Tempting Fate Read online

  “How can you be sure my cunning scheme won’t play out before dinner.”

  “I…” She opened her mouth, closed it again.

  “Cat got your tongue?” he inquired. “Or are you struck mute by worry?”

  She snorted derisively and spun on her heel to leave. The sun broke from behind a cloud and, for the briefest moment, highlighted her in soft amber. She seemed, he thought, brighter all of a sudden—different. He blinked, taken aback. Why the devil should she look different?

  “Just a minute.” He reached out and caught her arm a second time.

  She groaned but let herself be turned around. “What’s the matter, cretin, a third thought push the first two out so soon? I’ll own myself surprised that you had that many in so short a time. Perhaps, if you had someone to write it all down for you…”

  He stopped listening in favor of looking her over. It was the imp, certainly: average height and build, same brown hair and brown eyes, thin nose, oval face. Looking fairly nondescript, as was her wont, but something was off—changed or missing. He just couldn’t seem to put his finger on what that something was.

  Was it her skin? Was she paler, tanner, yellower? He didn’t think so, but he couldn’t say for certain, having never really paid any attention to her skin in the past.

  “There’s something different about you,” he muttered, more to himself than to her, but he noted that she blinked once before opening her eyes wide in an expression that displayed both surprise and skepticism.

  So there was something different. What the devil was it? Same widow’s peak on her forehead. Same high cheekbones. Had she always had that little mole just above her lip? He couldn’t recall, but rather doubted it had appeared overnight. Certainly her color was a little higher than it was a minute ago, but that wasn’t what was stumping him now.

  “It’s the damndest thing, imp. I can’t seem to…”

  He cocked his head the other way and ignored her exasperated expression. He just couldn’t puzzle out what was altered about the chit. He knew something had changed and he knew that, for some inexplicable reason, he didn’t like it. The alteration made him uncomfortable, uneasy somehow. And so it seemed a perfectly natural thing to straighten up and ask,

  “Have you been ill?”

  Two

  Mirabelle’s trip around the side of the house was not so much a walk, as it was an extended fit of huffing.

  Have you been ill, indeed.

  It might have made more sense for her to simply use the back door, but in order to do that, she would have had to walk past Whit. And an exit was never quite so dramatic as when one could spin on one’s heel and storm off in the opposite direction, which was exactly what she’d done after Whit had voiced his supremely asinine question.

  Have you been ill?

  She kicked at a small rock and watched it tumble through the grass. Maybe…possibly…she shouldn’t have been quite so contrary with him. But she’d been in a foul mood all day. Ever since that blasted note from her uncle had been delivered to her at breakfast.

  Twice a year, every bloody year, she was forced to make the two-mile trip to her uncle’s home for one of his hunting parties. And every year, he sent a missive in advance of those occasions to remind her she was to come. And every single year, no matter how hard she tried to make it otherwise, the note left her with a sick dread that lingered for the whole of the week.

  She despised her uncle, loathed his parties, and abhorred nearly every dissipated, dissolute, and debauched sot who attended them.

  She’d much rather stay here, at Haldon. She stopped for a moment to stare at the great stone house. She’d been a child the first time she’d seen it. A small girl who’d lost her parents to an outbreak of influenza and come to live with her uncle only a month before. Reeling from the change in her circumstances, and finding herself unwelcome in her new home, she soon came to look at Haldon as both a haven and an enchanted fortress. It was an enormous combination of the old, the new, and everything in between. There were cavernous rooms, narrow halls, sweeping stairs, and secret passages. There were gilded ceilings in one room, lowered beams in another—an oddly endearing collection of the past eight earls’ tastes and lifestyles. A person could, and occasionally did, get lost in the maze of it all. If only, she thought, she could get lost and never find her way out again.

  Well, she couldn’t, she reminded herself, and resumed her walk.

  She was to play hostess for her uncle, and there was nothing to be done about it. Except, of course, to prepare for what she knew was coming. She’d tried very hard this time not to let it ruin her stay at Haldon, even having gone so far as to have a new gown made up.

