Unraveled (Turner, #3)

The room was beginning to swim around Miranda. Their words were blurring together.

“I believe,” the duchess said, “that we’re beginning to overwhelm Miss Darling. It’s easy to forget that the family can be a bit much gathered en masse.”

“In any quantity,” Dalrymple muttered.

‘You have to understand,” the duchess continued, “we so rarely see Smite. We wouldn’t throw him out, even if he showed up with five baboons and a leper in tow.”

Smite crossed his arms. “If you’re comparing Miranda to baboons…”

“True. You’re more of a leper than she is.” The duke grinned at Smite, and then turned to Miranda. “This makes it all the easier to tease him. I don’t suppose Smite ever told you about the time he locked himself in the bell tower, did he?”

Miranda managed a shake of her head. Her stomach gurgled.

Parford gave her a brilliant smile. “Oh, lovely. He was seven, and—”

Smite turned around, quite abruptly, and without saying a word, left the room.

Everyone stared after him—his brother, the duchess, Dalrymple, and especially Miranda herself, who swallowed the faint meep of protest when the door closed behind him.

“Was it something I said?” the duke was muttering. “It was in good fun. He was teasing me back.”

“It will all make perfect sense in a few hours,” Miranda ventured. “It always does, your Grace.”

This made the duke examine her more directly. “No,” he contradicted. “It does not. Damn it. He is so bloody impossible.”

“Speaking of impossibilities.” This not-quite-casual comment came from the duchess. “Who are your people, Miss Darling?”

It was turning into a regular interrogation without Smite around. Miranda gripped the arms of her chair. “My father was Jeremiah Darling. He owned the Darling Players. You might, perhaps, have seen them in London many years ago.” Blank looks surrounded her. “No? Well. Then. My mother was born Eliza Scripling. She was a scullery maid for about two months, before she quit to tread the boards. That she did for almost ten years before she met my father, had me, and was married.” She glanced at the duchess. “I have never inquired as to the order of those events.”

“Of course.” The duchess rubbed her forehead. “Mark and Jessica have evaded censure by staying in the country, where there’s little chance of the truth coming out. But there’s no chance of Smite quitting Bristol.”

If her head had been spinning before, it positively whirled now. “I wasn’t aware there were social requirements to being a man’s mistress. It won’t help, but after my father’s death, Jonas Standish was appointed my guardian. He was of good family, until they disowned him.”

Perhaps she should not have said that. She scarcely knew them, after all. But hunger bred familiarity. The duke and duchess exchanged glances over her head.

“Believe you me,” Miranda said, aware that perhaps it would make more sense to keep quiet, “he’s still trying to figure out how to rid himself of me. It only makes it worse that he cares for me.”

The door opened and Smite came back inside. He was closely followed by a footman bearing a tray. At the first waft of the scent rising off it, a wave of hunger assailed Miranda. She was instantly salivating.

The servant set the tray on the table in front of her—a wide bowl of soup and an array of delicate sandwiches.

Smite sat down beside her.

“You’d mentioned not eating anything in the last day,” he said. “Your stomach was growling.”

She could have kissed him. She took a sandwich instead, only to look up and see everyone staring at him once more. It was as if they had no notion that he could be kind under that gruff exterior. Smite shifted uneasily in his seat.

“Don’t mind him,” Miranda said airily. “He only needs to question me. He can’t if I keel over from hunger. He’s just being…efficient.”

He met her eyes with rueful humor. “Precisely. I’m nothing if not efficient.”

Miranda took a bite of sandwich.

In a voice that was not quite soft enough, the duchess said, “I think that may be one of the sweetest things I’ve ever seen. Either that or the strangest.”

The tips of Smite’s ears turned pink, but he handed Miranda another sandwich. The first had disappeared with remarkable speed, and the second didn’t take much longer.

“When you’re ready,” Smite told her, “I’d like to hear what happened since last I saw you.”

None of the others made any move to leave, and after a moment, Miranda began to speak. She described leaving the Blasseurs’ shop to find the cart missing. She told them how she had walked on her own, how the constables had found her along the way.

She told them about the visit she’d received in the dark of night, and Smite’s visage grew more serious.

Finally, she recounted what Jeremy had told her. As she spoke, she reached into her pocket and took out a piece of paper and handed it to Smite.