This Rake of Mine (23 page)

For his part, Jack glanced down at the missing trinket and shrugged. "Probably at the bottom of the trunk with the rest of my old Town clothes." He pushed off the doorjamb and came into the room as proud and stately as any Corinthian. "Now, isn't anyone going to answer me?" he asked. "Who has a
tendre
for Miss Porter? And don't tell me it is Mr. Jones, for I'll sack him for his presumptions."

Tally giggled.

"No one," Miranda managed to tell him, trying to keep her eyes from his jacket. "The girls were just teasing—for really it is a ridiculous notion."

"And why is that?" he asked as he pulled his chair out and settled into the seat.

She only hoped her cheeks weren't as red as they felt. Oh, why couldn't he have just stayed absent?

Stayed away.

Left her in peace.

"My lord, please don't encourage them," Miranda said. "I have no delusions about my place in society. I am well past the age where I waste my time spinning dreams that are foolish at best." This comment she shot toward her erstwhile matchmakers.

None of them appeared to take her hint, for they had turned their heads to see how Jack would respond to this volley.

"I don't think age has anything to do with it," he replied, "when a lady is as pretty as you are, Miss Porter."

Her? Pretty? Spanish coin and false flattery if ever there was.

Tally let out a sigh, full of longing that suggested she couldn't wait for the day that a man said such a thing about her.

"You think Miss Porter is pretty, Lord John?" Felicity prodded, then cast an I-told-you-so glance back at her teacher.

"Miss Porter has a rare quality about her," he said, and his gaze met Miranda's and held it in a look that could have melted all her resolve to leave Thistleton Park with her corset strings intact.

The way he looked at her, devoured her really, made her spine tingle, her skin grow warm, as if his fingers were on her corset strings and untying them with deft and experienced fingers.

She needed to say something, do something to break his hold on her, to end this ridiculous game, but words failed her. This dangerous rake made her feel dizzy, breathlessly so.

Oh, please say something
, she willed herself.
Say something to end this perilous temptation
.

The silence was wearing on everyone, for the girls were now staring openmouthed at the pair of them, and the determined light in Felicity's eyes spoke of triumph.

That was enough to drive Miranda into action.

"Really, all of you are terrible teases," she said. "But I am quite content with my life and have never been regarded as pretty, despite Lord John's assertions." She paused and tapped her lips with her napkin. "Besides, you must remember that Lord John has been away from London for many years, and his memory and standards for beauty are not completely up to snuff."

Felicity's brows creased. Her displeasure over Miranda's continued and obstinate disregard for the prospect of marriage seemed enough to put her in a state of apoplexy. But she wasn't finished yet.

"Jack," she said sweetly, as if tossing out a honey-covered fishing line. "Do you like music?"

Miranda grit her teeth and entered the music room as if it were filled with French mines. Not only were the girls in open rebellion against her orders not to engage in any further matchmaking but, to make matters worse, Mr. Birdwell appeared their equal in audacity, if not in sheer determination.

Well, she certainly wasn't going to fall for the chicanery of three schoolgirls and a displaced London butler.

Not that Jack was doing her any favors. Why, the beast of a man had taken to Felicity's offer of an evening of music as if it were going to be presented in the finest London salon.

Still, when she entered the elegant room, it had the effect of bringing her back nine years to her own short Season—the candles fluttering in the corners, the flowers in the vases lending the rich scent of roses to the room. No tame hothouse flowers these, but spicy, heady blooms from the tangle of bushes that grew in wild abandon throughout the unkempt grounds of Thistleton Park.

It was a perfume that filled the senses with an air of persuasive temptation.

Like the master of the house himself.

"Upon my word," he exclaimed like a good London rake, "what mischief is all this?" He walked around the room admiring its transformation, seemingly oblivious to the spell it was meant to cast.

" 'T'was nothing that a bit of cleaning and some fresh flowers couldn't accomplish," Felicity told him. " 'T'was Miss Porter's idea."

