That Kind of Woman (25 page)

He dropped his head. “I cannot talk about this any more.”

“Very well. I can understand that.” She slipped off the bed. “I don’t know if you can ever comprehend all of this. I imagine it’s too much to hope you might accept it. But I will tell you this—never question that it was real to me. We three cared about one another. I didn’t allow anything filthy to happen in my home, and Reggie is neither perverted nor half a man.”

If he didn’t feel so sick inside, Andrew might have pitied her. Right now, all he could think was that his brother had lied to him and that she had helped him to do it. He was still too angry to feel sorry for her, although he knew he probably should.

“I think I’ll take Emma into London after all,” he said.

It hurt. As much as she had come to love George and Reggie, reliving the betrayal of that first discovery had left her raw, and Andrew’s rejection was salt to the wound. It was everything she could do to keep her composure as he picked up his shirt and walked back out of her house and into the moonlit garden.

“No!” Emma shouted. “I don’t want to go to tea at Lady Houghton’s!”

“But Emma, darling,” Lettie said, “Katherine will be there, and Susan, and surely several other friends of yours. They’ve all missed you.”

“Enough cajoling, Lettie,” Andrew interrupted. “You will end this scene at once Emma! You are to accompany your grandmama to Lady Houghton’s.”

“I’m ill!” Emma retorted.

“You most certainly are not!”

“I hate you!” Emma picked up a pretty little carved box sitting on the dressing table of her bedroom in the Danford London townhouse and threw it at her father.

Andrew caught it deftly and used all his self-restraint to keep from hurling it back at her. Instead, he strode to where she stood and set it back into place. Emma, apparently sensing that she had pushed too far, scuttled to her peach-swathed bed, keeping it between Andrew and her.

“Now, Andy, you’ve frightened the poor dear,” said Lettie.

“She bloody well ought to be frightened,” he answered.

Emma stood up straight, arms at her sides, lifting her chin, and closing her eyes. “Do your worst, Father. Beat me if you must!”

“Why? So that you may return to Danford where Miranda will tend to your injuries?”

Her eyes snapped open again. “Yes!”

“Well, let me disabuse you of your dramatic notions, young lady—”

“I should say so,” Lettie interjected. “Miranda has moved back in with her parents.”

Emma and Andrew both stared at her in open astonishment. “What?” they asked simultaneously.

Lettie paused for a moment, obviously nonplussed at having brought the fight to such an abrupt halt. “Why—it is on everyone’s tongues. I thought surely you must have known. She moved back in three days ago—lock, stock, and barrel, I’m told.”

“I
hate
you!” Emma reiterated to her father before throwing herself facedown on her bed.

Andrew shook his head in bewilderment. “Without so much as a ‘by your leave’?”

Lettie pursed her lips. “I assumed that she had spoken to you.”

“Wha—” He looked around the room as though some explanation were hiding there somewhere. “Well, I certainly would have said something to you. I wouldn’t have left you to hear it from the gossips.”

Emma’s head popped up. “What does any of it matter now? She’s gone! She’s gone, and it’s all Father’s fault!”

Lettie’s lips puckered up so tightly it looked like she had been sucking on a lemon. “Andrew,” she squeezed out between them, “a word in the hallway, if we might.”

He had unfinished business with Emma, but he was in no mood to deal with it, so he followed his stepmother out the door, closing it behind him.

“Tell me, Andy,” Lettie said, “tell me that you did not attempt to incite anything untoward between you and Miranda while your innocent child was living under the same roof with you.”

“Lettie, I am a grown man—”

“Well, Emma is still a young girl!”

“It is none of her concern.”

“Nonsense! She is a motherless child—”

“Do not attempt to excuse her behavior—”

“Excuse
her
behavior? You are the one shamelessly pursuing his brother’s wife!”

“Widow!”

“As if that makes the slightest bit of difference!”

“It makes a rather tremendous difference!”

“Not in the least, and we are wandering off the subject! Emma has already lost one mother—”

“What does that have to do—”

“Be still, Andy! When you are in my presence, you are my late husband’s son, not an army commander!”

