Glimmer of Hope Read online

  Cover image : Photography © Lee Avison / Trevillion Images

  Cover design copyright © 2013 by Covenant Communications, Inc.

  Author photo © 2013 by Claire Waite Photography

  Published by Covenant Communications, Inc.

  American Fork, Utah

  Copyright © 2013 by Sarah M. Eden

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any format or in any medium without the written permission of the publisher, Covenant Communications, Inc., P.O. Box 416, American Fork, UT 84003. The views expressed within this work are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect

  the position of Covenant Communications, Inc. or any other entity.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, names, incidents, places, and dialogue are either products of the author’s imagination, and are not to be construed as real, or are used fictitiously.

  ISBN: 978-1-62108-526-3

  Chapter One

  Dorset, England

  Late December 1807

  CHAOS. THAT WAS THE ONLY word for it.

  Miranda Harford was unaccustomed to chaos. Clifton Manor was a place of serenity and quiet. She preferred it that way. But in returning from her daily walk, she found an unfamiliar traveling coach outside the front entrance of her home and a scene of utter disarray when she stepped inside.

  She stood in the familiar entryway draped with the greenery brought in only a few days earlier in honor of the Holy Season. Her eyes quickly took in the white stone floor, the sweeping stairway to the left, an alcove with a replica Greek statue to the right, and, finally, luggage she had never seen in her life in a pile directly in front of her. Servants moved in every conceivable direction, not all of whom she recognized. They pulled luggage from the pile and carried it upstairs, along with linens and furniture polish. They came and went in such a turmoil of movement that Miranda was at a loss to keep up with them.

  Where was the quiet stillness she’d left behind only an hour earlier? For three years, she’d returned from her walks to the sound of a clock ticking, perhaps a maid humming happily as she went about her work. She was always greeted by either Timms, the butler, or Joseph, the footman. But not today.

  Miranda watched for a few short minutes, pulling her light-blue kid gloves from her cold, aching hands before untying her bonnet. No one stood at hand to collect them, so she held her belongings as the ceaseless movement continued in front of her.

  “Fanny.” Miranda stopped the first maid she recognized as the bright-faced young woman hurried past.

  Fanny curtsied.

  “Kindly explain to me what is happening here.” Miranda motioned around the entry with the hand that held her gloves as the footman Joseph trudged by, bent almost in half with a traveling case flung across his back.

  “We was—”

  “Were,” Miranda automatically corrected.

  “—were told to take these things to the rooms we was—”

  “Were.”

  “—were told to take them to.”

  “By whom?”

  “Whuzza?”

  Miranda recognized the question, though she doubted many others would have. She explained her inquiry in more detail. “By whom were you told to take these things”—again she motioned around the room at the shrinking pile of traveling bags and cases—“to the places you have been told to take them?”

  “Oh.” Fanny nodded her dawning understanding. “By him.” She curtsied again and continued up the winding staircase with her pile of freshly laundered linens.

  “Him?” Miranda asked no one in particular.

  A footman she knew she’d never seen before passed in front of her with a valise under one arm and an overly wide package under the other.

  “I do not believe I know you.” Miranda stopped him and assumed her mistress-of-the-manor air.

  He must have recognized it. The footman, six feet tall at least, set down his burden and bowed quite correctly. “Henry Helper, ma’am.”

  “You do not work here, Henry Helper.” Miranda tried to sound authoritative, but her voice shook with uncertainty.

  “I do now, ma’am,” Henry insisted.

  “Now?”

  “For the house party, ma’am.”

  Miranda tried to hide her surprise at his answer. “By whom were you hired?” Any additions to the staff would certainly not have been made without her approval.

  “By me,” came a deep voice to her left.

  Miranda felt her heart thud to a momentary halt. She closed her eyes and waited through an interminable moment for it to resume its normal pace. She knew that voice. Indeed, she would have recognized it in a crowded room. She probably could have picked it out on a battlefield if she’d needed to.

