The Last Time We Met - By Lily Lang Page 0,6
to slip down her shoulder to her elbow. Tying the sash did help, but Miranda was unhappily aware she looked like a little girl playing dress-up in her mother’s gown.
She also had no shoes.
She ought to be grateful for the fresh gown, but she wanted her own clothes back. She wanted the familiarity and the protection of shoes and her own dress, perhaps even her cloak, when she faced Jason again. Peeking out from beneath the hem of her borrowed gown, her bare toes looked disturbingly vulnerable.
“Did Jason…Mr. Blakewell mention when he would return?” Miranda asked, raising her hem and padding to the fire.
Harriet cast her a quick, curious glance. “No, miss. He only said I was to help you dress for supper. He had the footman set a table for two in his sitting room.”
Miranda thanked the girl, dismissed her, and went to dry her hair by the fire. Unlike the huge ancient hearths of Thornwood, the one in this room had been modernized. She noticed the difference immediately. At home, the fireplaces always managed to dispel any warmth with astonishing efficiency, while allowing smoke to linger and choke anyone foolish or audacious enough to attempt breathing. Here, however, the plain marble grate both radiated heat back into the room and forced the smoke upward through the flue.
She was sitting before the fire, feeling warmer than she could remember being in years, when the door opened.
She turned as Jason entered the room, and her heart caught in her throat. He looked dark and sleek and impeccably groomed.
“Miss Thornwood,” he said. One brow quirked mockingly as he appraised her. “You look considerably improved, I see.”
“Yes, thank you,” she said, rising to her feet, the thick rope of her hair hanging heavily over one bare shoulder. She had hoped the long soak in the hot water would calm her nerves, but the ill-fitting dress and her bare feet made her feel defenseless.
She did not like the sensation. She was Miranda Thornwood, descended of bloodlines older than the king’s, and trained since infancy in the etiquette and protocol suited to a woman of her rank. These weapons, the only ones she had left, she now gathered to her.
Her spine stiffened and her head came up as he held the door for her. She trailed before him into the sitting room, the skirts of her gown dragging on the thick rug. The footmen had pulled armchairs and furniture aside to make room for two chairs and a small carved table set with silver and china. As one of the footmen seated her, the impossibly long skirt of her gown caught twice beneath the chair. Miranda flushed and murmured an apology, keeping her gaze fixed on the portion of the table directly in front of her.
“I thought you would prefer privacy, and elected not to dine a la russe,” said Jason. “You don’t mind, I hope?”
“No, I don’t mind,” she said. She wished desperately to know what he was thinking. In their shared childhood, she had been so closely attuned to him she found his moods and his expressions easy to read, but he was now as illegible to her as a book written in another language.
The footmen laid out the meal, a process which she pretended to study with interest. The food was finer than any served at Thornwood Hall, even when her father had been alive. Jason had certainly come a long way in the world. First the soups, turtle and jardinière; followed by the turbot, lobsters and trout a la genevoise; and finally the desserts. Pineapple jelly, cherry tarts and soufflés au chocolat. Then, the footman set down the last dish.
Her stomach lurched sickeningly.
A bowl of wild strawberries.
Her gaze flew upward to Jason’s expressionless face. Even above the savory scent of the other dishes, the scent of the berries filled the air, subtle and yet piercing in their sweetness. Did he, too, remember the first strawberries of the year, the ones they had always shared in the secret grottos of Thornwood lands? Or were these summer berries, served in the depths of winter, only one more way to remind her of the wealth and power he now held?
“You find the menu satisfactory, I trust?” murmured Jason.
He had forgotten. Her throat tightened.
“Yes, of course,” she said.
The footmen departed at last, leaving them alone in the candlelight, with the sound of the rain against glass like beads of pearls slipping free onto a marble floor. Jason filled her goblet and set it in