“Aeschylus. How depressing.”
“It fits my mood.”
“Oh dear, was that a barb?”
“Don’t be condescending, Turner. Under the circumstances, it’s hardly appropriate.”
He raised his brows. “And what, precisely, might that mean?”
“It means that after all that has, er,occurred between us, your superior attitude is no longer justified.”
“My, but that was a long sentence.”
Miranda let her glare be her reply. This time, when she picked up the book again, it covered her face entirely.
Turner chuckled and leaned back, surprised by how much he was enjoying himself. The quiet ones were always the most interesting. Miranda might not ever choose to place herself at the center of attention, but she could hold her own in a conversation with wit and style. Baiting her was great fun. And he didn’t feel the least bit guilty for it. For all her disgruntled behavior, he had no doubt that she enjoyed the verbal sparring every bit as much as he did.
This trip might not be quite so hellish. He just had to make sure he kept her engaged in this sort of amusing conversation and didn’t stare too long at her mouth.
He really liked her mouth.
But he wasn’t going to think about that. He was going to resume their conversation and try to enjoy himself the way he had before they had become embroiled in this mess. He rather missed his old friendship with Miranda, and he supposed that as long as they were trapped together in this carriage for two hours, he might as well see what he could do to patch things up.
“What are you reading?” he asked.
She looked up irritably. “Aeschylus. Didn’t you already ask me that?”
“I meantwhich Aeschylus,” he improvised.
To his great amusement, she had to look down at the book before replying, “The Eumenides.”
He winced.
“You don’t like it?”
“All those furious women? I think not. Give me a nice adventure story any day.”
“I like furious women.”
“You feel a great empathy? Oh dear, no, don’t grind your teeth, Miranda, you’d not enjoy a visit to the dentist, I promise you.”
Her expression was such that he could do nothing but laugh. “Oh, don’t be so sensitive, Miranda.”
Still glaring at him, she muttered, “So sorry, my lord,” and then somehow managed to drop an obsequious curtsy right there in the middle of the carriage.
Turner’s chuckles exploded into rollicking laughter. “Oh, Miranda,” he said, wiping his eyes. “You are a gem.”
When he finally recovered, she was staring at him like he was a lunatic. He thought briefly about holding up his hands like claws and letting out some sort of strange, animalistic sound, just to confirm her suspicions. But in the end he just sat back and grinned.
She shook her head. “I don’t understand you.”
He didn’t respond, not wishing to let the conversation slip back into serious waters. She picked up her book again, and this time he busied himself by timing how many minutes passed before she turned a page. When the score was five and zero, he quirked a smile. “Difficult reading?”
Miranda slowly lowered the book and leveled a deadly gaze in his direction. “Excuse me?”
“A lot of big words?”
She just stared at him.
“You haven’t turned a page since you started.”
She let out a vocal growl and with great determination flipped a page over.
“Is that English or Greek?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“If it’s the Greek, it might explain your speed.”
Her lips parted.
“Or lack thereof,” he said with a shrug.
“I can read Greek,” she bit off.
“Yes, and it’s a noteworthy achievement.”
She looked down at her hands. They were gripping the book so tightly, her knuckles were turning white. “Thank you,” she ground out.
But he wasn’t done. “Uncommon for a female, wouldn’t you say?”
This time, she decided to ignore him.
“Olivia can’t read in the Greek,” he said conversationally.
“Olivia doesn’t have a father who does nothingbut read in the Greek,” she said without looking up. She tried to concentrate on the words at the top of the new page, but they didn’t make much sense, as she hadn’t finished reading the previous one. She hadn’t even started.
She tapped a gloved finger against the book as she pretended to read. She didn’t suppose there was any way she could flip back to the previous page without his noticing. It didn’t matter much anyway, for she doubted she’d manage to get any reading done while he was staring at her in that heavy-lidded way of his. It was deadly, she decided. It made her hot and shivery, and it did this simultaneouslyand while she was thoroughly irritated with the man.
She was fairly certain he had no interest in seducing her, but he was doing a rather good job of it, regardless.
“A peculiar talent, that.”
Miranda sucked in her lips and looked up at him. “Yes?”
“Reading without moving your eyes.”
She counted to three before responding. “Some of us don’t have to mouth out the words when we read, Turner.”
“Touché, Miranda. I knew there was still some spark left in you.”
Her nails bit into the cushioned seat.One ,two ,three. Keep counting. Four ,five ,six . At this rate she was going to have to go to fifty if she wanted to control her temper.
