“Open up the door, sister!” Her younger brother Brandon bellowed from the other side. “I can’t stand here all day.”
Miranda would have been more than happy to have left him there all day, but he was making far too much noise to allow any continued sleep. She dragged herself out of bed, shivering slightly when her bare feet met the cold floor, and she crossed the chilly room to the door, flinging it open just as he was about to pound on it again.
“It wasn’t locked,” she said in a deliberately mild tone.
“I don’t just barge into a lady’s bedroom uninvited,” he said stiffly, doing just that. “You might be dressing.”
“I might be sleeping.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised, with you out and about at all hours…damn, it’s cold in here! Why don’t you have your maid set a fire?”
“Because I’m trying to be careful with money,” she said.
“Why? The family has plenty…”
“I’ve put you all through enough as it is,” she said stubbornly, wishing she’d thought to put on her slippers. It was hard to be noble when her feet where like blocks of ice.
“That’s what I’m here to talk to you about, Miranda,” he began. “You can’t…”
“You can’t stand there and lecture me while I’m freezing,” she interrupted him, knowing instinctively what was coming. “Go downstairs and eat a large breakfast and Jane and I will join you as soon as we’re dressed.”
“Jane?” He perked up. “What’s she doing here? I thought she’d be busy getting ready for her wedding to old Bore-well.”
“He’s not old. And his name’s Bothwell, and that’s exactly what she’s doing. Her parents are travelling, and she’s here in London choosing fabrics for her trousseau and keeping me company.”
Brandon looked at her critically. He was young—a mere seventeen and a half—but he knew her well. “I thought you disliked Bore-well as much as the rest of us did. What made you change your mind?”
She took his arm and dragged him to the open door, shoving him through. “Allow me time to get dressed and then we’ll talk, you reprobate.”
“All right. But don’t think you’re going to weasel out of this. I’m just the first advance—the rest of the family are going to descend on you the moment they hear about what you’ve been doing.”
She knew. Without asking, she knew what had put her family into an uproar. Lucien had warned her. Friendship, with the Scorpion, even for one such as her, was out of the question.
“We’ll talk about it once I’m dressed,” she said and slammed the door shut in his earnest young face.
She turned and caught sight of her reflection in the mirror. She hadn’t been ruthlessly kissed by a criminal last night, but she had the same vibrant look on her face that Jane had had after the masked ball. Every day she spent with Lucien she ended up looking just like that. The flush of color, the shining eyes. Damn.
Miranda’s was an entirely different matter, of course. Lucien was her friend, her first friend in a long, long time, and she wasn’t about to give him up without a fight. Brandon could lecture her about how awful he was, but it wasn’t going to stop her.
She rang for Martha, who helped her dress for battle in dove-gray with faux military trim, gray leather boots and her brown hair tightly pinned and pulled back from her face. As the moments passed her determination grew—her family had been wonderful to her, supporting her foolish choices, and she owed them everything. But she just couldn’t give him up.
By the time she walked into the dining room her heart was pounding and her hands were sweaty, which was ridiculous. It was her darling baby brother she was facing, not some ogre. Jane was already up, sitting beside Brandon at the table, picking at her food while he plowed through a heaping plate of eggs and kippers, and she could only hope food had moderated his stern frame of mind.
“There you are,” he said, rising automatically like the exquisitely polite young man that he was. “What took you so long?”
She waved him back down into his chair, heading for the sideboard. The sight of food made her stomach lurch in rebellion, but she filled her plate determinedly before turning to join the two of them. “Give me a moment, darling. If you’re going to scold I need to fortify myself.” She took a piece of dried toast and began to munch on it, trying to delay things.
“I most certainly am going to scold.” Brandon had abandoned his plate at the sight of her, convincing Miranda of the seriousness of the matter. It took a great deal for Brandon to ignore food. “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing? How long has this been going on? Jane says at least two weeks.”
She cast Jane a reproachful look, and her friend had the grace to flush guiltily. “I had to tell him, Miranda. You don’t realize what a close call you’ve had.”
