no wonder that Danford and the major might be taken in by the daughter,” proclaimed another.

“Major Carrington is only relieved that Danford has finally married. He would accept anyone, even a Henley,” came the reply.

Major Carrington appeared oblivious to the discussion. He congratulated George and offered Miranda his best wishes before his daughter commanded his attention.

“How long shall you be home?” she asked, tugging at his coat. “Not long enough to hire another frightful nursemaid, I hope. I’m too old for one, you know.”

“Ah, Emma, you make me feel so welcome when I come home,” he replied.

“You can take me for a walk in the park and wear your uniform, and you should be most welcome. More welcome still if you’ll promise not to hire another nursemaid.”

“Governess, Emma, and you are precisely the right age for one of those.”

Emma turned to Miranda. “Did
you
have a governess?”

Miranda nodded. “I did indeed. Let me see, we lived in Vienna most of my twelfth year, so Frau Werner would have been with us then. I seem to recall she was very strict, but occasionally fascinating.”

Emma’s eyes sparkled. “Oh, I should think that
anyone
could be fascinating on the Continent! But not in France. I shall never set foot in France.”

“A shame,” Miranda said. “Paris is lovely in the spring.”

Emma turned back to her father. “Isn’t she wonderful? She’s been just
everywhere
, and when she was no older than me.”

“‘Than I,’” Major Carrington corrected. “Perhaps, when we’ve gotten the best of Napoleon, I shall take you across the Channel. For now, you must settle for an English governess and learn all you can about the places you wish to go.”

Emma sighed and begged off to visit with her friends. Men pressed forward, seeking the very latest information on the war, and Major Carrington told them what he could in clipped tones.

George was beaming happily, and Miranda had to smile, too. Henry and Emma liked her, Major Carrington seemed to approve, or at least, he didn’t openly disapprove. With time, Letitia, the dowager, might come around. Miranda would have a family all her very own. She and George would live on the family estate, and everyone would visit at Christmas. Emma would come, and Henry would one day bring a bride. Once the war was over, Andrew might remarry, as well. The house would be filled with little cousins playing and quarreling.

And her mother would come, too. She had settled this with George before she accepted his proposal. Montheath’s mistress and daughter would never again spend Christmas alone while he went to his country estate to be with his wife and sons.

George slipped his arm hesitantly around Miranda’s waist. “Have you eaten?”

“Not yet. There are so many people here.”

He looked around and said softly, “None who wish to be. It was your father’s influence that brought them, I suppose.”

A painful truth, but it meant much to Miranda that George was so honest. She had had more than enough make-believe in her life. “And at my mother’s insistence he use that influence. Shall we take our breakfast in the garden? Our absence will allow our guests to malign us more freely.”

He smiled at her. “Have I told you how fortunate I am? Let me fetch the food. I’ll be out in a moment.”

*

Andrew watched his brother escort his bride from the drawing room and nodded distractedly at the man with whom he was conversing. In truth, he was hardly paying attention. Miranda Henley. He hadn’t thought to ask the name of the new countess. When he had disembarked and been told George had wed only that morning, Andrew had dashed home to get the details. She was exquisite and gracious. She would do George proud.

Letitia drew him away from his acquaintance and huffed indignantly. “I have no idea what possessed Danford.”

Andrew regarded his father’s plump, soft-faced widow with a mix of irritation and fondness. “He and Montheath are old friends, Lettie. It is not so shocking.”

“Not shocking? Season after Season has come and gone, and nothing could move George to come and seek a bride. That girl has been on the market for years. Even Montheath’s power and wealth couldn’t secure her a husband of the caliber her mother sought, and then he foists her off on poor George. What kind of a friend is that?”

“She’s beautiful and, from what I have seen in these few minutes, refined and poised. He could have done far worse.”

“She is the daughter of Montheath’s mistress!”

Andrew searched the room and spied Montheath and Barbara Henley talking together in the corner. “Easy to see where the new Lady Danford gets her looks.”

Barbara Henley had been Montheath’s mistress for twenty-five years, but at forty-one years old, she looked more like Miranda’s older sister than her mother. Her gown of ruby red set her apart from all the pale pastels surrounding her, and her chestnut hair was only just beginning to show signs of gray. Montheath, on the other hand, was approaching sixty and had hair of pure silver. Whatever he and Barbara did, it kept him in good shape, for he was as fit as any of the younger men in attendance.

“The entire thing is a disgrace!” Letitia snapped.

Andrew’s gaze went from the scandalous couple to his child giggling with a group of girls her own age. Glad to change the subject, but wishing it were on to more pleasant things, he said, “Another governess, Lettie?”

Letitia’s eyes followed his. “She is a very spirited child, Andrew.”

“In need of a firm hand.”

“I am doing the best I can. Poor darling. With no mother and you traipsing around France …”

“Spain, Lettie.”

“God forbid you should die, too.”

He gave her a humorless grin. “I quite agree. But she has you, and George would take her in if necessary. Now that he has a wife it is all the better. If they weren’t newlyweds I might ask them to take Emma off your hands.”