  Slowly, eyes closed, almost afraid of what she’d see, Miranda turned toward the stairs and that hauntingly familiar voice. She managed to swallow, despite feeling her throat swelling shut. She knew she was facing the right direction, knew the minute she opened her eyes she would see him.

  With one last fortifying breath, Miranda opened her eyes. There he stood, not quite as she’d remembered him, but there was no mistaking him. Coal-black hair and flashing green eyes, the easy air of a London gentleman, with the build of the veriest Corinthian. He was, perhaps, more formal, less relaxed than she remembered him. He was older. Three years older, in fact. And he wasn’t smiling. That was the most startling difference.

  He hadn’t been smiling the last time she’d seen him, but somehow, in her mind, she still imagined him the way he had once been: easy, companionable, smiling. Nearly always smiling.

  “Carter,” she heard herself quietly say and knew her shock and dismay were clear in her tone.

  “Miranda,” he acknowledged with a sophisticated, if slightly curt, inclination of his head.

  He was obviously unhappy to see her. Why, after over three years, did that still hurt?

  “You’ve come, then?”

  “As you can see,” Carter replied with something like a shrug and a smirk.

  Years’ worth of desperate hopes died in that instant, with that look. Carter had never looked at her that way before. The Carter she’d known would never have laughed at her. He might even have been happy to see her. He would at least have pretended to be.

  For a moment, Miranda was tempted to turn around and run out of the house or head for the servants’ staircase in order to avoid him. Instead, she lifted her chin a fraction and offered Carter a brief curtsy. She made her way calmly up the stairs with as dignified an air as she could manage.

  “Dinner will be served at eight, Miranda,” Carter said as she neared him.

  Miranda stopped on the step directly below him. “Dinner is usually at six,” she said.

  “London hours,” he answered with an authoritative raise of his eyebrow. His expression offered no room for compromise or consideration. Miranda saw no warmth or humor in his distinctive green eyes. Yes. Carter had definitely changed.

  “This is your home, my lord.” Miranda resumed her climb.

  “You remember who I am, then?” Carter asked from somewhere behind her.

  She stopped once more and, without looking back at him, said, “Carter Alexander Harford, Seventh Viscount Devereaux.”

  “Is that all?”

  She took a few breaths in hopes of keeping her voice steady. “And you are my husband,” she said in something barely above a whisper.

  “I wondered if you remembered that.”

  Miranda heard Carter’s footsteps descend the staircase. Fighting herself with every step she took, she made her way up the stairs and down the first-floor corridor to the room she’d called her own for three years, two months, and nine days. She had found some degree of peace
and healing in that tiny corner of the world, away from the home she had once shared with Carter, away from the pain and heartache he’d caused her. Clifton Manor was her hiding place, her refuge.

  Hannah, her lady’s maid, was waiting for her as she always was at this time of day. “Come sit yourself down and rest a bit.”

  Hannah had said those exact words every day for three years. It was comforting, especially on a day when she felt her entire world had just begun spinning out of control. Miranda sat herself obediently at her dressing table and took a fortifying breath. Hannah started removing the pins that held Miranda’s hair in its simple knot.

  “A right hullabaloo there is downstairs.”

  Hannah pulled and untied, allowing Miranda’s hair to hang free down to her waist. For perhaps the hundredth time, Miranda silently asked herself why she didn’t just cut her hair short. She understood from the fashion plates that such was the current style. She, of course, knew the answer. But since her reasons had everything to do with him, she refused to think about it.

  “I noticed,” Miranda replied a little belatedly. “All I could find out was there is something of a house party beginning shortly.”

  “In two days, m’lady. Coming for Twelfth Night, they are.” Hannah ran a brush through Miranda’s hair. “I heard Mrs. Gillington say as how she was told just this day to expect seven guests to arrive.”

  Mrs. Gillington, Miranda’s ever-efficient housekeeper, must have been beside herself at the sudden upheaval.

