Lord of Ice (3 page)

He bowed his head, agonized by the thought. Clearly, he had tarried in solitude long enough.

When he lifted his head again, his eyes were as cold and gray as stone, and when he spoke, his voice was the controlled, deadened monotone of a seasoned commander. “I will be needed in London for the burial, I presume. He was not close to his family.”

Lucien passed an uneasy glance over his face, trying to read him. “There’s something else.” He reached into his waistcoat and took out a folded piece of paper, handing it to him. “Sherbrooke’s solicitor has already tried to contact you. I told him I would deliver this. It seems Jason named you not only executor of his will, but guardian of his ward.”

“Damn, I had forgotten,” he murmured, taking the letter. He cracked the seal and unfolded it with a private shudder to recall the conversation after the Battle of Albuera when Sherbrooke, half dead from saber wounds, his right arm gone, had begged him to accept the guardianship of his little orphaned niece if he didn’t survive. Damien had assured him that, of course, he would.

With a wave of loss that he quickly tamped down, he remembered how Sherbrooke used to buy souvenirs for the little girl, sending bits of Spanish lace and beads back to England for her from every town they conquered. Gaudy, colorful scarves, little dolls, satin slippers.

What the devil was her name again?
He skimmed the solicitor’s letter.
Yardley School, Warwickshire . . .

He had never seen the child, but he knew she was the bastard daughter of Sherbrooke’s deceased eldest brother, Viscount Hubert, by his mistress, who had been some sort of actress. Before Albuera, Sherbrooke had spoken often of the lively child, reading her earnest, little-girl letters aloud, to the hilarity of the officers at the mess, but after being maimed, he seemed to forget all about her, withdrawing into himself, drinking ever more heavily.

Ah, yes,
he thought, scanning down the page. That was it.

Miranda.

Just like the girl in Shakespeare’s
The Tempest
. A deuced fanciful name for an English schoolgirl, he thought with a stern frown. No doubt it was the actress’s doing. He supposed the chit was fourteen or fifteen by now—or had she passed that age years ago? he wondered with a sudden flicker of uneasiness. He brushed it aside. Folding the solicitor’s letter, he tucked it into his breast pocket.

Duty had a galvanizing effect on him. For a man of action, he had felt cut adrift since his regiment had been dissolved at the close of the war. He rolled up his emotions and tucked them away as quickly as a piquet could pull up camp and march. For the first time in weeks, he had some direction. After all, his demons could not haunt him when his mind was fixed on helping other people—his men, his new ward. He would hurry to London, arrange the memorial service for Jason, and steady his men after this difficult blow. With Lucien’s background in espionage for the Foreign Office, the two of them would help Bow Street however they could in the effort to find the person who had done this; then Damien would ride to Warwickshire to break the news in person to the girl about her uncle’s death.

Damn,
he thought bleakly. That would be the hardest part. He would rather rush a fortified line of French earthworks than face a female’s tears, no matter her age, but it had to be done.

He looked hollowly at Lucien, the silver-tongued, multilingual diplomat-spy. “How do you tell a little girl who watched her parents drown that the only person left in the world who loved her is dead?”

Lucien winced and shook his head. “Gently, my friend. Very, very gently.”

“Jesus,” Damien whispered, then looked away and let out a sharp curse under his breath. For Sherbrooke’s sake, he vowed to give the girl the best of everything, even if it meant foregoing the purchase of the broodmares with which he had planned on starting his racing stock in the spring—his dream, such as it was.

Above all, he would find out who had done this.

“I’ll go with you to London if you wish,” Lucien offered, watching him closely.

“Thanks,” he muttered, scratching his scruffy jaw with a barren sigh. “I’ve got to shave.”

Ready or not, it was time to face the world.

Warwickshire, a week later

“The food is hideous. I hate Mistress Brocklehurst. I was never meant to be worked like a galley slave. I wish I was
dead
!”

“Oh, Amy, quit whining. I did three times more work than you today, and you don’t see me moping.” This tart reply issued from within the hollow of the unlit fireplace, echoing slightly, but only the speaker’s drab, purple school uniform was visible, streaked with ashes, above a pair of prettily turned calves in black worsted stockings and battered half boots.

“But you have to do the most,” Amy said, her blond curls drooping like the feather duster in her hand. “You’re the eldest. And the strongest.”

“And
you're
the laziest,” Miranda FitzHubert retorted as she crawled backward out of the hearth with a smudge of soot on her nose. She stood, winced, gave her aching back a stretch, then elbowed the pouting twelve-year-old aside as she marched over to rinse her cleaning rag in the bucket of blackened water. “Hurry up, you lot!” she ordered the other dull, spiritless girls. “I’ve got to be out of here by five, and nobody had better make me late.” It was the one, precious, magical night a month that made her existence bearable.

“Yes, Miranda,” the others murmured at their tasks around the cold, drafty schoolroom.

The main body of the school’s thirty pupils had left for the holiday break, but the four girls presently scrubbing the schoolroom—Miranda, Amy, Sally, and Jane—had no families to go home to and so had to spend their dismal Christmases at Yardley. They were a company of outcasts—by-blows, orphans, poor relations—forgotten and unloved. To pay for their keep between sessions, the headmistress, Brocklehurst, had put them to work with tasks that would have caused a scullery maid to shudder.

“What do you suppose the others are doing right now?” Sally mused aloud as she carefully wiped the baseboards.

“Oh,” Jane sighed, standing on a chair to polish the wall sconces, “I’ll bet they’re baking pies with their mothers or shopping for presents for their papas.”

“Who cares what they’re doing? I don’t see why you all are so gloomy. It’s a lot more peaceful around here without them,” Miranda muttered, then attacked the caked-on dirt coating the brass fireplace grill.

