The Price of Indiscretion Read Free

of being embarrassed, you should be using it. It’s a power.”
    “I don’t want power.”
    “But you have it, whether you wanted it or not,” Lady Overstreet returned. “There is something about hair as blond and pale as yours that attracts men. Your figure alone is enough to inspire lust in them.”
    Miranda looked away, her cheeks burning furiously.
    Lady Overstreet leaned across the table. “Don’t ever shy away from being what you are. Life is too hard as it is. A woman has very little say, and only a fool would ignore what gifts she has been given. I could marry you off to that duke and one so wealthy, your sisters would be certain of finding noble and generous husbands.”
    “It can’t all rest on me,” Miranda said weakly. “I can’t marry.”
    “You can ,” Charlotte said. She looked Miranda intently in the eye. “It’s all in the past. He’s gone. He doesn’t matter anymore. We’re going to forge new lives.”
    Lady Overstreet’s ears picked up. “He? What’s this about?”
    Miranda kept silent, her back stiff with tension. Charlotte cast a glance at her, as if expecting her to speak. Miranda didn’t talk about Alex. Her family had not understood, and even after all this time, her emotions concerning him were still too much in a turmoil. Guilt weighed heavily upon her. Part of her wished she’d never met him.
    Another part yearned to see him again. Just once. Then maybe she would be able to forget him.
    Charlotte spoke, her words formal. “Miranda had an indiscretion years ago.”
    “An indiscretion?” Instead of being put off, Lady Overstreet was very interested. “Please tell.”
    “There isn’t much to say,” Miranda murmured.
    “Then tell me what little there is,” Lady Overstreet instructed.
    Miranda shook her head. Even after all this time, Alex was too personal a topic to be shared.
    It was Constance who answered. “Miranda had an Indian who wanted to marry her. A Shawnee. He wanted her to go with him.”
    “An Indian? How intriguing,” Lady Overstreet said.
    “Hardly,” Charlotte answered tersely. “Miranda was fifteen at the time. Too young to know better.”
    “ You were sixteen and promised,” Miranda reminded her.
    “To a white man,” her sister answered.
    Miranda could have said Alex was white, too. He’d been half British, but he had chosen his Shawnee side, the side that, in the end, she could not follow.
    Lady Overstreet fueled the sudden tension by asking, “Weren’t the Shawnees the ones who had killed your mother and baby brother?”
    For a moment no one spoke. And then Charlotte said, “Yes.” The word seemed to hover in the air around them.
    “Oh dear,” Lady Overstreet said.
    There was silence, and then Constance picked up the story. “They tell me Father was a different man when Mother was alive. But once she and Ben were killed, he changed. He got mean.”
    “I suppose he didn’t react very well to one of his daughters taking up with a savage?” Lady Overstreet said.
    Alex wasn’t a savage—
    Miranda held the words back. She’d learned it never mattered what the truth was. People thought, what they thought, and she’d already proven she wasn’t strong enough to stand up to them.
    But she wasn’t a coward. She could not let her sisters tell her story. “Alex wanted to marry me. He wanted to do what was right. When he asked for my hand in marriage, Father became insane. He horsewhipped Alex until he was nearly dead. He would have killed him. Father drank a lot then. He needed more liquor, and he left with friends to go get it. I guess it is thirsty work killing a man.” Her voice almost failed her.
    Charlotte reached for her hand. Miranda looked down at her sister’s hand holding hers before slowly raising her eyes to Charlotte’s. “I cost all of us so much.”
    “You didn’t mean to hurt anyone, and in the end, it doesn’t matter. I would not have been a good farrier’s wife.”
    “But you would have had children.”
    Tears