That Kind of Woman (4 page)

He drew her into his arms and pressed a kiss to her lips, his own tightly closed. When he pulled away, Miranda tried not to look disappointed. She had never expected to know so much more than her husband.

“Come, George, let us kiss as lovers.” She reached up for him, but he pulled away.

“I think we should get to know each other better, don’t you?” he blurted. “After all, we’re in no hurry. I mean, here we are in Lettie’s room, of all places…”

“Then let’s go to yours. I don’t have to get up as soon as it’s over.”

“I’m just—not comfortable here. At home, in Danford, we can relax. Get to know each other. This—now—just because you are my wife and it is expected and not because we are both ready…it doesn’t feel right.”

Miranda stepped farther away from him, trying not to feel so utterly relieved. “All right. We’ll wait. Yes, I think that’s better. In our own home, I’m sure it will feel more natural.”

“More natural,” George echoed, his voice hollow. “Yes. I haven’t disappointed you then? Or hurt your feelings? You are a beautiful woman, Miranda. Perfect. Like a Greek sculpture.”

Of marble? She hadn’t felt hurt until he had said that. Perhaps she was even less like her mother than she had feared. She wasn’t a seductress, a woman to whom sensuality came as naturally as breath. Perhaps she had more in common with the dried-up Lady Worthington than with the passionate Barbara Henley!

George retreated to his own door. “Good night, Randa.”

She gave him a tight smile. “Good night, George.”

Her windows had been left open, and though it was early summer, the room had grown chilly. She closed the windows and slipped into bed, letting her body warm the sheets and becoming drowsy far faster than she expected. The stress of the day, she supposed, and the wine…

In the dark of night, someone slipped into bed next to her.

“George?” she murmured thickly.

“Shhh.”

A hand, large, warm, and slightly rough caressed her arm, then slipped under it to travel over her hip and upward over her ribs until it gently cupped her breast. Miranda sighed and turned from her side onto her back, feeling the delicate, seductive rasp of sheets against bare skin. Where had her night-rail gone?

He leaned over her, brushing his lips against hers, nipping softly at her lower lip until she opened her mouth, welcoming the soft, sensuous invasion of his tongue. The hand she had felt before traveled over her naked body, and her flesh burned, greedy for the feel of him. Her heart sped up, as did her breathing, matching the pace of her unexpected visitor’s. The hand moved lower still.

“Yes,” she sighed. “Oh, yes.” Thoughts flitted through her mind, all the delicious things they could try together…

He pulled away, and in the suddenly bright moonlight falling between the curtains, she looked up into his face and gasped.

Miranda bolted upright in her bed, all alone and now fully awake. Her night-rail was still tied primly, but it had ridden up over her legs. She had been dreaming.

She clamped one hand over her mouth and the other over her chest where her heart still pounded erratically. True, it was only a dream, but she hadn’t been dreaming of George. The illusory man who had joined her in her bed had been his brother, Major Andrew Carrington!

*

Two days had passed, and Andrew wondered if he had said something to offend his new sister-in-law. Since the day after the wedding, she seemed to be avoiding any sort of contact between them. Of course, he might be merely overreacting. The house had been, after all, a hive of activity. Now, a comfortable landau awaited George and Miranda, along with a more modest conveyance for their personal servants. Still more servants loaded trunks onto a cart. The entourage would be leaving soon.

The earl and countess were getting a late start, as well. Andrew and George had lingered over breakfast, and when Andrew had gone hunting for Emma, he found her in Miranda’s room, slowing the packing by insisting she see every gown before it was folded and put away. He stood in the doorway, scolding his daughter, but Miranda insisted it was quite all right and then turned her back on him in dismissal.

Even now, in the midst of the rush, Emma and Miranda sat in the drawing room, chatting. He moved toward the back of the foyer to hear their conversation.

“The war will not last forever, Emma. When it’s over, and we must all know what is the
dernier cri
in Paris, you shall wish you had kept one of those governesses.”

“I told you, I shall never set foot in France! Not after Napoleon has kept my father so far away. I won’t care a fig for Paris fashion. Why must I learn to speak French? And none of the governesses my father finds can play the piano like you can.”

