CHAPTER 13
Miranda’s breath locked in her throat, and she was unable to do anything except stare at Devin as he came closer. Then his hands were on her shoulders, and he turned her gently around, saying, “Your maid will not come tonight. I will be your personal maid.”
His hands started on the row of buttons that marched down the back of her dress. His fingers brushed her skin as he did so, and it sent a shiver through her. Miranda struggled to collect her thoughts.
“I think that is hardly necessary. If I ring for the maid, I am sure she will come.”
“Most likely. Still…much easier if I do it.”
Miranda could feel the two sides of her dress parting and falling away from her back, exposing the bare flesh above her chemise. She clasped her hand to her chest to hold the dress up. His lips pressed against the bare skin of her upper back, velvety and warm. She felt the rush of his breath against her sensitive flesh.
“Devin…” His name came out hoarsely, and she stopped to clear her throat. She straightened and stepped away from the pleasurable touch of his mouth. “No. Really. This is enough.”
He slid his hands over her back, pushing her dress down onto her arms, caressed her shoulders, and it seemed as if everywhere he touched sprang to tingling life.
“It’s not enough,” he disputed her words, bending down to plant a trail of kisses across her collarbone and onto her shoulder. “It won’t be enough until I have you. All of you.”
“This is exactly what we agreed would not happen,” she said, trying to inject censure into her voice, which came out far too breathless for her comfort.
“No. This is what you agreed would not happen. I never agreed upon it at all.”
He slipped his hands in under the opened sides of her dress, gliding around her back and onto her stomach, nothing separating his skin from hers but the thin layer of her chemise. Miranda drew in her breath in a gasp. He made a soft noise and nuzzled her neck.
A long shudder ran down through her, and she could not suppress a moan.
“This is what’s right. You can feel it,” he murmured, his breath fluttering enticingly over her skin. “This is what it’s meant to be like.”
He moved his hands up to cup her breasts, kneading and caressing them as his mouth teased at her neck and ears. Desire flooded Miranda, almost frightening in its intensity, and she knew that she wanted nothing more than to spend the night in his bed, to be introduced to the delights of passion at his hands. It would be easy to give in, easy to taste the pleasure.
Easy, too, to lose the one thing she ultimately wanted.
“No.” She made her voice firm, and she pulled away from him, turning to face him. “No. This is not part of our bargain.”
His eyes were dark with passion, his face stamped with hunger. “Forget our bargain. We don’t have to follow it. It doesn’t matter.”
“It does matter. It was the whole point of our getting married. To remain uninvolved…to be free to pursue our own—”
He cut off her words by pulling her into his arms and kissing her deeply. Miranda sagged against him, desire washing through her.
He broke off the kiss and began to trail his mouth down her neck, planting slow, heated kisses on the sensitive skin. “There is nothing wrong with having passion in marriage, as well,” he murmured persuasively, his fingertips lightly brushing up her arms and back down. “Let me show you how good it can be. Let me….”
The very persuasiveness of his words and caresses suddenly struck Miranda, and she pulled back, her spine stiffening. “No, my lord, I think not. You are a practiced seducer, that is clear. But I am not so easily persuaded. I am not interested in a marriage of both intimacy and outside affairs. It would never work, at least not for me. I think it is better to keep the two things separate. Our marriage is a business arrangement, and we shall seek our pleasure elsewhere.”
His face darkened. “Dammit! There is no reason—”
“There is every reason,” Miranda responded crisply. “Your very reaction is reason enough. Already emotion has entered into it, and our marriage is not one of emotion.”
“Not all of us are as cold and rational as you!”
“No, I fear not,” Miranda replied, as if he had given her a compliment. “But I am sure that after you calm down and think about it, you will realize that I am right. With passion comes feeling, and with feeling come all sorts of entangling emotions—jealousy, hurt, anger. Well, it obviously would never do. It is much preferable to have that with a lover than with a husband.”