Miranda resisted the temptation to tell Jane her own close call was a great deal worse. “All right,” she said wearily, picking up her cup of tea. “Tell me how evil I’ve been.”
“Not evil, Miranda,” Brandon said earnestly. “Just thickheaded. You didn’t know what you were doing.”
“You do realize that I’d rather be evil than stupid, don’t you?”
He grinned at her. “No, you wouldn’t. And I know you’d hate letting another man make a fool of you. But the truth is, you can’t go anywhere near the Scorpion, and someone should have told you earlier. Our family has an unfortunate history with the man, and even I don’t know all of it. Back when it happened they decided that you should be spared the sordid details, and everything was hushed up, and even Jane didn’t know.”
“Back when what happened?” she echoed. “What in the world are you talking about?”
“I told you, I don’t know the details, I just know he’s trouble. Particular trouble for the Rohans. You need to take my word for it.”
“Well, I’m not taking your word for it. What mysterious connection is there between our family and Lucien?”
“Lucien?” Brandon practically spat his tea across the table. “You call him Lucien?
“We’re friends. And why do you know about this history at all when I’m six years older than you are?”
“I’m a man,” he said simply.
“You were a boy.”
“Don’t try to distract me. You can’t go anywhere near Lucien de Malheur, and if you happen to see him in public you need to cut him dead.”
“I’m not going to do that.” She set down the dry piece of bread, untouched. “I’ve been cut dead by people I counted my loyal friends, people I’ve known all my life. I would never do that to another human being. Not without a very good reason, and you have yet to give me one.”
“He’s not a human being, he’s the Scorpion.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, why is he called that?” she said, annoyed.
“Because he’s elegant, slithery and lethal. He stings without warning and his stings can kill you.”
Miranda made a rude noise. “Someone’s been reading too many Gothic stories. What evil thing did he ever do to our family that makes him so dangerous?”
For a moment Brandon looked blank. “I told you, I don’t exactly know details. I do know he’s reputed to be hand in hand with King Donnelly.”
“Who’s King Donnelly?” At least the tea was soothing her. She added more sugar for sustenance.
“Jacob Donnelly is the king of the London underworld. He rules the thieves and the fences, the smugglers and the pickpockets. He can arrange a murder at the drop of a hat, steal a diamond ring off your finger, all with a smile and an ‘if you please.’ Rochdale has a hand in his criminal activities, so they say, and that’s part of how he’s built his family fortune back up.”
Jane had turned an alarming shade of white, but Brandon hadn’t noticed, still intent on his sister. Miranda rose, ostensibly heading for more food, and put a reassuring hand on Jane’s shoulder as she passed her. “Well, Lucien would hardly bring such a man into society, now would he?”
“There’s nothing he wouldn’t dare.”
“I don’t care, Brandon. He could be running prostitutes from out of his house and it wouldn’t matter to me. I find him a pleasant, charming companion who certainly means me no ill, and I intend to keep seeing him.”
“If you do, I’ll be forced to call him out.”
She couldn’t help it, she laughed, a blow to Brandon’s somewhat shaky amour-propre. “You can’t,” she said. “He has a bad leg.”
Brandon immediately retreated into sulks. “He’s a cripple? No one told me that.”
“I don’t know that I’d call him a cripple, exactly,” Miranda said. She turned to Jane. “Do you know anything about our family and the earl?”
“Of course not,” Jane said as she nervously tore her bread into tiny pieces that fluttered down onto her untouched plate like snowflakes. The immovable diamond ring flashed on her hand. “If I had I certainly would have told you. I tell you everything. I trust you.” There was no missing the subtext in her pleading eyes.
“True, we would never betray each other,” Miranda assured her. She glanced across at her brother. “Then clearly there’s only one answer for it. I’ll have to ask him myself.”
