Chapter 3

Miranda found herself standing in the front hall in complete darkness. She supposed it was her due punishment for not taking the time to light her small lantern. Only a fool walked around with an unprotected candle. She stuck her hand in front of her face and wiggled her fingers. Nothing. Not even the slightest shadow was visible.

“Well, that will certainly make things more difficult.”

Her choices now consisted of finding a flint box downstairs to relight her candle or to feel her way back up the stairs to her room. Retreat didn’t sound appealing, so she slowly slid her feet across the marble floor. Leaving the safety of the staircase, she felt adrift in the sea of darkness.

She dropped her now-cold candle stub in the pocket of her dressing gown. Extending her hands out in front of her, she inched her way to the wall.

Who knew darkness could feel so heavy? It pressed against her, pushing her to take larger, faster steps or maybe sink to her knees and crawl. Anything to have something solid against her hands, anchoring her placement in the room.

With a determined sigh, Miranda set out once more, heading to the breakfast room at the back of the house. There was probably flint in other rooms, but she had no idea where the servants kept it.

The curse of an efficient household.

It was slow going, to be sure. One hand followed the bumps and ridges of the embossed wallpaper. The other waved in circles in front of her, seeking out any obstacle.

She pursed her lips and began to whistle. One of the stable boys had taught her as a child, but she never got the chance to practice, since her mother declared the practice decidedly uncouth. Her tune sounded more like a repeated collection of three notes, but it was better than the gloomy silence.

As she eased around the corner she saw a blessed flicker of light spilling from the library door and dancing through the darkness in the side hall. Giddy relief gave way to curiosity. Who else in the household was up? Surely Georgina had retired to her room where she could blather on about her evening to her maid and her pillows. Georgina had never cared much for the library, anyway.

Even though the door was only slightly ajar, causing the light to point away from her, it allowed Miranda enough vision to move down the corridor with confidence. She pushed the door the rest of the way open, expecting to find Griffith looking for some reference book to help him with one of his projects around the estate.

Instead she found Griffith’s boots—a whole pile of them on the floor by the settee. Griffith’s new valet was perched on the settee, one of her brother’s boots balanced across his lap. A book lay open on the table in front of him.

“Marlow?”

He jerked his attention from his book, sprang to his feet, and executed a smart bow in one fluid motion. “My lady, may I be of service?”

“What are you doing?” She seemed to be asking that a lot lately. It was not a question she normally felt the need to ask her servants.

“Polishing the duke’s boots, my lady.”

“Of course you are.” Miranda thought about rolling her eyes, but refrained.

“A lady always maintains perfect composure in front of the servants.”

Eye rolling was not ladylike.

Marlow stood completely still, continuing to stare. It was a bit unnerving.

“I am having trouble sleeping.” Why did she feel the need to explain her presence? She’d never needed to before, but oddly she felt as if she had intruded on Marlow’s private time.

“Would you like me to get you some warm milk? Or perhaps some tea?”

“I was on my way to the kitchen for tea when my candle blew out.” She withdrew the stub from her pocket and held it up.

Marlow opened his mouth to say something and then quickly shut it again. After a moment he opened his mouth again. “I beg your pardon, my lady, but do you . . . know how to make tea?”

“Of course.” She lifted her chin in an outward display of confidence. “Every lady has steeped tea.”

“My apologies, my lady.”

They stood for several heartbeats, he silently watching her while her eyes skittered all about the room. Griffith should really think about rearranging the bookshelves. Their current order was not at all attractive.

Marlow cleared his throat. “I believe the kitchen fires have been banked for the night.”

“Yes, I am sure they have.” Her fingernails were looking a bit rough. Had she been chewing them again without realizing it?

He cleared his throat once more. Did he always do that before speaking? “Do you know how to stoke the fire?”

Admitting defeat, Miranda threw herself into the chair at her little corner desk, relaxing her tight grip on correct ladylike posture and allowing herself to slump into the soft upholstery with a sigh. “No. I don’t.”

“Allow me, my lady. I shall fetch you some tea.” He executed a perfect bow and turned toward the door.

“Thank you, Marlow,” Miranda said to his back.

With nothing to do but wait, Miranda fiddled with the quills and papers on the desk before her. The small desk was one of her favorite places to write. A stack of letters marked for friends from London and for a collection of distant relatives sat on the corner of the table, waiting to be franked and sent to the post in the morning.

