So Wild A Heart Page 20

  “All right.”

  They made their way through the crowd, smiling and nodding to well-wishers, but deftly avoiding coming to a full stop. At the buffet table, they loaded their plates and again wound through the crowd.

  “Just act as if you’re looking for an open space to sit and eat,” Devin whispered. “Now we are almost to the door. Don’t look around or act guilty—someone is sure to catch you then. Just walk as if we’re heading toward those seats and now…out the door.”

  Miranda slipped through the open doorway, with Devin right behind her.

  “The back stairs are over here.” He nodded toward them. “Come on, we’ll have a picnic. I’m starving, and I haven’t be able to get near the food all night. How about you?”

  Miranda nodded agreement. “Where shall we go?”

  “I know a place.” He led the way up the stairs and along the hallway to a large room. Handing his plate to her, he lit a lamp in the room from one of the hallway sconces and ushered her inside. He made a sweeping gesture of the room. “Tables, chairs…”

  “The nursery!”

  “I grant you that they are a trifle miniature-size, but we can make do.” He took the plates and laid them down on the table, then pulled out one of the small chairs in a grand gesture. “If my lady will sit.”

  Miranda grinned. “I should be honored, my lord.”

  She sat down, and Devin took his place opposite her. She smothered a giggle at the sight of him sitting with his knees almost up to his chin, and he gave her a mock frown. “I am the lord of the manor, I’ll have you know. You mustn’t make jest of me.”

  “I would never do such a thing,” Miranda assured him solemnly. Picking up her fork, she tucked into her food with enthusiasm. Her stomach had been too nervous for her to eat earlier, and now, she realized, she was ravenous.

  While they ate, Devin entertained her with stories about his childhood, pointing out the cupboard where he had hidden as a little boy in order to jump out and scare his sisters, but had then fallen asleep and been presumed lost, with the whole household out looking for him.

  “Only the first of many misadventures,” he told her with a wry grin.

  They talked and laughed, sitting there incongruously in their wedding finery, and it seemed to Miranda the happiest wedding dinner she could possibly have had.

  Later they walked down to the medieval musicians’ gallery, a small screened room that jutted out above the ballroom below. Through the latticework, they could look down on the party and hear the mingling of music, laughter and talk that rose from it.

  “Rachel and Caro and I used to sneak in here after Nurse fell asleep and watch our parents’ parties,” Devin said. “They weren’t terribly exciting, but they seemed so to us—mostly because they were forbidden.”

  “That always makes things much more fun,” Miranda agreed.

  He took her hand, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world, pleasant and warm, in keeping with the light, happy aura of their “picnic.” But there was an underlying current of excitement in the touch, as well, a knowledge of his skin against hers, his warmth, his flesh, his smell—this man who was almost a stranger to her, yet her husband, as well.

  They strolled along the hallway to her room, and Devin opened the door, stepping aside for her to enter. She turned to say good-night, but he was already coming in the door, too.

  “What—what are you doing?”

  Devin closed the door behind him, and his eyes locked on hers. “Tonight is our wedding night.” He took a step forward, and his hands went to her shoulders. “And I am your husband.”

  13

  Miranda’s breath locked in her throat, and she was unable to do anything except stare at Devin as he came closer. Then his hands were on her shoulders, and he turned her gently around, saying, “Your maid will not come tonight. I will be your personal maid.”

  His hands started on the row of buttons that marched down the back of her dress. His fingers brushed her skin as he did so, and it sent a shiver through her. Miranda struggled to collect her thoughts.

  “I think that is hardly necessary. If I ring for the maid, I am sure she will come.”

  “Most likely. Still…much easier if I do it.”

  Miranda could feel the two sides of her dress parting and falling away from her back, exposing the bare flesh above her chemise. She clasped her hand to her chest to hold the dress up. His lips pressed against the bare skin of her upper back, velvety and warm. She felt the rush of his breath against her sensitive flesh.

