A Less Than Perfect Lady

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‘A commodity I patently cannot share. How are you, sir? It was an ill day for travelling today, was it not?’

‘That it was, my lord. I freely admit that these days I much prefer my chambers to the open road.’

‘Maybe one day we will be able to travel like birds instead of it taking us days to get from one side of the country to the other,’ Miranda mused.

‘Like flying pigs, Cousin?’ Kit asked impatiently.

‘Not quite, but equally unlikely, I am afraid.’

‘A pleasant idea though, my dear madam,’ Mr Poulson put in with a fatherly smile of encouragement, seemingly oblivious to the suppressed tension between his companions. ‘It would certainly save a good deal of time on dirty roads.’

‘If only we could invent machines to direct all those balloons people spend so much time watching launched, maybe your idea would be possible, Cousin Miranda,’ his lordship admitted.

‘Until that happy day, I suppose we will just have to make do with mud and inconvenience like everyone else, my lord.’

‘Indeed, and you have had a longer and harder trek than the rest of us, if I am not mistaken.’

‘And I doubt that you often are, my lord,’ she replied rather waspishly and felt the lawyer’s shrewd gaze on them both this time.

He seemed to gauge the undercurrent of awareness that ran between the new earl and his scapegrace cousin and momentarily looked puzzled and then oddly pleased. Miranda ordered herself to be more circumspect in future, but something kept her standing at his lordship’s side, pretending to be sociable all the same.

‘I thought we had agreed to be cousins,’ he chided when Mr Poulson’s attention was diverted by the new vicar of Wychwood.

‘Do you mean to acknowledge me as such in public then, my lord?’ she asked mockingly. ‘I’m probably beneath your touch, as well as us being connected to you only in the third or fourth degree.’

‘And it would make such a change for your branch of the family to note the existence of mine, would it not?’

She covered her bemusement at his peculiar statement with a social smile, for Grandfather had been rebuffed in the harshest of terms when he tried to send his cousin Bevis Alstone’s son and daughters to school instead of settling Bevis’s vintner’s bill as demanded.

‘Are we to celebrate our newly established kinship, or mourn it, do you think?’ she asked lightly.

‘I shall withhold judgement.’

‘Shall you indeed, cousin? How very refreshing to meet a gentleman who refuses to rely on the prejudices of others to form his opinions.’

‘You can be certain of one thing, Cousin Miranda, I long ago made it a rule to trust my own prejudices ahead of any others.’

There was no mistaking the heat in his dark gaze as he let it dwell on her discreetly displayed curves for a little too long, but she chose to pretend ignorance and gave him a sweetly insincere smile. ‘How unenlightened of you,’ she said lightly, ‘so pray excuse me while I look up prejudice in my grandfather’s copy of Dr Johnson’s famous dictionary, Cousin. Does it come before or after proof, I wonder?’

‘Oh, dear, that tutor of yours really wasn’t very good, was he? Before, of course.’

‘Then should I not appeal to Mr Poulson? I believe it is customary to present all the evidence before the court forms a judgement?’

‘Or so we are told,’ he replied sardonically.

‘Then I rest my case, my lord,’ she told him.

‘Cousin,’ he corrected abruptly.

‘Very well, but Cousin what, pray?

‘I suspect you know very well my name is Christopher,’ he said and silently dared her to remark on the fact that it was a very common Alstone forename, and probably given to him in defiance of his father’s family rather than to please them.

She felt a sneaking compassion for the little boy he must once have been, forced to live with the consequences of Bevis Alstone’s drinking, gambling and whoring. Cut off by his family, Bevis must have been an appalling parent. Miranda forced herself not to look for the vulnerable boy in the hard man his son had become. It was far simpler to think of him as just another man of the world, not the complex creature he really was.

Chapter Five

Coppice opened the doors and warily informed the company that dinner was served. As the senior and most socially distinguished woman present, Lady Clarissa went in on Lord Carnwood’s arm. Miranda told herself she was well pleased to be next to Mr Poulson and opposite the new vicar. Lady Clarissa took the foot of the table and had to content herself with insisting Celia took precedence over the vicar’s wife and had the other seat by the new Earl.

‘Surely we don’t need to stand on ceremony?’ Miranda asked rashly, used to informality presiding over state at her godmother’s table.

‘Indeed not,’ Lord Carnwood agreed. ‘Coppice? See that a round dining table is installed in the Blue Parlour by tomorrow night,’ he ordered with the air of easy command that Miranda had already noted the servants obeyed without a second thought. ‘We shall take our meals there whenever there are less than a dozen of us to dinner in future, and meet beforehand in the Countess’s Sitting Room, not the State Drawing Room.’

‘Very good, my lord,’ Coppice replied, a faint smile lifting his thin lips.

‘I do not approve of such shabby-genteel arrangements!’ Lady Clarissa announced regally.

‘Very well. Coppice, will you see that Lady Clarissa is served in here every evening? I doubt the rest of us will disturb her at such a distance.’

