Glimmer of Hope (26 page)

His embrace was as warm and loving as she remembered. Sitting there with him, mourning their child together, comforting each other, she felt at peace. The road ahead would not be an easy or a smooth one, but they would walk it together.

Over the next weeks, Miranda
slowly regained enough strength to take short walks around the knot garden. Carter walked at her side every day.

She looked forward to her daily exercise, knowing he would hold her hand and sit with her if she grew fatigued. Even with the lingering pain and weariness, the chest-rattling coughs, the occasional moment of dizziness, she was content. She was more than content—she was happy.

“I don’t know that the weather’ll hold today, Lady Devereaux,” Hannah said, helping Miranda with her coat. “Looks like rain out.”

Carter stepped up beside her in time to reply. “I promise to bring her ladyship back in immediately if the clouds break.”

He set Miranda’s bonnet on her head, tying the ribbons in a little bow beneath her right ear. He did that before every outing and always followed the gesture with a gentle kiss on her cheek.

They walked hand-in-hand down the garden path, a light breeze rustling the still-bare branches of the hedge. Their pace was leisurely. Miranda would have chosen a slow walk even if her health didn’t demand it. During their daily excursions, she felt as though they were newly married again. Conversation came easily. There were no awkward silences, no moments of painful uncertainty.

They navigated the first turn in the path. Miranda rested her head against Carter’s arm.

“I imagined this,” she whispered.

“Imagined what, darling?”

Darling.
He always used to call her that. “I imagined you coming here and walking with me in this very garden just as we are now. I dreamed of it.”

“I wish I’d come.”

Miranda had learned to recognize the tone Carter used when chiding himself. “We have an agreement, dear,” she reminded him. “No more sorrow over lost time. No more tears for past mistakes.”

Carter raised her hand to his lips, kissing it lightly. “I don’t deserve to have been forgiven as completely as I have been.”

She gave him a coquettish look. “I
am
something of a saint.”

His smile was the lightest, easiest she’d seen him wear in some time. The sight lightened her own heart. Odd how, even as life grew difficult and burdensome, a person could feel as though weights were being lifted from her shoulders rather than added.

“I will suggest your name for official sainthood if you’ll agree to sort through the correspondence waiting for me in the book room,” Carter said.

He received letters every single day from Town. His secretary sent regular reports of the goings-on in Lords. His friends and acquaintances sent letters. His land stewards sent reports.

Carter’s attention was in great demand, and still, he took time every day to walk with her. He sat with her in the evenings. He had breakfast with her each morning. This was what she’d longed for the past three years. This was the Carter she’d fallen in love with.

They finished their first circuit of the garden just as rain began to fall. She hated to see their walk end so quickly. Carter kept at her side as Hannah took Miranda’s coat and bonnet. He walked with her up the stairs. At his book room, she raised up on her toes and kissed his cheek.

“Enjoy your letters, dear,” she said.

“And you, darling.”

She silently laughed. “You know perfectly well I never receive any letters.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Is that so? Because I could have sworn there was a letter addressed quite specifically to you here on my pile of papers.”

He thoroughly piqued her curiosity. She leaned a bit to one side, looking beyond him to the book room desk.

“It’s just to the left of the blotting paper,” Carter said, moving so she could easily pass by.

Just as he’d said, a letter sat apart from the others, her name written across the front. “But this is your handwriting,” she said.

“Indeed.”

Miranda took up the letter. “Did you think I was mourning my lack of correspondents?”

He shook his head. “The way I see it, I owe you a few years’ worth of letters. I intend to see to it you receive them.”

A sweet and thoughtful thing to do. “Do you mind if I stay in here and read it while you work?”

Carter crossed to her. He set his hands on either side of her face. He gently kissed her forehead. In the weeks since she’d awakened, Carter had been as tender and careful with her as though she were spun glass. “Miranda, darling. I would like nothing more than to have you with me always.”

She held his letter to her heart and wrapped her other arm around him. “I am so glad you didn’t go to London.”

“You and I both.”

He tipped her face up toward him and slowly, purposefully lowered his mouth to hers. He pressed a brief kiss to her lips then another. He took his time on the third one. His hands slid an inch at a time from her face, past her shoulders, to her back, pulling her into a warm embrace.

Miranda leaned into him. Three years she’d hoped and prayed for him to come hold her again. She hoped she never reached the point when she no longer felt grateful and amazed at having him in her life once more.

“You are distracting me, woman.” He used the tone of feigned frustration that never failed to make her smile.

“I will see to my letter, and you can see to yours,” she said.

He saw her situated comfortably in the leather armchair near the fire. She pulled her boots off and put her feet up on the footstool. Carter sat at his desk, leaning over his paperwork.

Miranda flipped her letter over.
He even used a wax seal.
Carter apparently meant to take his letter writing very seriously. She broke the wax and unfolded the parchment.

The letter didn’t begin with the customary date or salutation but with a few words across the very top of the page.

“The letter I would have written if I had received the first one you wrote to me.”

The first one you wrote to me.
Her first letter to Carter was the one she’d sent to London telling him she had left their home, intending to visit her grandfather. She never did receive a response. Her letter had been kept from him.

The letter I would have written.

Below Carter’s introductory line, the letter began in the more traditional manner.

My dear Miranda,

I have sent a runner with all possible speed to Devon to make absolutely certain you have arrived safely. If I had realized you meant to travel so far, I would have made other arrangements, better arrangements for you. Your grandfather could have come to Wiltshire to stay with you while I was in London.

(I had to put that bit in, Miranda, rather than inviting you to join me in Town. I was still inexcusably thick three years ago, not realizing what an utter fool I was. But as this is meant to be the letter I would have written then, I am determined to be accurate, even at the risk of proving how entirely stupid I was.)

