‘I know what you’ll say,’ Miranda Alstone claimed with a disarming smile her lord was quite unable to resist, but it had no noticeable effect on the trio facing her. Her ladyship sighed. ‘I can’t help myself,’ she admitted. ‘With Kit away so long I can’t convince myself all is well with the world.’
Since he shared her apprehension, Ben allowed himself to be pacified and gave her an encouraging smile as he urged her upstairs and back into the cosy sitting room she had made there, despite the strict Palladian style that made the rest of the house a little too sternly elegant for his taste.
‘Tea, if you please, Coppice,’ he requested the stately butler with a manly exchange of glances that admitted there was no point in trying to send her ladyship off to bed to worry away the little hours alone.
‘All will certainly not be well if Kit comes home and finds you have fretted yourself into a decline, particularly in the present circumstances,’ he then told his friend’s wife as gently as he could, as he manoeuvred her towards the fire. After the hothouse atmosphere of Lady Wintergreen’s ballroom, even a mild night felt frosty to the partygoers and the warmth was welcome.
‘True, his lordship will be very put out if all is not as serene as he left it, but I fail to see why he should blame you for my folly,’ Miranda told him with a return of her usual spirit.
‘Because I happen to be handy, I expect,’ he said with a rueful grin she returned weakly, as she obediently sat on the nearest sofa in response to Miss Wells’s urging and even consented to put her feet up.
‘And at least you’re big enough to mill him down if he loses his temper,’ Miranda admitted with a fondly exasperated smile as she considered her sometimes fiery lord.
Kit’s lady knew her husband all too well, but Ben suspected she also knew they only sparred when nobody else was brave enough to enter the ring with them at Jackson’s Boxing Saloon. Neither had much taste for gratuitous violence, having witnessed the dire effect a selfish and violent drunkard could have on his unfortunate family during their boyhood. Ben’s mother had been one of the Alstones’ lodgers in the shabby house in St Giles that Mrs Alstone somehow contrived to keep, in the face of all her husband’s efforts to drink it down the River Tick along with everything else they had ever owned. There Ben and the Alstone children had learnt far too much about the bitter realities of life with a man who made no effort to control his temper or his fists.
‘My shoulders are broad enough to take whatever fate throws at them, even with the help of my lord the Earl of Carnwood,’ Ben said lightly.
‘True, but I shall not demand of you the sacrifice of taking tea with me at this unearthly hour of the night,’ Miranda observed, and Ben was relieved to see her resume her usual self-command and order her protesting sister off to bed, before she fell asleep in her chair. ‘Oh, and bring brandy for Mr Shaw, if you please, Coppice,’ she asked, then smiled her approval as another footman followed on the heels of the first one with the required decanter and a fine glass. ‘Why did I ever expect otherwise?’ she asked ruefully as the doors closed behind the butler and his cohorts.
‘I have no idea. Especially considering Coppice adores you just as foolishly as the rest of your staff,’ he informed her with a smile and watched Miss Wells pour tea with her usual stern disapproval.
Miranda flushed with pleasure at the thought that those around her actually liked her and, if Ben needed a reminder of why his friend had fallen so hard for her in the first place, that would have provided it. As the Countess carefully sipped at her fragrant China tea, Ben thought she looked considerably better now that two of her chicks were back under her roof unscathed. He fleetingly wished he could find such a wife, then dismissed the thought as paltry—there was only one Miranda Alstone, and an even bigger rogue than himself had already captured her. For himself, he enjoyed his state of single blessedness too well to give it up for married life.
He dismissed such ridiculous ideas as seeking a bride for himself among the belles of the Season, whilst he kept his eye on Miranda’s sister whenever Kit was unavailable. Instead he wondered why on earth her ladyship should consider the self-contained and dauntless Miss Wells in need of her protection. It was beyond Ben, but he sipped his brandy and watched them thoughtfully while they chatted of nothing in particular, as if to soothe each other’s ruffled feathers. There seemed to him to be a sincere friendship between countess and governess, and he was suddenly intrigued by the idea that Miss Wells must be a very different creature whenever he was not by.
Perhaps feeling his speculative gaze on her, she turned and shot him a fierce look of either suspicion or condemnation, and suddenly he felt very tempted to live down to her expectations. Good behaviour or bad seemed to cut no ice with the haughty dragon. Next time he was in the position to do so, he might just snatch a kiss to see if her lips were as cold as her eyes, which were once again glinting so disapprovingly at him that she didn’t even need those wretched eyeglasses to emphasise her aloof dislike.
Thank goodness Miranda had never provoked him to turn her upside down and shake her to see if there was a real warm and breathing woman under all the hairpins, caps and spectacles Miss Wells came armoured in. It was perfectly obvious from looking at his friend’s beautiful wife that she was all of those things, and a few more into the bargain. As he didn’t have the least wish to meet his best friend early one morning on Paddington Green for a very unfriendly encounter, it was very lucky Ben needed no proof of the Countess of Carnwood’s humanity.
‘Why are you flying in the face of experience and worrying about your husband, my lady?’ he turned and asked Miranda in an attempt to get at the truth, and distract himself from the remarkably sweet notion of finding out if Miss Wells’s rather lush mouth would yield under his and give the lie to her fearsome appearance.
If anything it was even more disapproving now, as if she could somehow read his errant thoughts. Anyway, how did she think they could soothe Miranda’s fears when they had no idea what they were? He sent her a fiercely repressive glance and then regarded his friend’s wife with gentle enquiry, having no idea that the contrast in his gaze when resting on the two women in front of him could have hurt the formidable governess.
‘Because I hate being apart from him, I suppose,’ Miranda admitted slowly, then seemed to come to a decision to confide more deeply. ‘And I have received a letter from Cousin Celia,’ she finally added.
Now he would happily have taken a joint share in Miss Wells’s most icy look of disdain if the wretched Celia were actually here to receive the full benefit of it. No wonder the poor girl was fretting herself into a headache if that murderous bitch had been stirring up the Alstone pond once more.
‘Not at all the sort of letter I would expect of her,’ Miranda added hastily as she observed his thunderous frown. ‘Indeed, I suspect that Celia has discovered actually living with Nevin is even more of a punishment than we all intended. Maybe she’s trying to soften Kit’s heart by warning me, in the hope he’ll allow her return to England without her husband.’
‘She has mistaken her man then. Kester will never forgive her for what she did to you, both before and after you met him. Even if he didn’t love you quite ridiculously, how could he forget her wanton cruelty to a vulnerable young girl who happened to be her own cousin into the bargain? But besides bringing up that mare’s nest again and upsetting you, what does the vixen have to say? If you’re able to tell me the details, of course,’ he said with a cautionary glance at Miss Wells.
‘Oh, there’s no need to hide any of it from Charlotte,’ Miranda said blithely, ‘she knows all about my past. Kit and I decided it was necessary that we told her, in order to make sure neither Nevin nor Celia could approach the girls in our absence.’
And it had been an understandable relief to unburden herself to a sympathetic female, Ben concluded, rather surprised at his sudden conviction that the suffocatingly correct Miss Wells would make a stalwart and very partisan ally.
‘I wonder she dared set pen to paper after she had done her best to ruin your life by urging her secret husband to elope with a seventeen-year-old girl, then bigamously