ATTEND SISTER ELIZABETH’S FUNERAL. And the final nail: LORD BENJAMIN ARCHER, DEPARTING FOR AMERICA, OCTOBER 20, 1815.
Archer’s family. Archer’s loss. Archer’s lie. Of course it was.
Numbly, she picked up the papers, tucking them away. One thought revolved sickly around in her head. Benjamin Archer had drifted through life, unchanged, since 1815. She knew him too well not to know that he’d been searching for a cure all that time—and had failed. Even more distressing—what did it mean to Archer physically should he find a cure?
He came home shortly after three. She heard his light greeting to Gilroy in the hall, followed by the rapid tread of his boots up the stairs. Her heart pounded overloud in her breast at the thought of confronting him. She had sat like a statue for the rest of the day, barely able to think or to breathe, only to wait. Now he was here.
Sliding to the foot of the bed, she set her feet on the floor. Determination to have her say steeled her spine. The connecting door to their rooms opened a moment later. His eyes went immediately to her, and a smile broke over his face. “That,” he said shutting the door behind him, “took inordinately long.”
He tore the silk mask from his head as he came near. Miranda’s resolve softened as she saw the joy in his eyes in doing so. It was the first time he’d taken the mask off in front of her. Black kohl encircled his eyes, and her lips twitched.
“You look like a bandit,” she said as he bent to kiss her.
Archer paused, caught between a grin and a grimace. “Right.” He brushed a kiss over her nose and then strode toward her bathing room, impatiently pulling off his suit coat as he went. Her heart stayed locked in her throat as she stared after him.
He emerged not a minute later, freshly scrubbed and wearing only his drawers and shirtsleeves. “Is it unmanly to say that I prefer your face cream to mine?” he asked, unbuttoning his shirt with a deftness and speed that entranced her.
“No.” Nothing about him could ever be considered unmanly. Again the flash came, of him not changed but whole and unaffected. Golden skinned. His hair not shorn but with glossy raven locks. Ben.
The shirt fell to the floor, and her breath hitched. He was simply beautiful. From the corded muscles of his shoulders and arms, to the little hollow between his collarbones, and the flat, matched ridges running down his abdomen like paving bricks, all of it was beautiful, and enough to make words fail her.
He read her look and grinned wide enough for small lines to dimple his cheeks. “Hello,” he whispered before catching her up. She could not think. It was like a drug taking hold of her when they kissed. She pressed against him, her lips throbbing under his ministrations. Could a man be an addiction?
His quick fingers made short work of her laces. Her bodice fell free, and his thumb ran under the curve of her breast. Hot shivers fanned out along her belly. She pulled away, her hands going to his shoulders to hold him off. “No,” she said. “Stop.”
Her tone froze him. Slowly he moved off the bed and sat back on his heels. His gray eyes searched her face and, reading what was so plainly there, he set his chin firm—a fully guilt-ridden gesture if ever Miranda saw one.
“Were you going to tell me?” she asked.
“I don’t know.” The pulse at the base of his throat throbbed as he sat watching her, his body still as stone, and the ache in Miranda’s chest turned to pain.
“Well, that is heartening,” she snapped, her fingers digging into the covers. “Honesty above all, is it?”
“Who was it?” he said, still frozen in place. “Eula? Mckinnon?” A hot wash of color rose up over his left cheek, and he jumped to his feet. “Son of a bitch.”
Miranda jumped up too. “What does it matter who told me? It should have been you!”
“Tell you?” he snapped, his color rising. “You, who professed the possibility of what I was a nightmare?”
She winced at that, but her anger flared higher. “God! How stupid I’ve been.” She paced in a helpless fury. “I asked you flat out. And what do you say to me? ‘Lord Benjamin Archer died in eighteen-fifteen!’ ” Her voice rose as she punched the air. “When really it was you all along! Lord Benjamin Aldo Fitzwilliam Wallace Archer, third