A flame sparked to life in his eyes, and Devin clenched his fists. For a moment Miranda thought he was going to fly into a fury. But then he stepped back, his jaw clenched, and said, “Of course. If that is what you wish. I can see how you would prefer not to feel any emotion for your husband. It would be harder to make everyone dance to your bidding then, wouldn’t it? Indeed, it is preferable to keep everything on a business basis. Employees cannot afford to complain too much.”
“That isn’t it at all!” Miranda cried.
“No?”
“Of course not. This is the marriage you wanted, too.”
“It was you who—”
“I agreed to the kind of marriage you offered. You wanted to keep a mistress. You wanted to go your own way. You wanted not to be tied to a wife. Or has that all changed suddenly?”
“No, of course not.”
“Well, that is what I want, too,” Miranda countered. “I am simply talking about sticking to the arrangement we agreed upon—a marriage in name only.”
“That does not mean we could not enjoy…certain aspects of marriage at the same time,” Devin pointed out. “A marriage can provide pleasure and still remain a loose bond.”
Miranda looked at him evenly. “Not for me. Marriage is either real or a sham. Ours belongs to the latter category. If you bring passion into it, it changes everything. I can no longer be objective. I am no longer beyond the realm of jealousy and pain. If I care, I care deeply. And I have no intention of spending my life wondering where you are and who you are with, while I sit at home bleeding from wounds only I can see. So you see, the only solution is not to care for you.”
Devin stood looking at her for a long moment. Then he nodded once, briefly. “Good night, Miranda.”
He turned and walked out the door.
Miranda spent a long, lonely night. More than once, she wished she had not turned Devin down; at one point she even considered getting up and going to the connecting door to tell him that she had made a mistake. But she managed to keep her resolve. What she had said to Devin was the truth—except that she had not revealed how much she already cared for him. There was more than strategy in her pledge not to consummate their marriage. She knew that to do so would tie her heart to him so irrevocably that she could not have a life without him.
When she awoke the next morning, her usual confidence and optimism had returned, and she went downstairs, ready to plunge into her plans. The landscape architect was due to arrive that afternoon, and the architect was coming the next day, so she decided to press ahead with working on the estate. She sent a note around to Mr. Strong, asking him to meet her in the library, where she had decided to set up office. Her father was there, and she invited Devin’s uncle, as well, more out of courtesy than anything else. Devin was fond of his uncle, but given the condition of the Ravenscar estate, Miranda could not help but feel that neither Strong nor Uncle Rupert had been very skillful at management.
Somewhat to her surprise, Devin strolled in as the group was settling around the library table and took a seat beside her.
He saw her look of surprise and smiled a little. “I was bored,” he explained in an aside as he sat down. “It was either this or needlepoint with Mother and Rachel in the sitting room.”
“I’m glad to see you here,” Miranda replied. “It is your estate, after all.”
“Good day, my boy,” Uncle Rupert said genially. “First time I’ve seen you volunteer to look at your finances.” He winked. “Must be the lure of a female present.”
“Makes it more pleasant than looking at you and Strong,” Devin agreed placidly. “Now tell us, Miranda, what you plan to do.”
“I had not expected to have so many people present,” Miranda confessed. “I was merely going to go over the estate with Mr. Strong. Did you bring the information I requested?”
“I—I did my best, ma’am.”
“I am sure, Ravenscar, that you and Mr. Dalrymple can add to my knowledge of the estate, as well,” she went on, looking first at Devin, then his uncle.
“I will be happy to help you all I can, Miss—excuse me, Lady Ravenscar,” Devin’s uncle replied.
“Please, call me Miranda. We are related now.”
“And you must call me Uncle Rupert, as Devin does,” he responded, a twinkle in his eyes. “But, I confess, I am at somewhat of a loss. Exactly what are we doing? Strong came to me in a tizzy yesterday, saying that you were going to be running the estate? I told him it was a lot of nonsense, but—”
“Oh, I shall not see to the day-to-day running of it,” Miranda assured him. “That would be far too time-consuming, and I am confident that Mr. Strong can make sure everything goes smoothly. I shall simply oversee it, of course.”
