The Wicked Marquess (11 page)

Chapter Thirteen

The various members of Sir Kenrick’s household held strong opinions about Miranda’s tinctures and tisanes. Most popular among the footmen was the taking of two tablespoons of syrup of bugle to counteract the effects of strong drink, while the maidservants swore by viper’s herb as a precaution against spider bites. Cook frequently bound a potato poultice to her forehead to ease the headache. The butler, Higgins, was partial to a toothache remedy of wood barley, made with mead and a little pennyroyal, gargled with a considerable amount of wine.

It was perhaps an after-effect of this decoction that caused Higgins to beam upon the gentleman who came calling this afternoon, and direct him to the garden, promising he would find both Miss Russell and Miss Blanchet. As it turned out, only Miss Russell was in the garden. Miss Blanchet had retired to her bedchamber, there to employ lettuce-water mixed with oil of roses in an attempt to soothe her over-stimulated nerves.

Lord Baird strolled along a pebbled pathway. The garden was nicely laid out, trees and flowers and shrubs arranged in naturalistic groups. The heavy scent of cabbage roses filled the air.

He found Miss Russell kneeling before a lovely old Damask rose. Her hair was untidy, her gown mussed, her left cheek smudged with dirt. On the ground beside her rested a copper watering pot. In one hand she grasped a pruning knife. She was removing dead blossoms from the rosebush with considerable savagery.

Benedict did not immediately announce his presence, but simply stood and watched her. So intent was Miranda on her task that she had not heard his footsteps on the path.

He had hurt the child, and was sorry for it. She was infatuated with her first kiss, or kisses, and the provider thereof. The infatuation would wear off, as infatuations always did. She would find soon enough that other kisses suited her as well as his.

Appalling, the idea of other gentlemen kissing Miranda. Shocking, the intensity of these feelings for an untried miss. Or almost untried, and Benedict must try her no further, which would be much easier accomplished if he could maintain a prudent distance. Yet he dared not avoid her, lest she find someone less scrupulous to help her achieve her ends.

Scrupulous? Sinbad? Benedict wavered between horror and amusement at himself. “Hello, brat,” he said. “You have a smudge.”

Miranda had not been paying attention to the Damask rose, or the Rosa Mundi, or the nearby Old Pink Moss. Her mind had been on a certain marquess, whom she had been consigning to perdition in various colorful ways. Now that he stood before her in the flesh, she couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

Best get the business over with. “How are you, Miranda?” Benedict inquired.

How was she? How
was
she? “None the better for you asking!” Miranda rose from her kneeling position, pruning knife still in hand. “Forget I said that, please. And forget as well that I said all those other foolish things.”

The conversation was not going as Benedict had anticipated. “What foolish things?” he asked, as he sat down on a stone bench beneath the tulip tree.

After considerable reflection, Miranda had decided that Sinbad had been amusing himself with her, and that she had been soundly hoaxed; and had consequently sunk into so very melancholic a state of mind that she feared she might die of the dumps. Now that he stood before her, however, she felt more inclined to kick him in the shins. “I asked you to ruin me, if you will recall.”

Of course Benedict recalled it. He had spent an inordinate amount of time trying to persuade himself he must not do that very thing. “It hadn’t slipped my memory.”

“Oh?” Miranda would never have guessed it from his actions. “Well, I have changed my mind. I no longer want you to ruin me, my lord.”

No? Benedict felt oddly disappointed. Then he realized that this was one of those instances when a lady’s word meant its opposite. “Ah. You have decided that I will not suit. I am too old, perhaps. Or too wicked, after all.”

Miranda might be feeling cross, but she couldn’t allow so grave a misapprehension to pass. “You know very well that you are nothing of the sort. I meant that I have been a dreadful bother. I am resolved to plague you no more.”

She was very much on her dignity. Benedict was not deceived. “You mustn’t mind Lady Cecilia. She is just a friend.”

Oh, perdition. He felt sorry for her. “I’d be surprised if Lady Cecilia considers you merely a ‘friend’. People are wagering she’ll bring you up to scratch.”