Brandon was in the midst of taking a sip of coffee and proceeded to choke on it. She rose to her feet, determination washing away her doubts. “I’m certain you’re making a great deal of fuss over nothing, and I despise seeing someone else treated as I have been, for an error in judgment. If you could simply tell me what Lucien de Malheur had ever done to harm our family then perhaps I might be willing to listen.”
“He hasn’t,” Brandon said.
She froze on her way out the door. “He hasn’t done anything to harm our family?” she repeated in a dangerous voice.
“The fear is that he might.”
She allowed her disgust to show on her face. “I would have thought better of you, Brandon,” she said in stern accents and swept from the room.
Cadogan Place was a fair distance, but no farther than she’d walked in the country almost daily. And she needed the exercise, needed the fresh air and the time to recover her temper. How dare her family try to interfere with her life? It seemed she had their full support when she lived a cloistered existence. Make one new friend and she was suddenly beyond the pale.
If Brandon wouldn’t tell her then she knew where she could get the answers. And it wasn’t as if the man had done anything to her family—it was the ridiculous fear that he might. Just as society feared she might corrupt the morals of the young ladies who had once been her dearest friends. Only Lord and Lady Montague had stood by their daughters’ friendship, with Lady Montague insisting that whatever Miranda had done, she’d done ten times worse and twice on Sundays, making Miranda laugh.
Evangelina Montague wouldn’t order her away from Lucien over any ridiculous might. Neither, she was sure, would her parents. It was only her interfering brothers who’d suddenly gotten the alarm up, and she was going to nip this whole thing in the bud. Lucien meant her no ill, and to assume otherwise was absurd.
The Scorpion. What an utterly absurd name for him. He was no more venomous than a field mouse. Well, perhaps that was putting it too gently. No more venomous than a fox. In truth, the whole thing was ridiculous and cruel, and she refused to listen to it.
The brisk hike through the cool morning air put color in her cheeks but did little to dampen the blaze in her eyes. By the time she reached the huge, dark house on Cadogan Place she was still in a fine stage of outrage, and her footman was sweating profusely and trying to catch his breath. “You need to exercise more, Jennings,” she said as she marched up the front steps to the shiny black door. He wheezed his agreement as he stood a decorous pace behind her as she used the heavy brass knocker.
The door was opened promptly, and the servant who stood there was tall, lugubrious, cadaverously thin and dressed in funereal black, clearly the Scorpion’s preferred color for livery. And for the first time Miranda began to feel conspicuous. Young ladies, even ruined ones, didn’t call at a gentleman’s house unannounced. “Is his lordship at home? Would you tell him…tell him a lady is here to see him?” She should have had enough sense to wear a veil, she thought belatedly. She’d just been too angry to think clearly.
For a long moment she was afraid the man would have her wait on the doorstep, but he opened the door wide, silently inviting them in. “I am Leopold, Lady Miranda. Lord Rochdale’s majordomo. He told me to expect you one day. If your ladyship would follow me I’ll find a place for you to wait while I see if the earl is receiving. He often doesn’t arise until noon.”
Now that was an embarrassing image, she thought, following him down the dark, faintly foreboding corridor. The thought of Lucien in bed, asleep amidst snowy-white sheets, was disturbing, though she wasn’t sure why.
And why was the servant told to expect her? And recognize her? The room he left her in was dark and cold. What windows it had were covered with heavy black fabric, and there’d been no fire laid in the grate. The furniture was stiff and uncomfortable, and Miranda was glad no one had bothered to take her cloak and gloves. She needed all the covering she could get in that icy, dark little dungeon.
She waited a very long time. There was no way she could really tell, though. The room boasted no clock that she could see in the gloomy shadows, and her fury was finally beginning to drain away, to be replaced by a touch of embarrassment. Any apprehension that slid into her consciousness she swiftly banished. She simply needed to clarify things, to find out why her family found the earl so unacceptable. And then she could stuff it down Brandon’s throat.