  “Devin…” His name came out hoarsely, and she stopped to clear her throat. She straightened and stepped away from the pleasurable touch of his mouth. “No. Really. This is enough.”

  He slid his hands over her back, pushing her dress down onto her arms, caressed her shoulders, and it seemed as if everywhere he touched sprang to tingling life.

  “It’s not enough,” he disputed her words, bending down to plant a trail of kisses across her collarbone and onto her shoulder. “It won’t be enough until I have you. All of you.”

  “This is exactly what we agreed would not happen,” she said, trying to inject censure into her voice, which came out far too breathless for her comfort.

  “No. This is what you agreed would not happen. I never agreed upon it at all.”

  He slipped his hands in under the opened sides of her dress, gliding around her back and onto her stomach, nothing separating his skin from hers but the thin layer of her chemise. Miranda drew in her breath in a gasp. He made a soft noise and nuzzled her neck.

  A long shudder ran down through her, and she could not suppress a moan.

  “This is what’s right. You can feel it,” he murmured, his breath fluttering enticingly over her skin. “This is what it’s meant to be like.”

  He moved his hands up to cup her breasts, kneading and caressing them as his mouth teased at her neck and ears. Desire flooded Miranda, almost frightening in its intensity, and she knew that she wanted nothing more than to spend the night in his bed, to be introduced to the delights of passion at his hands. It would be easy to give in, easy to taste the pleasure.

  Easy, too, to lose the one thing she ultimately wanted.

  “No.” She made her voice firm, and she pulled away from him, turning to face him. “No. This is not part of our bargain.”

  His eyes were dark with passion, his face stamped with hunger. “Forget our bargain. We don’t have to follow it. It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does matter. It was the whole point of our getting married. To remain uninvolved…to be free to pursue our own—”

  He cut off her words by pulling her into his arms and kissing her deeply. Miranda sagged against him, desire washing through her.

  He broke off the kiss and began to trail his mouth down her neck, planting slow, heated kisses on the sensitive skin. “There is nothing wrong with having passion in marriage, as well,” he murmured persuasively, his fingertips lightly brushing up her arms and back down. “Let me show you how good it can be. Let me….”

  The very persuasiveness of his words and caresses suddenly struck Miranda, and she pulled back, her spine stiffening. “No, my lord, I think not. You are a practiced seducer, that is clear. But I am not so easily persuaded. I am not interested in a marriage of both intimacy and outside affairs. It would never work, at least not for me. I think it is better to keep the two things separate. Our marriage is a business arrangement, and we shall seek our pleasure elsewhere.”

  His face darkened. “Dammit! There is no reason—”

  “There is every reason,” Miranda responded crisply. “Your very reaction is reason enough. Already emotion has entered into it, and our marriage is not one of emotion.”

  “Not all of us are as cold and rational as you!”

  “No, I fear not,” Miranda replied, as if he had given her a compliment. “But I am sure that after you calm down and think about it, you will realize that I am right. With passion comes feeling, and with feel
ing come all sorts of entangling emotions—jealousy, hurt, anger. Well, it obviously would never do. It is much preferable to have that with a lover than with a husband.”

  A flame sparked to life in his eyes, and Devin clenched his fists. For a moment Miranda thought he was going to fly into a fury. But then he stepped back, his jaw clenched, and said, “Of course. If that is what you wish. I can see how you would prefer not to feel any emotion for your husband. It would be harder to make everyone dance to your bidding then, wouldn’t it? Indeed, it is preferable to keep everything on a business basis. Employees cannot afford to complain too much.”

  “That isn’t it at all!” Miranda cried.

  “No?”

  “Of course not. This is the marriage you wanted, too.”

  “It was you who—”

  “I agreed to the kind of marriage you offered. You wanted to keep a mistress. You wanted to go your own way. You wanted not to be tied to a wife. Or has that all changed suddenly?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Well, that is what I want, too,” Miranda countered. “I am simply talking about sticking to the arrangement we agreed upon—a marriage in name only.”

