“An honorable man wouldn’t have a reputation like yours,” Waring returned, his voice rising.
“An honorable man would not go sniffing about the skirts of a married woman,” Rhys countered.
“Ha!” Waring sneered. “Do not tell me you have never cuckolded a man. I’ll not believe it for an instant.”
Miranda had endured quite enough of their masculine posturing. At the moment, she was every bit as cross with Waring as she was with Rhys.
“That is enough,” she interrupted sharply. “The two of you cease this nonsense at once. I do not wish to hear another word of it.”
Their gazes swung to her, both blue and yet each so different. One turned her insides to molten fire, and the other made her feel safe and comforted. One was dangerous, and the other was innocuous. One had helped her in her time of need, and the other had invaded her world and turned it upside down in the very best way.
Still, their behavior was equally childish and abominable.
The heat that had been crawling up her throat reached her cheeks. “I’ll not be fought over as if I am a bone and the two of you are territorial mongrels, snarling and snapping your jaws. If neither of you can keep a civil tongue, then you may go.”
“I believe she’s talking to you, Wartly,” Rhys taunted.
Waring glared back at him, his fists clenched. “Clearly, you were the recipient of her harangue.”
“The both of you,” she interrupted, frustrated with their antics. “I was speaking to the both of you.”
“Miranda,” Rhys began.
“Ran,” Waring said simultaneously, a note of hurt in his protest.
She replaced her dish of tea on the tray and shot to her feet. “I think it best if the two of you go.”
Miranda hated the hurt on her old friend’s face. He had just crossed an ocean—and seemingly to return to her. But the expectations he had arrived with did not match her own. She cared for Waring, but she loved him as a brother.
And as for Rhys, he had her heart, but loving him did not matter when there could be no future for them together. He had made his opinion of marriage more than clear. His offer to her had been finite and founded purely in the physical.
She had to think of her school. Of her own future. Before her was a stark representation of the choices she must make. And she knew, to her marrow, what she must do. Even if it broke her heart.
“Please,” she added, emotion making her voice thick. “For my sake. If you both will excuse me?”
Without waiting for their responses, she hastened from the sitting room, leaving the two bickering men and the cooling tea behind her. The time had come for her to put an end to her folly before it was too late.
CHAPTER 20
Rhys stared at the crumpled missive on his desk, the words standing in stark relief to mock him, still scarcely able to believe what he was reading two hours after it had been delivered that morning before he’d even broken his fast.
As our time together has reached its inevitable conclusion, I must look to the safeguarding of my reputation…
I will never forget the weeks we had together…
I cannot help but to think that, in the best interest of my school, our association must conclude now before it is too late…
“A fucking note,” he growled at the offending letter, which he had crushed in a fit of rage upon his first reading.
He had nearly thrown it into the fire just to watch the hateful thing catch flame and burn to ash. But at the last moment, he had changed his mind, opening the missive once more and flattening it on the desk in his study.
All they had shared.
Five weeks of unparalleled ecstasy.
And Miranda had ended it between them with a bloody letter, as if he were a stranger who had requested an audience with her and she was politely denying him. As if what had been between them had meant nothing to her.
With every woman in his past, Rhys had always been the first to sever their ties. He was first to grow weary of their arrangement. First to offer jewels as a conciliatory gesture for a woman who inevitably was distressed by the completion of their affair. He was the one who walked away. Who took a new lover. Who sought pleasure in another’s arms.
