And Then Comes Marriage (29 page)

Someone sneezed, a man sneeze, but it wasn’t Cabot or Twigg.

Twigg looked up, his face growing quite sharp and suspicious. Cabot and Twigg looked at each other. Twigg shook his head, quick and short. Cabot rose to his feet and joined Twigg as he started toward the other door in the room, the one that led to Miranda’s little library, her “reading room” as she called it. Attie liked it for its deep windowsills with cushions upon them, although Miranda’s books were mostly old Mr. Talbot’s stuffy history books, but for the ones that Poll had given her.

Cabot waved Attie back to her seat, which of course she didn’t return to, and he and Twigg crept carefully up to the door, Attie right on their heels. She might not be very big, but she could trip anyone, fast and dirty—and did it really matter
how
someone hit the floor, as long as they did so?

But when they pushed open the door, it was only old Seymour, sitting at a table with a book open before him, apparently lost in his reading.

When the door opened, he looked up, blinking. “Oh dear. I fear I’ve lost track of time. I just meant to check for a volume I lent Mrs. Talbot some weeks back, for I wished to search in the footnotes—” He drew back when he saw the two men staring at him and Attie scowling at him from between. He snapped the book shut and stood, pulling his dignity about him sternly.

“I must go. My, it grows late. Please beg Mrs. Talbot’s pardon for me.” More of that, blah-blah, heavens the man was a bore, and then he left with the book under his arm, mostly hidden, but Attie was short enough to read the binding.

She sneered as old Seymour let Twigg show him out. “He didn’t give that book to Miranda,” she told Cabot. “Poll did. Sneaky old sneak-thief!”

*   *   *

Miranda clapped her hands as Button opened the final, largest box—which Cabot had earlier secured against Attie’s curious, sticky fingers—and lifted the exquisite creation from it, flicking away the folds in the fabric with an expressive gesture.

“Oh, Button! For me?”

Miranda stepped forward to touch it, although she nearly drew her hand back like a child tempted by breakables. Which was ridiculous, for she would not only wear it on her skin, but she would also dance and whirl in it tonight.

Abruptly, she couldn’t wait!

It was crafted in the most beautiful shade of Turkish-blue silk, with a pattern in sapphire blue and emerald green glass beads twining sensually up one side and branching across the bodice like vines growing up a statue of a goddess. A wide sapphire velvet ribbon banded the high waist, and Button displayed a daintier version that would go about her neck, holding a single, perfect pearl pendant in a teardrop that she could already imagine would rest perfectly in the hollow of her throat.

Then she noticed some other details. The gown streamed down from the waistline in a sleek column. It lacked the fullness in the skirts that Miranda had become accustomed to in the demure and practical gowns Constance had ordered for her.

There would be no striding about in this glorious creation.
I shall have to drift like a ghost!

Button climbed onto a ready chair and held the gown over her head. She dived upward into it, for he did not wish to pool it on the floor for her to step into.

“It will crease, darling. In fact, from this moment onward, you probably ought not to sit, other than the carriage ride. Of course, if you could manage to lie flat?

Miranda frowned. “It is a ball. May I dance?”

From his perch, Button pondered her for a long moment. “You ought to manage a waltz well enough. Mind you, no country reels.”

Miranda’s brows went up. She had intended sarcasm.

Button clambered down from his place on the chair and moved behind her to fasten her up the back. She twisted a bit, wishing to see more in the mirror.

Button gave her bottom a little spank. “Be still.”

Miranda blinked at that. Goodness, the world certainly made free with her bottom lately.

She held her breath as he turned her toward the mirror at last. “Oh.”

She was beautiful. There was no denying it, no demurring, no waving off of compliments. She was absolutely gorgeous. “I had no idea,” she murmured in astonishment.

What a simply magical gown. What a strange and magical little man, this Liar.

“You’ll notice the new waistline,” he went on. “It is a classical line, very Greco-Roman, but the band around is much wider, thus lowering the waist by a few inches. It adds a certain elegance, don’t you think?”

Miranda bit her lip. Her body seemed terribly well defined in this gown. In fact, she was quite sure her bosom had never been so plentiful!

The gown was beyond her wildest dreams, however. “The new low waistline,” Miranda murmured. “I’ve truly fallen out of mode, haven’t I? When did that happen?”

Button, who was still behind her, fastening what was likely number twenty-five of the fifty buttons, straightened to smile angelically over her shoulder into the mirror.

“Tomorrow.”

Miranda went still. It suddenly occurred to her that for someone who had always preferred to stand on the sidelines and observe, she was about to become very, very visible.

To think she might, under Button’s patronage, be one of those astonishing women who set the mode of the day!

Button seemed to think such a thing routine. Of course, he would. He was the great Lementeur. Still buttoning, he recited a list of all his favorite clients—“Women,” he told her, “who changed the path of our history. After that,” he added, “creating a new bodice line is an amusing little game.

“You shall be one of those, I think,” he murmured as he took a tiny stitch somewhere in the back with the threaded needle that he’d kept thrust into the lapel of his perfectly fitted silk surcoat. “If you wish, you could quite easily fix the attention of a viscount, or even a duke.”

Miranda blinked; then a short laugh of disbelief burst from her lips. “Oh, no. Oh, Button, that’s…”
Impossible.

There is only one man’s attention I wish to fix.

And for the first time she really believed she could—his attention and his heart. Her beautiful, darkly shining Cas.

She suddenly felt light and joyous, ready to show the world that she was so much more than simply her inexcusable parents’ child, more than her repressive husband’s widow.

I am Mira. I am beautiful, and brave, and invincible … and in love. I have nothing to fear.

The past is in the past. At last.

A slow smile spread over her face, her body, and her soul. With her fingertips to her lips, she gazed in wonder at herself in the mirror.

