And Then Comes Marriage (2 page)

“Wood heat would never get the pressure high enough! Just wait, you’ll see!”

Just then, the whistle they had affixed to the meter blew shrilly. Poll grinned triumphantly when it shot a neat plume of steam into the air as it trilled.

“Ha! Listen to that!”

Cas listened as the whistle squeaked. Then it screamed. Then it popped a rivet, detaching itself to blow off the stack and sail across the alley, its trill weakening in a sudden, pathetic whimper.

Poll’s grin faded. “Oh, damn.”

The twins stepped back at once, Cas down one side of the alley, Poll down the other. After a brief alarmed glance at each other through the growing clouds of steam that really shouldn’t be there, they stepped back again. And again.

A movement at the edge of Castor’s vision caught his attention. He turned his head to peer into the dimness of the alley that ran from the street. A woman? Who—?

The stack itself shook from the pressure building up inside. The rivets holding it in its tubular form commenced to pop off in sudden, bulletlike haste. The twins threw themselves away from the machine, scrambling over the cobbles, intent only on getting as far from imminent death as possible.

Then Cas remembered the woman. He twisted half about to see that she had come closer, her appalled gaze on the wheezing, screaming, buckling machine.

Opposite him, Poll threw an arm over his face. “We need to get out of here!”

Cas pointed Poll toward the door to the safe interior of the building. “Run!”

He turned back to where the woman stood, her face pale and her hands held before her. She was finally backing away, as it was now quite obvious that the machine was about to explode like a Chinese firework, but she wasn’t moving fast enough.

Cas ran at her full-out, diving into her, wrapping his arms about her, and throwing them both back into the narrow, angled safety of the street entrance.

Just as they hit the hard, slimy cobbles, the monster behind them groaned into a roar.

Chapter Two

Miranda lay with a heavy weight upon her; a hard, cold lumpy surface beneath her; and a great ringing in her ears.

Through it, she could barely detect Mr. Worthington’s rather gratifying tone of concern. “Oh hell. Oh damn. Are you all right? Are you hurt?”

She remained still, a little surprised that she was, in fact, quite well. Her heart was racing and her bottom grew colder by the moment as the dampness of the ground seeped through her gown, but she felt nary a single bruise on her flesh.

His arms were wound about her, so very little of her had impacted the cobbles at full force. His large hand was wrapped around the back of her head, protecting her from the stones even now. She remembered that as they had fallen, he had tucked her face into the hollow of his neck and shoulder and rolled with her quite enveloped in his hold. It had been a splendidly athletic move and really a most gallant rescue.

Now he remained wrapped about her, lying fully upon her, his knee pressing her own apart. If anything, her pulse increased. He shifted his weight from her and knelt by her side. “Damn it, I’ve killed her!”

Opening her eyes, she couldn’t help smiling up at him gazing worriedly down at her. “A most graceful rescue, sir. Perhaps I should keep you at my side for all future explosions.”

He let out a gusting sigh of relief and grinned ruefully back at her. “No future explosions, I promise. In fact, let us pretend that one never happened!”

He stood easily and bowed to her, extending his hand. Taking hers, he lifted her to a standing position, steadying her as she staggered.

His arms were strong, keeping her easily on her feet. He took her shoulders in his hands, stepping back while yet steadying her.

“My deepest apologies! Are you quite sure you are all right?”

Miranda nodded, blinking back the sudden wave of heat that had apparently come directly from contact with Mr. Worthington’s iron-hard body. Goodness, he might have a taste for awful, foppish weskits, but there was nothing of the soft, doughy dandy about him!

Her feminine obsession with his bottom instantly expanded to a new fascination with that muscled chest.

I am incorrigible!

The notion rather pleased her, even as she smiled breathlessly up at Mr. Worthington. Imagine her—shy, awkward Miranda Talbot—incorrigible!

Mr. Worthington took her hand to bow over it. “Lovely lady, might I plead my heroism as cause to sidestep the proprieties just this once? I am Worthington.”