Uncle Rupert stared at her in much the same way the estate manager had the day before. “You are going to oversee the estate?” he asked carefully, as though he had not heard correctly. “But—but you are a girl.”
“Thank you. However, I have to admit that I am a good bit older than a girl.”
“Miranda…I can assure you that money will help us to put the estate in good order. There is no need to worry about it. You should be enjoying yourself. It’s not every day one gets to be a new bride. No doubt there are many things about the house that you will need to get acquainted with first.”
“Oh, I shall meet with Mrs. Watkins and Cummings, of course, but they seem to have things well in hand. If one has a good housekeeper and butler, the household takes little of one’s time and energy, I find. It certainly won’t keep me from getting the estate in order. Don’t worry about me, Uncle Rupert. I am used to working. I have never run an estate of this sort before, of course, but I have had quite a bit of experience with other businesses. I feel sure I will be able to get the hang of it.”
“But—” Rupert turned in confusion to his nephew “—Devin…I don’t understand.” He looked back at Miranda. “Perhaps you don’t realize I am the trustee of Devin’s estate. I will be happy, of course, to try to explain to you about it, but—”
“Well, no, sir, actually you are not the trustee,” Miranda said as gently as she could. “I know that you have been running the estate for Devin for a long time now, and I am sure he appreciates it a great deal. But in point of fact, the trust for his property ended over five years ago. There isn’t a trustee.”
It was just this sort of sloppy handling that she feared had helped the estate to its ultimate demise. Uncle Rupert seemed willing and good-natured, but she had seen little evidence yet of his acumen. It was a delicate situation, for Devin was quite fond of his uncle, but she did not see how she could allow the man to remain in charge of a job for which he was vastly unsuited.
“I suppose that that is technically true,” Rupert admitted.
“It has been very kind of you to continue to do it for so long,” Miranda went on. “But I feel sure that if the truth were known, you would prefer not to have the work and the responsibility. Wouldn’t you?”
“Well, yes, of course, but duty called, you know.” He coughed deprecatingly.
“If you will be so kind as to give me the benefit of your experience and advice, I would be very grateful. As I said, I have not had dealings with this particular sort of business. Most of what I have invested in has been raw land or city lots. And, of course, there was the canal venture that I entered into in Pennsylvania.” At his blank look, she went on. “Connecting coal fields to their markets in Philadelphia and New York. It will revolutionize the industry. But that is neither here nor there.”
“Ah…” Rupert looked faintly dazed. “I will of course be happy to lend you a hand, my dear. Indeed, now that I think of it, you are right. It will be a relief no longer to be responsible for the estate.” His face brightened visibly as he thought about it. “It was rather a hard thing, seeing it sliding down like that year after year and not having the resources to stop it.”
“I am sure it was,” Miranda said sympathetically. “It is a rather large estate, is it not?”
“Almost ten thousand acres,” Strong put in. “Of course, a lot of that is in the Roaches. It’s rocky and pretty much useless.”
“The Roaches?”
“Yes. A god forsaken landscape,” Uncle Rupert said. “It’s the tail end of the Pennine range. Hilly and rocky. Not useful for anything, as Strong said.”
“It’s attractive,” Devin commented. “In its own strange way. We’ll ride down there one day so you can see it if you’d like.”
“Yes, I would.” Miranda smiled at him. “I would like to ride around the whole estate. I want to see exactly what I’m dealing with. Meet your tenants.”
“All right.”
“I shall be happy to take you out on a ride, Miranda,” Uncle Rupert said. “Why don’t we all go? We can ride along the river, eh, Dev? It’s a lovely spot. Have a picnic.”
“Of course,” Devin agreed.
“Excellent.” Miranda favored Devin’s uncle with a smile, then turned to the estate manager. “Now, Mr. Strong, I would like first to see maps of the estate. And you must tell me what the main product is. I assume it’s agricultural.”