He stared at her. Apparently, Lettie had more mettle than he’d realized.

“I am not her mother, Andy. I am her grandmama, and even that only by marriage rather than blood. Miranda was beginning to fill that place for Emma.”

“Now, Lettie—”

“Ah!” She held her hand up, effectively cutting him off. “I don’t fault you, Andrew. You were distressed. All those men. You never talk about it, but I know you. You take your responsibilities seriously, and you were responsible for so many lives. And Caroline and the baby’s deaths must have hurt you in ways none of us can ever know.”

Her compassion came dangerously close to unlocking doors kept tightly closed in the light of day, and he fervently wished she would stop, but she kept on.

“But the fact is you left Emma to deal with her mother’s death by herself. I could give her love and compassion, but I could not truly share her loss. I liked Caroline, but we were never close.”

“I had no choice,” Andrew said. “I had to return to the front.” But shame clogged his throat.

“Emma was eight. She couldn’t understand that. The fact remains that you and your selfish lust have cost her Miranda—”

“It wasn’t merely lust.”

“Well, you had better convince yourself that it was and get over her, because you are tearing open old wounds in your child.”

“What if I were to marry her, truly make her Emma’s mother?”

“Marry? With George’s ghost forever between you? It is unnatural, unhealthy.”

“What if he wasn’t between us?”

“Oh, he would be,” Lettie said with absolute confidence. “It wouldn’t be good for Emma. Miranda is her aunt, a perfectly fine relationship.”

Andrew raked his hands through his hair. “You’re only saying that because you don’t like Miranda. You never did!”

Lettie looked genuinely hurt. “Of course I like Miranda! How could anyone not? Oh, I’ll not deny that I tried not to like her, but she has a heart of gold despite her bad blood. It is such a shame, all that she has suffered for her parents’ choices. Would you do the same to your daughter? Can you imagine what people would say—her father married to a woman who is practically his sister? And a Henley, no less? Leave well enough alone!”

As Lettie repeated each of Miranda’s arguments, his heart sank, and his head dropped.

“This is for the best, you know,” Lettie added before she walked away down the hall.

Andrew stayed there a few more moments while he regained his composure, then slowly opened Emma’s door. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she had lobbed another projectile at him, but she was curled up into a tiny little ball on the large bed, hugging a pillow tightly against her and crying.

“Emma—”

“I hate you,” she said for the third time, but there was no vehemence in her voice.

“You’re angry with me. You don’t hate me.”

“Yes, I do.”

He sat on the edge of the bed and reached for her, but she scooted to the opposite side.

“I’m sorry.”

Emma pulled herself up and leaned against the headboard, her knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them. “No you’re not. You’ve never been sorry for anything in your life. You know what you are, Father? Heartless. You—have—no—heart. No wonder no one could ever kill you in war.”

He didn’t think anything that had ever been said to him, anything that had ever happened to him, had hurt as much as his child’s words. The pain was nearly enough to drive him from her room altogether, but Andrew Carrington did not run from a battle, however bloody, however much he wanted to.

“Do you feel a better person for having said that to me?” he asked.

Tears began to pour from her eyes again, but she said nothing.

“We’ve never talked about your mother.”

“This isn’t about my mother.”

“I think it is.”

She pondered that a moment, then pinned him with a narrow-eyed glare and gave a soggy sniff. “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps it is. You didn’t love Randa. You didn’t care if we lost her, and you felt just the same about Mama. You’ve never loved anyone.”

“Of course I cared. About you, about Miranda, and…and your mother. It may not have seemed so but…” He swallowed hard. “I’ve seen a lot of death. It was an inherent part of what I had to do.”

“So by the time Mama died, you were just used to it, I suppose.”

He shook his head. “Not in the least. You never get used to it. You just—just brace yourself and go on. You have to in war. That doesn’t mean that a little part of you doesn’t die each time you lose someone. You just don’t dare
feel
it all the way.”