  “That does not mean we could not enjoy…certain aspects of marriage at the same time,” Devin pointed out. “A marriage can provide pleasure and still remain a loose bond.”

  Miranda looked at him evenly. “Not for me. Marriage is either real or a sham. Ours belongs to the latter category. If you bring passion into it, it changes everything. I can no longer be objective. I am no longer beyond the realm of jealousy and pain. If I care, I care deeply. And I have no intention of spending my life wondering where you are and who you are with, while I sit at home bleeding from wounds only I can see. So you see, the only solution is not to care for you.”

  Devin stood looking at her for a long moment. Then he nodded once, briefly. “Good night, Miranda.”

  He turned and walked out the door.

  Miranda spent a long, lonely night. More than once, she wished she had not turned Devin down; at one point she even considered getting up and going to the connecting door to tell him that she had made a mistake. But she managed to keep her resolve. What she had said to Devin was the truth—except that she had not revealed how much she already cared for him. There was more than strategy in her pledge not to consummate their marriage. She knew that to do so would tie her heart to him so irrevocably that she could not have a life without him.

  When she awoke the next morning, her usual confidence and optimism had returned, and she went downstairs, ready to plunge into her plans. The landscape architect was due to arrive that afternoon, and the architect was coming the next day, so she decided to press ahead with working on the estate. She sent a note around to Mr. Strong, asking him to meet her in the library, where she had decided to set up office. Her father was there, and she invited Devin’s uncle, as well, more out of courtesy than anything else. Devin was fond of his uncle, but given the condition of the Ravenscar estate, Miranda could not help but feel that neither Strong nor Uncle Rupert had been very skillful at management.

  Somewhat to her surprise, Devin strolled in as the group was settling around the library table and took a seat beside her.

  He saw her look of surprise and smiled a little. “I was bored,” he explained in an aside as he sat down. “It was either this or needlepoint with Mother and Rachel in the sitting room.”

  “I’m glad to see you here,” Miranda replied. “It is your estate, after all.”

  “Good day, my boy,” Uncle Rupert said genially. “First time I’ve seen you volunteer to look at your finances.” He winked. “Must be the lure of a female present.”

  “Makes it more pleasant than looking at you and Strong,” Devin agreed placidly. “Now tell us, Miranda, what you plan to do.”

  “I had not expected to have so many people present,” Miranda confessed. “I was merely going to go over the estate with Mr. Strong. Did you bring the information I requested?”

  “I—I did my best, ma’am.”

  “I am sure, Ravenscar, that you and Mr. Dalrymple can add to my knowledge of the estate, as well,” she went on, looking first at Devin, then his uncle.

  “I will be happy to help you all I can, Miss—excuse me, Lady Ravenscar,” Devin’s uncle replied.

  “Please, call me Miranda. We are related now.”

  “And you must call me Uncle Rupert, as Devin does,” he responded, a twinkle in his eyes. “But, I confess, I am at somewhat of a loss. Exactly what are we doing? Strong came to me in a tizzy yesterday, saying that you were going to be running the estate? I told him it was a lot of nonsense, but—”

  “Oh, I shall not see to the day-to-day running of it,” Miranda assured him. “That would be far too time-consuming, and I am confident that Mr. Strong can make sure everything goes smoothly. I shall simply oversee it, of course.”

  Uncle Rupert stared at her in much the same way the estate manager had the day before. “You are going to oversee the estate?” he asked carefully, as though he had not heard correctly. “But—but you are a girl.”

  “Thank you. However, I have to admit that I am a good bit older than a girl.”

  “Miranda…I can assure you that money will help us to put the estate in good order. There is no need to worry about it. You should be enjoying yourself. It’s not every day one gets to be a new bride. No doubt there are many things about the house that you will need to get acquainted with first.”