“Yes, ma’am. Rents from tenants. They’ve been dropping steadily the past few years. The land just doesn’t produce as many crops.”
“I see. We shall have to see what we can do to bring it back. You know, Mr. Jefferson has written extensively on modern farming methods that he used at Monticello. I shall have to send for those—and I am sure there must be Englishmen who have been experimenting with the same sort of thing. Also, I should like to go over the books for the estate. I’ll get our assistant Hiram Baldwin to help you there. We will need to see several years, I imagine, to pinpoint the problems. That should do for starters.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Strong agreed in a faint voice.
Uncle Rupert chuckled and turned to his nephew. “I say, Dev, your new bride is something of a whirlwind.”
“Yes.” Dev looked at her, and a smile played about his lips. “I would say that she is.”
* * *
Miranda settled into her life at Darkwater with an ease that surprised even her. Both the architect and the landscape expert arrived, and there were meetings with them about restoring Darkwater. She was pleased that Devin often attended the meetings and even got involved on more than one occasion in the discussion of what should be done. When she expressed her surprise at his participation, he replied in his light way that he had been bored, but she could tell that he had more interest in the old house than he was willing to let on, and he certainly knew a great deal more about it than she would have guessed.
She also was examining the estate finances, though she quickly saw that she made poor Mr. Strong so nervous that she had Hiram Baldwin do much of the research and discuss his findings later with her. It was, apparently, a wearying succession of crop failure and depleted land, of failed tenants and unpaid rents.
But, despite her meetings, she had ample time left over to visit with Rachel, whom she was growing to like more and more every day, and to tramp about exploring with Veronica. Devin sometimes accompanied them, which always made the excursions more fun. He was good with Veronica, teasing her and making her laugh, and he could usually be counted on to come up with something interesting to do even when they were confronted with a wet, miserable day that kept them indoors the whole time.
He did not mention their sleeping arrangements or try again to seduce her, a fact that worried Miranda a little and often left her feeling restless and dissatisfied. Devin seemed to have accepted her decision too easily for her comfort, and sometimes she wondered if he felt so little desire for her that it did not bother him to stay away from her. And knowing that Leona was only a few miles away at Vesey Park, she also could not suppress the fear that Devin was seeking the fulfillment of his masculine needs elsewhere. Neither thought was encouraging.
However, sometimes she would glance over at Devin—in the music room after supper or on a walk in the afternoon, or even sitting across the dinner table from him—and she would catch a certain look in his eyes, a glimpse of a smoldering, banked fire that made her own loins tingle. At those moments the very air seemed to hum between them, and Miranda would be certain that he was not indifferent to her at all.
She would have felt better if she had known that Devin, far from being indifferent to her, was becoming daily more and more consumed by lust for her. At first he had decided to abide by her decision. He wanted to bed her, but, after all, he reminded himself, he had had many women and would doubtless have many more. He did not need this particular one. It was a trifle annoying that she was so easily able to turn him down, but he knew that she was right—he was not interested in any sort of marriage but the kind she described, where he was free to do as he chose and sleep with whomever he chose. After a time he would leave Darkwater and return to London and Leona and his life there. Darkwater and his new marriage had not yet started to bore him to tears, but he knew that they would, and when that happened, he would be gone. Bedding Miranda would be a diversion, but it was scarcely important, and the last thing he wanted was for her to become attached to him and turn into a lachrymose, clinging female who got upset every time he left.
Therefore, he had not attempted again to seduce her into his bed. But he had found, strangely, that staying away from her had been difficult. Thoughts of her occupied his head. He wanted to see her, to be with her. When she was not around, he thought about her, and more than once he sought out pen and paper, trying to sketch her face and finding with frustration that he could not quite get the look in her eyes that fascinated him so.
Nights were the worst times. He would lie awake in his bed, thinking about her, only a door away from him, and his thoughts would become more and more feverish, until he would often get out of bed and begin to pace the room, more than once ending up downstairs in his study, drinking away the thought of her. It annoyed him that he could not turn off his desire for her, that the more he tried not to think about her, the more he thought about her.