Miranda smiled, completely charmed.
Let us pretend that one never happened.
He meant to start over indeed, for those were the very words he used the day they had met!

On that afternoon a month ago, she’d been crossing a busy street in Mayfair and had caught her heel between two cobbles. Tildy, toting packages, had fallen a little behind.

Miranda knew she’d been silly to lose sight of the oncoming traffic in her worry over a shoe, but thankfully a handsome man—Mr. Worthington!—had simply stepped into the street, wrapped an arm about her waist, and plucked her from danger—and the offending shoe!

Now, just as she had then, Miranda dipped a curtsy and said, “Gallantry is its own reward, sir, but your actions were most heroic. I might allow that the act of introducing yourself—while shocking and forward of you!—is a just and proper reward for such valor.”

When she straightened, she found her own reward in the warmth of his smile. Goodness, she’d never seen his eyes gleam so at her! Previously warm and friendly, like spring sun on green grass, his eyes now promised heat and light and shadow and all manner of wickedly playful possibilities!

It must be that he’d been affected by their brief intimacy on the cobbles as well!

Miranda’s pulse became more rapid. She loved the spring sun but the flame of a midsummer bonfire might warm one twice as well, might it not? Fighting her own timidity, she gazed right back and continued the game. “I am Mrs. Gideon Talbot, Mr. Worthington. However, my hero may address me as Miranda.”

Would he say it again? Would he say the words that had made a fiercely circumspect widow, the very model of propriety, begin to remember that she was a flesh-and-blood woman as well?

His lips curled up at the corners. “Miranda, lovely daughter of Prospero. ‘O you, / So perfect and so peerless, are created / Of every creature’s best!’”

Miranda’s jaw dropped slightly.
Oh my.

The first time, he had smiled teasingly and recited, “‘The very instant that I saw you, did / My heart fly to your service.’” She’d been flattered, impressed by his Shakespeare-at-the-ready compliment, and charmed by his relaxed impertinence.

Now, with his leaf green eyes gleaming wicked promise and his lean, broad-shouldered form leaning close over hers, she found herself thrilled by the breathtaking notion of being seen as “perfect and peerless” by such a man!

She struggled for a light laugh. “You’ve studied up on your
Tempest
! Very good! But are you my Ferdinand or simply a Caliban?” She pretended arch indifference. “That remains to be seen, does it not?”

Cas stared down at the pretty widow, perplexed. She ought to be weak-kneed and simpering by now, not teasing him so pitilessly. He’d been quite proud of yanking that handy Miranda quote out of his memory.

Of course, his father, Archimedes Worthington, Shakespeare scholar, had strolled around the house quoting that bloody play for months. There was nothing so likely to drive a fellow off Shakespeare as an elderly man wandering the house at midnight in his baggy drawers stentoriously spouting Ferdinand’s lines from
The Tempest
!

Mr. Castor Worthington, confirmed bachelor, appreciator of all things feminine, stepped back to take a better look at the delightfully soft object of his sudden collision.

She seemed rather poised. Was this the same woman he’d just tackled and flung onto the cobbles—after very nearly exploding her?

She looked a mess, actually. Her fine straw bonnet, dyed to match her spencer, was a smeary ruin, as was the spencer. Beneath the short jacket, her gown was sullied with more alley slime, especially about the er … arse.

The damp fabric clung to her flesh, and Cas took a moment to appreciate the delightful shape revealed beneath it. Then he firmly returned his gaze to her face to find her assessing him expectantly.

Hmm.
His smile warmed.
Pretty.
Perhaps even beautiful, properly gowned in something that would set off that nicely structured bosom and that alabaster skin. Not that she wasn’t well dressed, just a bit understated.

Widow? Who else wore that weary shade of lavender gray?

A pretty widow with a wayward sense of adventure, if he was not mistaken.

His very favorite kind.

