Forever My Love (Berkeley-Faulkner #2)(35)

“Excuse me,” he muttered. “I thought you wanted to meet me here, William.”

“I do, I do!” Sackville said, taking a swallow of brandy and patting Mira’s hip. “Off you go, my dear. Thank you for an enjoyable evening.”

Wordlessly she stood up. For a second her eyes caught with Alec’s. He was looking at her as though she were beneath disdain, and mixed with his contempt was an odd sort of rage. Catching her breath, she folded her arms around herself protectively and left the room.

Every time Alec looked at her, he was confronted with more evidence of the close relationship between Mira and Sackville. His previous assumptions about her began to decay. He wondered if all the signs of her innocence had been a game. Had she been amusing herself with him, was she a masterful little actress who was now making sport of him behind his back with Sackville? Resentment and desire intermingled in his blood, making him light-headed whenever he saw her. After a late night of drinking, he passed by her near the turret steps, and they both stopped in painful confusion. They were alone in the hallway. His expression was indifferent, hers uncertain. Suddenly he seized her shoulders roughly, lifting her so that her feet almost left the floor. He glared into her face.”What are you trying to do to me?” he demanded harshly, his fingers tightening until she gasped with pain. “I don’t want to see you anymore, do you understand? No more well-planned scenarios with Sackville’s hands down your dress. No more accidental meetings to show me that you’re in heat for each other—I get the idea, and you can tell him that I don’t have the slightest interest in a promiscuous little—”

His monologue was broken off as she kicked him in the shin.

“Ow! Damn you!” Alec let go of her immediately, massaging his leg and raining a string of heartfelt curses on her head.

“You… you big, stupid, blind… barbarianl” Mira snapped, lifting her hands to her throbbing shoulders. “Don’t you ever touch me again. You can think whatever you want about me, I don’t care a single bit, but don’t you dare go around with the idea that you have the right to attack a defenseless woman!”

“You’re about as defenseless as a python,” Alec said coldly, rubbing his bruised shin and scowling at her.

Mira drew herself up with dignity.

“If I am a python, then you’re a worse one,” she said, her voice cutting. Then she swept up the turret steps in a regal manner, wondering exactly what a python was.

From the nearby chateau came the sounds of a string quartet rehearsing to perform during supper. Mira had spent hours sitting in the garden on a stone bench, her feet propped up and her arms braced on her knees as she thought. Sighing, she looked around at the peaceful green of the landscape, knowing that she would miss the Sackville garden. It was a place of solitude and beauty, a well-composed scheme of immaculately shaved lawns and clusters of spruce and fir trees, miniature waterfalls and an artfully dug stream.Across the stream arched a small bridge which led to a fanciful vine-covered pagoda. The design followed the innovative patterns of Capability Brown, a landscape gardener who favored gardens with a natural appearance rather than the overly cultivated ones previously in vogue. Brown had advised Sackville to get rid of the pagoda, but Sackville had fancied the little structure too much to get rid of it.

Listening to the rustle of the falling water and staring absently at the pagoda, Mira wondered what she was going to do in London. She had been in the huge city before, especially the grimy eastern section of London, which was worse than anything she had seen in Paris. In the mornings the sky was black with the sea-coal smoke that burned in thousands of hearths. The streets were filled with garbage and drunkards, and men who stared at her in a frightening way, and women who looked wretchedly tired, and children who did not look like children at all. They were too desperate, too skeletal and animalistic to be children. Mira had been filled with despair at the sight of those little beastlike creatures, and it had not taken long for her to soak up the hopelessness that saturated east London. She had sunk down into the mire of it, becoming one of the scavenging crowd, until she could barely recognize herself. But she had been too vulnerable to survive there and too strong to die easily—and so she had settled for a compromise between surviving and dying, crawling into the back of a hay wagon and casting herself on the mercy of fate.

“How can I go back?” Mira asked herself, stemming a faint shudder. She knew that this time she would have money and references, and she would not have to live so far east, but her dread of London remained unshakable.

Nearby came the crunching of feet on a sanded path. Mira took care to remain still, for she and the wanderers through the garden were separated by ahedge. At the moment she had no wish to be discov ered by anyone. She kept quiet. It sounded as if there were only two women walking leisurely along the path.

“...someone should tell Clara that she’s making a fool of herself,” one of them was saying indignantly. Her companion’s voice was much calmer and a little amused.

“My dear, she’s finding that out already. It’s plain as day that Falkner doesn’t want her. I only hope it’s set her down a step or two—”

“Pooh! That won’t daunt her for long. Lord Falknet is a handsome devil, but Clara’s really just biding her time until the man she really wants comes along.”

“Who is that?”