He sought her out frequently, joining her on her walks or giving her a tour of the village or going to her meetings with the architect. He had even, much to his inner horror, found himself playing charades with her and her stepsister one evening, along with Michael and Rachel. He knew that if any of his usual companions had seen him, they would have laughed ‘til they cried at the sight of him engaging in such prosaic and banal pursuits. But, somehow, as long as Miranda was there, none of the times seemed dull or prosaic. She always had an interesting thought or a humorous quip to brighten things up—and there was the physical pleasure of looking at her and remembering how she had felt in his arms. He could remember, too, the taste of her mouth, the smooth texture of her skin, the sweet rose-tinged smell of her—it was these thoughts that plagued him at night, impelling him to leave his bed and seek whatever surcease he could find in books or bottles of liquor.
The turmoil of feelings coursing through him was exacerbated by the faint but persistent sense of guilt that had been gnawing at him since he had told Leona to leave the wedding reception. He had had to do it, of course; he could not have allowed her to ruin Miranda’s wedding day. The thing that bothered him was that he had wanted to send her away. He had been angry with her, which was not uncommon; there had been many times when she had irritated him beyond belief, and he had even raged at her. But always before in his anger there had been a thread of lust winding through it, a desire for Leona that thrummed in him. Indeed, the anger had usually been brought about by a desire that she had frustrated in some way, or by the jealousy he felt when he saw her with her husband or witnessed her flirting with another man. Whatever emotion he felt around her, passion was always part of it.
But the other night, he had not wanted her. Even when she had acted seductively toward him, he had been left cold. His anger had been hard and cold, and he had felt not desire for Leona but only a need to protect Miranda from the insult Leona represented. For the first time he could remember, he had put another woman before Leona, and even though Miranda was his wife, he felt guilty about his decision. It did not mean that he did not love Leona, of course. He had loved her for years; he could not imagine not loving her.
What he felt for Miranda was a momentary obsession, one that would go away if he slept with her. He had felt such things before for other women, and that had always been the case. He saw a woman; she intrigued him; he pursued and won her. And then it was over. It had never changed how he felt for Leona or even altered the desire that always lay in him for her.
The difference, the odd thing about his obsession with Miranda, was not only that it was deeper and more intense than what he usually felt, but also that it seemed to somehow mask his feelings for Leona. He knew Leona expected him to visit her at Vesey Park, and he had had ample time to do so. No one would question him about where he went of an afternoon, least of all Miranda, who seemed aggravatingly unconcerned about what he did. Yet he did not go. He thought about it from time to time, but his overwhelming feeling when he did so was one of reluctance.
That fact bothered him—and it bothered him, too, that even though he still desired Miranda, he had held off from pursuing her because she had said she did not want him to. He was not the sort to force himself upon a woman, but he had certainly never stopped trying to seduce a female just because she seemed reluctant. But there had been something in Miranda’s eyes the other night when she had looked up at him and said that when she cared, she cared deeply. He had glimpsed in her then the possibility of love and betrayal, and he had known that if he seduced her into loving him, he could hurt her deeply. And since then, even though the passion still burned in him, he had made it a point not to try to arouse the same passion in her.
He had not considered that idea with any other woman that he could remember. But when he thought of winning Miranda over and taking his pleasure in her, there was always the thought immediately after of what would happen when he tired of her and returned to Leona, as he knew he would. So he wound up, he thought, like a fool, wanting her and not having her, yet unable to completely give her up, either. There were times when he wondered if marriage had made his brain soft; he certainly was not acting like himself these days.
He told himself that the primary reason for this silly obsession with Miranda was boredom. There was almost nothing to do here at Darkwater except sit around and think. It was no wonder his thoughts turned so often to the lust Miranda incited in him, and the more he thought about her, the more serious the lust became. When he tried to take his mind off it by doing something, the something he wound up doing usually involved her, which did little to appease the desire coursing through him.
