Unraveled (Turner #3)(55)

Beside her, Smite drew in breath. But he said nothing to her—at least not with words. His hand came around her wrist in a grip that was not hard, yet still disapproving.

Let him disapprove. She raised her chin.

“Please,” Miranda said.

Richard Dalrymple gave her a soft smile. “I’m too ill-bred to turn you down.”

Turner had nothing to say to that. He gave Miranda his arm as they descended the staircase. But beneath the wool of his coat, his muscles were tense. Dalrymple had his own carriage to contend with, and after tersely communicating the direction to his brother-in-law, Smite handed Miranda into the hired cab that he’d had waiting.

He sat on the squabs opposite her and folded his arms. “What in blazes do you think you’re doing?” he demanded the instant they were off.

“Isn’t that what a mistress does?” she shot back. “She holds salons. She entertains a man and his friends.”

“You’re too intelligent to imagine that Dalrymple is a friend of mine. It was perfectly clear that I had no desire for his company.”

“True. But I desired it, and you said I wasn’t to think of what you wanted. That I should act upon my preferences.”

His eyes blazed at that. “You prefer to infuriate me?”

“One day,” she snapped, “that is going to be me—the person who so offends you that you won’t even look in my direction. I know who I am, and what I am. Sneaking into empty boxes is the least of my sins. I hope to God that when I beg you to listen, as that man did just now, you’ll do so.”

He raised his eyes to hers. “Unlikely,” he said, and cut his gaze away.

That stung so hard it stole her breath.

He looked up at her gasp and frowned. “Unlikely, I mean, that you will offend me as Dalrymple has. Or that I would fail to hear you out. When have I ever done such a thing to you?”

“To me? Never. Yet.” She set her hand against her face, pressing her eyelids. “But… I tell myself that you are a good man. A kind man. Mostly, I have been proven right. But sometimes, there is a coldness in you. It scares me.” She pressed harder. “What do you think I did in the slums to survive as I did? I didn’t manage to keep my virginity intact because angels intervened at every turn.”

She was falling in love with a man, and she wasn’t certain who he was. He surely didn’t know her—not her history, nor the full truth of what she’d done in Temple Parish.

“It’s not coldness,” he said quietly. “It’s decisiveness. When I make up my mind, I don’t look to change it. It would be cruel to allow someone to believe otherwise.”

“But why don’t you consider changing your mind? You’re not one of those crabbed, angry fellows who abhors all alteration.”

“Because no good can come of it.” He looked away. “I deal in irrevocabilities, Miranda. If I issue a warrant for a man’s arrest, he may be swinging on the end of a noose two weeks later. If I fail to do it, he may murder a good man. If a baker makes an error, his bread fails to rise. If I do, men die.” He spread his hands. “Often there is no right answer. The law demands that a man must be sentenced to transportation—there is no room for mercy, no space for adjustment. And yet, if I act as the law demands, his children will be thrown on the parish, and into the workhouse.”

She leaned across the carriage to set her hand atop his. He turned his hand up and clasped her fingers. His grip was cold in hers.

“It is a responsibility that every magistrate shares. So far as I can tell, there are only three ways to shoulder that burden. My way is this: even though I may be in error, I never allow myself to doubt what I have done. That way lies endless recrimination.”

“What are the other two ways?”

“Pretend the people before you aren’t human,” he responded smoothly. “Then it doesn’t matter if you make a muck of things.”

“Or?”

“Or you can go stark raving mad. Neither of those last two options appeals to me.”

She drew breath. “But this is not part of your responsibility as magistrate, Turner. This is life, not duty.”

A longer pause, and the carriage came to a halt. “I see very little difference,” he finally said into the quiet. “My life is duty. Essentially.”

Miranda wasn’t certain if she hurt more for him or for herself. “What part of your duty am I?”

He squeezed her hand. “You’re the ray of sun at the center of the storm.”

It choked her up, that image. A shaft of sunlight would be welcome, true, but the storm would pass on. His life was duty; and he had as good as said she was no part of his life. She focused on the squabs in front of her and let out a long, slow breath, hoping the tightness in her chest would ease. It didn’t.

Instead, the hired cab drew to a halt outside her home. He jumped down, paid the driver, and helped her out. The night air was cold against her skin.

“Come,” he told her. “I’ve forgiven you for drawing Dalrymple in already. You could hardly do much worse.”

She drew a shaky breath. She’d done worse. The door opened; her home awaited, warm and inviting. She could put her past behind her.

Maybe Temple Parish was nothing but a memory to be left behind. What had happened there…it was a belated shiver running up her spine. She could pack those memories away and never speak of them again. She’d escaped it all.