Turner saw her moving her head slightly along some unknown rhythm and grew curious. “What are you doing?”
Eighteen,nineteen— “What?”
“What are you doing?”
Twenty. “You’re growing extremely annoying, Turner.”
“I’m persistent.” He grinned. “I thought you of all people would appreciate the trait. Now, what were you doing? Your head was bobbing along in a most curious fashion.”
“If you must know,” she said cuttingly, “I was counting in my head so that I might control my temper.”
He regarded her for a moment, then said, “One shudders to think what you might have said to me if you hadn’t stopped to count first.”
“I’m losing my patience.”
“No!” he said with mock disbelief.
She picked the book up again, trying to dismiss him.
“Stop torturing that poor book, Miranda. We both know you aren’t reading it.”
“Will you just leave me alone!” she finally exploded.
“What number are you up to?”
“What?”
“What number? You said you were counting so as not to offend my tender sensibilities.”
“I don’t know. Twenty. Thirty. I don’t know. I stopped counting about four insults ago.”
“You made it all the way up to thirty? You’ve been lying to me, Miranda. I don’t think you’ve lost your patience with me at all.”
“Yes…I…have,” she ground out.
“I don’t think so.”
“Aaaargh!” She threw the book at him. It clipped him neatly on the side of his head.
“Ouch!”
“Don’t be a baby.”
“Don’t be a tyrant.”
“Stop goading me!”
“I wasn’t goading you.”
“Oh,please , Turner.”
“Oh, all right,” he said petulantly, rubbing the side of his head. “I was goading you. But I wouldn’t have done it if you weren’t ignoring me.”
“Excuse me, but I rather thought you wanted me to ignore you.”
“Where the devil did you get that idea?”
Miranda’s mouth fell open. “Are you mad? You have avoided me like the plague for at least the last fortnight. You’ve even avoided your mother just to avoid me.”
“Now that’s not true.”
“Tell that to your mother.”
He winced. “Miranda, I would like for
us to be friends.”
She shook her head. Were there any crueler words in the English language? “It’s not possible.”
“Why not?”
“You can’t have it both ways,” Miranda continued, using every ounce of her energy to keep her voice from shaking. “You can’t kiss me and then say you wish to be friends. You can’t humiliate me the way you did at the Worthingtons’ and then claim that you like me.”
“We must forget what happened,” he said softly. “We must put it behind us, if not for the sake of our friendship, then for my family.”
“Can you do that?” Miranda demanded. “Can you truly forget? Because I cannot.”
“Of course you can,” he said, a little too easily.
“I lack your sophistication, Turner,” she said, and then added bitterly, “Or perhaps I lack your shallowness.”
“I’m not shallow, Miranda,” he shot back. “I’m sensible. Lord knows, one of us has to be.”
She wished she had something to say. She wished she had some scathing retort that would cut him off at the knees, render him speechless, leaving him quivering in a gelatinous, messy heap of pathetic rot.
But instead she just had herself, and the horrible, angry tears burning behind her eyes. And she wasn’t even certain she could manage a proper glare, so she looked away, counting the buildings as they passed by her window and wishing that she were anywhere else.
Anyoneelse.
And that was the worst, because in all her life, even with a best friend who was prettier, richer, and better-connected than she was, Miranda had never wished to be anyone other than who she was.
Turner had, in his life, done things of which he was not proud. He had drunk too much and vomited on a priceless rug. He had gambled with money he did not have. He had once even ridden his horse too hard and with too little care and left the horse lame for a week.
But never had he felt quite so low as he did when he looked at Miranda’s profile, aimed so determinedly toward the window.
So determinedlyaway from him.
He did not speak for a long while. They passed out of London, through the outskirts where the buildings grew fewer and farther between, and then finally into open, rolling fields.
She didn’t look at him once. He knew. He was watching.
And so finally, since he could not tolerate another hour of this silence, nor could he bring himself to ponder what, exactly, this silence meant, he spoke.
“I do not mean to insult, Miranda,” he said quietly, “but I know when something is a bad idea. And dallying with you is anextremely bad idea.”
She didn’t turn, but he heard her say, “Why?”
He stared at her in disbelief. “What are you thinking, Miranda? Don’t you give a damn for your reputation? If word gets out about us, you’ll be ruined.”
“Or you’ll have to marry me,” she said in a low, mocking voice.