She reached for a piece of blue paper from the stash she kept on the corner of the desk, the all-too-familiar feeling of emotional upheaval crawling beneath her skin.

Dipping a quill in ink she began to write.

Dear Marshington,

Georgina has had her little debut here in Hertfordshire. She has made quite a few conquests. I have no doubt the admirers will swarm when she reaches London in a few months.

Is it possible to be happy and disquieted at the same moment? I believe I’m truly happy for her success, but all of those gentlemen now fawning over her did not do the same when I came out a few years ago.

Miranda continued pouring out her feelings in a hasty scribble. A smudge here and a blurred word there didn’t much matter. No one would ever read the words but her, and she rarely went back to review them.

She should probably burn them but couldn’t bring herself to do it. Instead she kept the piles of letters locked away in a trunk underneath her bed.

The letters kept her sane. She’d long ago passed the age where imaginary friends were acceptable. The fact that her friend wasn’t actually imaginary, but simply unaware of her existence, was of little consolation.

There was still the idea in the back of her mind, planted there during those impressionable childhood years, that Griffith’s old friend would understand.

I know that I am fairly intelligent, passably pretty, and skilled at running a household, although I discovered tonight that I find fire rather elusive, so why doesn’t anyone of any worth seem to want to court me?

Just once I would like to meet someone who wasn’t intimidated by Griffith. Unfortunately there are no other dukes around. They would not be intimidated by another duke. There is you, of course, but we have never actually met, so a courtship between us is a bit unlikely at the moment.

Ah well, I think I hear Marlow returning with my tea.

Yrs,
Miranda

Hastily she folded the paper and shoved it underneath the stack of letters as Marlow entered the library with a loaded tea service.

“Your tea, my lady,” he said with a bow.

Miranda looked from the valet to the tea service. The comforting aroma of tea spread through her, making her more relaxed with every breath.

She should offer him a cup. It was the middle of the night, with no one around to see them, and if ever the rules of propriety could be bent it was now.

Then again, “A lady is always a lady.”

Bother that. She shoved her mother out of her mind, fighting a grin at the mental image. It would be a few hours yet before anyone else stirred in the house. Besides, there was something addicting about his grey gaze. Almost refreshing in its honest directness.

She moved from the desk to the settee, trying to subtly wipe her hands against her dressing gown. Had they been sweating while she wrote her letter? “Would you care to join me?”

His gaze snapped to hers.

Miranda’s heart gave a strange twist in her chest. They were alone. As alone as she’d ever been with a man, servant or otherwise.

She should recant her offer. The memory of those grey eyes had not accounted for how uneasy they made her feel. They seemed to see more than what was actually before him, as if he could look into her soul and pick apart her inner ponderings and motivations. What a ridiculous thought. Something about this man clearly brought out her fanciful side.

“I would be honored, my lady.” Even after answering in the affirmative, he hesitated before taking a seat across the low table from her.

Miranda began to pour the tea. She fixed his cup according to his stated preferences and then sat back with her own cup. She’d already thrown propriety to the wind; rigid posture might as well join it.

“How did you come to be in Griffith’s employ, Marlow? I wasn’t aware he had set about looking for a new valet, although it was high past time. Herbert must be sixty years old.”

“We happened upon each other in the village. I had, ah, been relieved of my employment. Your brother took a liking to me, however, and here I am.”

“Truly? That sounds so very unlike Griffith,” she murmured. Griffith never did anything without thinking it through and coming up with a good reason or twenty.

“Then I am even more grateful for the position.” Marlow quietly sipped at his tea, apparently waiting for her to guide the conversation, if there was to be any.

Did she want there to be any? Yes. Yes, she did. If for no other reason than to pretend she had control over something. “Did you work as a valet before?”

“Yes, my lady.”

Miranda took a large gulp of tea and tried desperately to think of something, anything, to ask that did not involve work. She really didn’t want to know what it was like dressing a gentleman for a living, and especially not in relation to her brother. Having decided that they were going to have a conversation mere moments before, she wasn’t quite ready to abandon the effort.

Her gaze drifted back to him, as if just looking at him would inspire an appropriate topic. All it did was make her realize that she’d been wrong when she thought no man could fill out a coat like her brothers did. Marlow was either padding his shoulders or his muscles were straining the seams of his tailored jacket. She cleared her throat and looked back to her teacup. Tiny blue flowers on white porcelain were considerably safer to look at. “Have you any family near here?”