About a week after the wedding, his mother invited the vicar, his wife and the local doctor over for supper. In London his mother would have found such company as a doctor and a vicar poor pickings indeed, but in the country she had to make do. Devin was in a foul mood to begin with, and watching Miranda spend most of the evening in rapt conversation with Dr. Browning did little to make him happier.
Dr. Browning was the son of the doctor who had worked in the village when Devin was young. The old Dr. Browning had given his practice over to his son a few years ago and now spent most of his time tending his rose garden. The present Dr. Browning was about thirty years old and handsome in a sober way. He dressed without much regard to style; Devin knew his own valet would have blanched at the way the doctor’s cravat was tied. He was a large man, and Devin assumed that some women found his blond-haired, blue-eyed, strong-jawed looks attractive. Certainly Miranda seemed to find nothing about him to displease her.
Dr. Browning was seated beside her at the dinner table, and they had begun to converse there. By the time dinner was over, they were so engrossed in their conversation that they continued it in the drawing room, where everyone retired after the meal.
Devin wondered what they could possibly be talking about that could interest Miranda so. It occurred to him that perhaps this doctor was exactly the sort of man Miranda would find attractive, a man who had dedicated his life to something, who was intelligent and well-read, who did something useful with his life. Dr. Browning obviously thought things, knew things, that she found fascinating. And his looks were above average. Nor would the fact that he was only a doctor, whereas she was now a countess, deter Miranda if she liked him. Like so many Americans, she really did not seem to understand class distinctions.
The doctor, in fact, might be exactly the sort of man Miranda would choose for one of those affairs that she seemed so set on having. Devin wondered if she was even now thinking the same thing. It seemed to him very wrong that a doctor should be either that young or that handsome. Doctors should, by the very nature of things, be old men—well, at least middle-aged.
He glared balefully at them through much of the evening, then rose abruptly and left the room.
Miranda saw Devin leave the room, and she wondered why he had departed so suddenly without offering even a goodbye. She was growing weary of talking to Dr. Browning—or, rather, listening, as he was a long-winded sort—and she had hoped that Devin might liven things up by suggesting a card game or something else a little more exciting than Dr. Browning’s description of his village practice. She had made the mistake of making polite conversation with him at dinner, asking about his career, and he had latched on to the topic, telling her all about growing up admiring his father, then his schooling, and now the many diseases and conditions he encountered in the village.
It was a great relief when the vicar’s wife said that they must excuse themselves, as the vicar had a sermon to work on, and the doctor, fortunately, realized that he too, had been there long enough. Michael, who was leaving the next morning, decided that he should retire early, and nearly everyone else agreed that they should do the same—bored, Miranda assumed, into sleepiness.
She went up to her room and let her maid help her change into her nightgown. She started to lie down, but she knew that she could not possibly go to sleep this early. So she put on her dressing gown and slippers and, picking up an oil lamp, made her way downstairs to the library. As she walked toward the library, she noticed that the door to Devin’s study stood open, light slanting out onto the hallway carpet. Curious, she turned toward it instead of the library.
Devin was seated at his desk, a bottle of whiskey and a glass in front of him. He had discarded his coat and cravat, and his shirt was unbuttoned at the neck, the sleeves rolled up. He was idly tossing dice, first with one hand, then with the other. He took a healthy gulp from his glass while Miranda watched. Then he transferred the dice to the other hand and rolled.
“Damn,” he muttered softly, glaring at his left hand. “You are a dead loss. A hundred and fifty yellow-boys behind already.”
“Talking to yourself?” Miranda asked lightly, stepping into the room.
Devin glanced up, startled. “Miranda! What are you doing here?”
The sight of her standing there pierced him with a fresh, fierce lust. She wore a dressing gown, with the neck of her nightgown peeking above the lapels, white and softly feminine. Her hair was brushed out and lay tumbling down across her shoulders, long and silky, inviting his touch. He wanted her with a passion as hot as any he could remember.
