Breathless (9 page)

She waited a very long time. There was no way she could really tell, though. The room boasted no clock that she could see in the gloomy shadows, and her fury was finally beginning to drain away, to be replaced by a touch of embarrassment. Any apprehension that slid into her consciousness she swiftly banished. She simply needed to clarify things, to find out why her family found the earl so unacceptable. And then she could stuff it down Brandon's throat.

After all, the Rohans were hardly the epitome of respectability. Though her loving but stern mother had made certain her sons had never succumbed to the lure of such depraved activities as the Heavenly Host provided, she had accepted that young men were bound to kick up the occasional fuss. And Miranda knew the shocking truth. Her own darling father and his father before him had been active in the Host. In fact, her father said his knowledge of them gave him particular reason to make certain his sons kept their distance.

But still, she vaguely remembered the occasional scandals. Benedick had once been engaged to a woman so unstable she'd threatened him with a gun at a public rout, and then she'd continue to behave so strangely she would have ended in Bedlam if she hadn't died.

Charles, stuffy Charles, had had a great fondness for opera dancers until he'd fallen in love with Kitty
Marsden, the surprisingly down to earth daughter of a country squire.

And Brandon was doing his best to follow in the family tradition. It was no wonder they'd been so forgiving of her lapse.

So the Rohans were scarcely high-sticklers. Why should they kick up a fuss about a simple friendship with a man of bad reputation? It made no sense.

She rose and strolled nervously around the cramped confines of the room. She peered through the window that looked out over the mews, then turned and walked back around the crowded room. What was taking him so long?

Eventually she sat again, back on the hard sofa. If it had been at all warm she would have fallen asleep, but as it was she had to pull her pelisse closer about her in a vain effort to keep warm. She began to worry that the majordomo had forgotten her existence, or that his disapproval of a young lady visiting a gentleman so offended his proprieties that he thought to teach her a lesson, which was far-fetched, but servants could at times be even stuffier than their masters. Except that he'd looked almost embarrassed when he'd shown her into the dismal room.

She'd just about given up hope when the door opened, and the gloomy butler reappeared. “His lordship will see you now,” he announced, and she could sense his disapproval. Presumably with her, though he looked around the grim room with disapprobation. Miranda rose as gracefully as she could with frozen joints, giving the man a pleasant smile as she preceded him out the door.

She hadn't realized how big the house was as she
followed the gloomy Leopold through the darkened corridors. She expected to be brought to the cozy little parlor where she and Lucien had shared so many pleasant hours, but the room he brought her to was a great deal different. Warmer, thank God, with a good fire blazing in the grate, but with dark, almost severe furnishings and heavy draperies.

Lucien de Malheur was sitting behind a desk, writing. He glanced up as she approached, but in the darkness she couldn't see his expression. Just his face surrounded by a mane of long dark hair. He made no effort to rise.

“Oh, thank God,” she said briskly, heading straight for the fire. “I'm absolutely freezing! Don't you have fires in any of your parlors?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Leopold put you in an unheated room.”

It wasn't exactly a question. “He did. He probably didn't expect it to take you so long to see me.”

“Is that a note of reproach I hear?”

There was something wrong. His voice was light, faintly teasing, but there was something between them that hadn't been there before. Some odd constraint that made her uneasiness deepen.

But she refused to give in to it. “It is,” she said in a cheerful voice. “I come racing across town in a desperate hurry because I had to see you at once, and you keep me locked up in an icebox for hours.”

“One hour,” he corrected her, and he gave her no answering smile. “Things have moved a little faster than I expected, and I needed to make a few arrangements, marshal my forces before we met.”

Her flippant response died on her tongue as she looked at him. He might have been a stranger. Not
the man she'd laughed with, talked with. The scandal-mongers had been right after all. This was the Scorpion who faced her, cold and deadly.

“Did I do something wrong?” she asked in a quiet voice. “Have I somehow offended you?”