“No, my lady. I am afraid it is only me. There may be a scattering of cousins over in Derbyshire, but I’ve lost touch with them over the years.”

“Did you grow up in Derbyshire, then?”

“No, Kent.”

She looked at him in confusion. It wasn’t unheard of for aristocratic families to become scattered, with so many of them traveling to London to marry, but the lower classes? “How in the world did you become so separated? Kent is nowhere near Derbyshire.”

“A small move here, a large move there, and you end up going wherever the work takes you.” He had a faraway look in his eye, and she suspected there was much more behind his statement than the scattering of extended family members. With a sad little smile and a shrug, he went back to sipping at his tea.

“I see,” Miranda said, although she really didn’t. A servant would have to change jobs quite a bit to jump from house to house and travel all the way to Derbyshire from Kent and then on to Hertfordshire—and Marlow couldn’t be much older than Griffith. “What are you reading?”

Marlow glanced at the book open near the stack of boots. “Shakespeare. Twelfth Night.”

“Is that the one where the noblewoman pretends to be a servant to the duke?”

He nodded.

“I’ve never understood how that would work. I mean, I can’t even make myself a cup of tea, much less do things for someone else.” She glared at the teapot, as if her ineptitude was entirely its fault. “Aside from the practical aspects, there’s the fact that you’d have to go against everything you had been taught since childhood.”

Marlow cleared his throat. “I believe, my lady, that the idea is that someone will do whatever is needed when the situation calls for it. I think anyone, nobility included, can find hidden talents within themselves when it is required to accomplish their goals.”

After several moments of awkward silence, he placed his cup back on the tea tray. “If you have finished, I will see to the dishes, my lady.”

“Of course.” She quietly placed her cup down and stood. The smile she directed at the servant wasn’t as forced as she expected it to be. The interlude had been far from comfortable, but spending time with him intrigued her more than anything else of late. “Thank you for the tea.”

With a last questioning glance at the valet, she lit her candle and went back to her room. Amazing how such a little bit of light made the pathway so much easier to navigate.

Her nerves had settled and bed didn’t seem such a daunting place anymore. If part of her suspected it had more to do with the tea and conversation than her heartfelt letter, she refused to admit it.

He set the tea service on the worktable with utmost care. What he really wanted to do was hurl the thing into the fireplace. That would wake the housekeeper though. He didn’t doubt his abilities to calm any ruffled feathers waking her would cause, but he preferred no one found out he’d taken tea with the lady of the house.

Servants frowned on uppity airs such as that.

Marlow. He was Marlow. He must remember to be no one but Marlow.

He dumped the tea leaves from the pot and plunged the dish into the wash bucket. Why had he told her about his family? Not all of it, granted. The cousins in Derbyshire were a bit removed and mostly on his mother’s side. The aunt and cousin residing in London were much closer relations, but he never mentioned them.

Most of the time he tried to forget they were there.

Life would have been simpler if they weren’t. If not for his cousin, he’d have never gone to France, never been caught up in the mystique of espionage, and never found himself shining boots at a duke’s country estate.

Which meant he would never have taken midnight tea with Lady Miranda . . . and that would have been a shame.

He smiled as he left everything in the kitchen the way he had found it. No one would suspect a middle-of-the night forage.

Thoughts raced through his mind as he returned to the library. He went over every moment of the exchange, examining angles and motivations. Why would she invite him to drink with her? He’d brought a second cup, intending to finish the pot after she had retired. He never expected she’d invite him to sit with her.

The small writing desk caught his eye as he entered the room. She had left it hastily when he returned with the tea. Was she hiding something?

Dread pooled in his stomach. By necessity, everyone in the house was a suspect until proven otherwise, but he had never truly thought Griffith or his family were behind the leaked secrets.

What if he was wrong?

Thoughts of Miranda’s charming and generous nature fell to the wayside. With absolute calm he sorted through the papers on the desk. Letters to family and other social equals were of little interest to him. There was nothing out of the ordinary there, and the post had been the first thing the War Office had searched.

His eyebrows rose at the blue paper at the bottom of the stack. It was folded crookedly, unlike the precise lines of the other letters, and it bore no direction.

He flipped it open and couldn’t believe his eyes. She was writing to the Duke of Marshington? Breath whooshed from his lungs as he read the letter. She wasn’t just writing to the duke, she was pouring her heart out to him. It indicated an intimate relationship.

He sat on the couch and stared at the dancing flames of fire. This changed everything.