Lily Lang Read Online Free Page A

carefully. At last she said simply, “You remember my brother William?”
    He nodded, his face impassive. “I remember.”
    “Yes. Of course. Well, three weeks ago, William struck my uncle with a poker in the head. I’m afraid Uncle Clarence is dead, and William will be charged for murder.”
    A long silence passed. She still could not bring herself to meet Jason’s gaze, but she studied his hands and the white cravat stark against his dark evening clothes. His shoulders had broadened considerably in the last ten years, and he looked strong enough to bear the weight of the world. She wished she might lean against him, as she would have done when they were children. She had been alone for so long.
    “You’d better begin at the beginning,” said Jason at last.
    “Yes,” she said. “I suppose I had better.” She picked up her fork and stared down at her plate. Though she had eaten little more than crusts of bread in the last week, her stomach felt too knotted for food.
    At last, she said, “You are aware, I think, that my father died a little over a year ago.”
    “I had heard. My condolences.”
    His voice was without inflection, but his hand tightened on his wineglass, the knuckles whitening, the strong veins raised and pulsing. So he was not as indifferent as he pretended to be. He had never stopped hating her father and was perhaps even glad the older man was dead, but he had tamed the impetuousness of his youth, and the control he exercised over his emotions was complete.
    “Thank you,” she said quietly. “He was a difficult man, and we did not always agree, but he was my father.”
    “And you, of course, have always been a dutiful daughter.”
    She flinched at his tone, but did not rise to the bait. “My guardianship, and William’s, fell to my father’s younger brother, my uncle Clarence. He and his family—my aunt Beatrice and cousin Laurence—arrived in Hertfordshire for Father’s funeral, and, they said, a brief visit to comfort us in our bereavement. But it rapidly became apparent none of them had any intention of ever leaving Thornwood again.”
    She picked up a roll and bit into it without tasting it. “William started at Eton some years ago,” she continued, “so he returned to school soon after the funeral, but I was left with my uncle and his family at Thornwood. Before long, Uncle Clarence began to act the lord of the manor. He moved into Father’s suite and interfered with my decisions regarding the management of the land. Aunt Beatrice took over the running of the house and confiscated Mother’s jewels—for safekeeping, she said, but she would wear them when she called on the neighbors or attended the local assembly. Laurence, at least, moved to Town almost immediately and began to spend from our inheritances.”
    “And you did nothing to stop them?” Jason asked, raising an eyebrow. “That seems unlike you.”
    “I tried,” said Miranda. “I tried everything I could think of. I wrote to Father’s lawyers, but they said nothing could be done. I demanded my uncle and his family leave, but they had replaced all of our servants with their own. I tried to go to the local magistrate, but he dined with Uncle Clarence every Thursday.”
    She set down the roll she had been mechanically shredding.
    “Uncle Clarence was to be my guardian until I wed, or reach the age of thirty. As it is…” she took a deep breath, “…As it is exceedingly unlikely I should marry, there would be nearly four years until I come into my inheritance, though I fear by then there should be nothing left. As for William, he does not reach his majority for another nine years.”
    She could not even pretend to eat any longer. Pushing her plate away, she folded her hands in her blue skirts and forced herself to sit very still.
    “Then, a month ago, William came home for the holiday. I don’t think he’d realized how bad things had gotten at Thornwood. He’d spent the last two holidays with a friend, you