After all, the Rohans were hardly the epitome of respectability. Though her loving but stern mother had made certain her sons had never succumbed to the lure of such depraved activities as the Heavenly Host provided, she had accepted that young men were bound to kick up the occasional fuss. And Miranda knew the shocking truth. Her own darling father and his father before him had been active in the Host. In fact, her father said his knowledge of them gave him particular reason to make certain his sons kept their distance.
But still, she vaguely remembered the occasional scandals. Benedick had once been engaged to a woman so unstable she’d threatened him with a gun at a public rout, and then she’d continue to behave so strangely she would have ended in Bedlam if she hadn’t died.
Charles, stuffy Charles, had had a great fondness for opera dancers until he’d fallen in love with Kitty Marsden, the surprisingly down to earth daughter of a country squire.
And Brandon was doing his best to follow in the family tradition. It was no wonder they’d been so forgiving of her lapse.
So the Rohans were scarcely high-sticklers. Why should they kick up a fuss about a simple friendship with a man of bad reputation? It made no sense.
She rose and strolled nervously around the cramped confines of the room. She peered through the window that looked out over the mews, then turned and walked back around the crowded room. What was taking him so long?
Eventually she sat again, back on the hard sofa. If it had been at all warm she would have fallen asleep, but as it was she had to pull her pelisse closer about her in a vain effort to keep warm. She began to worry that the majordomo had forgotten her existence, or that his disapproval of a young lady visiting a gentleman so offended his proprieties that he thought to teach her a lesson, which was far-fetched, but servants could at times be even stuffier than their masters. Except that he’d looked almost embarrassed when he’d shown her into the dismal room.
She’d just about given up hope when the door opened, and the gloomy butler reappeared. “His lordship will see you now,” he announced, and she could sense his disapproval. Presumably with her, though he looked around the grim room with disapprobation. Miranda rose as gracefully as she could with frozen joints, giving the man a pleasant smile as she preceded him out the door.
She hadn’t realized how big the house was as she followed the gloomy Leopold through the darkened corridors. She expected to be brought to the cozy little parlor where she and Lucien had shared so many pleasant hours, but the room he brought her to was a great deal different. Warmer, thank God, with a good fire blazing in the grate, but with dark, almost severe furnishings and heavy draperies.
Lucien de Malheur was sitting behind a desk, writing. He glanced up as she approached, but in the darkness she couldn’t see his expression. Just his face surrounded by a mane of long dark hair. He made no effort to rise.
“Oh, thank God,” she said briskly, heading straight for the fire. “I’m absolutely freezing! Don’t you have fires in any of your parlors?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Leopold put you in an unheated room.”
It wasn’t exactly a question. “He did. He probably didn’t expect it to take you so long to see me.”
“Is that a note of reproach I hear?”
There was something wrong. His voice was light, faintly teasing, but there was something between them that hadn’t been there before. Some odd constraint that made her uneasiness deepen.
But she refused to give in to it. “It is,” she said in a cheerful voice. “I come racing across town in a desperate hurry because I had to see you at once, and you keep me locked up in an icebox for hours.”
“One hour,” he corrected her, and he gave her no answering smile. “Things have moved a little faster than I expected, and I needed to make a few arrangements, marshal my forces before we met.”
Her flippant response died on her tongue as she looked at him. He might have been a stranger. Not the man she’d laughed with, talked with. The scandal-mongers had been right after all. This was the Scorpion who faced her, cold and deadly.
“Did I do something wrong?” she asked in a quiet voice. “Have I somehow offended you?”
“No. Have a seat, Lady Miranda. I’m still waiting confirmation on a small issue, and then we’ll talk.”
She turned slowly, facing him. He hadn’t risen, when he always had before. Perhaps his leg was paining him, and that was why everything was so stiff and strange…
No. She wasn’t going to lie to herself, and she wasn’t going to sit patiently like a good girl. She moved closer. “I think not. I think you should explain what’s going on now.”
“Sit down.”
She sat.
She sat, hating herself for doing so, but there was something in his voice, an icy chill, that hit her knees, and she sank into the chair behind her.