“No. Have a seat, Lady Miranda. I'm still waiting confirmation on a small issue, and then we'll talk.”

She turned slowly, facing him. He hadn't risen, when he always had before. Perhaps his leg was paining him, and that was why everything was so stiff and strange…

No. She wasn't going to lie to herself, and she wasn't going to sit patiently like a good girl. She moved closer. “I think not. I think you should explain what's going on now.”

“Sit down.”

She sat.

She sat, hating herself for doing so, but there was something in his voice, an icy chill, that hit her knees, and she sank into the chair behind her.

She watched him, her face composed, even as her heart raced beneath the stern trappings of her day dress. “I've been a very great fool, haven't I?” she said in a conversational voice.

He was scribbling something on a piece of paper, and he didn't bother to look up. “More than once, Lady Miranda,” he said. And then his pale, empty eyes met hers. “To which time were you referring?”

“Our friendship is far from accidental, isn't it?”

“Our friendship?” he echoed, and there was only the slightest trace of mockery in his voice. “It was planned.”

“But how did you know I'd have a carriage accident?
Or was that simply good luck on your part?” She kept her hands clasped in her lap. She didn't want him to see how tightly she was gripping her fingers, and she buried them in the folds of her pelisse.

“I never count on luck, child. One of my men tampered with your carriage, ensuring the wheel would come off.”

This was a nightmare, she thought, not blinking. This was some horrid bad dream and she was back home in bed, sleeping soundly.

But she knew it wasn't. “I could have been killed.” Her voice was steady.

He showed no remorse. “That would have been highly unlikely, given that you are a notable whip. I expected you'd be able to control your cattle under even more dire circumstances. And of course we were right there waiting. If my calculations had been off it still would have accomplished what I hoped.”

“And what is it you wished to accomplish?”

He set the pen down and leaned back. “Your family's misery,” he said frankly. “In particular your older brother's, but I'd be happy if the entire family suffered the torments of the damned.”

It felt like a knife to her heart, she thought dazedly, trying to compose herself. Her friend, her lover, the lover who'd never touched her, never said anything but who was, nevertheless, her love. “Me included?” She managed to keep her voice steady even as she was breaking inside.

His eyes met hers. “Actually not,” he said. Watching her, and there was an odd expression in his pale eyes. “I thought I'd marry you.”

His arrogance took her breath away, and her grief vanished, replaced by a cleansing anger. “I think not.”

“Do you? You forget: I always get what I want, sooner or later. Call it payback for what happened to my sister.”

“I didn't know you had a sister.”

“She was my half sister and my only living relative. Genevieve Compton.” He said it as if he expected it to mean something to her, but she simply shook her head.

“I've never heard of Genevieve Compton.”

“Your brother Benedick's fiancée? Granted, you were a child at the time, but I can't believe you weren't aware of the scandal.”

“Our family is always embroiled in scandal. My parents did their best to shield me from some of the more salacious stories. What did my brother do to your sister?”

“He cried off from the engagement and she killed herself.” The words were flat, emotionless, and Miranda stared at him in shock. The stories of the mad fiancée she vaguely remembered now made sense. “He told her he was going to break the engagement, so she arranged to meet him at Temple Bar to discuss it with their lawyers, and when he arrived she took a gun and blew her brains out in front of them all.”

“That is truly tragic,” she said, horrified. “But your sister was said to have been mad—she threatened him with the very same gun.”

His mouth thinned. “It's of no consequence. He took my sister. I thought I'd return the favor.”

She didn't move, afraid if she did that she'd attack
him. She'd never been so angry in her life—she almost trembled with it. “No.”

His smile, the one that she'd found so charming, now infuriated her. “Yes.”

“This isn't medieval England, you lying skunk,” she said with something close to a snarl. “You can't marry an unwilling bride.”

“You'll be willing.”

“And what miracle or force of nature would ensure that?” she snapped.