“Which I have no intention of doing. You know that.” He swore under his breath. Dear God, that had come out wrong. “I don’t want to marry anyone,” he explained. “You knowthat , as well.”
“What Iknow ,” she shot back, her eyes flashing with un-concealed fury, “is that—” And then she stopped, clamping her mouth shut and crossing her arms.
“What?” he demanded.
She turned back to the window. “You wouldn’t understand.” And then: “Nor would you listen.”
Her contemptuous tone was like nails under his skin. “Oh, please. Petulance does not suit you.”
She whirled around. “And how should I act? Tell me, what am I supposed to feel?”
His lip curled. “Grateful?”
“Grateful?”
He sat back, his entire body a study of insolence. “I could have seduced you, you know. Easily. But I didn’t.”
She gasped and drew back, and when she spoke, her voice was low and lethal. “You’re hateful, Turner.”
“I’m just telling you the truth. And do you know why I didn’t do more? Why I didn’t peel your nightgown from your body and lay you down and take you right there on the sofa?”
Her eyes widened and her breath grew audible, and he knew he was being crude and crass and, yes, hateful, but he could not stop himself, could not stop the bluntness, because, damn it, she had to understand. She had to understand who he really was, and what he was capable of, and what he was not.
And this—this. Her. He had managed to do the honorable thing for her, and she wasn’t even grateful?
“I’ll tell you,” he practically hissed. “I stopped out ofrespect for you. And I’ll tell you something—” He stopped, swore, and she looked at him in question, daringly, provokingly, as if to say—You don’t even know what you mean to say.
But that was the problem. He did know, and he had been about to tell her how much he had wanted her. How if they had been anywhere but his parents’ home, he was not certain he would have stopped.
He was not certain he could have stopped.
But she did not need to know that. She should not know it. That sort of power over him, he did not need.
“Can you believe it,” he muttered, more to himself than to her. “I did not want to ruin your future.”
“Leave my future to me,” she replied angrily. “I know what I’m doing.”
He snorted disdainfully. “You’re twenty years old. You think you know everything.”
She glared at him.
“When I was twenty, I thought I knew everything.” he said with a shrug.
Her eyes turned sad. “So did I,” she said softly.
Turner tried to ignore the unpleasant knot of guilt twisting about in his belly. He wasn’t even surewhy he felt guilty, and in fact the whole thing was ridiculous. He shouldn’t be made to feel guilty fornot taking her innocence, and all he could think to say was, “You’ll thank me for this someday.”
She looked at him in disbelief. “You sound like your mother.”
“You’re getting surly.”
“Can you blame me? You’re treating me like a child, when you know very well I’m a woman.”
The knot of guilt grew tentacles.
“I can make my own decisions,” she said defiantly.
“Obviously not.” He leaned forward, a dangerous glint in his eyes. “Or you wouldn’t have let me push down your dress last week and kiss your breasts.”
She blushed with the deep crimson of shame, and her voice shook with accusation as she said, “Don’t try to say that this is my fault.”
He closed his eyes and raked both hands through his hair, aware that he had just said something very, very stupid. “Of course it’s not your fault, Miranda. Please forget I said that.”
“Just like you want me to forget you kissed me.” Her voice was devoid of emotion.
“Yes.” He looked over at her and saw a kind of deadness in her eyes, something he had never before seen on her face. “Oh, God, Miranda, don’t look like that.”
“Don’t do this, do do that,” she burst out. “Forget this, don’t forget that. Make up your mind, Turner. I don’t know what you want. And I don’t think you do, either.”
“I’m nine years older than you,” he said in an awful voice. “Don’ttalk down to me.”
“So sorry, Your Highness.”
“Don’t do this, Miranda.”
And her face, which had been so closed and bitter, suddenly exploded with emotion. “Stop telling me what to do! Did it ever occur to you that Iwanted you to kiss me? That I wanted you to want me? And you do, you know. I’m not so naive that you can convince me you don’t.”
Turner could only stare at her, whispering, “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Yes, I do!” Her eyes flashed, and her hands curled into shaking fists, and he had a terrible, awful premonition that this was it, this was the moment. Everything depended on this moment, and he knew, without even a thought to what she would say, and what he would say in return, that it would not end well.
“I know
exactly what I’m saying,” she said. “I want you.”
His body tightened, and his heart thundered in his chest. But he could not allow this to continue. “Miranda, you only think you want me,” he said quickly. “You have never kissed anyone else, and—”