“Even a mediocre piano teacher is better than none at all. Where will you be without music?”

“I could come to Danford with you!”

Andrew stepped into the room. “I believe Lord and Lady Danford deserve a little time alone, Emma. Besides, it isn’t polite to invite yourself. You would know that, if only you would pay attention to your lessons in comportment.”

“Comportment!” Emma protested. “Did you ever have to take lessons in comportment, Aunt Randa?”

“Emma Louise! You will address Lady Danford by her proper title!”

“Oh, it’s quite all right, I assure—” Miranda began, but something in Major Carrington’s face made her stop.

“This child has been given more than enough leeway where proper conduct is concerned. Make your curtsey, Emma, and go to the kitchen. Your grandmother is having several ladies over for tea today, and she wishes you to help oversee the preparations.”

“But—”

“Now!”

Emma faced Miranda so that her back was to her father. From behind, her curtsey was straight and proper, but she rolled her eyes and stuck out her tongue so that Miranda would know just what she thought of her father’s edict. Miranda tried not to smile.

Once she had left, Andrew looked at Miranda. “I am sorry she’s been such a nuisance.”

“She hasn’t been.”

“And I would not ask you to take her in. She’s merely in need of a firm hand, a proper governess.”

Miranda nodded slowly. Someone proper for his daughter. For George, he would publicly accept his brother’s choice, but for his daughter, he expected better. How silly of her to have thought otherwise.

Still, she said, “I do hope she’ll come to Danford sometime. Christmas, at least?”

Andrew looked at her and thought of the two of them, George and this woman who had finally captured his heart. They would decorate the house as he had once done with Caroline, kiss under the mistletoe. He missed all of that. Emma would surely miss it all the more, too, to be around them and reminded of the life she had once had.

“I doubt I will be home, and Emma and Lettie love Christmas in Town.”

“Of course,” Miranda replied.

“It is my turn to thank you for helping me.”

Miranda frowned. “What did I do?”

“You encouraged Emma to get along with her governess, whomever I can find to be the next.”

“Oh, from time to time, I can actually be a good influence.”

Andrew smiled, but his brow was furrowed. At the moment, her influence was most troubling. It was a strange and awkward feeling to be jealous of his older brother. He had never wanted the title or the lands; he had known his whole life that those belonged to George. He had his career and the respect of his colleagues. This was different. He had known what it was like to come home to a beautiful wife and loving child, for Emma had adored him when her mama had been alive. And he wanted George to have those things, he did! He simply wished he still had them, too.

“I wish you a safe journey, my lady, and I hope you and George are very happy at Danford.”

George especially, Miranda thought. Well, the man loved his brother, and for all that she thought he was terribly hard on his daughter, he cared about Emma. She would have preferred military discipline from a father over the benign neglect she had known from her own. Major Carrington wasn’t a bad person. He just didn’t want his child to fall under the influence of a woman with a dubious background. It was nothing new.

Why, then, did it hurt so much?

“If we ever actually get on our way,” she said.

“I suppose it is just as well you’ve been delayed in leaving. Your mother and Montheath haven’t made it yet, to see you off.”

Yet another thing that shouldn’t hurt after so many years. “Doubtless they found enough entertainment at various galas last night to keep them up all hours and are still sleeping. The fact that they pried themselves from their bed in time for the wedding was nothing short of a miracle.”

“They’ll come to see you settled at Danford, though.”

“They’ll stay here through the fall. Mother will spend the holidays with us.” Better he should know up front. No sense shocking him with Barbara’s presence, should he think to change his mind and visit. “Danford lies between here and Montheath, so my father can bring her on his way home and pick her up again when he returns to Town. She is lost in London without him.”

Andrew nodded. It seemed so odd to be talking about Montheath’s disreputable living arrangements as if they were speaking of any other family. How strange it must have been for Miranda to have grown up with everyone whispering behind their hands at the only kind of life she had ever known.

He slipped out to say one last good-bye to George and checked in the kitchen to make sure Emma had obeyed his orders. Then he headed out to meet General Lawton and the fresh-faced young men whose lives were about to change forever.