Mr. Button watched the joy infuse her features, and his anxious face creased into a puckish grin. “Ah! This is good, then?”

Miranda made a small sound of disbelief. “Good? It is astonishing! Wondrous!” She lifted her chin, her joy bubbling out of her in a lilting chuckle. “You need not worry over wrinkles from the carriage, dear Button! I do believe I could fly to Wyndham’s ball!”

*   *   *

A short time later, the lovely Mrs. Talbot left the house on Breton Square with a smile on her pretty face. Button was as proud as any papa, or mother duck watching her hatchling take to the water.

Swim, my dear!

Oh, when he got his hands about the throats of those two rotters! Really, to spin their wily web around a perfectly nice creature like Miranda!

There would be no more of that now. Miranda would go to the ball, advertise his genius and her own beauty while he took a well-deserved celebration with his Cabinet.

Really, the world had no idea of the intricacy involved in launching a legendary beauty! As if one could simply be born fabulous!

Button helped Miranda into the rented carriage and gave the driver directions to Lord Wyndham’s grand house in Grosvenor Square.

Once the carriage was lost among the hordes of others heading out to their entertainments, Button turned to reenter Miranda’s house to gather his tools and saw Cabot stepping out with the already packed cases in his capable hands, along with Button’s hat and coat and gloves. Cabot stopped, lifting his head, looking for Button.

Button’s throat tightened. That jawline … just devastating. Then, as he always must, Button pushed Cabot’s incandescent—naturally born!—appeal to the back of his consciousness and forced himself to see only the useful assistant, who was now striding toward him. “Cabot, you’re a godsend!”

Cabot looked down at him calmly. “No one sent me. I am never far.”

Later, at Worthington House—which had never been so quiet!—the three conspirators, Button, Cabot, and Attie, sat down at the kitchen table and lifted their hot chocolates high.

Cabot glanced askance at the inattentive Philpott rocking in her chair by the ovens. Attie dismissed his concerns with a wave of the lemon biscuit in her hand, which Philpott had prepared for the sole purpose of cajoling another very fine bonnet from the great Lementeur.

“Don’t mind Phillie. She’s on her second pot of tea. I could chase a cobra about the kitchen and she’d never notice.”

Cabot slid his gaze toward Attie. “Tell me that never happened.”

Attie only smiled.

Button tapped the kitchen table impatiently with the head of his entirely-for-striking-a-fashionable-pose walking stick. “Attention, if you please! We have a dire emergency of the Cas and Poll variety!”

Attie stopped in mid-chew, a frown skewering her brow. “Mmph-phy?”

“Emergency?” Cabot translated for Button. “The plan came off swimmingly. Miranda has never been more beautiful. What could go wrong now?”

Button paused for dramatic effect. “Miranda is
in love.
”

Attie’s jaw dropped, crumbs and all. Cabot let out a long breath.

“Oh damn.” That was Cabot, who never cursed.

“Oh my.” That was Attie, who often cursed. “Are you sure?”

Button nodded, obviously much gratified by their shock and amazement. “I told her she could easily angle for a duke. She only smiled dreamily.”

“So you believe we are too late.” Cabot, who disliked sweets, absently took a lemon biscuit and bit into it. When he noticed, he handed it to Attie, bite-mark and all.

She dug in at once, for Attie always did think best while chewing. Or hanging upside down. She’d learned long ago not to mix the two.

Button spread his hands. “My worry, exactly!” He ran his fingers distractedly through his thinning hair, disarranging it madly. “And now I’ve made her one of the most beautiful women in London! What are we going to do?”

Cabot reached out, but didn’t quite touch Button’s hand where it lay on the tabletop. “Sir, there is nothing we can do tonight—and Miranda is safely in the hands of Lady Wyndham, with the twins safely occupied at Mrs. Blythe’s.”

Attie nodded. “Ellie and I managed to keep them away from Miranda all day. We can keep it going a little longer, I think.”

Button let out a breath, then mustered up a smile. “Yes. There is time to think of some solution.”

In thanks, he reached out to put a hand over Attie’s smaller one and Cabot’s larger one. It was a gesture of relief and friendship. There was no reason to imagine that he felt Cabot’s hand vibrate slightly beneath his.

No reason at all.

Chapter Twenty-six

Since Miranda had never been terribly in the know with Society gossip, Button had given her a few clues about the stunning redhead who greeted her in the grand hall of Wyndham House.

“Lady Alicia, Marchioness of Wyndham. Fallen woman, such a scandal, married very well anyway. No one in Society remembers her past. I know that because they say so every time they mention her. Don’t tell anyone, but she has saved the British Empire at least twice—and goodness knows the trouble she saved our future citizens! Don’t let the fact that she is petite and curvaceous fool you. That ginger hair comes with a temper. She killed the most dangerous man in the world with the very knife with which
he
had just stabbed
her
! It’s a wonderful story, which I can’t possibly tell you, because it is a state secret. In addition, she has the most marvelous taste in bonnets. You should see what she can do with a veil!”

Miranda looked a few inches down at the ridiculously beguiling creature who stood smiling at her in welcome. Lady Alicia’s Lementeur gown was in a rich bronze that made her hair look like flame. The beading swept down over her from one shoulder, making her look as though she stood among green branches. Her gown also sported the “new” waistline.

Her bosom looked even better than Miranda’s.

Lady Alicia didn’t look like a killer. Or a fallen woman.

Then again, I don’t look like a woman who is secretly having a wildly wicked affair.
Miranda looked down at herself in the fitted bronze gown that did miraculous things for her middling bosom.
Or perhaps I do.

Miranda adored Mr. Button, and Mr. Button adored Lady Alicia. That was all Miranda needed to know about her. She smiled back at her hostess in delight.

“Button has told me so much about you!” they said simultaneously.