  She hadn’t put on a new dress in…oh, forever it seemed. The pittance her uncle gave her for pin money didn’t allow for extravagant purchases. It barely allowed enough for basic necessities.

  In retrospect, perhaps she shouldn’t have dipped into her savings, but after the note arrived, she’d gone straight to her room and put on her new dress. It was silly, really, how much better it made her feel…almost pretty. She’d rather expected someone might comment upon it.

  Have you been ill?

  She found the rock again and kicked it hard enough to feel the bite against her toe.

  Really, Whit was about as perceptive as a…well she didn’t know exactly. Something blind and deaf. Pity he wasn’t mute in the bargain.

  Mirabelle stopped to take a deep calming breath. It was pointless for her to become so worked up over one little comment. In particular when said comment had come from Whit. It wasn’t anywhere near the most offensive insult he’d ever handed her, and the fact that she was so angry over such a small slight only served to make her…well, angrier.

  She turned and pushed through a side door into the house, turned her steps toward her room, and tried to sort through her muddled feelings. It wasn’t all anger, she realized. There was hurt, too, and disappointment. He had just stood there, with that famous lopsided devil-may-care grin that had half the ton in love with him, and for an instant it seemed as if he might actually say something pleasant. For reasons she chose not to examine too closely, she had very much wanted him to say something pleasant to her. Something along the lines of: “Why, Mirabelle…”

  “Why, Mirabelle, what a lovely dress.”

  Mirabelle whirled to find Evie Cole exiting a room behind her. A curvaceous young woman with light brown hair and dark eyes, Evie’s appearance would have been described as lovely were it not for a slight limp and the long thin scar that ran from her temple to her jaw, both remnants of a carriage accident during childhood.

  Though it was not known outside the family, it was that very accident that had brought Evie to Haldon Hall. Her father—Whit’s uncle—had been taken that night, and her mother—not an attentive parent to begin with by all accounts—had chosen to dwell in grief rather than see to the care of her child. According to Evie, Mrs. Cole had been all too happy to accept Lady Thurston’s offer to raise Evie at Haldon.

  After years of neglect, it was no great surprise that Evie arrived a painfully shy child. It had taken months to coax her out of her shell. When she finally emerged, Mirabelle had been astounded to find not a proper and demure little girl, but an opinionated bluestocking. Evie had an incredible gift for mathematics and a personal, albeit currently secret, goal to free the world’s—or at the very least England’s—female population from the oppressive rule of the subspecies she referred to as the male gender. In short, she was a radical.

  She was also unerringly loyal, wickedly clever, and rather incongruently fashion conscious. There was little chance of Evie failing to notice a friend’s pretty new dress.

  Mirabelle felt herself smiling broadly.

  “Does this mean your uncle has finally loosened his death grip on the purse strings, then?” Evie inquired, plucking at the lavender sleeve of the dress.

  “Hardly,” Mirabelle scoffed. “It would take a good deal more than the grim reaper to pry
that man’s fingers from his money.”

  At Evie’s questioning expression, Mirabelle took her hand and led her to a small sitting room at the end of the hall. “Come, I’ll explain when Kate returns from her ride. In the meantime, ring for tea and some of those delicious biscuits Cook makes. I know it’s early, but I’m starved. And now that I have you cornered, I insist you finally tell me all about your trip to Bath last month.”

  “You’re always hungry,” Evie mumbled after pulling the bell cord and sending the answering servant for refreshments. “And I’ve told you, Bath was Bath. A goodly number of ugly people in pretty clothing, drinking filthy water. I wrote you quite faithfully,” she finished, taking a seat.

  “You turned out one letter, and its entire contents were centered on a dreadful musicale you were forced to attend at the Watlingtons’. I want the high points.”

  “That was the high point,” Evie insisted. “Miss Mary Willory tripped on the hem of her skirt and upended the cellist before her head connected soundly with the back of his chair, and by way of clarification, one letter is faithful correspondence where I’m concerned.”

  “I know,” Mirabelle chuckled. “It’s fortunate others are fond of writing letters or I should never know what happens on your adventures.”