“Well,
I
felt it all the way. Grandmama took me to see her, and there she was, holding that
stupid
baby. He took her with him,
my
mama! He got to keep her forever and ever. Her arms were wrapped all around him, and when I touched her she was cold! So cold. She didn’t even smell like her. And where were you? Locked in your study, where Grandmama said I should leave you. She said you needed time. You needed time? I needed
you
! And then you came out and told me that I must be brave and mind my grandmama and my nurse and
you left me
!”

“It was a cowardly thing to do.”

“I was a little girl! I wasn’t a coward!”

He squeezed his eyes shut, but it didn’t ease the sting. “Not you, little one. I. I should have been there. I should have taken you into that room, not your grandmother. I should have held you in my warm arms. I wish I had. A thousand times I’ve wished I had done it differently, but I can’t undo it.”

“Well you can undo whatever it is you’ve done with Randa,” Emma said, and she unwrapped her arms and rose to her knees on the bed. “You can fix this. If you love me at all, you’ll do this for me.”

It tore him apart to crush her hopes. He reached for her again, but she pulled back, her eyes wary.

“I can’t, Emma. There are things you are simply too young to understand.”

“I’m not a child!”

“You’re not a woman, either!” He took a deep breath. Patience had simply never been his strong suit. “There are boundaries—”

“Not if you’re really in love there aren’t! Father, even if you don’t love her, I do! Please, please don’t take her away from me!”

“I’m not taking her away. She will always be your aunt.”

“You don’t understand! It isn’t enough!” She started sobbing again, and Andrew rose, admitting defeat.

“Someday, this will all make sense,” he ventured, but she buried her face in her pillow again. Such a farce! It didn’t even make sense to him. He could think of nothing more to say. Even if he could have, he doubted she would listen, so he walked quietly from the room.

*

“You have a visitor.”

Barbara’s voice carried above the sound of Miranda’s violin and Montheath’s piano. Miranda took one look at the odd expression on her mother’s face and knew who it was. She sighed and lowered the instrument.

“Where is he?”

“The drawing room, of course. Do you think I would have invited him along to invade your sanctuary?”

Miranda rose and touched her mother’s shoulder briefly. Sometimes Barbara understood her better than she expected. “Thank you.”

It was a quick trip down the hall, and Miranda slipped quietly into the drawing room. Andrew sat on the low-backed couch, looking large and powerful among the delicate furnishings, but his shoulders were slumped and his face was haggard. When he saw her, he rose tiredly to his feet.

“It’s true then?” he asked. “You are home for good?”

“I am away from Danford for good. I am not entirely certain where I will go from here.”

“And what of Emma?”

“She is always welcome.”

The anger he could not unleash upon his daughter he let loose on Miranda. “And you couldn’t have at least told me so that I could tell her? You left her to hear it from Lettie who was but repeating idle gossip?”

“I didn’t think word would get out so quickly. I meant to come and tell you in another day or so.”

“You thought the arrival of the notorious Miranda Henley would not cause tongues to wag within moments of her appearance?” He saw the look of pain and shock on Miranda’s face and regretted his callousness, but he had eaten his fill of crow for the day and couldn’t bring himself to take another bite.

“The
ton
must be especially bored this Season,” she replied, looking away from him. “Perhaps you will extend an invitation to Emma to come stay with me a while. We can continue her music—”

“And then in the fall she can leave you behind? Have her heart broken again and again each time she must return to Danford while you remain here?”

Miranda looked back at him, her heart in her eyes. “Shall I return to Danford?”

He walked over to her, his hand drawn of its own accord to the soft, smooth flesh of her cheek, the pad of his thumb to her full lower lip. “I think…” he murmured, then bent down to kiss her.

She stood perfectly still, her eyes closed, and absorbed the tender feel of his lips brushing hers, his tongue lightly grazing them before she opened her mouth and invited him in. He wrapped his arms around her waist, and she put her hands on them, traveling up over the soft serge to his shoulders and farther until she clasped her hands behind his neck, his hair tickling her palm. Heat began to build inside of her. The taste of him, the scent of sandalwood, the feel of his chest pressing her breasts flat against him made her dizzy.

He pulled away, his mouth hovering a tantalizing breath away from hers. “I think that I could forgive you.”