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.I’ve seen the way he looks at you.I wanted to meet with you, especially after the Hannings’.I saw you there.Knew that my father had plans.” She dipped her head to hide her features as a woman brushed by them.“I know that Downing will do the ‘respectable’ thing and keep us apart.For all of his wild ways, he has only ever been like his parents in reaction to them.”“You know him well.”Charlotte tilted her chin back up.“No, not at all really.He keeps his cards close.But his face is easier to read when he looks at you.”Miranda said nothing, for what was there to say?“I just wanted to meet you.” The girl’s eyes were even, calm.“It seems like it might make things easier that way, don’t you think?”“I don’t think it easy at all.”“No.” Charlotte smiled a little stiffly.“But then I don’t love him.I know him not.And I do not presume to think that he will try to love me even a little.It seems that men save those feelings for those on the other side.” She looked away.“I envy you your freedom.”So strange to hear her own thoughts on the lips of another, in reference to her instead.“Sometimes the specter of freedom presents more of a chain.” Love, the greatest chain of all.“Ah.I do see how that could be so.” Charlotte crossed her hands, pulling at a heavy ring on her finger.“Yet, I have no experience of it myself.And I may never have.So perhaps I crave that chain, just a little.” She rose and pulled her hood down lower.“Forgive me for my curiosity, in any event.A good evening to you, madam.”“Good evening,” Miranda echoed, as Charlotte disappeared in the crowd of women, through the door.She expected not to see her upon her return to the theater, and she was correct.The box across from theirs stood empty.The viscount looked at her, eyes searching, still intense.“Are you well?”She smiled, a decidedly sad attempt at brightness.“I’m well.And looking forward to Act Two.”She just hoped it didn’t end in tragedy.Chapter 20From hence through eternity, You are my muse, my salvation.My eternal damnation.Maximilian Downing to Miranda Chase(note never sent)Miranda rose from the bed, untangling herself from warm sleeping man and crumpled sheets.There was something odd and coiled within her.Waiting for the pin to drop.For the kettle to come crashing down, spraying scalding water everywhere.The opera had been tense and wild.Strange and exciting in one way, terrifying and draining in another.She gazed down at the sleeping form on the bed.Did she want that life? If it was the only one she could have with him?She thought of Charlotte Chatsworth.Sitting in the shadows.Not judging, simply watching.Coming to the opera on a debauched night, hidden and viewing.To see her.To see what her own future held in store.Miranda picked up the night rail that had been placed on the curling bench at the foot of the bed.She had seen it before.In “her” wardrobe in “her” room.A lovely, diaphanous material.Not like her father’s robe.Something instead made for a man’s pleasure.She knotted the ties around her waist.Her room.But not for long.She’d not be able to stay here.Would have to have her own household.Get her own staff.Her throat tightened.She tried to relax under the thoughts.She had accepted this path.Goodness, the other woman about to grace her lover’s life had given her some sort of resigned blessing.She put a hand to her forehead.She felt a little faint, truth be told.She shook her head and felt around for a lamp and the means to light it.Her hand touched the handle of a door in the dark.Ah, a sitting room.Perfect.She fumbled the handle, then walked into the adjoining room, realizing too late that the viscount’s valet was probably on the other side.But there was no one there.He must have excused the man when they’d come in.She lit the small lamp she had found and sunk into a chair.She’d just wait here for a bit.Until the spell passed.She didn’t want to wake the viscount.Her thoughts were already in a muddle, and she needed to clear them before he touched her and made every rational thought disappear from her head.Again.The soft light of the lamp lit the room, casting golden light onto the comfortable space, obviously the viscount’s personal area.The thought that perhaps she shouldn’t be here sifted into her mind, but then the light caught a series of shelves, and her feet unwillingly carried her to them.The bookshelves here were the opposite of the Red Room below.Everything here was.There was a lived-in, touched feeling.The side of the viscount that she read in his correspondence, that she glimpsed in the country, and that sometimes she even saw on his face when he was sincere.When he looked at her and melted her insides.She touched the books dotting the shelves.Lovely first editions.Rare works.Personal pieces.Her hip knocked against something at the edge of the desk, and she had to extend a hand quickly to catch the book there.Lovely sloping handwriting dotted a page that slipped from between the covers.She touched the paper and lifted the lamp over it.The Eight Elements of Enchantment was scribbled across the crown.This was where he worked [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]