but this time, Miranda reacted. She might be starving, penniless and filthy, her gown might be more ragged than any she would have permitted her lowliest scullery maid to wear, but no mere footman could intimidate her.
“Remove your hands from me at once, sir,” she said, and the footman, reacting instinctively to the practiced authority in her voice, fell back in confusion.
For the first time since he had recognized her, Jason spoke. “Send the carriage back, Briggs,” he said quietly, without looking away from Miranda. “I won’t need it tonight.”
Briggs, still gaping at Miranda, snapped immediately to attention and signaled to the coachman. “Yes, sir. Of course. At once.”
The carriage drew away. She continued to stare mutely at Jason, but after a moment he turned abruptly away and started down the street.
“Come along,” he said brusquely. “We’ll go back in through the side entrance.”
He led her around the great Palladian structure of Blakewell’s. In the pallid light of the gas lamps lining St. James Street, the pale stone of the club gleamed like moonlight. Pillars and porticoes ran around a large central block; wide, shallow steps led up to the front door; and Venetian windows stamped the lovely façade in long rectangles of gold.
Jason Blakewell had come a long way from his days as a stable boy, Miranda thought, following him numbly into an alley. He knocked briskly on one of the back doors, and it opened immediately, producing a rosy-cheeked kitchen maid who beamed with pleasure at the sight of Jason.
“Well now, if it isn’t Mr. Blakewell,” she said, smiling broadly and stepping back to admit him into a bustling kitchen. “Decided to visit us downstairs today, sir?”
“Just passing through, Polly,” he said.
Miranda followed him inside. Heated air washed over her immediately, making her shudder. She’d been cold for so long she’d nearly forgotten what it was like to be warm.
Watching them, the maid’s eyes turned round with surprise, but Miranda ignored the girl. Nor did she look at Jason again. What she had felt when she had seen him had frightened her so terribly she forced herself to focus on her surroundings instead. They walked through a high, vaulted room full of scurrying footmen and maids, who whisked away laden dishes of le coq de bruyere, brioche au fromage, massive tureens of soups, whole pheasants and fishes, and a host of other dishes she could not even name. Gleaming pewter and copper filled a gigantic dresser covering an entire wall, and more than a dozen pots sat simmering on the massive range. A small, bewhiskered Frenchman, nearly as wide as he was long, presided over the chaos, cursing and snarling in his native tongue and occasionally shaking his spoon at a trembling underling.
“Monsieur Leblanc,” murmured Jason, as he led Miranda past a kitchen table the size of a small tennis court.
The little Frenchman paused mid-tirade and scowled at them, saying reproachfully, “What are you doing here, sir? You are in the way.”
“We’re only passing through, Antoine,” said Jason easily.
Miranda cast a brief glance at the temperamental little Frenchman. She knew from reading the London papers they still received at Thornwood Hall that Antoine Leblanc was one of the reasons Blakewell’s had gained such enormous success. Leblanc had apprenticed in the kitchens of Letitia Bonaparte, the mother of Napoleon himself, and the quality of the fare he served purportedly exceeded even the famous suppers at Watier’s and Crockford’s.
Jason held the kitchen door for her, and they exited into a long corridor. For the first time, genuine curiosity pierced the haze of her anxiety and anguish. She was inside a gentleman’s club, something most ladies of her station would never have an opportunity to experience. Of course, Jason would keep her below stairs; he would not allow the club members to suffer the indignity of seeing a woman in this purely masculine domain.
But she still caught glimpses of the interior of the club as a footman or maid hurried past them and exited the hall with a tray of food, or re-entered with empty dishes of Sevres porcelain. The sumptuousness of the furnishings astounded her—the columns of Siennese marble, the rooms decorated in the style of Louis XIV, the Buhl furniture, heavy upholstery, gilded-looking glasses. Though Thornwood Hall had once been the greatest house in Hertfordshire, in its heyday during her father’s time and before her Uncle Clarence had begun to sell off its best treasures, it had never been so luxuriously appointed.
Miranda knew from her obsessive reading of the