Miranda cringed.

"It was?" he asked.

Cleaning, yes. That had been her idea. Not this orchestrated attempt to toss her yet again into Lord John's arms.

"It seemed a small way to repay your hospitality," she said.

Jack slanted a glance at her, the look on his face saying only too well that he'd caught the double entendre to her words.

A small favor for his pittance of hospitality.

He continued into the room, eyeing all the changes, then came to a sudden stop. "I have a pianoforte?" he asked, his brows cocked with a wicked tilt. "Whenever did I acquire this?"

"A tolerable one at that." Tally grinned at his teasing. "It was a wonderful find. Much better than the collection of dust curls we discovered behind the sofa."

He bowed to the three of them. "I should detain you all from ever leaving, for I imagine if I let you loose in the house for, at the very least, another fortnight, you would probably uncover all sorts of treasures—beyond my rare collection of dust."

As the girls laughed at Jack's wit, Miranda wondered just what sort of secrets they would indeed find—for if they were anything like the nefarious items she'd discovered in Albin's Folly, it was certainly better for all of them that they were leaving on the morrow.

Especially for her. For more dangerous than the manacles, the powder, and pistol was the way Jack sent her senses into a wild flight from reason.

Glancing over at the all-too-handsome man, with his dark brushed hair and chiseled jaw, she thought he looked more like a fallen angel than a gentleman.

And angels fell for very good reasons. This one was as mercurial as they came: boorish one moment, charmingly handsome the next, only to turn around and be forcefully seductive.

Which Jack Tremont was the true master of this house, she couldn't say.

The girls stood gathered around their host, chattering about their discoveries of music and rare vases and imported bric-a-brac, but he wasn't paying them any heed. His gaze rose over their heads, sweeping across the room until he found her.

A deep, piercing glance that drew out her desires for him like a summer moth to a candle. She shivered and wrapped her shawl tighter around her shoulders.

Resolve, Miranda
, she told herself.
Remember the missing woman. His desperate need for gold
.

She felt a sudden urgency to turn his attention elsewhere.

"Thalia, perhaps you can show Lord John just what a valuable pianoforte he possesses by playing it for us."

Tally bobbed her head and hurried over to the instrument, in all eagerness to begin.

So with everyone diverted as Tally began to play, Miranda walked around the edge of the room, taking in both the music and what the girls had accomplished in the once dusty, unused room.

She stopped before an ancient chessboard, its pieces neatly arranged and waiting in their orderly lines for combat to begin.

Miranda couldn't help herself; she reached down and picked up a pawn. The board summoned forth memories of countless evenings spent sitting across from her father learning the fine art of chess, and listening to the tidbits about business and trade and organization he'd interjected into their games.

Sadly, she had realized only too late that her father had seen her as nothing more than a pawn in his own ambitions—to see her wed to improve his business. Her mother had been of the same bent, even without her knowledge of chess.

Miranda had been but a piece in her parents' ambitions. Yet a stray thought floated into her musings.

Even a lowly pawn could sometimes take the king.

"I am so sorry about today, Miss Porter," came a low voice as contrite and sincere as she'd ever heard. "My actions were most regrettable."

She looked up at Jack, the pawn still clenched in her hand. " 'Tis forgotten."

"Hardly so," he said, glancing across the room, as if gauging whether or not their conversation was being subjected to eavesdropping. "I see it in your eyes."

She glanced away and took a deep breath. "It is forgotten now."

It had to be
. It was too dangerous, too uncontrollable.

Too unforgettable.

"I'm not usually such a complete and utter ass—"

Turning a calculated glance up at him, she arched one brow in response.

He shrugged, then offered the grin that had served him so well in his madcap days. "Perhaps that is also best forgotten."

Miranda returned the pawn to its place on the board.

"You manage them quite well," he said, nodding toward the girls. "Why, their matchmaking efforts are barely transparent this evening."

"Not as well as I would like," she replied.