“I just came down to the library to get a book,” Miranda replied. “I saw your light was on, so I thought I would see what you were doing.”
“Tossing one hand against the other. The left hand has abysmal luck.” The way his eyes ran down her made Miranda suddenly aware of the fact that she wore only a dressing gown over her nightrail, a flimsy thing that the modiste in London had made for her honeymoon. “You are up late.”
“Not so late. Everyone retired early, after the vicar and his wife left. The doctor, too, of course.”
“I am sure you were reluctant to see the doctor go,” Devin said sarcastically, downing the last of his drink and immediately reaching out to pour another one.
Miranda watched him pour. His hand was a trifle unsteady.
“Have you been sitting here drinking all this time?” she asked.
Devin shrugged. “More or less.”
“Why? Why did you leave the party?”
“The party? Is that what you would call it? Seemed about as lively as an interment to me. Of course, I was not privy to the good doctor’s fascinating conversation.”
Miranda stared at him in surprise. “I beg your pardon?”
“The doctor. I didn’t have the pleasure of talking to him all evening as you did.”
“It was scarcely a pleasure,” Miranda began, ready to vent her true feelings, but Devin’s next words stopped her.
“It certainly seemed as if it was a pleasure.” He looked at her, a fierce bright anger burning clearly in his eyes. “You were hanging on every word he said.”
Miranda’s brows vaulted upward, but she said nothing to contradict him. Devin sounded jealous, and she found the idea not at all displeasing.
“He was telling me about his cases,” she said, carefully telling the truth.
“Was that it? I thought perhaps you were making an assignation.”
“What? Now, really, Dev, that is going too far.”
“Oh, I don’t think I have gone nearly far enough,” Devin said in a silky voice that was somehow frightening. He rose slowly and leaned forward across his desk, bracing himself with his fists. “Tell me, is he to be your first fling? I must say, I would think the local doctor a trifle too close to home. Wouldn’t you?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it,” Miranda returned truthfully.
“Is he what you like, Miranda?” he went on in the same quiet, deadly voice. He pushed his chair back and came out from behind his desk. “A sober, industrious citizen? Someone who can fascinate you with tales of his good deeds?”
“He does spend his days in more fruitful pursuits than drinking and casting dice,” Miranda retorted with some asperity. His closeness made her a little breathless, but she wasn’t about to let him know that.
Devin chuckled without humor, “Ah, my dear wife. So you have chosen him for your first foray outside the marriage. Well, good luck with him. I’ll lay you odds that he is as dull a stick in bed as he is out of it.”
“Indeed? Well, I suppose I shall find out, won’t I?”
His hand lashed out and grasped her arm, digging in painfully. “No, you won’t, my lady!”
“I beg your pardon? Are you telling me who I can and cannot see?”
“I am telling you that you will not bed down with that lump of a fellow right in front of me.” His eyes flashed, bright green in their fury. “I will not be made a mockery of, madam. You may think you call the tune because of your fat purse, but I can tell you, you will not do this.”
Miranda could not help but thrill to the hot emotion in his eyes, even though she might bridle at his commanding tone. She had no intention, of course, of doing anything with Dr. Browning except fleeing to escape his conversation the next time she saw him, but she did not intend to let Devin know that.
“You are ordering me?”
“I am ordering you,” Devin replied, reaching out and placing his hand across her throat. Her flesh was soft and silken beneath his palm, and the intensity of his lust shook him. “I will not let him touch you. Do you understand?”
Miranda’s breath was ragged, her thoughts scattered. All her awareness was centered in that span of flesh where his hand lay, burning her with his intensity. “I understand that you are breaking our agreement.”
“To hell with our agreement! Did you actually think I would allow you to sleep with other men? Did you think I was that low? That weak?”
“What am I supposed to do, then?” Miranda asked calmly.
“This,” he answered, as his hand stole beneath the neck of her gown, and his mouth came down on hers.