The Last Time We Met - By Lily Lang Page 0,23

charge of the staff, even when they’re not yours. Looking after their well-being. Ensuring the whole domestic operation is running smoothly.”

Her tongue was very dry. “I’m sorry if I have displeased you,” she whispered. “I didn’t intend to interfere with the way you run your club.”

“I rather doubt that,” he said. “But as I said, I imagine you cannot help it. It is who you are, is it not? It is who you were always meant to be.”

She closed her eyes again, hardly able to breathe, wanting to lean into the warmth of him, the strength of him.

“So tell me, Miranda,” he said, his lips very close to her ear now. “Why are you not mistress of your own home somewhere? Was that not what your father wished? That you should be married to a great lord with multiple Christian names and a large estate? You ought to be ‘my lady’ and dangling some rich toff’s heir on your knee by now.”

Because if I could not have you, she wanted to say, I would have no one. But could she bear to tell him the truth? So many years had passed, and he certainly hated and despised her now. What good could come of it? Better to let him think she was heartless and mercenary than to allow him to toss her love back into her face.

But before she could think of anything to say, he bent his head and kissed her.

As always, the unbearable rightness of his mouth on hers swept through her. She wanted to be closer to him. Her hands raised themselves to drape around his neck and she pushed herself onto her toes. One of his arms locked around her waist, the other hand coming up to cradle her head. Her lips parted and immediately his tongue licked delicately against hers and she was lost, she was drowning in the dizzying heat of him…

“I always knew aristocrats were fools,” he said.

He bent to kiss her again, when a fusillade of knocks on the door, followed by a loud, frantic voice, made him jerk up his head.

“Jason! Are you in there?”

It was Oliver Harvey.

Jason turned his head toward the door, and for a brief moment his expression seemed as dazed as she felt. Then, as though she had been turned into hot iron, he sprang away from her, turning so his back was toward her.

“Yes,” he said, his voice very steady.

He went to the door and opened it. Over the broad outline of his shoulder, Miranda could see Mr. Harvey, perspiring into a handkerchief and looking frantic.

“There you are, Jason,” said Mr. Harvey, hurrying toward him. “Thank goodness I found you. Crockford has been cooling his heels in your study for nearly twenty minutes. He’s furious, as you can imagine, and no one knew where you had gone.”

“As you can see, I was here,” said Jason coolly. “Thank you. I’ll see to the old goat. Go back out and help Mr. Page in the hazard room.”

“Yes, of course,” said Mr. Harvey, and a second later, his hasty footsteps retreated down the hall.

Jason turned back toward her and bowed, very formally.

“Goodnight, Miss Thornwood,” he said. His mouth curved once again into the mocking smile that cut her to the core. “Thank you for a most entertaining interlude.”

She flinched. In the space of the moment it took her to find her voice once again, he had left the room without a backwards glance.

Chapter Three

Jason made his way down the stairs and back to the block of offices on the lower floor, calling himself every foul word he could think of. Fortunately, he knew a great many foul words, thanks to the years he had spent in the hulks, and the activity kept him occupied for a few minutes, allowing his head to clear.

For ten years, the old bitter anger had been his companion, serving as an armor, allowing him to act with mockery and contempt toward the woman who had once destroyed him. But something else had tempered it, some painful, creeping emotion he could give no name. He had never been as savagely aware of the vast chasm between them as he had been watching Miranda crumbling pastry in his kitchens, enveloped in that appalling white apron. This fresh reminder of the gulf separating them had made Jason lash out, wanting to hurt her.

It wasn’t merely their differences in rank, that he had been born a servant and she the daughter of a viscount. Hauteur, aristocratic disdain, the