Love was real, and he was an idiot.
“What are you going to do about it?” Rhiannon asked.
“I’m going to marry her,” he said hoarsely, knowing it was what he had to do.
What he wanted to do. Nothing less than a lifetime with Miranda would suffice. All he had to do was persuade her.
“Good.” Rhiannon smiled, but he swore that there remained a touch of sadness in her countenance. “I have always wished for a sister, and I have a feeling I will like this Fallen Countess of yours very much.”
“You will.” Impulsively, he drew his sister into an embrace, hugging her tightly. “Thank you, Rhi.”
She hugged him back. “You are most welcome, dearest brother.”
Miranda satin her quiet classroom where the ingredients had been dutifully assembled for the hotentréeclass she was meant to be teaching this morning. Two long tables with empty chairs faced her, mocking as the silence. Not a single pupil had arrived.
She had dressed herself with care that morning, pressing a cold cloth to her tear-swollen eyes after dashing off the letter to Rhys ending their arrangement. With a judicious—if trembling—hand, she had applied pearl powder to her reddened nose and cheeks. Her hope had been that no one would take note of her altered appearance or inquire after the reason for her sorrow.
Now, however, it would seem that all her efforts had been for naught.
Because there were no eager young ladies awaiting her instruction. No cooks desiring to hone their skills. The Lenox School of Cookery was as empty as Miranda’s heart.
As she stared at the fresh herbs and neatly chopped vegetables before her, tears began to blur her vision. Tears she had done her utmost to keep at bay since she had first settled upon what she must do. Tears she had failed miserably in banishing. Instead, they had fallen, becoming full-bodied sobs that had echoed in the stillness of her little bedchamber.
By dawn, her decision had not been any more impossible than it had felt the night before. She’d scarcely slept at all, dread and agony keeping her in a tight, unmerciful grip throughout. But she had done what she did best. She had faced her obligations. Miranda had always known her divorce from Ammondale would irrevocably change her life. What she never could have known, however, was how it would taint every action that followed, the one rotten apple that turned a bushel.
She had told herself sternly that her choice had been made. That severing all ties with Rhys was for the best. That all good things must come to an end.
And so they all had.
It was over. Her arrangement with Rhys. Her school. What had remained of her reputation.
She had lost it all.
She had nothing aside from her molds and ice caves and the ingredients before her. It wouldn’t surprise Miranda to find that even White had abandoned her when she returned home. And what could she expect? The tainted divorcée, the scandalous Fallen Countess, had proven everyone right in the end.
She was an immoral woman. The Duke of Whitby’s mistress.
Society’s most notorious scandal rag had published the announcement for all London just that morning.
Mrs. Kirkeland had reluctantly shown Miranda the article after the young lad who helped with carrying about and storing their ingredients had given it to her. Miranda had been shocked to read a salacious account of her affair with Rhys, from the wicked country house party in Hertfordshire to their time in London, complete with reports of her late-night jaunts to a certain house in St John’s Wood.
Most particularly proven correct about Miranda had been her former husband, the horrified Earl of A. who, by all accounts, had feared the former Lady A. would find an ignoble end. She didn’t doubt that Ammondale was somehow behind the article. It was not without irony, of course, that he would prove the architect of her downfall.
Had she not been so desolate, Miranda might have laughed.
As it was, a hysterical bubble of something worked its way up, from deep inside her, and emerged as something that rather resembled the bleat of a sheep.
“Ran.”
She looked up, blinking furiously to clear her vision. Waring stood at the threshold of her barren classroom. How she wished it were Rhys in his place.
“Waring,” she managed. “What are you doing here?”
“That infernal gossip rag,” he explained, striding toward her, pity in his voice. “I heard about it this morning, and I knew I had to find you.”
Good heavens, did all London know about her ignominy already? It would certainly seem that way, particularly given her lack of pupils.
A sob went through her at the reminder of all she’d lost. “You shouldn’t have come. I’ll only sully your reputation. Have you not heard? I am a fallen woman in all ways now. So immoral that no lady of good breeding would dare to attend one of my classes.”