  “Nothing happens on my adventures, that’s why I write so little. It takes up half a week of my time composing enough material to fill one page, and to be honest, a good deal of it is exaggerated—for dramatic purposes, you understand.”

  “Naturally. The Miss Willory incident?”

  Evie grinned wickedly. “Oh no, my recounting of that event was true down to the last blessed detail. God knows I made every effort to memorize the scene. I shall live off the memory for years.”

  Mirabelle tried and failed not to smile. “I suppose we hardly do ourselves credit by sinking to her level of spitefulness. Besides, she could have been injured.”

  “Oh, she was,” Evie replied, unrepentantly cheerful. “She had a lump on her forehead the size of a hen’s egg.” She smiled wistfully at the memory. “It was glorious—all black and blue and red around the edges.”

  “God, that sounds painful.”

  “One can only hope. And it turned the most spectacular shade of green after several days. I’ve never seen the like. I was tempted to invite her to the modiste so I might have a gown made in the same shade in honor of the occasion, but I didn’t think I could stand her company for quite so long a time.”

  A rattling at the door and the appearance of a bedraggled young woman stopped Mirabelle’s reply.

  “Kate!” Both girls cried, half in pleased greeting and half in dismay over her state.

  Lady Kate Cole, under better circumstances, was a beauty—tall enough to wear the current high-waisted fashions with ease, but still petite enough to appear respectably delicate—and endowed with enough curves to keep men’s eyes and thoughts off either one of those concerns. She’d had the good fortune to be born with the pale blonde hair and soft blue eyes the ton was currently raving over, as well as a straight blade of nose, an adorable little chin, and a perfect rosebud mouth. Normally, she was a vision. At the moment, however, her hair was half undone from its pins, hanging in damp lanks down her neck. Her dress was torn, and the front of it splattered liberally in mud.

  “Oh, Kate,” Evie sighed, standing up to take her cousin’s hand. “What ever happened?”

  Kate blew an errant lock out of her eyes. “I fell off my horse.”

  Both Mirabelle and Evie gasped. Kate’s mishaps were common, but rarely were they dangerous.

  “You what!”

  “Are you hurt? Should we call for a physician?”

  “Does your mother know?”

  “You should sit. Immediately.”

  Kate let herself be led to one of the chairs where she sat down with a disgruntled sigh. “I fell off my horse, and I’m perfectly well, I assure you. I don’t need a doctor, or my mother. Has anyone rung for tea, I’m in desperate need—”

  “Yes, yes,” Mirabelle cried impatiently, “but are you sure you’re uninjured? Being thrown from a horse is no small matter, Kate. Maybe we should—”

  Mirabelle stopped at Kate’s sheepish grimace.

  “Daisy didn’t throw me,” Kate supplied reluctantly. “I fell off.”

  There was a moment of silence before Evie raised her eyebrows and said, “Well, I’ll concede there is a difference.”

  Kate nodded and waved at her friends to resume their seats. “I was in the east pasture, and I stopped to look at a little flower just starting to bloom quite in the middle of nowhere, and so early as well. I thought if I could find out what it was, I could plant some of them along that far side of the walled garden that gets so little sun. You know the spot, where nothing ever seems to grow but spiny weeds and—”

  “Kate,” Mirabelle admonished gently.

  “Right, well…I leaned down for a closer peek and my dress, or maybe it was my heel…” She paused to look down questioningly at her feet. “Something, at any rate, caught on something else, and the next thing I knew, I was face down in the mud. Daisy was standing perfectly still.”

  Evie and Mirabelle winced sympathetically. Mirabelle couldn’t help but ask one more time if she was all right.

  “I’m fine. Truly,” Kate replied. “Nothing was injured besides my riding habit, which can be replaced, and my pride—which, fortunately, has developed a healthy callus over the years and shall no doubt heal completely before the day is out. Oh, and the flower. I landed on it.”

  “That’s a shame,” Evie remarked.

  “Rather. Now I’ll never know what it was.”

  “I’m sure there are others,” Mirabelle assured her. “I think you should go change your dress before you catch a chill.”

