That Kind of Woman (26 page)

She opened her eyes and met his, green and clear. “Forgive me?”

“For the lies, for what you did. It is all in the past.”

Miranda pushed away from him. “For what
I
did.”

He grabbed her hand, and she pulled it away. “Miranda, I’ve had enough fighting for today. I
forgive
you. We can go back to the way things were.”

“Meaning that I shall resume my life as your brother’s widow and Emma’s aunt and governess? We will pretend that our night together never happened?”

“We will go on as though you hadn’t been—as if we had never talked about George. As if we had left things unsaid.”

“Oh, I see. I will become your mistress, but we will hide that fact from the world. You will have been the only man to whom I have given myself, but we will ignore that gift and pretend there was another. You forgive me for lying, but you will expect me to live a lie.”

“Good God, Miranda, is it so much to—never mind! I will send Emma tomorrow afternoon. I’ll tell her that it will have to do. To hell with her. To hell with me. To hell with this!” He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her close, his mouth crushing hers, his tongue plunging past her defenses and taking her breath away. Her body caught fire even as her heart shattered. Then he released her every bit as abruptly. “You talk about what’s real and what’s pretend.
That
was real, my dear.”

He spun on his heel and left, and Miranda pressed her fingers to her lips, where the taste of him lingered.

Emma’s fingers fumbled over the ivory keys in front of her. Her heart wasn’t in the music at all. Finally Randa, who had been standing behind her silently, sat down next to her on the bench and put her arm around Emma’s shoulder.

“This is not the result of missing practice a mere week or so,” Randa said.

“If you lived in the dowager house, you’d never have to see Father at all,” Emma said.

“I cannot hide at Danford forever.”

Emma looked up into Miranda’s face, and her hopeful expression had nothing to do with artifice. “You wouldn’t be hiding. You would be there because you want to be. Wouldn’t you? I thought you were happy with us. Henry and I would make you happy. Even Grandmama would try.”

“Emma, I can honestly say I am never happier than when I am with you. But Danford carries a lot of memories for me and not all of them good.”

“But what about Christmas? And what about music lessons? And riding in the park and through the forest? The saddest day of my whole life happened at Danford, but I just try to remember all the good times. It works! If you’ll only try it—”

“Darling, Danford is your home—”

“It is yours, too!”

“Not anymore.”

“Why not? Aunt Randa, whatever Father did to make you angry, I’m sorry. Whatever it was, I’ll make up for it. I’ll practice and practice my music and never lose my temper and be a perfect lady!”

Miranda put her other arm around Emma and laughed, though there were tears in her eyes. “Oh, no, dear girl, never be a perfect lady. Promise me here and now that you’ll never do such a horrid thing! I wish to goodness I hadn’t worked on it so hard myself.”

Emma clung to her as though she were drowning. Randa was warm and soft and smelled of roses, and she held Emma close. “Tell me what to do,” Emma pleaded.

“Well,” Randa said, tucking an errant curl back into place in Emma’s coiffure, “to begin, you must accept things as they are.”

“But—”

She put a finger to Emma’s lips. “Shush. And you must realize that this is not your father’s fault.”

“But he—”

Randa shook her head and tsked, and though Emma wanted to stand up and rail, she kept quiet.

“Life can become very complicated sometimes, and no one is really to blame. I know you were hoping your Father and I would find some way to be together and to make a family for you, but that just wasn’t meant to be.”

“But your parents did it for you!”

Randa paused. It was that odd sort of pause, Emma thought, that happened whenever the topic was wandering onto something adults didn’t think children ought to hear. When she was small, it was the pause that was followed by her mother and father spelling things so she couldn’t understand. When she began her schooling, it was the sort of pause that came before Lettie or someone else suggested she go outside and get some fresh air or go read a book in her room.

“For pity’s sake, I know all about Miss Barbara and Lord Montheath,” Emma said.

“No. No, I don’t think you do. My parents are not together for my sake. I was an accidental result of their being together. They are together for no other reason than they wish to be.”

“And you do not wish to be with Father under any circumstances. I can hardly blame you,” Emma replied. She wouldn’t live with him either, if she had a choice.