His voice was simple and direct. “If you don't I will challenge your brother Brandon to a duel, and I will kill him.”

Automatically her eyes fell to his leg. “You can't…”

“I will arrange it so that your brother is the one who calls me out, and it will be my choice of weapons. I'm an expert marksman—I will put a bullet directly between his eyes with no effort at all.” He rose, moving around the desk, holding his cane but barely leaning on it. “You see, I can do anything I want. I'm giving you a chance to save your brother, but I'm just as happy slaughtering him. Anything to take a beloved sibling away from the Rohan family. Taking a sister has better symmetry, and the advantage with you would be that the pain would be lifelong. Once you marry me you'll never see them again.”

She wanted to throw up. The thought of her darling baby brother lying cold and dead in the predawn light horrified her, and she didn't doubt for a moment that this vile man meant it.

She couldn't show weakness. “I think your brain must be as disordered as your sister's, my lord,” she said with a foolish lack of tact. Except she didn't believe he was
mad at all. Cruel, determined, but perfectly rational. “Why in the world would you want to be saddled with a wife you despise?”

He laughed. “Oh, I don't despise you, my precious. I find you quite…irresistible. My original plan had nothing to do with marriage at all, but a few minutes in your delightful company and I decided you were just what I needed. I need an heir, after all, and I have to marry sooner or later, and if I marry you it will be forever. You'll never be free.” His smile was positively angelic. “At least with you I won't have to worry about foolish conventions.”

“Such as pretending to be in love?”

“Exactly. I rather thought we'd present your family with a fait accompli. There will be nothing they can do about it—they certainly can't kill their brother-in-law in a duel. All they can do is…miss you.” There was no pain beneath his smooth voice, and yet for a moment she thought she had a glimpse of what drove him.

“No.”

He looked at her tenderly. “The ton will be astonished. Who would have thought a soiled dove would make such an excellent match?”

“You bastard.”

“Not in fact, but in nature, absolutely. I have a special license already in hand. I think distance would be a wise idea when your family hears about our elopement. We don't want our honeymoon interrupted by a brawl.”

“I won't marry you.”

He came toward her, and she noticed his limp was far less apparent than it had been. He came close and she wanted to flinch, but she held herself still. She gripped the seat of the chair as his fingers ran down her cheek
and along the side of her neck, dipping inside her collar for a brief, shocking moment. “Oh, my precious,” he said softly, “of course you will.”

She shivered. Shivered because he was touching her, shivered because she reacted to it, to the caress. But she didn't move, and her eyes flashed fire.

“You wouldn't do it.”

“You think not? I had no qualms about endangering your life with a carriage accident. Trust me, the name
Scorpion
isn't an accident. I'm cold and lethal—society shuns me for good reason.” He leaned his face down, and brushed his lips against her cheekbone. “I'm sorry I'm such an ugly brute, my precious, but you can always close your eyes and pretend I'm someone else.”

She did close her eyes then. Not because of the scars—those she'd ceased to notice long ago. The sight of his betrayal was new, though, and she couldn't stand it.

“So what's it to be, my darling? Your brother's life or marriage to me? I do promise that I'll grow bored of you very quickly and you will live a pleasant life out in the country, with more than enough money to indulge your every whim. Look at it this way—your life will be very much like it is here. You'll be free to do what you want without a thought to the ton. You'll simply be a bit more isolated. Make your choice.” The soft, caressing voice ended on a note of steel.

He'd won, as he'd known he would. She knew Brandon too well—he'd rush into a confrontation and Lucien would kill him without hesitation.

“Yes.” Her voice was cold.

He laughed softly beneath his breath. “I warned you I was ‘determined to be a villain.' I may look like foolish
Caliban, but my soul is far blacker. You just refused to see it.” He pulled back. “I'll have the horses put to.”

“
What?
I have no clothes, and my servants will have no idea where I'm gone…”