Meanwhile, the clock on the mantel above her went on ticking relentlessly. She lifted her soot-smudged face and glanced at it. A quarter to five! God’s knuckles, she would never make it in time! The curtain rose at six.

Mentally rehearsing her lines for the umpteenth time, she redoubled her efforts, vehemently scrubbing the brass gridiron until she could make out the reflection of her own green eyes blazing with determination in it.

She hurried the others along until, at last, they finished cleaning the schoolroom from top to bottom, put away their brooms and brushes. Miranda hushed Amy’s chattering as the girls tiptoed past the headmistress’s parlor, where Brocklehurst and Mr. Reed, the cheese-paring clergyman who had founded Yardley School for Girls, were having tea with the nasty old ladies from the Altar Guild.

The girls climbed the stairs to their cold, bare dormitory on the topmost floor of the old converted farmhouse. Moonlight striped the darkened room from the long row of windows on the wall. Striding down the long line of cots to the smoldering hearth at the far end of the dreary room, Miranda’s step was light in anticipation of her long-awaited adventure. She glanced out through the frosted pane and saw yesterday’s snow still thinly covering the surrounding fields. Though it was scarcely past five o’clock, full darkness had fallen.

“How can ye have any energy at all, Miranda?” Jane asked wearily, falling onto her cot. “You worked like a dog.”

“I’m too excited to be tired—and too nervous,” she confessed. As the other girls lay inert on their cots or shut the curtains and began undressing with slow, weary movements, Miranda hurried to the crackling fire and pulled the cauldron out carefully on its metal crane. She ladled a washbasin full of the steaming water, then lit a few rushlights in the dark room.

They glowed like orange fireflies as she set them around her to light her task, her jittery anticipation growing by the minute.
Will there be many people in the audience tonight?
She hoped the playhouse was full to the rafters and bursting at the seams. The soldiers from the nearby barracks always loved her. Sometimes the travelers from the coaching inn came for the entertainments, as well. Maybe some fashionable Londoners would even be there. Maybe they would think she was even good enough for Drury Lane! she thought. Well, almost.

Soap in hand, she scrubbed her face, throat, and hands, scouring the dirt out from underneath her nails, dabbing the moist washcloth over her long, dark, wavy hair to get the soot out of it. The girls watched her in dull-eyed interest as they waited for Mrs. Warren, the cook, to bring up their tea and one slice of stale bread each.

Amy sidled up to her with a petulant look. “I want to come with you!”

“Absolutely not.”

“Why?”

“They don’t let children in.”

“But I want to hear you sing in the burletta. I want to see you dance in the ballet!”

“Too bad,” Miranda replied briskly as she plopped down onto the nearest cot and took off her sorry black boots and peeled off her smelly black worsted stockings. She put the washbasin on the floor and stepped into it with a giant sigh of pleasure; then she sank down on the edge of the bed again, savoring the luxury of letting her feet soak for a few minutes. She would be on them for the next six or seven hours, after all, mostly dancing.

“You’re so lucky. It’s not fair. I want to be an actress, too! You’re going to run away with Mr. Chipping’s acting troupe, and I shall die!”

“I wouldn’t do that to you, Amy.”

“Really?” The child sat down beside her and put her arm around her, leaning on her shoulder like the most devoted little sister, though her eyes sparkled with mischief.

Miranda cast her a wry smile. “If I ran off, how would my Uncle Jason know where to find me when he comes to fetch me?”
If he ever comes,
she thought, but did not utter the dismal words aloud.

“
Please
can I put on some of your rouge?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Amy, you’re twelve.”

“Rouge is wicked,” Sally announced, pushing herself up to a seated position from where she had sprawled on her cot.

Amy grinned at her. “Of course it is. That’s why Miranda likes it. Miranda, when you’re a rich and famous London actress, will you come and fetch me out of Yardley?”

Her long, dark hair slipped forward over Miranda’s shoulders as she bent down to wash her soaking feet. “If you promise not to whine every day.”

“I won’t have anything to whine about!” Amy hopped up to sit on the heavy table by the wall, swinging her crossed heels prettily. “Just parties and balls and fine frocks and a hundred boys to swear they love me.”

Miranda looked at her dubiously and lifted her feet out of the basin. She was hurriedly drying her feet and legs when all of a sudden, a bloodcurdling scream shot up through the floor. All the girls froze and looked around at one other, wide-eyed.

Amy jumped down off the table and began hopping about in panic. “Oh, no! Oh, no!”

Miranda whirled to her. “What have you done now?”

“Nothing! It wasn’t me!”

“Amy!”

“FitzHu
berrrrt!
” Brocklehurst’s roar zoomed up the stairs, followed in the next instant by marching footsteps that the girls knew all too well and feared like the advance of a Roman legion.

Miranda glanced in distress at the closed door of the dormitory, then at the child. Amy’s round face was pale and she was backing away from the door.

“Amy, what happened?”

“It was an accident!”

“Oh, blast, Amy. What did you break now?”

Amy’s huge blue eyes filled with tears. “Her stupid Wedgwood doggy!”

Every girl in the room gasped with dread.

“Oh,
no,
” Miranda whispered, her heart sinking.

Brocklehurst’s tirades tended to be lengthy. This could interfere with her slipping away tonight to reach the Pavilion Theatre in time. If she didn’t leave in fifteen minutes, she would miss the curtain call. Mr. Chipping had given her the starring role as the heroine in tonight’s burletta,
The Venetian Outlaw
. If she failed him, he might never give her such a large part again. He already thought all actresses were irresponsible. She didn’t want to prove him right.