Coppice wisely said nothing, but Miranda thought she caught a twinkle in his eye as he waited impassively on events.

‘Well, I shall enjoy the novelty,’ Celia said, with a hard look for her bridling parent.

Ambition for her daughter narrowly beat Lady Clarissa’s pride. ‘Very well, let it be so,’ she said grandly and nobody bothered to point out that it would be so, whether she liked it or not.

After that Miranda was not the only one to concentrate on her excellent dinner and her thoughts. Deciding that her aunt would always be a mystery to her, she turned to her dinner companion in the hope of setting an innocuous hum of conversation going.

‘How did your journey really go, Mr Poulson?’

‘In truth, I would rather not travel at this time of year, Mrs Braxton. The roads are naught but a sea of mud and the beds at the inn I stayed in last night were decidedly damp,’ the little lawyer told her indignantly.

‘How very distressing for you,’ she said soothingly, thinking ruefully of her desperate journey to Lady Rhys’s remote home five years ago, when she and Leah slept fitfully on top of a swaying accommodation coach to stretch their small store of money.

‘Still, we must all suffer in the line of duty now and again,’ the little lawyer said piously, ‘but how was your own journey, ma’am?’

‘Uneventful,’ she said cheerfully, ‘and worth it to experience the benefits of Cook’s skills again. Have you tried her baked trout, sir?’

‘It almost blots out the memory of those sheets,’ he replied with a self-deprecating smile.

While he set to with a will, Miranda surreptitiously watched their dining companions. Mr Draycott was being condescended to by her aunt while she regally ignored his wife, presumably because Mrs Draycott was very pretty and must not interfere with Celia’s fascination of the Earl. She saw Mrs Draycott meet her husband’s gaze with rueful amusement and wondered how it felt to love like that after years of marriage. Her own delusions of love had barely outlasted the ceremony over the anvil, and how she wished she had possessed a little more patience and discernment.

Ironic, was it not, that a woman supposedly experienced in the arts of love knew virtually nothing about that tender passion? Luckily Celia’s polite titter distracted her just then and reminded her of another conundrum. Considering her cousin rarely did anything on impulse, her hasty wedding to a mere lieutenant of Foot Guards was a puzzle in itself. Surely Celia hadn’t married for true love?

Miranda frowned and wondered why she thought her cousin incapable of such untidy emotions. She had never met the gallant lieutenant, of course, and the poor man had been dead within weeks of their hasty London wedding. There had been no seven-month pregnancy to tell of illicit passion, unlikely as such weakness seemed on the part of her icily lovely cousin. Yet Grandfather must have disapproved, or Celia would have been married from Wychwood with as much splendour as Lady Clarissa could contrive.

‘This beef is as good as any I ever tasted, Mrs Braxton,’ Mr Poulson said with a hint of reproach as he eyed her untasted portion.

‘My appetite seems to have deserted me,’ she admitted.

‘Indeed, this must be an ordeal,’ he said with quiet sympathy.

Touched by such understanding, she sought to reassure him. ‘I have grown a very thick skin of late years,’ she assured him with a mischievous smile. ‘And my old friends below stairs seem pleased to see me.’

At last it was time for the ladies to retire to the barn-like State Drawing Room while the gentlemen enjoyed their port in peace. It wouldn’t be a riotous interlude, Miranda decided, considering the company. Yet she would rather have endured the earl’s jibes than join her aunt, Celia and a vicar’s wife who must disapprove of her on principle. She bore it stoically for a while, then excused herself, fearing that if she stayed she might say something scandalous just to live down to their expectations.

Opening the door of the library cautiously, in case his lordship had sneaked back into it when her back was turned, she sniffed the familiar scents of books and lavender polish. Closing her eyes, she could almost fool herself that Grandfather would be sitting in his favourite chair by the fire, absorbed in his beloved Homer and a glass of fine cognac. Of course the chair was empty when she opened them and she allowed herself a sigh of regret at not seeing him so one last time.

‘Don’t tell me you’re looking for a book, Mrs Braxton?’ the new Earl asked disbelievingly and Miranda cursed herself for leaving the door open—although she supposed she could hardly shut him out of his own library.

‘Then I won’t, my lord,’ she told him equably and tried to move round him; the dull safety of the State Drawing Room suddenly seeming appealing after all.

‘Off to charm the little lawyer out of his wits again?’ he asked sardonically as she turned to leave.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mr Poulson was a friend of my grandfather’s.’

‘You’re right and I’m sorry.’

‘I beg your pardon, my lord, I think my ears must be deceiving me,’ she said, genuinely shocked to hear his admission.

‘We have got off on the wrong foot, Cousin Miranda. I apologise for my harsh words and inexcusable actions.’

‘Thank you,’ she replied, too dazed by this turnabout to say anything clever.

‘Which doesn’t mean we have to become bosom bows, or suddenly trust one another with our deepest secrets,’ he replied with a lopsided smile that nearly made her knees melt.