“People wager on a great many foolish things,” Benedict said gently. “Tell me, where were you headed on the night we met?”

Miranda shrugged. “I wanted to go home. I hoped my uncle might relent if I ran away. Kenrick is my guardian, you see, and he means to do what he deems right. Whether or not it is right for me! He says I am being a great deal too fastidious in this matter of a husband, and has decided that he must take a hand. I can’t imagine why he thinks I would agree to marry a gentleman so advanced in years as Lord Wexton is.”

Benedict kept a careful eye on the pruning knife. “
I
am considerably advanced in years,” he pointed out.

“Not
that
advanced!” retorted Miranda. “And you don’t prose on about lamps. Moreover, nobody is saying I should marry you, so it is not the same. But you need not concern yourself. I shall contrive without your help.”

Unquestionably she would contrive. Undoubtedly her next scheme would prove even more potentially disastrous than the last.

Benedict’s aunt wanted him to get an heir. His mistress wanted him to get married. Miranda wanted him to be the instrument of her downfall. Such complexities would not plague a man who led a monkish life.

The sight of Miranda so ruffled and disheveled might have made even a monk reconsider his vocation. “If you were to marry, and yes I know you do not mean to marry, what manner of man would you wed?”

“Not Lord Wexton!” retorted Miranda. “Or Mr. Dowlin, or Mr. Burton, or Mr. Atchison, or the rest. I’ve no answer for your question, my lord. It hardly matters if there exists a man who might please me, when I cannot have him anyway. I do not see that any purpose is served by making myself unhappy over things I cannot have.”

Benedict sympathized. What he wanted was Miranda, and have her he must not. Definitely he was unfit to associate with innocents, or at least this particular innocent, because he was experiencing a nigh-overwhelming impulse to nibble on her earlobe, her chin, the nape of her neck; to pull her muslin gown down off her shoulder with his teeth and lick her soft skin; to sweep aside her skirts and slide his hands up her smooth legs, lay her down and caress her lush little body until she moaned against his lips and pressed herself against him and—

And this time there could be no adequate apology, because this time he would not stop.

Benedict dropped his hand to the edge of the garden bench and took firm hold, thereby anchoring himself. “I am acquainted with Wexton. I have never heard him prose on about lamps. Could he believe you have an interest in such things?”

“It is my uncle who has the interest. So well do Kenrick and Lord Wexton rub on together that the pair of
them
should wed.” Miranda wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t quite mean that.”

Benedict blinked away a startlingly explicit tableaux involving Lord Wexton and Sir Kenrick Symington. “Poor puss. You are in the devil of a fix.”

So she was, and it was in no small part this man’s doing. “I knew that Lady Cecilia was your fancy– ah, your special friend!” Miranda said abruptly. “And you did tell me to go about my usual pursuits. It shouldn’t have surprised me that you went about yours.”

Benedict was not surprised that the conversation had come full circle. “I regret that I upset you. That was never my intent.”

Nor had it been Miranda’s intent to reproach him. “If anyone should apologize, it should be me, for making a cake of myself.”

This was the most extraordinary flirtation in which Benedict had ever been engaged. Engaged in it he was, despite his better intentions. He rose from the bench.

Miranda watched him, glumly. The marquess was going to take his leave. He would never kiss her again, or make her senses reel and her heart beat fit to burst.

She must not fling herself upon him, or beg for one last embrace, at least not here in her uncle’s back yard, where there were servants all about, and the head gardener was likely to pop up at any moment to ascertain what Miranda was doing to his plants. “Goodbye,” she said.

Benedict could not force himself to walk away. “Are you so eager to be rid of me?” he asked.

Of course she was not eager to be rid of him. Miranda’s fingers itched to grab hold of his arm. But she had already behaved so very badly that he probably already thought her the worst of all sad romps.

Benedict had moved away from the bench. Suddenly he was standing very close. “Well, no,” Miranda admitted.

Benedict wiped a smudge off her cheek. “Good.”

His fingers lingered on her face. “Whatever are you doing?” Miranda inquired.

He was being damned foolish, and he knew it, and in this moment Benedict didn’t care. “You misunderstood the situation. Now that we have been properly introduced, we may have an assignation. Unless you have changed your mind.”

