that curved round the well of the hall. To think she had been within an inch of being mistress here! She might have occupied the master suite, and descended those stairs every evening for dinner. She might have had servants to fetch and carry for her, and been invited to all the county functions. Countess Sanders—the housekeeper’s daughter. Of course, she would have had to accept other responsibilities, too, not least the commitment to let Mark into her bedroom every night. That was not so easy to contemplate, and she determinedly thrust away the memory of the last time she had seen him …
‘Reflecting on what might have been?’ a lazy voice drawled behind her, and she spun round resentfully to face her tormentor.
‘Would it do any good to deny it?’ she demanded.
‘It might. But I’d find it very hard to believe. The old place has a lot to commend it.’
Miranda folded her hands round her handbag. ‘I’m surprised you think so. It must be much different from what you’re used to.’
His smile was mocking. ‘Now how am I supposed to take that? Am I to assume you think we live in squalor back home? Or have I simply not the taste to appreciate it?’
Miranda expelled her breath on a sigh. ‘I was merely stating that rural England must be vastly different from—where is it you live? South America? Brazil?’
‘South America will do,’ he returned, his voice noticeably cooler. ‘And yes, of course, it is—vastly different. Geographically at least.’
Miranda wanted to walk away from him, but something held her where she was. She didn’t like the way he could disconcert her without any apparent effort on his part, and although she knew he was only six or seven years her senior, he seemed much older than that. Perhaps it was due to the differences in their ways of life. She guessed that conditions in South American countries were much less civilised than in her own, and the heat and the insects held no appeal for her.
Trying to take the conversation on to a lighter plane, she said: ‘Will you be leaving now? Or will you stay with your aunt until after Christmas?’
‘That rather depends.’ Jaime folded his arms, standing feet apart facing her, his expression impossible to read.
‘Depends?’ Miranda was aware of the quiver in her own tones. ‘On what?’
He pushed his lower lip forward. ‘To quote an earlier conversation—what has that to do with you?’
She coloured deeply, half turning away. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.’
Her voice was stiff with embarrassment, but when she would have left him, he stepped forward and caught her arm. ‘Have you spoken to Lady Sanders?’ he asked.
Miranda looked up at him. ‘You know I have.’
‘What did she tell you?’
Miranda pressed her lips together to suppress her indignation. Then she said tautly: ‘She told me the estate is entailed, and that she, like my mother and me, is losing her home.’
‘Is that what she said?’ Jaime’s lips twisted. ‘Those were her very words?’
Miranda tried to pull her arm free, but it was a useless exercise. ‘She might not have said that exactly, but that was what she meant. Why? What has any of this to do with you?’
He let her go then, and she rubbed her sleeve to stimulate the blood circulating through her numbed flesh. ‘Perhaps I feel sorry for you,’ he said provokingly. ‘Or then again, perhaps I don’t.’
Miranda uttered a word under her breath that she would never have voiced, but from his expression she suspected he had heard her. ‘I think you’re despicable! It may have slipped your notice, but I cared for Mark, and now he’s dead! That’s all that matters to me.’
‘Really?’ The scepticism in his voice was denigrating. ‘How touching! Forgive me if I don’t shed a tear!’
‘You don’t care about any of us, do you?’ Miranda said accusingly. ‘You just enjoy making fun of us.’
He ran a probing hand over the fine silk of his tie, and regarded her intently for a moment. Then he said, ‘Would you think I was making fun of you if I asked you to marry me?’
Miranda groped weakly for the newel post at the foot of the staircase. Her fingers curved round the polished ball on its pedestal, and its coolness was like a lifeline in a broiling sea.
‘I see the prospect had not occurred to you,’ he said mildly. ‘And there are certain advantages in the element of surprise.’
Miranda gathered herself and stared at him resentfully, half suspecting that this was yet another attempt to humiliate her. ‘You’re not serious, of course!’
‘Why not?’ His mouth thinned. ‘Is it such a distasteful proposition?’
Now was her chance, and Miranda seized it with both hands. ‘Frankly, yes,’ she declared coldly. ‘I think you must be quite mad to consider it!’
She had not really thought that she could arouse him, but she was wrong. Before her half fearful gaze, she saw the sudden tautening of the skin across his cheekbones, the aggressive tightening of his jaw, and the diamond-hard congealing of his eyes. The temperature in the hall lowered a terrifying number of degrees, and she knew she had been right to be apprehensive of this man.
‘Very well,’ he said now, and she was almost shocked at the lack of emotion in his voice. ‘But you’ll remember what I said.’ And he walked away.
Miranda stood for several minutes in the hall after he had gone, desperately trying to regain her former composure. But composure would not come, only a devastating conviction that for all her small victory, the war was not yet over.
The guests began to drift away in the late afternoon, and by five o’clock only Miranda, Jaime and Lady Sanders, and the caterers she had hired for the occasion, were left in the echoing mansion. Avoiding Jaime’s eyes was becoming increasingly more difficult, and Miranda excused herself on the pretext of checking that the hired staff knew where to put everything. The kitchen was her domain, she told herself bitterly, refusing to contemplate what her lot might have been had she accepted Jaime Knevett’s offer. She had no idea why he should have made such an outrageous suggestion, but in any case, marrying him was out of the question. Apart from anything else, she could not consider leaving the country with her mother a helpless invalid in some National Health establishment. Besides, she had no desire to marry him, or anyone else for that matter. It was all rather unreal and insubstantial, part and parcel of the unreality of these last days.
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