Waring gave her a small smile, clasping his hands behind his back. “You are not pleased to see me, then?”
“Of course I am,” she reassured him, moving deeper into the room.
For shewashappy to see him. His letters had been few and concise. She had missed his steadfast presence in her life, whichhad begun during the misery of her new marriage and had lasted the duration.
She reached him and opened her arms. Waring embraced her as he always did, with tenderness and yet reverent care, as if she were fine Sèvres porcelain he feared might break lest he grow too exuberant. Miranda rejoiced in the familiar, comforting warmth of his strong arms, noting he held her just a moment longer than strictly necessary before releasing her and stepping away.
His light-blue gaze roamed her face, as if searching for signs of change. She wondered if he found any and treated him to the same. His hair was longer than fashionable, and he had grown a beard in his absence. Perhaps his new hirsute appearance was down to his time in America.
“You look well,” he said at last, breaking the almost awkward silence.
“As do you,” she returned politely. “You have a beard now.”
He scrubbed a hand over his jaw, and she noted for the first time that the dark hair was stippled with hints of silver. “You don’t like it?”
“I suppose I’m not accustomed to it.”
“I thought it rather dashing.”
“I think it very American.”
They shared a laugh, and suddenly, it was as if he had never been gone, the initial uncertainty of their reunion shattered like an unwanted pot tossed into the dustbin.
“I’ve missed you, Ran.”
His words were tinged with emotion she didn’t recognize, even if his old, familiar endearment for her was.
“I have missed you as well.” She gestured to the settee behind him. “Shall we sit? I’ll ring for tea. How long are you staying in England?”
“Tea would be just the thing.”
Miranda moved to the bellpull and gave it a tug before she turned back to the seating arrangement.
“And as for how long I’m staying, forever, I should think,” Waring added.
He said the last as Miranda settled in an overstuffed chair opposite the settee. The act was undertaken with a distinct lack of grace, thanks, in part, to her renewed surprise.
“You mean you won’t be returning to America?” she asked.
Just prior to his departure, Waring had been considering the move a permanent one, pleased to leave his estates in the care of his capable younger brother.
He shook his head now. “I discovered there was something of great import I left behind.”
The look he gave her was meaningful, and just as quickly as the mood between them had lightened, becoming familiar, it shifted yet again. There was a new intensity in his eyes, in his voice. Almost as if… But no, surely not. Waring considered her a sister. He had always said so, and she felt for him as if he were another brother, only one to whom she was even closer than George.
“I expect you must have missed your brother and your estates,” she guessed.
“I missed more than that,” Waring told her quietly.
She blinked, thinking she was misreading the expression on his face, one of such honed concentration. It was a look he hadn’t given her since he had volunteered himself as sacrificial lamb in the matter of her divorce from Ammondale. One that had been so fleeting at the time that she had decided she must have imagined it.
“What else did you miss?” she asked, fearing she knew the answer.
“Do you need to question it, Ran?”
She was spared from having to answer by the discreet tap on the door signifying White had arrived with the tea. Apparently, White must have had it at the ready, and Miranda had never been so thankful for her disapproving maid of all work as she was in that moment. The bustling presence of the steel-haired domestic broke the subtle tension of the room. When she had excused herself and Miranda and Waring were once more alone, Miranda prepared tea for them.
The distraction was a welcome one, for there were emotions in her old friend’s eyes she had never thought to see. Emotions that made her belly tighten with dread, because she could not return them. Not after Rhys.