‘I think that most unlikely, but I can assure you that I am nowhere near as bad as rumour accounts me, my lord.’

‘Cousin,’ he corrected and his eyes were sceptical again and his smile a matter of form.

Thus far and no further, his expression seemed to say, and she told herself to be glad of it. He was nothing like the gentle picture she had built up over the years of a man she could slowly trust with her secrets and her heart, after knowing him for many months, if not years.

‘We should not be alone in here,’ she said defensively.

‘I know, I was about to go outside and blow a cloud when I heard you. Perhaps I had better do so, before your aunt finds us absent without leave.’

‘Which would never do,’ she replied with a cool smile. After their earlier scene in this room, she didn’t altogether trust his mellow mood.

‘Indeed not,’ he said with a rigidly correct bow, and let himself out of one of the long windows to indulge in his occasional penchant for cigarillos.

Kit had reconsidered his impulse to do anything in his power to bed Miranda Braxton at last. During dinner he had secretly watched her try to mitigate the failings in her aunt and cousins’ hospitality, and finally acknowledged to himself that she possessed the instincts of a true lady. Having reached that disappointing conclusion, he had then forced himself to consider her past like a rational human being instead of a lust-ridden fool.

In truth, Braxton had subjected her to such degradation and horror that it revolted every instinct Kit possessed. He had spent most of his early years somehow scratching together the means to keep his little sisters out of the very trap Braxton had knowingly, even gleefully, sprung on his own wife. For five years he had thought her a fallen beauty, cunning enough to work the age-old trick of selling herself to the highest bidder then letting her pimp in to rob and attack their victim, before or after the fool had taken his pleasure. It had been obvious, until he had looked down at his Venus and seen her pretend to be a virtuous widow more sinned against than sinning.

Only tonight had the heat of betrayal finally faded and cold reality taken its place. Braxton had tried to sell his wife into a life Kit wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy. The wanton cruelty of that action could overcome Kit’s wish to see Miranda as a noble houri, flitting from conquest to conquest with no thought for her victims. Then he could have taken his pleasure of her and moved on as thoughtlessly as the harlot he suddenly imagined her would have done. Given that he had finally worked out the truth, that lusty scenario must be forgotten.

Remembering their passionate kiss now he was acutely uncomfortable. There had been a peculiar innocence to her lips, as if she was surprised to be wooed rather than forced. No, there could be no more of that, for it would lead to places he refused to go. A mistress could arouse his passion and even affection—as such he could have kept her and not cared if he liked her a little too well. Unfortunately, ladies expected marriage instead of a carte blanche, even ladies like Mrs Miranda Braxton.

He couldn’t wed a headstrong beauty whose wildly rebellious nature had already precipitated her into one hasty marriage. After all, he had long ago decided to wed for reason and not emotion. An excess of that had led his mother to marry a man who cared for the green baize tables and the wine bottle more than he ever did about her or her children, and he had no intention of following her down that particular road to damnation.

So Kit strode about the shadowed terrace and thought about the excuse for a man Miranda Alstone had married and, if his fists tightened until his slender cigarillo was in danger of ending up mangled and burning him in the process, that was because he loathed cruelty and injustice. He forced himself to relax his tensed muscles and tried to ignore his sudden suspicion that Miranda Braxton would always rouse strong feelings in him. Emotion fogged judgement and he had no use for such folly.

No, a lifetime of suspiciously watching every man who so much as looked at his wife held no attraction for him. All he had to do was endure the next week without disaster and then he could avoid her until one of them was safely wed and out of reach. Something told him that if they ever spent too long together the consequences would be inevitable, and catastrophic. Having settled that conundrum in his mind, he returned to the over-gilded barn Lady Clarissa had best enjoy presiding over one last time, and made himself endure the rest of a dull evening just to prove himself right. Resisting the extraordinary beauty of his newest relative would get easier, he told himself stubbornly, as the evening at last wound to a weary end at long last and the Draycotts went home.

He took his candle and headed off to his bedchamber, after assuring himself Lady Clarissa had not lodged either of his guests in the lumber room. Kit threw himself into the chair by the fire in the master bedroom and sighed heavily. He would do it, he reassured himself. After all, he and his childhood friend Ben Shaw had risen from the worst slums in London and wrought a fortune out of nothing but will power, so he had a goodly stock of that commodity. Overcoming a craving for a lady of dubious reputation and spectacular beauty should be easy enough after that Herculean task, so long as he avoided her more steadfastly in future.

As he tossed and turned through a very uncomfortable night with only half a dozen doors between him and temptation, he kept repeating that assertion in the hope it might one day be true. Yet when he eventually slept uneasily, his dreams were haunted by a dockside Venus who watched him with reproachful eyes as if he had disappointed her hopes and dreams all over again.

After marrying Nevin Braxton, Miranda had thought herself immune to the baser passions, like a person who had survived a life-threatening disease and was protected against it for life. Therefore she was shocked to spend a restless night, thinking far too often of renegade earls too handsome and dangerous for her peace of mind.