“To be raised by
her
? What would Caroline have thought?”

But Caroline wasn’t there. Sometimes it was hard to believe it had been four years since her death. “She would have wanted whatever was best for Emma.”

Lettie’s eyes misted, and Andrew felt the sting of a guilty conscience. “That didn’t sound right. You’ve been a saint, Lettie. Emma and I would have been lost without you. But you said it yourself, she’s a spirited girl, and you allow her far too much rein. You do the same with Henry. He needs discipline.”

“If you had ever actually tried to be a father, you might have some notion how difficult children can be. Henry will be fine. He’s young.”

It was pointless to argue. Lettie simply didn’t have the knack for command. He would remedy the situation himself if he did not have obligations to England that superceded the ones he had to his family. It didn’t help that both Lettie and Emma seemed to think he had left them on his own initiative!

The crowd around him felt oppressive, and he knew if he lingered more people would begin to press in around him asking about the war. He lived, ate, slept, and breathed the damned war. The last thing he needed was to relive its horrors for the entertainment of the
ton
at parties. He moved swiftly toward the French doors that opened out into the garden, blatantly ignoring acquaintances who called out to him, and the gossip shifted from the scandal of the wedding to the oddness of so many of the men who returned from battle.

“It is as if they forget their manners!”

“It is all anyone talks about, but when the men who know all the latest come home, you cannot pry out a single detail.”

Only the other men who had fought understood, and they remained silent, because it was impossible to explain.

*

Miranda sat on a stone bench in the garden, breathing in the sweet scent of roses and fertile earth. George did not tend to the small garden behind the townhouse, as he did the one at Danford, but he had hired the best gardener in London. He was taking a while to fetch breakfast, and she could only assume he had been waylaid by a guest. She straightened a little when Major Carrington came through the French doors instead.

“It is a lovely day,” he said. “How odd that no one else is out here to enjoy it.”

Miranda shrugged lightly. “I have stepped out here myself as a courtesy—to allow my guests the chance to speak more freely among themselves.”

He paused halfway between the house and Miranda. “They don’t work very hard to keep their spiteful remarks from you, do they?”

“They never have. I appreciate what you did in there.”

“What did I do?”

She smiled. “You know very well. You met me and treated me no differently than you would one of the Season’s most prized debutantes.”

Andrew shook his head and closed the distance. “I treated you quite differently. Seldom can I stand any of the Season’s most prized debutantes. You’re very—forthright—aren’t you?”

“We harlots’ daughters lack polish.”

He had to chuckle at the absurdity of the comment. As little time as he spent in London, even he had heard of Montheath’s illegitimate daughter. Montheath had claimed her from the very beginning, turning his back on London and traveling abroad with his mistress and their child. Every year, just before Christmas, he returned to his wife and sons, but at the first opportunity, he would hasten back across the channel to Barbara Henley’s bed. Raised on the Continent, Miranda was rumored to be fluent in several languages. Apparently she had also inherited her father’s love of music, and while the
ton
might ridicule her birth, they were forced to begrudgingly admire her fine voice and talent for the piano and violin.

One eyebrow raised, he said, “All those rough edges from your youth abroad.”

“It was not as genteel as you might imagine. I was raised by servants, but often sang and played music for royals, nobles, exiles, and courtesans. My parents had a rather eclectic group of friends and very unusual notions of how to raise a child.”

Andrew paused a moment before saying, “Then I suppose the Continent has left a few rough edges on us both.”

Miranda studied the faraway look in his eyes. He had the air of a man who had burdens of his own, who, like her, felt somehow not a part of the world occupied by the guests inside.

“I shouldn’t want too much polish,” she said. “One loses oneself when one can only reflect the images of others.”

Andrew had to resist the impulse to sit next to her on the little bench. The desire left him feeling slightly uneasy with his own motives. “So, Montheath brought you home when you came of age and presented you to Society, bestowing upon you a dowry that would make the most avaricious man content for a long time.”

Miranda stood up, tired of craning her neck to look at him. Her coming out had been a farce instigated at her mother’s insistence. Barbara had hoped her worldly daughter would be the belle of every ball. Of course, both Barbara and Miranda were snubbed by every matron of any consequence. Fathers sat their sons down over glasses of port and explained that, while Montheath’s bastard was beautiful and accomplished, she was not marriage material. Then those same fathers went into competition with those very sons, offering her various “lucrative and mutually beneficial arrangements.”

“Montheath was very realistic from the beginning,” she explained. “The dowry monies and house were mine, whether I married or not. He fully intended to make sure that I never took a lover out of financial necessity.”

“Like your mother?”

“I do not discuss my parents’ relationship with anyone.”

He nodded. “Fair enough. Why marry at all, then?”

“For the very best of reasons. George and I want the same things from life. Money doesn’t matter to either of us, although I am sensible enough to admit that is probably because we both have enough. We hate London Society and all the backbiting and posturing that comes with it. I love to make music, and he loves to listen to it. I want a house full of children, and he needs an heir.”