As if seeing Mirandas thoughts on her face, Rachel added, You have not met my husband. Lord Westhampton resides at our country estate most of the year. She hesitated, then went on, Surely you can see that sometimes it is a necessity to marry well, not to marry as one desires. It seems that you would encounter the same sort of thing in the United States. Your fathers business will need someone to take his place when he dies, will it not? If you did not have a brother or uncle or whoever to run the business, then wouldnt you feel the obligation to marry someone who could take it over?
I have no brother or uncle. But when my father dies, I will take over his business. I will not need a husband to do so.
Rachel stared at her for a long moment. You will run it?
Yes, of course. There is no one who knows more about it than I. I have been helping my father with his work since I was seven years old and totted down the numbers and prices for furs when he was trading with the trappers. I know the fur business from the ground up, and now that he has sold it to Mr. Astor, frankly, the business that he has now is more my doing than his. I invest the majority of his money for him in real estate and businesses and such.
But IYou deprive me of speech, Miss Upshaw. I am amazed.
It will be mine one day, mine and Veronicas. It would seem very foolish not to know all I can about it. Besides, its quite a bit more interesting than paying calls all day. Oh! Im sorry. I didnt mean to imply
That what I do is useless and boring? Rachel finished her sentence for her. Dont worry. Im not angry. Its the simple truth. What I do is rather useless and often boring. She smiled, a dimple popping into her smooth cheek. But I am afraid I would not have the slightest idea how to run the estate or how to make money to repair it. And, besides, here it would not be considered proper.
Oh, I doubt it is considered proper where I live, Miranda replied cheerfully. But if I lived my life by what society matrons considered proper, I would scarcely ever get to do anything I enjoyed. I am not a very proper person, Im afraid, so you can see that it is just as well that your brother does not marry me, for I would doubtless be forever doing things that would shock everyone.
Rachel smiled. But life would be much more entertaining for us.
Perhaps. Miranda smiled back and rose to take her leave.
Lady Ravenscar came over at her daughters signal, smiling in her rather stiff way and saying, Oh, no, you must not leave us so soon, Miss Upshaw. Why, you have not yet met my brother. Rupert She turned and gestured toward an older gentleman standing a few feet away. Do come here and meet Miss Upshaw. This is my brother, Rupert Dalrymple, Miss Upshaw.
Rupert Dalrymple was an affable gentleman, far more genial than his sister, a trifle portly, with an almost completely bald pate, which he strove to make up for by cultivating a luxuriant white mustache that curved down far past his upper lip. He, too, strove valiantly to convince Miranda to stay, offering card games and more music as amusements and assuring her that his nephew Dev was one who tended to lose track of timeno insult intended to you, I can assure youand would soon appear.
Miranda smiled but stood her ground, and a few minutes later she was outside Lady Ravenscars door, waiting for her carriage to pull up in front.
Lady Ravenscars house, for all her complaining about its inadequacies, was a pleasant white house of the Queen Anne style, and, while not large, it sat on a crescent-shaped street, the other side of which held a small park, protecting the little street from a larger thoroughfare. After the carriage pulled up and Miranda climbed into it, they drove forward, curving around the crescent and joining the large thoroughfare, empty of traffic at this time of night.
Miranda pulled back the curtain to look out into the night. Most people, she knew, preferred the privacy of the curtains, but on such a pleasant night as this, warm and not rainy, it seemed a shame to sit in a stuffy, enclosed carriage. She would frankly have preferred to walk the few blocks home and enjoy the balmy evening up close, but the sort of soft evening slippers she wore were not made for walking, and, besides, she knew that her stepmother would suffer a collapse at the thought of Miranda walking alone at night amid the dangers of London.
As her driver turned right at the next street and started up the block, Miranda saw a man strolling down the street toward them. He was dressed in elegant evening attire, his hat set at a rakish angle on his head. Miranda noticed that as he walked along, his steps were less than straight. Though he did not stagger or lurch, he was, Miranda decided, definitely bosky. There was something about the overly careful way he strode along, his steps meandering first one way and then the other.
A gentleman coming home from his club, she thought, and wondered if he was walking in the hopes that the evening air would sober him up a bit before he had to face his wife. She had noticed the propensity of the aristocracy to drink, but it was a trifle early for a gentleman to be quite this far in his cups. He must have started rather early.
He passed a narrow strip of black that indicated a passageway between two of the houses, and as he did so, three men erupted from the little alley and launched themselves at him. He fell to the ground under their attack, the others on top of him. It was scarcely a fair fight, even if the man under attack had been sober, and Mirandas innate fairness was aroused. Sticking her head out the window, she shouted at her driver to hurry toward the knot of men.
But, miss! the driver exclaimed, shocked. Theyre fighting. You dont want to
Do as I say, Miranda replied crisply. If you favor keeping your job.
Having driven the Upshaw family for a week now and having a fair idea how things stood with them, the driver did not hesitate to obey Miranda. He shouted to his horse, slapping the reins, and they clattered forward. Miranda glanced around the inside of the carriage for a weapon, and her eye fell upon an umbrella in the corner, kept handy for the inevitable rain. She grabbed it, threw off her light shawl, and, when the carriage pulled to a halt, she opened the carriage door and leapt down, shouting to the driver to follow.
She ran to the knot of men, who were rolling across the sidewalk, punching and kicking. Without hesitation, she raised her umbrella, grasping the shaft with both hands, and brought it down hard, handle side down, onto the back of the nearest assailant. He let out a cry of surprise and pain and whirled around, rising to his knees as he did so. It was a foolish move, for it exposed his front without giving him the leverage of height, and Miranda quickly took advantage of his move. She whipped the umbrella around so that she held the heavy curved handle and thrust it hard into the attackers midsection. His initial expression of outrage was quickly followed by one of astonishment upon seeing that it was a well-dressed woman who had hit him and then by one of intense pain as the pointed end of the umbrella poked into his belly.
He rose with a howl of pain and grabbed for the umbrella, but Miranda stepped neatly backward and whacked the umbrella shaft across his outstretched arm. At that moment the carriage driver, having paused to secure his horses, arrived at the fight, carrying the short, thick club that he always kept tucked beneath his seat. He used it now to good effect, bringing it down on the back of Mirandas opponents head just as he managed to grab the other end of Mirandas umbrella. The ruffians eyes rolled up, and he slumped to the ground without a sound.