After three days of travel, Miranda discovered Danford to be exactly as George had described it. They reached the lands long before she saw the house, rolling hills of emerald green, neatly kept farmhouses belonging to families that had lived there since feudal times. Sheep grazed in meadows, along with the occasional horse and a number of cattle. They crossed a bridge over a wide, slow-moving river and waved to several boys who were fishing there. George signaled the driver to stop, and she climbed out with him to meet them, carefully stowing their faces, names, and bits and pieces of information about their families inside her head.

George was not like so many aristocrats who knew little about their holdings except what they made in rent. He kept track of which fields were to be planted and which would remain fallow. Most would grow the same barley, wheat, and hay they had for centuries, while others would be planted with new hybrids and crops that he had chosen to experiment with.

George knew well, though, that those fields must be tended by farmers who cared as much as he about the estate. Therefore, he made note of which families were expecting children, and which had children who had not made it through the winter. If a farmer had been incapacitated, George secured extra help so that no planting or harvesting was left incomplete.

As his countess, Miranda, too, must know the names of their tenants and their joys and sorrows. Perhaps it was old-fashioned, but it was exactly what she wanted. These people neither knew nor cared about her parents or her pedigree.

They resumed their journey, and George waved to workers in the fields, promising to take her out riding to meet them later in the week.

“You’ll want to get to know the household staff, first,” he said.

Miranda nodded. Her mother had kept extensive staffs in their various homes. She knew as much about running a household as any well-bred woman, or so she had thought, until she laid eyes upon the manor house.

The servants must have been watching for them, for they had lined up neatly along the walkway from the drive to the front door, a battalion of liveried men and uniformed women. George had told her that the original ancestral home had been remodeled and added on to until it had become a rambling sprawl of mismatched architecture. Before George’s father had married his first wife, he’d had the entire thing torn down and rebuilt from the ground up. Now, it was a stately Georgian made of local stone. Steps of imported white granite led up to a grand entryway flanked by eight neoclassical columns.

From the carriage’s vantage point at the top of a hill, Miranda could see that behind the house stretched a formal garden, filled with the roses George had spoken of so passionately. Neat hedges edged it, separating the garden from a vast park with a meandering stream running through it. The park bumped up against forestland, and a herd of deer grazed on the grasses there, looking serene and majestic. To the east of all this were the stables and pastures reserved for Danford’s prized thoroughbreds, to the west, a dowager residence that Lettie had chosen not to use. It was small compared to the manor, but of a size with what Miranda had thought to be some of the grander homes she had lived in as a child.

When they arrived at the front entrance, the regal head butler and lively head housekeeper stepped forward, and George introduced them as Mr. Malfrey and Mrs. Charger. Mrs. Applebee, plump and pleasant, was the head cook, and wiry Mr. Eggers the head groom. There were so many new names and faces that Miranda’s head swam with them all.

Finally, they made it through the gauntlet, and she stepped through the door of her new home. The ceiling of the front hall rose three floors above her and was painted with cherubs and classical gods and goddesses. Two staircases curved upward to the second story, nestling between them a marble statue of a previous countess of Danford. She was represented as the goddess Diana, clad in a toga and standing with a graceful doe. The floor was made of polished marble shot through with rose-colored veins. Each of the upper floors had galleries with life-sized portraits visible through white arches and rails.

Tired and completely overwhelmed, Miranda would have liked nothing more than to sit in one of the drawing rooms and let her new surroundings sink in, but it was not to be. Mrs. Charger whisked her away from George and led her straight into a comprehensive tour. She showed Miranda the grand ballroom hung with huge gilt mirrors and the cavernous formal dining room, although the present Earl was not inclined to use either one. The informal dining room was for smaller gatherings. A dozen might dine here quite comfortably. Miranda and George each had their own withdrawing rooms. Hers was white and gold, but she was, of course, welcome to redecorate. There was a salon with several small tables surrounded by chairs, two sets of couches, and more seating for card games and conversation. The library housed countless volumes and smelled richly of leather and parchment. In the center of it was George’s desk, covered with books, ledgers, and papers. This was a room where work was done. There was also a couch of well-worn red velvet, suggesting that it was also a place of rest and relaxation. She saw the kitchen and the guestrooms, including the state apartments that were reserved for visits from the Prince Regent, who had been known to call upon the Earl occasionally.