He smiled in return, a slow, lazy grin that had stripped many a woman right down to her knickers on the spot. He might need to flee the scene of the crime in the next few moments, but that didn’t mean he would pass up a chance to flirt with a pert young widow!

He was yet breathing, after all.

*   *   *

Miranda inhaled, her mouth going dry. Why, all of a sudden, was he smiling down into her eyes as if she were a present he’d very much like to unwrap?

Oh, yes. Please unwrap me.

Miranda closed her eyes and stilled her body against the heat that shot through her at that outrageous, wayward thought and the vague, disturbing, and delicious images that followed.

“Mrs. Talbot, I do believe I ought to take you—”

Miranda’s eyes flew open and her lips parted. In addition, her hands went completely numb with shock and parted ways with her reticule, which plopped to the filthy ground.

“—home. You’ll want to change out of these … er, damp things.”

Removing her revolting gown would be … “Wonderful,” she breathed. Then she caught herself up. Yes. Home. Changing into something that didn’t reek of best-not-ask! Good plan.

She reached out to awkwardly shake his hand. “It was lovely to … well, not really, but…” Don’t blather, girl! She straightened and curtsied sedately. “Home. Yes. I really must be heading home. I should not like to leave it too late, for it is becoming quite chilly out, isn’t it?”

He smiled down at her. Such a bold little thing! “Is it?” He bent his elbow and offered it to her, his busy schedule entirely dismissed from his thoughts. “Then I must continue my gallantry and accompany you home.”

He tucked the pretty hand of the pretty widow into his arm and allowed the lady to turn their feet toward the street, a hired cab, and this fascinating destination.

With those sea green eyes and those enchanting lips, not to mention a smashing figure, she was lovely, sultry, and altogether enticing.

What a grand way to pass the afternoon.

*   *   *

In the hired hack, Miranda found herself very nearly speechless in the company of the man she valued for his sparkling conversation! Yet something was different now. There was a new element, a tension between them that perhaps came from the way their bodies had mingled and warmed to each other.

And when he looked at her with that teasing, appreciative glint in his eyes?

I feel almost …
alluring.

Now, that was a word she’d never thought to apply to herself.

Ever.

She was a widow, attractive enough, but no raving beauty. Mr. Worthington was tall, broad-shouldered, fit as a horseman should be, and possessed of a handsome chiseled face, brilliant green eyes, a devilish smile, and charmingly wayward brown curls.

And a truly outstanding bottom. Her fingers twitched with a nearly overwhelming desire to explore further.

Miranda sighed. She had never once thought of running her hands over Gideon’s bottom. She’d never seen her stoop-shouldered, scholarly late husband without his frock coat or his nightshirt. Even marital copulation had been most decorous, in the dark with only the most necessary bits of muslin shifted to allow for the act. She’d done her duty to Gideon, as overseen and supervised by the ever-present Constance, Gideon’s strict elder sister, but she hadn’t loved him.

Nor had he loved her. He’d provided. She’d done her duty, all but for bearing a child. Gideon had found that flaw in his plan a tad disconcerting, but eventually allowed that children were a disturbing element in a house of cerebral pursuits, and magnanimously forgave her. Miranda had comforted herself in her barrenness with the thought that a houseful of little Gideons might have been a bit more than any sane woman might tolerate.

She’d kept her husband’s house in good order and his cerebral work uninterrupted. In return, he’d doled out just enough funds to keep her looking respectable, in gowns subject to Constance’s vision of respectability—that is, plain and demurely Quakerish. She’d not gone hungry, nor been beaten, nor actually deprived in body at all.

She’d simply been ignored to tiny little bits. She’d actually felt those bits falling off her, like flaking paint on a neglected house, shreds of her mind and soul drifting invisibly down to the carpet, day after day, year after long year.

Then Gideon had died, and shortly afterwards, miraculously, came the retirement of the repressive Constance, leaving Miranda most satisfactorily alone.