She watched him, her face composed, even as her heart raced beneath the stern trappings of her day dress. “I’ve been a very great fool, haven’t I?” she said in a conversational voice.
He was scribbling something on a piece of paper, and he didn’t bother to look up. “More than once, Lady Miranda,” he said. And then his pale, empty eyes met hers. “To which time were you referring?”
“Our friendship is far from accidental, isn’t it?”
“Our friendship?” he echoed, and there was only the slightest trace of mockery in his voice. “It was planned.”
“But how did you know I’d have a carriage accident? Or was that simply good luck on your part?” She kept her hands clasped in her lap. She didn’t want him to see how tightly she was gripping her fingers, and she buried them in the folds of her pelisse.
“I never count on luck, child. One of my men tampered with your carriage, ensuring the wheel would come off.”
This was a nightmare, she thought, not blinking. This was some horrid bad dream and she was back home in bed, sleeping soundly.
But she knew it wasn’t. “I could have been killed.” Her voice was steady.
He showed no remorse. “That would have been highly unlikely, given that you are a notable whip. I expected you’d be able to control your cattle under even more dire circumstances. And of course we were right there waiting. If my calculations had been off it still would have accomplished what I hoped.”
“And what is it you wished to accomplish?”
He set the pen down and leaned back. “Your family’s misery,” he said frankly. “In particular your older brother’s, but I’d be happy if the entire family suffered the torments of the damned.”
It felt like a knife to her heart, she thought dazedly, trying to compose herself. Her friend, her lover, the lover who’d never touched her, never said anything but who was, nevertheless, her love. “Me included?” She managed to keep her voice steady even as she was breaking inside.
His eyes met hers. “Actually not,” he said. Watching her, and there was an odd expression in his pale eyes. “I thought I’d marry you.”
His arrogance took her breath away, and her grief vanished, replaced by a cleansing anger. “I think not.”
“Do you? You forget: I always get what I want, sooner or later. Call it payback for what happened to my sister.”
“I didn’t know you had a sister.”
“She was my half sister and my only living relative. Genevieve Compton.” He said it as if he expected it to mean something to her, but she simply shook her head.
“I’ve never heard of Genevieve Compton.”
“Your brother Benedick’s fiancée? Granted, you were a child at the time, but I can’t believe you weren’t aware of the scandal.”
“Our family is always embroiled in scandal. My parents did their best to shield me from some of the more salacious stories. What did my brother do to your sister?”
“He cried off from the engagement and she killed herself.” The words were flat, emotionless, and Miranda stared at him in shock. The stories of the mad fiancée she vaguely remembered now made sense. “He told her he was going to break the engagement, so she arranged to meet him at Temple Bar to discuss it with their lawyers, and when he arrived she took a gun and blew her brains out in front of them all.”
“That is truly tragic,” she said, horrified. “But your sister was said to have been mad—she threatened him with the very same gun.”
His mouth thinned. “It’s of no consequence. He took my sister. I thought I’d return the favor.”
She didn’t move, afraid if she did that she’d attack him. She’d never been so angry in her life—she almost trembled with it. “No.”
His smile, the one that she’d found so charming, now infuriated her. “Yes.”
“This isn’t medieval England, you lying skunk,” she said with something close to a snarl. “You can’t marry an unwilling bride.”
“You’ll be willing.”
“And what miracle or force of nature would ensure that?” she snapped.
His voice was simple and direct. “If you don’t I will challenge your brother Brandon to a duel, and I will kill him.”
Automatically her eyes fell to his leg. “You can’t…”
“I will arrange it so that your brother is the one who calls me out, and it will be my choice of weapons. I’m an expert marksman—I will put a bullet directly between his eyes with no effort at all.” He rose, moving around the desk, holding his cane but barely leaning on it. “You see, I can do anything I want. I’m giving you a chance to save your brother, but I’m just as happy slaughtering him. Anything to take a beloved sibling away from the Rohan family. Taking a sister has better symmetry, and the advantage with you would be that the pain would be lifelong. Once you marry me you’ll never see them again.”