London is lonely without you, darling. I spend my days discussing the state of the kingdom with a great many pompous and arrogant men then spend the evenings doing exactly the same thing with an even greater number of tiresome people. The fortnight ahead will be a long and tedious one. Please let the man I’ve sent to inquire after your well-being know if you mean to remain with your grandfather longer than two weeks. If those are your intentions, I will meet you there rather than in Wiltshire.

(You see, dearest, I was a fool, but I missed you enough to have gone wherever you were when my sojourn in Town was over. I wish I’d had the intelligence to have gone even before the two weeks had ended.)

I think of you every day and love you more with each passing hour. I pray you are well and safe and enjoying your visit with your grandfather.

All my love,

Carter

All my love.
She would have given anything to have received those words three years earlier. But she had him with her now.

“Carter?”

He looked up from his papers. “Yes, love?”

She indicated the letter in her hands. “You
were
rather thick.”

He chuckled. “I was, indeed. You enjoyed the letter?”

Miranda nodded.

“I’m glad, because I mean to write you more. I owe you quite a few, as you well know.”

Sweet Carter. “You did send letters. I simply never received them.”

“All the more reason to write them now.” He flashed a bright smile. “I predict I will grow far less stupid with each letter.”

“What will you do when you catch up in your letter writing?” Miranda asked. “Will you stop writing to me?”

Carter pushed back from the desk, stood, and walked to the chair where Miranda sat. He lifted her feet from the footstool and sat on it, resting her feet in his lap.

“I will write you letters for as long as you want me to,” he said. He rubbed her feet, something she had learned to greatly appreciate over the last weeks.

“Will you write to me while you’re in London?” How she hoped he would. She would miss him when he eventually had to make a trip to Town.

“If you’d like.” He looked a little confused, a little surprised. “Won’t that be redundant?”

“Redundant?”

Carter nodded. “What would I write? ‘Dear Miranda, As you know, Almack’s was a terrible bore tonight and the patronesses were as tedious as ever.’” He gave her an amused look. “I would have to begin every letter that way. ‘As you know . . .’”

His meaning became instantly clear. “I’ll be there with you.”

“Of course you will.”

They hadn’t discussed London in great detail since her heart episode. She had assumed he would, after assuring himself she was recovering, make his trip to Town alone while she remained behind, regaining her strength. “I may not be strong enough to go for quite some time.”

He shrugged as though it didn’t matter in the least. “We’ll go when you’re ready. I’m in no great hurry.”

“But the things you have to do there are so important.”

He rested his arms on her legs. “I know we decided not to dwell on the past, darling, but I need to for just a minute. I broke promises to you, important, crucial promises. And I know full well that the trust you once had in me will take time to regain. So I will tell you this as often as you need me to: I love you, Miranda Harford, deeply and completely. I am more grateful than I can possibly say that you are in my life again. And there is nothing in all this world that is as important to me as you are. Nothing. Not trips to London. Not Parliament. Not the fickle opinions of society. Nothing. I only hope that, given time, I can provide you with enough evidences of that for you to trust it is true.”

Their relationship would indeed take time to fully mend. Trust no longer came easily to either of them. But Miranda felt safe and content in his care in a way she never had before. She had found during the years she’d spent without him an inner strength she’d not known before. And in the weeks since his return, she’d discovered in him a man of dependability and goodness.

Life was far from perfect, but there was hope.

“Miranda. We’re here, love.”

Carter’s gentle voice woke her from a surprisingly deep sleep. She had anticipated an uncomfortable journey and was grateful to have been wrong.

She opened her eyes. A London street, dim with approaching nightfall, lay just beyond the windows of the Devereaux traveling carriage. They pulled to a stop at the front steps of what must have been Devereaux House—as fine and elegant a home as any lady could have hoped for.

“Cook should be here already.” Carter leaned closer to her and looked out the window as well. “Hannah arrived this morning, I am sure.”

Miranda took a deep breath. She’d dreamed of coming to London with Carter for years, and now that she had arrived, it still felt like a dream.

“There is no need to worry, my love,” Carter whispered then kissed her tenderly on the cheek. “Mother is as far from us as possible without actually living in the slums. The household is not only aware of our desire for a quiet life but is actually grateful for the change. You, and you alone, will set our schedule. And MacPherson has recommended a physician in Town should you need one.”

Miranda turned her face to look up at him. “I was not worried, Carter. I am just so happy to be here. It hardly seems real.”

“Do you know? I feel precisely the same way.”

Carter kissed her again, a quick peck on the lips. She very nearly giggled—she felt like a newlywed all over again. But considering how soon after their marriage they had separated, Miranda didn’t believe they had ever progressed past that stage in the first place.

The staff did seem genuinely happy to meet her and weren’t the least shocked when Carter announced they would not be going out that evening as Miranda knew most couples in society would have. In fact, just as Carter had predicted, they seemed quite pleased with the idea.

After a quiet dinner, they retired, sitting in front of the fire on a settee in Miranda’s bedchamber. She had grown quite fond of settees.

“You have missed a great many weeks of the session,” Miranda said some time after they’d settled in and covered other topics less pressing on her mind. “The party leaders must not have been pleased.”

“I found, actually, they didn’t care one whit,” Carter replied. “There were plenty of other aspiring politicians to take my place.”

“Oh, Carter.”

“Now, none of that.” Carter pulled her closer to him, his arm around her shoulder. “I understood the cost of my decision. I chose what was best for me.”

“I just don’t want you to regret it. You will have your career far longer than you will have me.”

“First of all, my love, I have it on the best of authority that you might very well surprise us and live another thirty years.” Carter pulled her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers. “Second of all, I do not regret my decision to stay in Dorset. Given the opportunity, I would do it again.”