  “Oh, I shall meet with Mrs. Watkins and Cummings, of course, but they seem to have things well in hand. If one has a good housekeeper and butler, the household takes little of one’s time and energy, I find. It certainly won’t keep me from getting the estate in order. Don’t worry about me, Uncle Rupert. I am used to working. I have never run an estate of this sort before, of course, but I have had quite a bit of experience with other businesses. I feel sure I will be able to get the hang of it.”

  “But—” Rupert turned in confusion to his nephew “—Devin…I don’t understand.” He looked back at Miranda. “Perhaps you don’t realize I am the trustee of Devin’s estate. I will be happy, of course, to try to explain to you about it, but—”

  “Well, no, sir, actually you are not the trustee,” Miranda said as gently as she could. “I know that you have been running the estate for Devin for a long time now, and I am sure he appreciates it a great deal. But in point of fact, the trust for his property ended over five years ago. There isn’t a trustee.”

  It was just this sort of sloppy handling that she feared had helped the estate to its ultimate demise. Uncle Rupert seemed willing and good-natured, but she had seen little evidence yet of his acumen. It was a delicate situation, for Devin was quite fond of his uncle, but she did not see how she could allow the man to remain in charge of a job for which he was vastly unsuited.

  “I suppose that that is technically true,” Rupert admitted.

  “It has been very kind of you to continue to do it for so long,” Miranda went on. “But I feel sure that if the truth were known, you would prefer not to have the work and the responsibility. Wouldn’t you?”

  “Well, yes, of course, but duty called, you know.” He coughed deprecatingly.

  “If you will be so kind as to give me the benefit of your experience and advice, I would be very grateful. As I said, I have not had dealings with this particular sort of business. Most of what I have invested in has been raw land or city lots. And, of course, there was the canal venture that I entered into in Pennsylvania.” At his blank look, she went on. “Connecting coal fields to their markets in Philadelphia and New York. It will revolutionize the industry. But that is neither here nor there.”

  “Ah…” Rupert looked faintly dazed. “I will of course be happy to lend you a hand, my dear. Indeed, now that I think of it, you are right. It will be a relief no longer to be responsible for the estate.” His face brightened visibly as he thought about it. “It was rather a hard thing, seeing it sliding down l
ike that year after year and not having the resources to stop it.”

  “I am sure it was,” Miranda said sympathetically. “It is a rather large estate, is it not?”

  “Almost ten thousand acres,” Strong put in. “Of course, a lot of that is in the Roaches. It’s rocky and pretty much useless.”

  “The Roaches?”

  “Yes. A god forsaken landscape,” Uncle Rupert said. “It’s the tail end of the Pennine range. Hilly and rocky. Not useful for anything, as Strong said.”

  “It’s attractive,” Devin commented. “In its own strange way. We’ll ride down there one day so you can see it if you’d like.”

  “Yes, I would.” Miranda smiled at him. “I would like to ride around the whole estate. I want to see exactly what I’m dealing with. Meet your tenants.”

  “All right.”

  “I shall be happy to take you out on a ride, Miranda,” Uncle Rupert said. “Why don’t we all go? We can ride along the river, eh, Dev? It’s a lovely spot. Have a picnic.”

  “Of course,” Devin agreed.

  “Excellent.” Miranda favored Devin’s uncle with a smile, then turned to the estate manager. “Now, Mr. Strong, I would like first to see maps of the estate. And you must tell me what the main product is. I assume it’s agricultural.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Rents from tenants. They’ve been dropping steadily the past few years. The land just doesn’t produce as many crops.”

  “I see. We shall have to see what we can do to bring it back. You know, Mr. Jefferson has written extensively on modern farming methods that he used at Monticello. I shall have to send for those—and I am sure there must be Englishmen who have been experimenting with the same sort of thing. Also, I should like to go over the books for the estate. I’ll get our assistant Hiram Baldwin to help you there. We will need to see several years, I imagine, to pinpoint the problems. That should do for starters.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Strong agreed in a faint voice.

  Uncle Rupert chuckled and turned to his nephew. “I say, Dev, your new bride is something of a whirlwind.”