Unraveled (Turner, #3)

He might have criticized, but her eyes were alight, and he couldn’t bring himself to do it. “You had a happy childhood,” he remarked instead. He couldn’t imagine what that would be like.

“I’m sure someone could point out the many imperfections of my childhood, but I loved it. I loved it all.”

In fact, her eyes seemed suspiciously bright. He remembered what she’d told him last night about her father. “So when the troupe fell apart, you lost everyone. Not just your mother.”

“Yes,” she said softly. And then after a pause, “Well, no. Jasper and Jonas had already left a few years back. Father found a patron, and so we’d been in London for a good space of time, see.” She looked to the window, dark as it was. “They didn’t like staying in one place too long. People talked. The last I’d heard, they were in Bristol. It’s why I came here with Robbie—I’d been hoping to find the two of them. But they’d moved on, and I’ve never had the means to search them out.”

He’d never wondered why she was alone with Robbie. Perhaps he should have. But he was so solitary by nature; it often slipped his mind that others naturally were not.

“Besides,” she continued, “Robbie was ship-mad. And when I thought of him crawling about some mine in Yorkshire…” She shook her head. “But enough of me. Tell me more of you.”

“I’ve talked of myself enough for today.” He gave her his most repressive cold glance.

His most repressive cold glance bounced ineffectually off her sunny smile. She helped herself to a second serving of carrots and said, “No, you haven’t. Tell me about your brothers. There are three of you in your family, are there not?”

Four.

But he didn’t correct her. “Ash,” he said. “The eldest. He’s a damned nuisance.” But he could feel himself smiling despite his words. “I would say that he’s like Midas, turning every enterprise he touches to gold, but it’s not that. He’s just one of those men that brings out the best in everyone.”

“Everyone except—I am guessing—you.” Miranda took a bite of carrots.

“Except me. I am his brother, after all. He went to India at the age of fourteen. Five years later, he returned, conversant in several languages and with a fortune in the thousands of pounds. Which has only grown since. He has some of the most incredible stories.” He shook his head. “Then there’s Mark, my younger brother. For a while, he was the most popular fellow in all of London. He wrote a book, for which the Queen knighted him.”

“Mark Turner,” she said. “Sir Mark is your brother?”

Smite gave her a repressive nod.

“Sir Mark of the Practical Gentleman’s Guide to Chastity?”

“Yes,” he growled.

“Oh, you do have disagreements with him, then.”

“No. We are in perfect accord.” He glanced at her. “Mostly because my letters to him have made no mention of you.”

In any event, he suspected that even Mark might thank the Lord if he found out about Miranda. You’re too solitary, Mark had said a few months ago. Smite shook his head.

What he said instead was, “Mark makes no mention of my affairs. I believe he harbors hopes that one day I’ll fall in love. Always the damned optimist.”

The tiniest intake of breath across the table betrayed what Miranda thought of that disclosure.

She held the fork too tightly and didn’t look him in the eye. If she’d burst into tears or leveled accusations, it would only have annoyed him. But her stoic acceptance of his cavalier words—that he was never going to love her—befuddled him more than any overt emotional display.

But Smite suffered from no illusions about himself. It was best that she avoid them, too.

He chose his next words carefully. “I suspect he thinks that the cure for all my troubles is the love of a good woman.”

She speared a piece of turnip, none too gently.

Smite continued. “He thinks that I need only meet The One, and all my little foibles will be cast aside, healed by the magic of her pearly white hands.”

“I don’t believe in magic,” Miranda said. But her gaze cut away from his.

For all the faults of her upbringing, she’d grown up around love. She’d spoken of a sunny, effervescent companionability that he could never give her.

He couldn’t bring himself to smile. “As you may recall, I’m already married to Lady Justice. There’s little room in my life for anything else.”

Her lips pressed whitely together. But she lifted her gaze to his and gave him a nod of understanding. “So I’m just your bit o’ muslin on the side.”

“Yes.” And she was: a departure from duty, a holiday from his responsibilities. He was cheating on sobriety with her. The thought should have filled him with horror.

One month of companionship. One month of warmth. One month of her smiles. A one-month vacation from the coldness of his solitary existence. That was all he could let her be to him. Any longer than that, and he’d never give her up.

“Well, then,” she said, extending her hand. Her smile was brilliant and harshly beautiful. “I’d best make use of you while I still can.”