No doubt he realized it, and that is why he did not come tonight. But it would be foolish of me indeed to linger here in that case.”
Rachel sighed. Miranda squeezed her hand and smiled. She had liked Lord Ravenscar’s sister from the moment she met her. The young woman had a pensive, lovely face, her big green eyes touched by a hint of sadness, and there was a quiet warmth in her manner that made her seem approachable despite her beauty, and her fashionable hair and attire.
“Lady Westhampton, I truly do like you,” Miranda went on. “And I think more of your brother that he is reluctant to attach himself to any rich woman who comes along. However, like him, I have no desire for this marriage, and it seems quite useless for me to remain.”
“I would so like for him to meet you. Now that I have met you myself, I—I am even more in favor of his marrying you. He is a very charming man, really. You would be bound to like him. And he would be so sur—well, pleased to meet you.”
“Surprised, you started to say?” Miranda asked, a smile curving her mouth. “Why? Did he think I was an untutored rustic?”
Color rose in the other woman’s cheeks. “It’s…well…possible. You see, we didn’t know.” She sighed and raised her hands in a gesture of surrender. “I am sorry. I am making even more of a hash of it. But I admit, I had not expected you to be…so fashionably dressed or to speak so, well, almost like an Englishwoman.”
“My stepmother is English,” Miranda replied. “She always made certain we spoke correctly and behaved politely.”
“Oh, I see.” Rachel colored even more. “Now I feel even more the fool. I—is your stepmother here? I don’t remember meeting her.” Rachel glanced around the room.
“No. She wasn’t feeling quite the thing this evening. She is often a trifle ill, I’m afraid.”
“I’m sorry.” Rachel looked at her for a moment, then said, “Miss Upshaw, may I be quite frank with you, as you were with me a while ago?”
“I prefer it.”
“I am afraid that we seem very different to you, this way we marry for alliances rather than for love. It is somewhat cold, I admit. But that is the way it has long been among us—the aristocracy, I mean. We have a duty to our family, our name, the very house where we were born and all the people who work there, who live there. We are not always able to do as we choose. I, too, married as my parents wished.”
Miranda wondered curiously how that marriage had worked out. She had not met a Lord Westhampton here tonight.
As if seeing Miranda’s thoughts on her face, Rachel added, “You have not met my husband. Lord Westhampton resides at our country estate most of the year.” She hesitated, then went on, “Surely you can see that sometimes it is a necessity to marry well, not to marry as one desires. It seems that you would encounter the same sort of thing in the United States. Your father’s business will need someone to take his place when he dies, will it not? If you did not have a brother or uncle or whoever to run the business, then wouldn’t you feel the obligation to marry someone who could take it over?”
“I have no brother or uncle. But when my father dies, I will take over his business. I will not need a husband to do so.”
Rachel stared at her for a long moment. “You will run it?”
“Yes, of course. There is no one who knows more about it than I. I have been helping my father with his work since I was seven years old and totted down the numbers and prices for furs when he was trading with the trappers. I know the fur business from the ground up, and now that he has sold it to Mr. Astor, frankly, the business that he has now is more my doing than his. I invest the majority of his money for him in real estate and businesses and such.”
“But I—You deprive me of speech, Miss Upshaw. I am amazed.”
“It will be mine one day, mine and Veronica’s. It would seem very foolish not to know all I can about it. Besides, it’s quite a bit more interesting than paying calls all day. Oh! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply…”
“That what I do is useless and boring?” Rachel finished her sentence for her. “Don’t worry. I’m not angry. It’s the simple truth. What I do is rather useless and often boring.” She smiled, a dimple popping into her smooth cheek. “But I am afraid I would not have the slightest idea how to run the estate or how to make money to repair it. And, besides, here it would not be considered proper.”
“Oh, I doubt it is considered proper where I live,” Miranda replied cheerfully. “But if I lived my life by what society matrons considered proper, I would scarcely ever get to do anything I enjoyed. I am not a very proper person, I’m afraid, so you can see that it is just as well that your brother does not marry me, for I would doubtless be forever doing things that would shock everyone.”
Rachel smiled. “But life would be much more entertaining for us.”
“Perhaps.” Miranda smiled back and rose to take her leave.
Lady Ravenscar came over at her daughter’s signal, smiling in her rather stiff way and saying, “Oh, no, you must not leave us so soon, Miss Upshaw. Why, you have not yet met my brother. Rupert…” She turned and gestured toward an older gentleman standing a few feet away. “Do come here and meet Miss Upshaw. This is my brother, Rupert Dalrymple, Miss Upshaw.”
Rupert Dalrymple was an affable gentleman, far more genial than his sister, a trifle portly, with an almost completely bald pate, which he strove to make up for by cultivating a luxuriant white mustache that curved down far past his upper lip. He, too, strove valiantly to convince Miranda to stay, offering card games and more music as amusements and assuring her that his nephew Dev was one who tended to lose track of time—“no insult intended to you, I can assure you”—and would soon appear.
Miranda smiled but stood her ground, and a few minutes later she was outside Lady Ravenscar’s door, waiting for her carriage to pull up in front.
Lady Ravenscar’s house, for all her complaining about its inadequacies, was a pleasant white house of the Queen Anne style, and, while not large, it sat on a crescent-shaped street, the other side of which held a small park, protecting the little street from a larger thoroughfare. After the carriage pulled up and Miranda climbed into it, they drove forward, curving around the crescent and joining the large thoroughfare, empty of traffic at this time of night.
Miranda pulled back the curtain to look out into the night. Most people, she knew, preferred the privacy of the curtains, but on such a pleasant night as this, warm and not rainy, it seemed a shame to sit in a stuffy, enclosed carriage. She would frankly have preferred to walk the few blocks home and enjoy the balmy evening up close, but the sort of soft evening slippers she wore were not made for walking, and, besides, she knew that her stepmother would suffer a collapse at the thought of Miranda walking alone at night amid the dangers of London.
As her driver turned right at the next street and started up the block, Miranda saw a man strolling down the street toward them. He was dressed in elegant evening attire, his hat set at a rakish angle on his head. Miranda noticed that as he walked along, his steps were less than straight. Though he did not stagger or lurch, he was, Miranda decided, definitely “bosky.” There was something about the overly careful way he strode along, his steps meandering first one way and then the other.
A gentleman coming home from his club, she thought, and wondered if he was walking in the hopes that the evening air would