  “We can be glad we already have the greenery up,” Hannah said. “Maybe ’twon’t be such a trial, after all.”

  Miranda looked into the mirror for the first time. She quickly diverted her eyes from her own reflection and, instead, caught Hannah’s eyes in the mirror and waited.

  Hannah grimaced. “You seen ’im already, have you?” She began brushing a bit too vigorously. “Always expected he’d be a fine-looking mort—”

  “Gentleman,” Miranda corrected. She’d developed the habit not long after arriving at Clifton Manor. She’d taken on a small group of local girls who not only needed employment but also had hopes of improving their stations in life. Miranda schooled them to a degree—basic reading and writing and ’ciphering, as the girls called it. She made efforts to correct their grammar as well. Speaking well went a long way toward moving up in the world of the serving class.

  “Gentleman.” Hannah took the correction without comment, as always. “But I didn’t realize he was handsome.” Hannah said the word as if it made Carter something of a demigod.

  “Yes.” Miranda allowed her eyes to drift back to the image of her own face. “He always was excessively handsome.”

  There was a time when Miranda might have been considered something of a beauty. She’d had a creamy complexion with rosy cheeks and a healthy glow. She’d always been, if not slender, at least slim. The reflection that met her eyes now, however, had been changed by life and struggles. There were no rosy cheeks, the creamy complexion had faded to pale, and there was no glow, healthy or otherwise.

  Hannah stepped away, no doubt to fetch Miranda’s wrap. It was nap time, after all. She had once easily run through a day with ample energy and enthusiasm for the many joys and activities of life. Now, at only twenty-four, she needed a nap every day.

  She noted, leaning a little closer to her mirror, that her eyes had lost something as well. They’d been her finest feature, she’d always thought. Grandfather had often commented that her eyes would be his undoing.

  “Underneath your shy exterior,” Grandfather had said, “is an intelligent, witty, and caring young lady. If a young gentleman catches so much as a single sparkle from your telltale eyes, he’ll snatch you up before I have a chance to say a word about it.”

  Life hadn’t played out precisely that way. She had married, but Grandfather had been as pleased with her choice as she had been. Orphaned too young to even remember her parents, Miranda had been raised by her paternal grandfather. He’d sworn from the time she was a babe that he would never part with her for anyone he couldn’t wholeheartedly approve of.

  Carter had fooled them both.

  Now he was back in her life, in her home. Legally, of course, Clifton Manor was his house. One of several. But for three years, she’d lived here alone, and it felt like hers.

  “Up now.” Hannah fussed over Miranda in her characteristic way.

  Miranda was beginning to drag. She cursed her body and its weakness. Here was Carter on her doorstep, just as she’d imagined so often those first few months before she’d accepted the fact that he would never come, and she was in need of a nap at two in the afternoon like an infant in the nursery wing rather than the mistress of the manor.

  Undressed and in her wrap, Miranda climbed into her bed. Hannah pulled the covers to her shoulders.

  “Sleep well, Lady Devereaux.” Hannah offered a curtsy as she stepped back from the bed.

  “I will try, Hannah.”

  “Now, don’t let him fret you none.” Hannah spoke with more confidence than Miranda felt. “Timms and me will look after you. Soon as we saw his lordship struttin’ around downstairs, we said to ourselves, ‘We’ll take right good care of her ladyship.’”

  Miranda was too weary to correct Hannah’s grammar.

  “And Mr. Benton’s due back in the next day or two.”

  With the reassurance of her grandfather’s return echoing in her thoughts, Miranda slipped into sleep, hoping she wouldn’t dream of him.

  Chapter Two

  TWO MINUTES PAST EIGHT O’CLOCK and Miranda had yet to make an appearance. Carter stood beside the mantel in the drawing room, determined not to pace or show any outward signs of his inner frustration, though he was picking absentmindedly at the fir garland draped festively across the mantel. Beneath, a fire burned low and steady.

