Miracle (55 page)

With a curse, Trey hurried from the room. Clayton stared after him.

"You don't intend to join him?" the duchess asked.

"Why should I?"

"Curiosity, I would think. Or family loyalty."

"I grow weary and impatient of family loyalty."

The duchess moved to the door. "You always did take loyalty to the extreme," she said under her breath, then added, "I'm finding that loyalty can be a damned nuisance occasionally."

Having given Trey enough time to have departed for the park, Clayton allowed his grandmother a slight bow, then exited the room, stride lengthening, his mind scrambling over alternative routes to Hyde Park. Certainly avoid the way by Westminster, which meant
Blackfriars
Bridge was out of the question—too many Sunday worshipers, the snare would be murder: perhaps down Fleet Street to The Strand, out by way of Saint James's Square then to Piccadilly—

What the devil was she doing climbing into that feeble little racer? Didn't she
care
that she could be killed? Or was this just another spiteful ploy to needle him—or rather Trey—the duke—

"Clayton! Darling!" Blanche
Delarue
-Madras, his mistress, who he had virtually forgotten the last weeks, stepped into the foyer, stopping him dead in his tracks. Throwing open her arms and greeting him with a brilliant, delighted smile, she cried, "I'm home from Paris at last!"

At the commencement of the running, bets were five and six to four on Lady Cavendish. Indeed, the oldest sportsmen gathered had wagered on her and declared they never, surely, did see a woman drive in better style.

Word of the future duchess challenging members of the Jockey Club had obviously run rampant throughout the city. It was all Clayton could do to elbow his way through the pressing throng, men and women craning their necks, standing on their toes to watch the spectacle. By the time he arrived at the frenzied scene, the race was over.

Miracle stood up in the racer and waved at the cheering crowd, which only excited the spectators more.

"Another race!" several cried.

"My money's on the gel!" another shouted.

They cheered again.

Miracle threw them a kiss.

Bumped and jostled, Clayton allowed himself to relax. She had obviously survived the race—and won it. Why was he not surprised?

"Clayton! Darling, what is all the commotion over?"

Huffing, yanking her skirt hem from beneath a man's foot, Blanche said, "This is hardly the sort of welcome I had anticipated—being practically dragged from the house—"

"Spare us the theatrics," he told her, watching Miracle's hair tumble as she removed her purple cap and waved it in the air. Her waistcoat was purple, and she wore nankeen skirts, purple shoes, and embroidered stockings.

Blanche went to her toes, hopped up and down, as she attempted to see over the people's heads. "Scandalous."

"Isn't it?" he replied with a grin, and glanced askance at his mistress, who regarded him with a curious eye and a pout on her full red lips.

"And beautiful," she added with a tip of her head.

"Isn't she?"

"Obviously, the rumors I've heard about her are true."

"No doubt."

The crowd parted in that moment. Suddenly, the duke appeared, red-faced and agitated, but in fine form, certainly: It wouldn't do to exhibit flagrant anger in public, especially not at Miracle.

The spectators roared again.

Trey said something to Miracle. She said something to him. Clayton knew that look. Recognized the flash of fire in her blue-green eyes. Knew only too well what the set of those shoulders and the thrust of that chin portrayed. If his brother thought that bullying her in front of a hundred or more people would accomplish anything, he was sadly mistaken. "Careful, big brother," he said aloud to himself. "She bites when bitten."

Wrapping one arm around her waist, Trey dragged her off the racer. With a smile plastered across his face, his brow sweating, he maneuvered himself and Miracle through the pressing crowd toward Park House. Men slapped him on the back. They demanded to know the date of her next race, and hoped they would be invited to the wedding.

Clayton stared after the departing couple.

The realization that she was his now—
his brother's
—hit him like a blow in the stomach.

He turned and discovered Blanche regarding him curiously. "Shall I have my driver take us to my place?" she asked softly.

Sliding his hands into his pockets, Clayton nodded.

Salterdon kicked open the front door and dragged Miracle across the threshold, squirming. Gertrude, Ethel, and the cook scattered. Ellie planted herself on the bottom step of the staircase as if barricading it with her body. Upon seeing her standing there, stiff as a pillar of salt, he declared with a snarl, "You! I might have known."

"Your Grace—"

"Traitor. You always did like him best."

"Let me go!" Miracle snatched and hopped, paying little attention to the odd, angry words Salterdon shot toward her flushed and agitated friend. "How dare you handle me in such a way? You've no right! We're not married and— and if I have any say-so, we won't—"

"You have no say-so, brat." He dragged her into the drawing room, shoved her away, then slammed the door behind him. He looked, Miracle thought with a sluice of despair and a momentary twinge of fear, like a madman: face purple with rage, eyes wild, fists clenched so hard his knuckles shone white. Reason. Obstinacy would only aggravate matters.