“There, my dear, you are entirely wrong. I believe that you have grown up a very great deal in the time I’ve known you, and so I am going to be completely honest with you. As honest as I would be with my most trusted friend. I would give anything to be with your father. He is devoted and loving and so, so strong. Sometimes that strength is his greatest weakness. He can never allow any little chink in his armor.”

Emma nodded. “He is so strong he doesn’t even feel anymore.”

Randa stood abruptly and scowled down at Emma. “That isn’t true! He loves his family so deeply that they can hurt him in ways no war ever could. I think he would rather die than let any of you down. But his expectations, of others and of himself, are sometimes unrealistic.”

Emma stood and faced her aunt. “He let me down. Time and again he has let me down!”

“Then you must forgive him, Emma! Believe me, whatever resentment you feel for him, he feels a thousand times worse for ever hurting you.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I hurt him. I hurt him very badly, and all the same, when he came here yesterday, it was you he was thinking of, not himself.”

Emma felt a queer, sinking sensation in her stomach. What could Randa have done to Father? She couldn’t imagine Randa hurting anyone. It had never occurred to her that Randa might be behind whatever it was that had gotten between her and Father. “What did you do?”

“We can’t be together, that’s all.”

“Why not?”

“It has to do with Uncle George.”

“Henry told me about that—” Emma interrupted, “—about the law. But surely—”

Randa sighed. “It isn’t only the law.”

Emma nodded slowly. “You loved Uncle George.”

“Yes, darling, I did. And I think that love will remain forever a wall between Andrew and me. But it has nothing to do with you and me. Whenever you are in London, you are welcome, and we will still find a way to travel together. I’ll show you Paris and Vienna and Venice.”

“I’d like that.”

Montheath’s butler tapped lightly on the door. “Lord Danford for Lady Emma,” he said.

When her father came into the music room, Emma took a long look at him, and it was like seeing him for the first time in a very long time. Her mother had been dead for six years, but Father looked far more than six years older. He had seemed young and strong in his scarlet coat when she was a child. Now, he looked almost as old as Uncle George had before he had taken ill, though her father was still much younger.

She tried to imagine how he had felt when Randa had told him she still loved Uncle George and she couldn’t be with him. Had it hurt him as badly as it had hurt Emma when Grandmama said Randa had moved back to Town? Perhaps worse, because Emma could still visit Aunt Randa, and she would always be her niece. Father could never be Randa’s husband, and he didn’t want to be merely her brother. She walked over and slipped her hand in his, and his eyes widened in surprise, but his hand squeezed hers reassuringly.

“Are you ready to go?” he asked, and Emma nodded. He looked over at Randa. “The afternoon went well?”

Randa smiled. “Her music wants practice, but we had a lovely talk. Tomorrow, then?”

He glanced down at Emma, and she nodded. She wanted to see as much of her aunt as possible before she had to return to the country. They walked to the door, and she hugged Randa good-bye before climbing into the carriage with her father. When he would have settled himself into the seat opposite her, she took his hand and pulled him next to her. Then she leaned her head on his shoulder and let herself enjoy the pleasant summer day and the sight of the splendid horses pulling the landau.

“What’s all this?” he asked.

She didn’t lift her head. “What I said to you yesterday. I shouldn’t have said it. I know you have a heart, Papa. I know you loved Mama.”

He rested his cheek against the top of her head. “Do you know that I love you?”

She sighed. It felt so good to be like this, snuggled up next to him. It made her feel like she was six or seven, safe and protected. “Yes. I know.”

A minute or two later, her head popped up, and a mischievous twinkle lit her eyes. “Must we go right home?”

Her father shrugged, and inside, Emma had to laugh at the confused look in his eyes. It was wonderful to be getting along with him for the moment, and she wasn’t about to waste it. They would probably be in another fight before nightfall. She smiled at him with a coquettish smile she had been practicing in the mirror. “May we go shopping?”

His eyes cleared, and he laughed, a rich, hearty,
real
laugh. “For a moment, I thought someone had stolen my real daughter and taken her place. There isn’t much time until the shops close.”