She wanted to throw up. The thought of her darling baby brother lying cold and dead in the predawn light horrified her, and she didn’t doubt for a moment that this vile man meant it.
She couldn’t show weakness. “I think your brain must be as disordered as your sister’s, my lord,” she said with a foolish lack of tact. Except she didn’t believe he was mad at all. Cruel, determined, but perfectly rational. “Why in the world would you want to be saddled with a wife you despise?”
He laughed. “Oh, I don’t despise you, my precious. I find you quite…irresistible. My original plan had nothing to do with marriage at all, but a few minutes in your delightful company and I decided you were just what I needed. I need an heir, after all, and I have to marry sooner or later, and if I marry you it will be forever. You’ll never be free.” His smile was positively angelic. “At least with you I won’t have to worry about foolish conventions.”
“Such as pretending to be in love?”
“Exactly. I rather thought we’d present your family with a fait accompli. There will be nothing they can do about it—they certainly can’t kill their brother-in-law in a duel. All they can do is…miss you.” There was no pain beneath his smooth voice, and yet for a moment she thought she had a glimpse of what drove him.
“No.”
He looked at her tenderly. “The ton will be astonished. Who would have thought a soiled dove would make such an excellent match?”
“You bastard.”
“Not in fact, but in nature, absolutely. I have a special license already in hand. I think distance would be a wise idea when your family hears about our elopement. We don’t want our honeymoon interrupted by a brawl.”
“I won’t marry you.”
He came toward her, and she noticed his limp was far less apparent than it had been. He came close and she wanted to flinch, but she held herself still. She gripped the seat of the chair as his fingers ran down her cheek and along the side of her neck, dipping inside her collar for a brief, shocking moment. “Oh, my precious,” he said softly, “of course you will.”
She shivered. Shivered because he was touching her, shivered because she reacted to it, to the caress. But she didn’t move, and her eyes flashed fire.
“You wouldn’t do it.”
“You think not? I had no qualms about endangering your life with a carriage accident. Trust me, the name Scorpion isn’t an accident. I’m cold and lethal—society shuns me for good reason.” He leaned his face down, and brushed his lips against her cheekbone. “I’m sorry I’m such an ugly brute, my precious, but you can always close your eyes and pretend I’m someone else.”
She did close her eyes then. Not because of the scars—those she’d ceased to notice long ago. The sight of his betrayal was new, though, and she couldn’t stand it.
“So what’s it to be, my darling? Your brother’s life or marriage to me? I do promise that I’ll grow bored of you very quickly and you will live a pleasant life out in the country, with more than enough money to indulge your every whim. Look at it this way—your life will be very much like it is here. You’ll be free to do what you want without a thought to the ton. You’ll simply be a bit more isolated. Make your choice.” The soft, caressing voice ended on a note of steel.
He’d won, as he’d known he would. She knew Brandon too well—he’d rush into a confrontation and Lucien would kill him without hesitation.
“Yes.” Her voice was cold.
He laughed softly beneath his breath. “I warned you I was ‘determined to be a villain.’ I may look like foolish Caliban, but my soul is far blacker. You just refused to see it.” He pulled back. “I’ll have the horses put to.”
“What? I have no clothes, and my servants will have no idea where I’m gone…”
“Leopold will see to your servants. In fact, he’ll see to everything. As for clothes, you won’t be needing any. You’ve been dancing on the edge for long enough—we may as well seal our devil’s bargain immediately.”
“But where are we going?”
He shook his head. “I think you’re better off not knowing. But you’ll be pleased to know I’ll ride while you have the carriage to yourself. I think I’d find the trip a bit too…arousing. And I certainly don’t want this to remind you of your last elopement.”
“It’s exactly like my last elopement,” she spat. “I was abducted against my will that time, as well.”
“But at least I’ll marry you,” he said in a silken voice. “Whether you want me to or not.”
And a moment later he was gone.