  Three minutes past eight. Where was Miranda? Would she defy him? He’d told her eight o’clock. If he was to take charge of the situation—and he had every intention of doing just that—it would begin tonight.

  This relaxing excursion of his was proving to be anything but. What could be simpler? he’d thought when the idea had been proposed a week earlier. Parliament was to be called back near the end of January, which left enough time for a short house party. He would spend a fortnight in Dorset with two of his associates from Lords. Perhaps they would even enjoy a few Twelfth Night festivities. The complications seemed minuscule.

  Until Carter had seen her. Miranda was the last person on earth he had thought to find at Clifton Manor. The last he’d heard of her, she was living in Devon with her grandfather.

  “I am sorry I am late.”

  Carter froze. Miranda. He knew her voice, how it seemed to carry even when she spoke quietly as she did just then. In control, Carter reminded himself. Now was the time to set the ground rules.

  Carter stopped his mindless shredding of fir needles, pasted a bland expression on his face, and turned to look at her, ready to affect a perfectly indifferent greeting.

  She was stunning, standing framed in the doorway. He’d thought somehow the impact of seeing her would lessen since he’d already faced her down once that day. He’d been wrong. She’d always been the most breathtaking woman of his acquaintance.

  Miranda wouldn’t have been labeled a diamond by society—hers was not the classical kind of beauty. It was something more. Her eyes, the color of an early morning sky, stood out in sharp contrast to the deep, rich chestnut brown of her hair. Chestnut. No one had hair quite the color of Miranda’s. It was one of the first things he’d noticed about her. She seemed paler than he remembered, almost ethereal.

  For a moment, he couldn’t look away. She, he noticed, seemed to be avoiding looking at him. He had no idea what she was thinking. There had been a time when he could read her feelings in her eyes. They had been expressive and unerringly honest. Now they seemed, essentially, empty.

  “Miranda,” he said in a voice sans emotion. She still didn’t look at him. Well, t
wo could play at that game, pretending to be indifferent acquaintances having a perfectly unexceptional conversation. “As it is only the two of us this evening, I will not remark on your being a few minutes late. However, in two days’ time, we will have guests. And as you are to play the role of hostess, I will require you to be on time for meals.”

  She looked at him then, her eyes still shuttered, her expression unreadable. She stood perfectly still and silent, as if studying him. He felt suddenly uncomfortable, like a schoolboy caught pilfering pastries from the kitchen. Carter forced himself to remain aloof and unaffected. He would be in control this time.

  He raised an eyebrow, an imitation of the aristocratic look he’d seen his father use, one that worked well when one’s point needed to get across quickly and effectively. It seemed to work.

  “Of course,” Miranda said in that same placid, quiet voice she’d used earlier. “I will not be late again.”

  Immediate concurrence? That made him suspicious. So he pressed on. “And you will be expected to entertain the ladies during the day, arrange for excursions and outings, see to the menus.”

  “I was told your mother was to arrive shortly,” Miranda replied, the first signs of uncertainty in her voice. “She would expect to—”

  “She is not my wife. Hostess is your proper role, not hers.”

  “But I have never—”

  “I will not court further scandal, Miranda. If you intend to remain here during the house party, the proprieties will be observed.” Carter pushed as much as he dared. Either she would realize he had the upper hand, or she would choose to leave. Both would be a better alternative to the mess he anticipated otherwise. She, as he well knew, had the ability to wreak havoc.

  “These are important people, then?” Still she watched him with those newly unreadable eyes.

  “Extremely.”

  “I will do my best.” Miranda lowered her eyes to her clasped hands. “I have little experience with hostessing a gathering.”

  “I am certain Mrs. Gillington has ample experience.” Carter turned back as if studying the greenery, though in truth he needed to look away before her air of feigned humility cracked his resolve. “All you need do is show up. On time,” he added with some emphasis. “And at least pretend to be happy about it.” He didn’t hear a reply. “I expect you to treat my guests with civility and the appropriate respect,” he added.