She gave him a sly, sideways look. “Oh, I can be very efficient.”

“Of course you can.” He chuckled. “You are my daughter, after all. Come, let us see how utterly you can breach my pockets’ defenses in an hour and a half!”

From the doorway to the drawing room, Barbara Henley perused her daughter with a critical eye. “You are more clever than I gave you credit for.”

Miranda shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Walking into the room, Barbara continued. “Here, I thought you were letting him go, but I see now that you keep him tied to you by the child.”

“She is my niece, Mother.”

“You could have let her stay angry with her father.”

“She needs him, too.”

“So you are the peacemaker between them, and therefore indispensable.”

“Not everything is a manipulation, you know.”

Barbara smiled. She sat on the low-backed couch and patted the seat next to her in invitation. “Of course it is. There’s nothing wrong with taking what you want.”

Ignoring the gesture, Miranda stayed at her place near the window, where she had watched the two they were discussing depart. “I care for them, Mother!”

“I never said you didn’t.”

“I want them to be happy!”

“Naturally.”

“Why are you doing this?” Miranda demanded. “You are being deliberately obtuse! I am not using Emma to keep Andrew tied to me; I am trying to help them.”

“Trying to make Andrew into the man you thought your father should have been? Trying to be the mother you always hated me for not being?”

“I never hated you.”

“You were disappointed.”

Miranda lifted her chin a notch. “Perhaps.”

“You are unrealistic, darling, and you will only saddle that girl with your own impossible notions of how the world ought to be. And tell me this, since you are but looking after his happiness, are you so anxious to see him happy with someone else?”

The thought stung. He was a handsome man, wealthy and reliable. There were countless women who would dearly love to step into the place she had taken for herself at Danford—helpmate to Andrew, mother to Emma, sharer of enchanted, moonlit gardens. She took a deep breath and said, “If I love him, then I can hardly wish him a lifetime of loneliness.”

“Sit down,” Barbara said—a demand, not an invitation, this time. Miranda sat in a small, upholstered chair by the window. “Have you any notion of what it might be like to know that another woman’s body swells with the children of the man you love? Shall I tell you about cold winter nights alone in your bed while you know he warms the bed of another?”

“That was your choice.”

“Yes, it was. When I set out to capture the Duke of Montheath, it didn’t matter to me that he was already married. I wanted the kind of life he could offer his mistress. I intended to obtain a house and decent savings from him and whoever else might give them to me. I thought independence would be enough. How was I to know I would fall in love with him? How could I have guessed the pain that would become such a part of my life every time he left me to return to her? And I was never the dreamer you are. I walked in with my eyes wide open.”

“What has this to do with me?”

“Men are carnal creatures, Miranda. Even if he loves you, if he cannot have you, he will crave a warm, female body, and in the dark, any female will do. Will you play favorite auntie to Emma forever? Shall Andrew come and pick her up after her music lessons with the woman he finally takes in your place?” Barbara rose and crossed the room to stand behind Miranda. She leaned down and murmured in her ear, “Can you honestly exchange cordial greetings, knowing that the smooth, cultured voice of that woman moans his name in the dark?”

Miranda stood and spun to face her mother. “You want me to be like you! You want me to make your choice so you can feel vindicated!”

“You
are
like me, Miranda! We are flesh-and-blood women, the both of us! I need no vindication. I may have suffered for what I’ve chosen, but I have never regretted it. Go to him, darling! Ensnare him to you before he is bound by law to another. You told me once you would never share your man, as I have—”

“My
husband
, mother, I said my husband—”

“Well, you shared him all the same, didn’t you?” Barbara snapped. Miranda sucked her breath in sharply, and the look of anger on Barbara’s face melted instantly into remorse. “I am sorry. I should not have thrown that in your face.”

“You knew?”

“I spent the holidays at Danford. Perhaps Reggie and George could fool Letitia, for she didn’t want to see it, but they didn’t fool me.” Barbara shrugged. “You never brought it up, so I didn’t either. There was nothing to be done about it by then, and I would never have rubbed salt into such a wound.”