Chapter Fourteen

Miranda was to have an assignation! She was so excited by the prospect that she tossed and turned all night in her domed bed, and the next morning tried on every costume that hung in her mahogany wardrobe once if not several times, and anxiously scrutinized her reflection in the cheval glass, after which she applied to her chequered carved chest for a decoction of lavender made with a little cinnamon. She settled at length on a carriage dress of corded muslin, and a close green bonnet trimmed with black, not because she considered this a suitable costume for an assignation – what
did
one wear to such an engagement? Miranda had no one to ask – but because time was running short. All that remained was to escape her watchdogs, a task not easily accomplished since she could hardly make use of the tree outside her bedroom window in broad daylight and dressed as she was.

It seemed strange to have an assignation in broad daylight. Miranda would have thought romantic trysts were better conducted under cover of darkness, in the dead of night.

Nonie now lay napping, because Miranda had ruthlessly dosed her with Water of White Poppy. Kenrick was out about some business of his own. Miranda set Mary to mending petticoats, a task that – since the maidservant’s needle-working skills were nearly nonexistent — could be trusted to occupy her for several hours. She crammed her bonnet on her head and escaped out a side door.

Miranda hurried down the street behind the house. Around the corner, and—

 A closed carriage waited. It was a very discreet carriage, made of plain dark wood with no insignia on the door.

The carriage door opened from within. Miranda set her foot on the step. The interior was richly upholstered in crimson and gold. Benedict lounged on one of the seats, his long legs outstretched.

Miranda settled beside him. He gave his coachman the order to drive on, and pulled down the window shades. The carriage rattled over the rough roadway.

 Miranda’s nerves were all a-flutter. She should have dosed herself with lavender and cinnamon, and maybe some Water of White Poppy as well. “Where are we going?” Tales of unwary young maidens sold into lives of depravity marched through her mind.

Was Miranda a little frightened? Benedict hoped she was. “You expressed an interest in seduction. Not once, but several times.” There was light enough in the carriage for him to see that she had clasped her hands together in her lap.

Some men delighted in despoiling innocence. Benedict was not one of them. Or he had not been until recently. “Have you wearied of the game already?” he asked, more sharply than he had intended. “Will you cry craven so soon?”

The marquess was acting strangely, decided Miranda. Maybe his mood as customary for gentlemen embarked upon a tryst. “I am not a coward! And I do not consider this a game.”

Clearly she did not. Benedict was accustomed to women experienced in the amatory arts. He didn’t know what to do with this babe.

Rather, he knew what he
wanted
to do with her. But he couldn’t decide where to begin.

Benedict raised his hand to Miranda’s throat, felt the frantic beating of her pulse. “Are you afraid of me?” Though it was his intention to frighten her a little bit, and thereby bring on a belated attack of common sense, at the same time the notion that she should fear him made him cross.

Miranda was intensely aware of his fingers against her flesh. Now that the long-awaited moment was upon her, she felt very shy. Sinbad had traveled the wide world and experienced all manner of wondrous things, while she was a green miss.

He had only to touch her and she sizzled. Miranda knew no other word. Lady Cecilia would know what to call these feelings. Lady Cecilia would know all manner of things.

Benedict had not moved his hand from her throat. Was he realizing that Miranda could not compare with his mistress? Regretting that he had agreed to help her achieve her ends?

In that case, she must release him. “If you have changed your mind, I will not hold you to your word.”

Benedict did not recall that he had made a promise. “I haven’t changed my mind,” he murmured, as his hand slid from her throat to the nape of her neck, and found the curst bonnet in his way. He untied the ribbons and tossed the headgear aside, tangled his fingers in Miranda’s hair, and tilted her face up to meet his gaze.

Her violet eyes opened wide. “Are you going to kiss me?” she whispered.

Of course Benedict was going to kiss her, though he knew he should not; he would kiss her and be damned for it, because her lips were so inviting, and her pretty face so close. Miranda caught her breath as he dropped tantalizing little salutes around her mouth and along her jaw, grazed her earlobe with his teeth.