The Last Time We Met - By Lily Lang Page 0,3

let them know if you should need anything else, Miss Thornwood.”

Miranda managed a nod. “Thank you, sir.”

“I’ll be in my office if you need me again, miss.”

She sensed his last curious glance. Then, closing the door of the suite behind him, he left her alone.

Jason Blakewell stood outside the door of his private office. His hands shook too badly to fit the key into the lock. With a supreme effort of will, he forced his fingers to cease their trembling and managed to let himself inside.

The fire had nearly died in the hearth, but he ignored the chill of the air and went directly to the sideboard. Retrieving a decanter of brandy, he poured himself a glass, but missed. Liquid splashed on his fingertips. He stared incredulously at the amber drops on the polished wood, then, with a deliberate motion, he picked up the glass and hurled it into the fireplace.

Brandy splashed onto the dying embers, and the flames burst to life again.

For a long while he paced about the shadowy room like a caged tiger, unable to form a coherent thought. He had been plunged into a private hell from which he could not escape. For ten years, he had assiduously avoided thinking about Miranda Thornwood, telling himself she meant nothing to him. But her lovely, treacherous face had never ceased haunting his dreams, sleeping and waking.

And now she was here. Here in the colossal club he had built with his blood and sweat and soul. Here in the massive monument to wealth and power he had constructed to prove to the world—to prove to her—he was worthy.

Tonight, standing on his doorstep, she had been wet and filthy, but nothing could disguise that narrow, delicate face, those fathomless eyes so black they seemed to reflect the midnight sky, so black they seemed to absorb all light. As they stood staring at each other in the rain, his heart had pounded with painful intensity, time had fallen away, and he had been twenty-one again, gazing into the eyes of the girl he loved from across a moonlit summer garden.

In that one endless moment, he had forgotten everything—her treachery, the long years separating them, even the wild, untrammeled hatred he had once felt for her, and that he now knew had never died at all. He had remembered only that he’d once loved her beyond reason, to the beggaring of his heart and his life.

Unable to move, unable to breathe, he had simply stared at her, the chaos of the streets around them fading away, and the gas lamps lining the footpath becoming distant glittering stars.

Then she had stepped forward, pushing back the hood over her masses of bone-straight hair, and he had seen her face clearly for the first time. The face that had haunted him, the face that he had loved, that he had hated, that he had worn like a talisman and a millstone in his heart for ten long years.

Now, he sank down onto an armchair and covered his eyes with his hands. He had succeeded beyond even the most fevered fantasies of revenge he’d constructed in the cesspool of the hulks he had survived for two long years. Every trapping of wealth and power surrounded him; he ate only the finest food and wore only the finest clothes; princes and potentates addressed him by name.

But the memory of the last time he had seen Miranda, when she had flung back the curtains of the tall windows at Thornwood Hall and the sky had burned scarlet outside above the hills of her father’s lands, still had the power to sear him.

For a long time he wrestled with the demons rising like phoenixes from the ashes of his past, as the fire died again in the hearth and the penumbra grew soft and nebulous. By the time the knock sounded on his door, he had gathered his composure.

“Come in,” he said.

The door swung open and Oliver Harvey stepped into the room, his curiosity nearly palpable. The little man had helped Jason escape the hulks eight years ago, and when Blakewell’s opened, Olly had jumped at the chance to manage its accounts. Jason had always trusted him with all his secrets save one.

“Miss Thornwood is settled in your suite,” said Olly. “I sent Harriet up from the kitchens to tend to her. Monsieur Leblanc isn’t pleased, but there isn’t anyone else.”

“Thank you,” said Jason.

Olly cleared his throat. “If I may be so bold as to inquire…”

He trailed off delicately.

“No,”