They both laughed, and Miranda felt one of the bricks in her wall of resolve crumble. No matter her attempt to contain it, to put the rubble back in place, Jack Tremont was yet again dismantling her determination.

"You strike me as a woman with a military mind, Miss Porter," he said, picking up a pawn and moving it into play. He glanced up at her, his look challenging her to a match.

"Not so," she told him, making a cautious entry into the fray. A battle she wasn't about to lose.

"I think you could manage the French out of Spain much quicker than Wellington ever will."

"Bah!"

"Look what you did to this room in one short afternoon."

"I didn't do anything to this room," she said, concentrating on the board in front of her and not willing to look up at him. "It was all the girls' work."

"Yes," he said, moving a rook. "But I can't believe they fostered this sense of independence on their own. Such a quality in a young lady usually has to be encouraged. Or learned by example."

Miranda felt the implication of his words down to her toes, but she wasn't about to concede to him. Not on this, not on whatever undercurrent he was trying to ply from her. "You don't think that such a thing as independence is a natural occurrence?"

He shrugged and made his next move.

"And you, Lord John? From whom did you learn your… your independence?"

"From a lady," he said softly, picking up the queen and carefully moving her into the action.

A lady
. But of course. Another brick chinked loose and fell to her feet as a torch of jealousy flared to life inside her. Who was this woman who'd had such an influence on Jack, who'd been able to take that wild thread within him and pull it loose like a spinning top?

Was it the same woman she'd heard last night?

To her ears, the lady from the library had sounded older than Jack, but she doubted he was the type of man who cared about such conventions—especially when the woman ignored propriety and decorum, a lady who boldly marched through life.

The kind of woman who wouldn't run from the secrets and mystery of Thistleton Park but would uncover them brazenly, intently, without a care for the danger they might hold.

A woman whose inner light would illuminate the very night, shine like a beacon into the heavens.

She glanced up at Jack, who was studying the board seriously, and she realized that as much as he stirred her senses, the real danger he posed to her, the real temptation he elicited was the desire he evoked in her to live her life with a daring and audacity that went against her very grain.

To let her spirit shine through the rules and decorum she'd become imprisoned by.

Then once again, her heart staged a perilous rebellion, raising a battle cry that drowned out common sense, trampled the hallowed halls of reason.

What was the use of a life of decorum if she never lived?

Recklessly, she gazed at the board until she saw something she might never have seen if it hadn't been for this discordant tune running through her veins. She pulled her fingers away from the piece she'd been considering and boldly moved her queen into harm's way.

Jack's eyes widened. "Are you sure about that?"

"Very much so," she said confidently.

He moved as she'd guessed he would, taking her queen and striding forward, thinking he had her cornered. "Check."

Miranda feigned surprise. Then coolly reached down and moved the pawn he'd overlooked. "Checkmate."

He did a double take, staring down at the board as if he couldn't believe it, and then up at her as if he was seeing her for the first time. "Miss Porter! You surprise me… yet again."

She couldn't speak, afraid as she was of what sort of nonsense would come from her lips, come racing forth from her fast-beating heart.

Pippin rose from her chair and came over to look at the chessboard, studying the pieces. "What a masterful game, Miss Porter. I didn't know you played."

"I did as a young girl," she confessed. "Actually, it has been years."

"You obviously haven't lost the skill," Jack said, still looking at the board, replaying the moves and trying to discover how he had failed to see the entrapment that had been his downfall. When he came to the point where he'd been distracted, he nodded, then grinned at her. "What other secrets do you possess, Miss Porter?"

Miranda felt his probing question down to her toes. As if he were trying to strip her naked. Worse yet, before she could come up with a starchy reply to set him down a bit, Tally answered for her.

"She dances beautifully, my lord," the girl told him.

More like lied.

Miranda's gaze swiveled toward the cheeky little matchmaker. "I do not!" she exclaimed.

Felicity waded in to add to her sister's case. "Miss Porter is infamously modest about her accomplishments. It is why she was the perfect decorum teacher."