  “Oh no, it isn’t necessary. I’m dry as a bone underneath all the mud. Speaking of dresses, you look quite lovely today, Mira. Is that a new gown?”

  “It is.” She plucked at the skirts. “My uncle sent his note this morning. I rather thought the dress might cheer me up.”

  Kate leaned forward and grasped her hand. “You don’t have to go, you know. If you’d just tell Mother you want to stay, she’d see it done.”

  Mirabelle turned her hand over and gave her friend’s a squeeze. Lady Thurston would no doubt try. Unfortunately, according to the terms set out in her parents’ will, Mirabelle’s guardian received a yearly stipend of three hundred pounds, until she reached the age of seven-and-twenty, provided she spent a minimum of six weeks every year under his roof. Mirabelle assumed it was a precaution taken to ensure she wasn’t simply shipped off to the poor house. Good intentions that had done more harm than good.

  “I know, but my uncle would make it so difficult, and I won’t bring that sort of battle into your home.”

  “How much longer until the will runs out and you’re ours for good?” Evie inquired.

  “Not long, less than two years.”

  That knowledge had played a key factor in her decision to purchase a new gown. She would no longer need her paltry savings of eighty pounds after her twenty-seventh birthday. Her parents had evidently decided that if she hadn’t managed to land a husband by that age, it was likely she never would, and then her inheritance of five thousand pounds—currently a dowry—would be hers to do with as she pleased.

  It would please her very much, she thought, to have a house of her own—where people would come to visit her for a change.

  Her musings were interrupted when Thompson, the butler, entered the room.

  “The Duke and Duchess of Rockeforte have arrived,” he informed them before wisely stepping aside as the three women made a dash for the door.

  Three

  The duke and duchess—better known to their close friends as Alex and Sophie—were, in Mirabelle’s opinion, the most delightful couple in all of England. She could see the pair now through the open front doors as they descended from the carriage—a markedly handsome man handing down a b
eautiful and obviously pregnant young woman.

  Mirabelle had known Alex since childhood. His mother and Lady Thurston had been lifelong friends, and when a young Alex had been left orphaned, Lady Thurston had opened her doors and her heart to him and had become, in essence, a second mother. He was as tall as Whit, but a bit broader in the arms and chest. His hair was a rich coffee color, and his eyes a misty green that once had a wariness about them, but were now filled with laughter.

  Mirabelle had made Sophie’s acquaintance less than two years previously, but they had become the fastest of friends in a matter of days. She was a fascinating woman, having traveled the world for years before she married Alex, and been involved in any number of outrageous adventures along the way. Her hair was a dark mahogany and her eyes a crisp blue, which, like Alex’s, usually shone bright and happy. Just now, however, they were snapping with irritation.

  “While I’m sure numbness about the hands is a widely held complaint amongst women in my condition,” she was saying in a tone simply dripping with sarcasm, “I find that I am miraculously unaffected. Please hand me my reticule.”

  “No.”

  Mirabelle may not have recognized the language Sophie responded in, but she could fathom the content well enough. Curses had a sort of ring about them.

  Sophie broke off when she caught sight of the group from the house. What followed was not the ton’s usual round of stilted greetings. There was no formality here as the women laughed and embraced, speaking over each other in their excitement. It was, Mirabelle thought, the way of family—of sisters and brothers.

  The newcomers were ushered into the house with a great deal of noise and movement. Boxes and trunks were hauled from the carriage and into the hall, a maid was called to take coats and hats, and refreshments were offered in the parlor.

  “I’m sure Alex would prefer to take his tea with Whit,” Sophie interjected before Alex could speak.

  “I would, in fact, but only if you’ll promise to sit down while you take yours.” Alex grinned at his wife and planted a brief and gentle kiss on her cheek. It was an easy affection Mirabelle supposed he probably indulged in several times a day, but there was a sweetness to it that had her wondering, as she had a time or two in the past, what it might be like to know that sort of love. It was a thought she quickly pushed aside. Love was reserved for the beautiful, the lucky, and the incurably romantic. She wasn’t even remotely qualified.