“Only because you all but named our names.”
“The entire compilation was an accident,” she protested. “At first, I merely wrote letters to my dear cousins, and then Lady Harriet pressed me to turn it all into a real book.”
Philip shook his head, unable to believe he’d heard her correctly. He stared at the book in his hand, thinking of the damage it had done and would continue to do.
“Lady Harriet knew about this?”
“Yes,” Miranda said. “She suggested it. She invited me to her home the first week after you started escorting me. We were speaking about family. Naturally, I mentioned my cousins and that led to a brief discussion of how I write letters to keep them amused.” She broke off at his thunderous expression.
“Hold your tongue,” he ordered and thumbed through the book, every damnable, cursed page. Finally, he looked at her again.
“Yet Harriet Beaumont is not in this ... this compilation of horse dung.”
Miranda’s mouth dropped open. “That is not very nice. I know it has not the caliber of Miss Austen, but it’s hardly dung!”
“Fine!” Philip spat out. “The story of a young woman’s Season is passingly good. It has the style of a very abbreviated version of Fielding’sTom Jones. Yet why doesn’t Lady Harriet grace its literary pages?”
“Because she said her family doesn’t need the fame nor find it agreeable the way others do.” Quieting, she considered her own words while her verdant hazel eyes grew larger.
“Now that I say it to you, it sounds implausible. But she has been so kind and given me advice on who and what to write about. She is my patron.” Miranda lifted her chin. “She paid for the printing and distribution. After all that, you see I couldn’t put her in unless she wished it.”
Philip was beginning to see clearly as through a crystal ball. Tossing the volume onto the sofa, he walked to the window overlooking her uncle’s modest acreage.
“She knew I was escorting you. She knew you would tell your cousins about me. And she probably even added a few juicy morsels, I’ll warrant.”
He turned at her silence. By the color of her cheeks, he would say he’d hit the nail firmly with the hammer.
“I am truly sorry,” she said. “I would not hurt you for the world. In fact, if I may tell you the truth of what I am feeling—”
“The truth!” Fury rose like bile in his throat. “I think you should keep your feelings to yourself. You have already laid bare quite enough, and I for one don’t think I can stomach any more.”
MIRANDA LOOKED DOWN at the book.
She’d been naïve. Lady Harriet’s friendship had occurred quickly, practically overnight. She recalled wondering at the kindness of the flurry of invitations, and only now realized she’d been spoon-fed stories and suggestions like a baby with its first slip-slops.
Having thought she was figuring out thetonand their ways, in truth, she’d been made a fool of. Worst of all, she’d betrayed Philip.
“I’m terribly sorry.”
Philip shook his head. “It’s too late for that. I think it’s too late to salvage anything now. I need to send a courier to London to determine the damage.”
With that, he stormed from the room.
He was not going to forgive her. After he left Northampton, he would probably never speak to her again.How could she bear it when she loved him?And this on the heels of having decided to go back with Philip to London, even knowing how it would have bruised her heart to be near him when he didn’t return her love.
Should she try again to tell him of those feelings?
Chewing her bottom lip, Miranda decided it would make little difference. Trying to express the fullness of her heart’s emotions had only infuriated him further.
When Aunt Lucinda came back, Miranda would return home and face whatever consequences there might be.
Retiring to her room, she saw no one until dinner. Her aunt and uncle knew something was going on, but only Helen had read any of the pages upon the book’s arrival. Her cousin’s wide-eyed stare of shock had made Miranda’s stomach churn. With her anonymity stripped away, everything that had seemed amusing was now simply vulgar.
If this was how she felt with family, how terrible would it be to encounter those who did not care for her. Miranda could hardly bear the humiliation.
Wearing a bleak expression at dinner, Philip made little effort to be congenial, leaving her uncle and Peter to carry the conversation. After the debacle of the book, the good news of the crutches barely raised Miranda’s spirits, and Helen, too, remained subdued.
When her aunt switched to the topic ofGlenarvon, a recently published novel by Lady Caroline Lamb, Miranda thought she would jump out of her skin. A satirical political tale, it was Lamb’s cruel and bitter depiction of Lord Byron, her ex-lover, that had caused the greatest stir.