She backed away, rolling her velvet cap in her hands. "I was never in any danger," she imparted as he paced like a leopard, hands on hips, head down, dark hair waving over his brow nearly to his eyes, before the only escape route from the room. "The trick is to know the course—"

"Be quiet." He flashed her a telling look. "I'm attempting to decide whether I want to choke you or not."

She raised her chin. "Would I be wrong in supposing that your temper is
aflux
over how this looks to your beloved peers, and not because I might have been injured or killed?"

A thin smile curved his hard mouth.

"Well." She sniffed. "At least you're at last being honest. Does this also mean I'm free to return to Cavisbrooke?"

"Is that what you want?" he shot back so quickly that Miracle was left momentarily speechless. The realization that whatever she admitted might well mean her future made her face go cold as ice. For the last days, since leaving Salterdon in a cloud of dust, she had thought of nothing but returning to Cavisbrooke—to her father, her horses, and her life as a hermit—and never setting eyes on the duke of Salterdon again.

"Answer me,
dammit
!"

She jumped, and wrung her hat harder. "I . . ." she began hesitantly, "I . . .
yes . . .
no. I don't know."

"You don't know? Is that my understanding? You don't know if you wish to be married?"

"Perhaps if I had more time—"

"Time? Why? So you can further humiliate me? What next, Lady Cavendish? Perhaps ride nude down Piccadilly? Dance on a stage and flash your bottom? Or perhaps something a bit more dignified. Have yourself appointed to the House of Lords . . . or should I say, Commons? Tell me what you want, Miracle."

With a little shrug, she lowered her eyes. "I've given that a great deal of thought these last weeks. I suppose what I would like best is to leave London—oh, not necessarily return to Cavisbrooke—it is rather bleak and very lonely, once I allowed myself to admit it. And there are those terrible memories . . ."

A cloud of unhappiness crossed her features. Her throat tightened. "I've imagined myself in the country. Where the air is clean and the sky is blue. Where I can have my chickens and pigs and rabbits . . . and, of course, my horses. Napitov.
Hasan
.
Salifa
. I've even given some thought to breeding them to English horses. I understand that it's been done. That the cross breeds excellently. With the English horse's ability for speed, and the Arabian's for endurance, the resulting horse would be untouchable on the track." Realizing her voice had risen with enthusiasm, Miracle glanced at Salterdon, who, having stopped his pacing, stared at her oddly.

"I'm sorry if that upsets you," she said, "and I'm sorry if that doesn't meet with your approval of what your wife should be, but it's what I am, sir. And what I will be until the day I die."

The duke dragged his hands through his hair and shook his head. The anger having drained from him, he declared in a weary, resolute voice to himself, "I must have been crazy for becoming involved in this. No amount of money is worth this worry and humiliation."

Blanche's deceased husband's money had purchased the house on Drury Lane, as well as one in Paris, and another in Rome. But she wanted Basingstoke. Badly.

Pouring himself a healthy brandy, Clayton tried his best to imagine Blanche occupying his home—all two hundred rooms of it. Perhaps it wasn't such a bad idea. She was certainly beautiful, in the run-of-the-mill sort of way. She understood his appreciation for privacy. While she didn't understand his love of labor, of tilling the soil and watching it burst forth with abundant treasures, she allowed him his "pastime," claiming he would eventually outgrow it.

No doubt they would produce handsome children together. But Blanche didn't care for children. She had gladly handed over the custody of her only son to her deceased husband's family for the settlement of £100,000.

His grandmother didn't like her. Called her a "
dollymop
with a pedigree."

And the fact that Trey had slept with her had come as no surprise. He'd suspected it from the beginning. He hadn't cared then, and he didn't care now.

Perhaps he
should
marry her. As the duchess had pointed out more than once—always after she had attempted to arrange a relationship with some vapid and vain daughter of one of her peers—"You'll grow fond of her in time."

Besides, marriage to Blanche might get his mind off Miracle.

"My lord," a servant said behind him. "Her ladyship is ready to see you now."

He poured Blanche a drink, refreshed his own. He took the stairs slowly, feeling as if he were scaling a mountain.

Blanche was already in bed, her black hair loose and thick and spread over the white silk sheets. Her skin looked just as white. Her lips were red. And smiling.

"Took you long enough," she teased, and patted the bed beside her.

Clayton glanced around the room. Blanche's clothes were tidily folded and put carefully into place, and it suddenly occurred to him that all their many lovemaking escapades had always been in the bed, with their clothes folded neatly, put aside carefully.

Until Miracle, spontaneity hadn't existed. Passion had been something to harness. And lust—inappropriate for a man of his station to even acknowledge, much less act upon.

Until Miracle.

He had never wanted a woman so badly as he did Miracle.

He quaffed his brandy. Then he quaffed Blanche's. He dropped the glasses to the floor, and her eyebrows went up.

"Get out of the bed," he ordered her.

"I beg your pardon?"

"The bed. Out. Get on the floor. The window. The chair. Anywhere but the bloody bed."