Firelight
with disdain. It was the image of an innocent and a maiden. She was neither. And yet he had come for her. Why?
    She did not believe Father’s nonsense about him wanting her for her beauty. There were plenty of pretty daughters of utterly bankrupt, thus desperate, nobles for a wealthy man to chose from. What, then, did he want? What has the world come to when men such as he are permitted to roam the streets… Perspiration bloomed along her upper lip. And yet Lord Archer did not know precisely what he was acquiring when he took Miranda as his bride, did he?
    To create fire by mere thought. It was the stuff of myth. She had discovered the talent quite by accident. And had burned through her share of disasters. Father and Mother had forbidden anyone to ever speak of it and, more to the point, for Miranda to ever use her talent again. Poppy had simply disappeared in the library to search for an explanation; she never found one. Only Daisy had been impressed, though quite put out that she did not possess a similar unearthly talent. As for herself, the question always remained: Was she a monster? Both beauty and beast rolled into one unstable force? Despite her desire to know, there was the greater fear of putting the question to anyone and seeing them turn away as Martin had. So she kept it inside. She would not tell her husband to be, no. But she took comfort in the notion that she was not without defenses.
    Poppy and Daisy’s mutual disregard for Father kept them at a distance as Father hovered by her elbow, guarding all possible attempts to escape. Their chatter was no more than a din, Father’s hand upon her arm a ghost, as they made their way to the small family chapel by the river.
    Reverend Spradling met them at the door. The brackets around his fleshy mouth cut deep as his eyes slid from Miranda to Father. “Lord Archer is…” He tilted his head and pulled at the cassock hugging his bulging neck. “He is waiting in the vestry.”
    “Grand,” said Father with an inane smile.
    “He wants to talk to Miss Ellis in private,” the reverend interrupted as Father tried to walk through the doorway. “I told him it was inappropriate but he was most insistent.”
    The two men turned to Miranda. So now her opinion mattered, did it? She might have laughed, only she feared it would come out as a sob.
    “Very well.” She gathered her skirts. Her fingers had turned to ice long before, and the ruffles slid from her grasp. She took a firmer hold. “I won’t be but a moment.”
    Slowly, she walked toward the vestry door looming before her. She would finally face the man who would be her husband, the man who sent brutes to hospital and caused women to swoon with terror.
    He stood erect as a soldier at the far end of the little stone room. Women, she thought, letting her gaze sweep over him, could be utterly ridiculous.
    She closed the door and waited for him to speak.
    “You came.” He could not fully stamp out the surprise in his deep voice.
    “Yes.”
    He was tall and very large, though there wasn’t a spare ounce of fat discernible over his entire form. The largeness of appearance came from the breadth of his shoulders, the muscles that his charcoal gray morning suit—no matter how finely tailored—could not completely hide and the long length of his strong legs encased in gray woolen trousers. It was not the elegant, thin frame of a refined man, but the brute and efficient form of a dockworker. In short, Lord Archer possessed the sort of virile body that would catch many a lady’s eye and hold it—were it not for one unavoidable fact.
    She lifted her eyes to his face, or where it ought to be. Carved with a Mona Lisa smile upon its lips, a black hard mask like one might wear at Carnival stared back. Beneath the mask, his entire head was covered in tight black silk, offering not a bit of skin to view. The perversity of his costume unnerved, but she was hardly willing to swoon.
    “I thought it best,” he said after
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