She had a plan, albeit an undesirable one. But what else was a woman to do once she’d been publicly shamed?
Miranda whirled at the knock on her door, thinking it might be a servant with word that her carriage was ready to transport her home. But when she opened the door, it was to find two of the Thornton siblings awaiting her.
It took a moment for Miranda to recover from the shock, and in that split second, Emily Thornton marched through the doorway, dragging the viscount by his arm.
“I beg your pardon for the intrusion, Lady Hughes,” she said with an apologetic look in Miranda’s direction. “But when I heard what had occurred between you and Roger, I couldn’t allow it to stand.”
Miranda closed the door and turned to find Angus staring at her as if terrified of her wrath. “Miss Thornton, this is not necessary.”
“But it is,” Emily insisted. “You see, I know both my brothers more than anyone else does. Roger isn’t a fortune hunter or a seducer. But Angus, however, has a propensity for sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong and speaking without a thought to who he might hurt with his words.”
“Your brother’s words might have hurt me, but they were the truth,” Miranda replied. “I suppose I ought to thank him for exposing their plans before I made a grave mistake.”
“That’s just it,” Emily said. “There was no plan. Tell her, Angus.”
The viscount cringed at the command in his sister’s voice, his face flushing beet red. “Lady Hughes … first, allow me to convey my sincerest apologies—”
“Get to the important part,” Emily grumbled, elbowing him in the side.
With a grunt, Angus rubbed at his ribs. “My brother and I made no plans concerning you or any other widow. The truth is, our family has been in debt for a long time, mostly due to my own foolishness. Roger has always been the bedrock of our family, holding us together, finding solutions. When I lost Emily’s dowry, he vowed to find a way to mend my mistake, but he never told me how he intended to go about it.”
Miranda frowned, digesting his words. They aligned perfectly with the story Roger had told her concerning his reasons for becoming a courtesan.
“Then why did you congratulate him for his ‘genius solution?’” she challenged. “Why did you speak of him using trickery to snare an heiress so your family’s problems could be solved?”
The viscount lowered his gaze, running a hand through his hair in the same anxious gesture as his brother. “That was an assumption on my point … an idiotic one. I saw that Roger was showing interest in you, when he’s never paid so much attention to any woman. I made a guess as to why he might have pursued you, but I was wrong.”
Miranda pressed two fingers to her temple, her head aching as she tried to make sense of what she was hearing. Her heart and mind were pulled in different directions until she felt stretched taut, unable to decide what was real or true.
“Lady Hughes, Roger is shy and reclusive,” Emily said. “I believe you might already know that. Angus is right that he’s never openly pursued any woman for fear of exposing his … his stammer. If he has taken a chance on you, it isn’t for the sake of a fortune. It’s for something far more important.”
Miranda backed toward the bed, sinking onto her rear as her legs became boneless. Her fingers brushed against the pile of notes, each one signed, ‘Love, Roger’ in a neat, efficient hand.
Had she been wrong about Roger, about what they’d shared? A voice in the deep recesses of her mind screamed that she had known it all along, yet caution and logic told her not to be impulsive. Could she truly trust that Emily was telling the truth? The girl was desperate for her dowry so she could marry Lord Lovette. The viscount’s estate and livelihood were on the line. This could just be part of a joint plan on all their parts to entrap her, and she was falling for it.
“Lady Hughes,” Emily tried again. “Please. I’ve despaired for so long that Roger will grow old alone. He would want you if you came with nothing, and I think we both know that to be true. Forget about the scandal, or Angus’s foolhardy mistake. Think only of what you feel, what you know about my brother. I think you will find you already know that answer. He trusts you with the part of himself he keeps hidden from everyone else. I know that because he told me so himself and I believed him.”
Miranda perked up at that, a sudden realization occurring to her. If this had been an entrapment scheme, why wouldn’t the Thornton’s have used Angus to snare her instead of Roger? Angus was the sociable one who boasted a title—an old name if nothing else. He would need heirs someday, and Miranda was not too old to conceive them.
Roger, on the other hand, was the last man this family should have used to bait her. Over the course of the party, she’d learned that his reputation for silent aloofness preceded him. She had witnessed his embarrassment and shame over his stutter, knew how difficult it had been for him to even speak a few words to her. Now that the initial shock and anger had cleared, and Angus had come to her with the truth, Miranda realized she had been hasty in her judgment. The reason her heart kept telling her not to believe what she had heard, was because deep down she’d known the truth. She had mourned Roger’s loss because something inside her knew him to be just the man she’d thought he was.
“Dear God,” she whispered, slowly coming to her feet. “I’ve made a terrible mistake.”
“You acted based on false information,” Emily said, with an endearing smile. “Roger understands, and is not angry with you. But he is suffering to think of you hating him, Lady Hughes. Will you put him out of his misery?”
Miranda grinned, joy and relief coming on the heels of clarity. “I do think the time has come for you to start calling me Miranda. After all, if Roger will have me, we are to be family.”
Emily let out a soft squeal of excitement, then took hold of both her hands. “And you shall call me Emily, or Em. Oh, of course Roger will have you.”
“I have to find him. Where is he?”
“I saw him walking toward the garden just before Angus and I came here.”
Before the words had left her lips, Miranda was through the door and running with skirts held aloft, her heart soaring and her hope restored.
Roger leaned against the tree at his back and closed his eyes. Weariness sapped the strength from his body and fatigue made a mess of his senses. He’d hardly slept since the night Miranda had gone running from his chamber, convinced by his idiot brother that the scene on the terrace had been staged to entrap her. He had been too shocked to go after her, and once he’d recovered enough to race into the corridor after her, she was gone. Instead, he’d torn into his brother with a string of unintelligible, stammered oaths and accusations. Angus had been regretful and, for once, at a loss for words in the face of Roger’s tirade. While it was common for him to take Angus to task for some foolish stunt or another, he’d never been forceful or raised his voice. Calm was a part of his nature, and his family had only experienced the cold, hard side of his anger. What he’d felt watching Miranda walk out of his life had filled him with heat and fury.
So close. He had been but a breath away from finally having everything he’d longed for. Miranda had been on the verge of accepting his proposal, he’d seen it in her eyes. Over the course of his speech, her expression had changed from one of uncertainty, to one of sudden realization, then joy. Roger had practiced the words he would say for when he saw her again. He had been elated to get them all out without faltering. It was what Miranda deserved, and he’d wanted it to be perfect. It had been perfect … right up until it wasn’t.