A Less Than Perfect Lady. Elizabeth Beacon
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The Honourable Mrs Miranda Braxton considered the visitor’s view of Wychwood Court, and found it even more imposing than she remembered. Through a veil of drizzle, the golden stones of the great Tudor mansion looked warm and welcoming after her five-year exile and she shifted in her seat to peer at it even more intently. It was impossible not to think of the folly of youth as she recalled how blithely she had left all this for the mirage Nevin Braxton had proved to be.
All she needed to do this time was hold on to her composure and keep out of the way of Aunt Clarissa and her Cousin Celia for the week she would be permitted to stay. Why Grandfather had decreed her attendance at the final reading of his will was beyond her, considering he had made it very clear that she would never be allowed to darken his doors again. It wasn’t his door any more, so he had cunningly kept to the letter of his decree, she supposed. Yet, considering that his heir was the son of a man Grandfather hated, he must be spinning in his grave at the arrival of so many cuckoos in his precious nest!
Even in north Wales she had heard whispers that the Carnwood heir was doing well for himself in the City. She had permitted herself a secret smile at how poorly that news would go down at Wychwood. Aunt Clarissa would hate the fact that he was tainting the noble Alstone name with so strong a whiff of trade, even if he was rumoured to have grown very rich doing so. Miranda wondered what her aunt thought the family fortunes were founded on, and spared a moment to consider the ridiculous hypocrisy of the higher echelons of polite society.
‘Just like his lordship to have his will read all these months after he died. He always was a contrary old curmudgeon,’ Leah, Miranda’s maid and companion, remarked as the coach began to slow. ‘Looks just the same as ever though, doesn’t it?’ she ended gruffly, and Miranda could see now that Leah had missed this lovely place as much as she had herself.
‘Yes, it does.’
‘It’ll be different inside, I dare say, what with there being a new earl and everything. Lady Clarissa will be in a right tweak about that, just when she’d finally got your grandfather trained, so to speak.’
‘I really hope you won’t, Leah.’
‘Won’t what?’ her friend asked innocently, for friend she had been since they were children. Never mind the supposed gulf between mistress and maid—if not for Leah, where would Miranda be now?
‘Speak your mind.’
‘And why shouldn’t I?’
Leah had long ago decided not to be the sort of maid who was seen and not heard. Miranda reflected that their five years of living in such an unusual household was unlikely to convince her friend to change. ‘Because it might help keep the peace,’ she replied wearily.
‘Hah! Some things aren’t worth keeping.’
‘Whether or not that’s true, this household has naught to do with me nowadays and I’ll thank you to remember it,’ she insisted.
‘It’s your home, Miss Miranda.’
‘No, it was my home,’ she replied calmly enough.
She might have yearned desperately for Wychwood when she found it closed to her for good, but her darling godmother had given her a new home, and one she loved and appreciated. At Nightingale House she had learnt much she would never have found out as the pampered granddaughter of an earl, yet she had to admit to herself that Wychwood Court would always be something more to her than a grand manor. If she was given to extravagant flights of fancy, she would call it the home of her heart, and it was as closed to her now as it had been five years ago.
‘His lordship should never have sent you away,’ Leah grumbled on.
‘No, he was quite right to do so. He had more important things to consider than a wayward young idiot with more hair than sense.’
‘Nothing should have been more important to him than his own flesh and blood.’
‘Precisely,’ Miranda returned smartly, as the hired carriage drew up at the front door of her old home.
As the steps were lowered and she stepped down on to the gravel, she hoped the two very good reasons for her five-year exile were safely ensconced at their select seminary in Bath and that nobody had insisted on them being present at such a sad and solemn occasion.
‘It would not have been suitable for me to come home, Leah,’ she said quietly. ‘I have two little sisters who would have been tainted by association, and you know very well I am happy with Lady Rhys.’
‘You haven’t been that since the day you left,’ Leah replied with a mulish expression that warned Miranda there was very little point arguing. But Miranda was more convinced than ever that Grandfather had been right to make her stay away, lest her example continuously remind everyone just what Alstone girls were capable of.
Even so, she felt the tears she had promised herself not to shed threaten as she looked up to survey her old home, and met the coldest and most cynical pair of brown eyes she had ever had the misfortune to encounter instead. Her latest detractor had been standing so still she had not noticed him, until his stony gaze fell on her and revealed his contempt. She didn’t know what she had done to offend him. Still, he looked like just the sort of enemy she would have travelled far to avoid, she decided, with a shudder that she sincerely hoped he was too far away to notice.
Far too optimistic a notion! His sharp stare seemed to bore through her across the famous entrance to her one-time home. Yet even knowing that she was staring could not make her remember she was a lady and look away. No need to worry about that anyway, when the wretched man’s hostile gaze met hers with no concession to good manners. She contrarily felt as if a series of little fires had spontaneously taken hold at every nerve end.
He looked like every girl’s dream and their chaperons’ worst nightmare. Even the blue coat, fawn breeches and top-boots of a country gentleman did nothing to detract from the danger signalled by his sardonic mouth and fathomless dark eyes. Add in curling dark hair as black as a raven’s wing and it was little wonder she had been momentarily dazed, she told herself.
She could envision him on the quarterdeck of a privateer, or grimly determined as he charged into battle like a latter-day Achilles, but tamed by velvet and ermine and sitting in the House of Lords? Something told her he would hate such ceremonial splendour. The very thought of it made her smile as she came out of her reverie to greet the latest Earl of Carnwood.
‘So the prodigal returns,’ he remarked with an smile that did little to soften his stern expression.
He descended the steps with a grace that reminded Miranda of a self-assured predator and one with every confidence in his power over his prey, she decided as she forced herself to stand her ground. The new earl had long legs and a leanly muscular build that would no doubt be a match for any athlete. There was something wholly untamed about him. Once upon a time his feral assurance and hunter’s eyes would have drawn her to him like a moth to a flame. Every inch of him was a challenge to any female in possession of her senses, and the rebellious, headstrong Miranda Alstone she had thought long dead was urgently reminding her she still had a full set of those.
‘Sir?’ she said stiffly, cross with him for scouting her delusion that she was in full control of both mind and body nowadays.
‘Madam?’ he replied blandly, offering no excuse for his intent summary of her face and person, just as if she was the next item on his bill of fare and he wasn’t quite sure if he was too fastidious to gobble her up or not.
Suppressing a shiver that should have been one of revulsion, but fell loweringly short, she assured herself that she had the right to expect better from the man who was now head of her family. Eyeing him warily as he stepped down to her, she concluded there was very little point in trying to shame him into politeness. If the mix of hunger and fury in his dark eyes was anything to go by, he certainly hadn’t much intention of acting the gracious host towards his latest guest and she might as well resign herself to a very uncomfortable week.
‘We have not been introduced,’