“Very well. I have housemaids. Perhaps one will do as your personal maid. If not, you may hire one,” he said, reaching his door ahead of her and opening it. How he would afford another servant, he couldn’t imagine.
“I am more than happy to share my bedroom with you,” he continued, “but you may want to have privacy at times and a place of your own. When you do, there is another chamber next door. For the time being, my house affords us more than enough space.”
He shouldn’t have added that. It sounded like another jab at her, especially not while she was standing in the center of his bedroom for the first time, her dainty feet on his soft Persian carpet, surveying the gold and white wallpaper, and the large four-poster bed that had been his grandfather’s.
Her head whipped around to face him.
“How long have you lived here?”
He swallowed. “All my life. My parents bought it when they were newly married.” A surge of anger tried to take him over again, and he tamped it down.
Besides, she looked as miserable as he felt for having failed his family. Her book was merely the final doomed battle in his epic defeat.
“I think I should like to see my room after all,” she said softly.
They blinked at one another. It was probably for the better.
“Through there.” He nodded to the connecting door and gestured for Miranda to go explore. She passed by him, but he didn’t follow.
“It might need freshening,” he said, peering past her at the blue and white room. “Mr. Cherville is an efficient man, as good as any general. He’ll send up a housemaid to set things to rights at once. After you’ve settled in, there is a salon one floor down, toward the back of the house, overlooking the garden. I shall await you there.”
She opened her mouth to say something and changed her mind.
Spinning on his heel, Philip left her, going downstairs to the salon. He knew what would be awaiting him.
As expected, a stack of missives from shocked friends which he put aside, invitations from people who werenothis friends but who wanted him as the attraction at a party, which he crumpled up and tossed into the hearth, a letter from his mother, and lastly, an urgent message from Lord Perrin.
First, he scanned his mother’s shocked and saddened words at his behavior. She did not yet know she finally had a daughter-in-law. Then he turned to Miss Waltham’s father’s curt note.
When Miranda entered five minutes later, having removed her bonnet, gloves, and spencer, he was unable to keep his fury at bay any longer.
“I have beensummonedby Lord Perrin.” He slapped the paper while pacing up and down the peach-colored room. Supposedly, it was a soothing color for walls and furnishings, but it annoyed him right then. He wanted to see vivid red to match his mood. “Summoned!”
“What happens if you don’t comply?” she asked.
He stopped and frowned. Truthfully, he hadn’t considered ignoring the viscount. But it would gain him nothing.
“That would only delay the inevitable.”
“Which is?” she asked.
“He may call me out to duel over the honor of his daughter.”
“That’s preposterous!” she said. “You are innocent of all but a kiss.”
“He may simply want to tell me he sank the blasted ships rather than transport my brandy.” Philip sat, then jumped up since she was still standing. “Now I cannot even sit in my own house when I wish to.”
With those unkind words, he drove off his new wife who, with her back ramrod straight, left him alone with only his ire for company. Instantly, he regretted it. Having Miranda in his life was truly the only bright spot.
Bright spot!He smiled wryly and vowed to do better. It was fear of what would happen next that drove his seesawing emotions, and he knew better, as a soldier, than to let fear control him.
MIRANDA WONDERED IF they would survive the evening, never mind a lifetime of wedded war. She was ready to take herself home and tell her father she had made a dreadful mistake.
Many of them, actually!
However, she’d brought it all upon herself. Mayhap tomorrow she would pay a call upon Lady Harriet and punch her in the nose!
After exploring the house on her own, Miranda looked up from the shelf of books in the study at the sound of a throat being cleared.
