Chapter One

 

Miranda slumped low in the back seat of the Mercedes, sulking, and wanting everyone to know it. The only other person present was the driver, of course, and he was hardly important. Still, the principal remained. She was not happy, not even a little bit. And when Miranda was unhappy she felt better if she made everyone else unhappy too.

And Miranda was often unhappy.

Though not without cause, even those who found her most tiresome would admit.

The only daughter of Bernard Smithson and Alexis Doyle, she had been raised in a large, but cozy London flat until the age of nine, when her father's aircraft had crashed on landing.

Miranda's mother had always been a cold, and somewhat calculating woman, far more concerned with herself and her image and prestige than in something as discomforting as a messy, noisy child. She had, almost since birth, left the raising of her daughter to her husband and the nannies she had hired - quite properly so, she thought.

In fact, she found her husband's interest in the girl somewhat bizarre. Children were smelly, bothersome creatures, and if one were a member of the upper classes one had more important things to spend ones precious time upon. She had been raised by nannies, and she found that to be entirely normal.

With her father gone Miranda was left almost entirely in the care of her then governess, Mrs. Saunders. But when her mother had remarried only two years after her father's death, Miranda had found herself moving into the large country estate of Gerard Kennedy, an arrogant man whose disposition made even her mother seem sweet and open.

There was little love lost between her mother and her new stepfather. It was the marriage of a pair of venal people seeking greater wealth and social accomplishment. Her mother popped out the obligatory (it was in the marriage contract) two children; one boy, and one girl. Both were raised in an environment which almost guaranteed they would become as cool and aloof as their parents.

But perhaps due to her early privilege of her father's companionship and love Miranda grew up to be something of a wayward child. She looked at her mother and stepfather in comparison to her father, and found them greatly wanting. Nor did she make any secret of her poor judgment of them as parents.

A series of more and more restrictive schools, with greater and greater discipline did little to enhance her affection for her parents, and instead brought a rebellious streak to full life. Miranda knew that her parents cherished nothing so much as being seen in a respectable light, and so, in ways only an adolescent might consider subtle, she sought to embarrass them.

She acted up in school, performed poorly on tests, skipped classes, and, on the few occasions when she was "home", slouched, dressed poorly, talked back, and did her level best to act like a bad-tempered, impertinent child - always when there were visitors over.

That such minor adolescent rebellion could cause her parents as much distress as it did was testament to the determination her mother and stepfather had in being seen in just the proper light, by all the right people.

And that distress only grew worse as Miranda grew into her teenage years and found even more ways to torment them. She ran away from home, repeatedly, and had to be located and brought back, often from the streets of London. At fifteen she was found working at a holiday camp in Scotland. At sixteen she was dragged home from a boyfriend's home in the French countryside. At seventeen she made the actual scandal sheets at last - true victory for her - for a lusty episode of kissing and groping in a well-known nightclub with a popular television actor - who happened to be both ten years older than she, and married.

By this time she was casually dressing in the shortest of skirts, and the tightest of tops. Her long, silken hair was dyed a blue-black mixture, and her lipstick was usually black, as was her nail polish.

Her parents thus derived no social prestige, as they might normally have expected, from her being so obviously beautiful and intelligent. Quite to the contrary. For as she grew older she seemed to have even less restraint, and to care even less for the chastisements and punishments they heaped upon her.

But that didn't really bother her. For she knew that when she turned nineteen she would be granted access to the trust fund her father had established for her, and be independent of her parents wishes and desires.

In fact, her interest in making their lives miserable had actually faded of late. She really didn't care much about them, and had matured enough to not much care what they thought of her. That she dressed the way she did had more to do with personal preference than any attempt at embarrassing them.

They were tiresome bores and she had to put up with them for only another few months before she would get her trust fund and be gone. Then she'd probably never see them again, or their rotten, bratty, perfect little children.

But for now, she had little choice but to be in this car, with the suspicious driver who was quite loyal to her stepfather, and who would certainly not take her anywhere but where he was bade to take her, which, at the moment, was to the estate of her mother's brother Randolph.

Uncle Randolph, she had long learned, was easily as bad as her mother, but more desperately so for his lack of accomplishment. He had inherited an enormous sum and managed, through incompetence and his many vices, to turn it into a minor sum in a remarkably short time.

His estate was now mortgaged, and he was having a great deal of time keeping it from being sold for taxes and fees.

Despite that he was every bit as arrogant and pompous and cold as her stepfather. Worse, he had a wife who could freeze water with a glance, and two children who she cordially despised for their insufferable conceit and overbearing manner.

In any event, she was about to become better acquainted with her cousins and uncle and aunt, for her parents had decreed - bizarrely, she thought - that she needed to spend more time with them and get to know them. Since her mother had never shown very much interest in her brother that surprised Miranda considerably.

She had, of course, resisted, refused, ignored her mother's wishes, and finally, after many months, been almost physically forced into the car for the week long visit to her uncle and aunt.

Miranda had already decided that either she would make their lives so miserable they would insist she leave early, or she would ignore them entirely and see if there was anything worth doing at their estate and in the nearby towns and villages.

The mansion was a rambling old Edwardian, half of which was in ruins for lack of upkeep. She snorted in disdain as they pulled up before the main entrance, and did not change her position, slumped back, and legs apart, even as Barry, the chauffeur, stopped and walked around to open the side door for her.

She was slumped low, wearing a very short skirt, and her legs far enough apart to show the lacy blue panties beneath. But she didn't particularly care if he saw.

"We're here, Miss," he said stolidly.

It was almost impossible to get a rise out of Barry, and she almost physically shook her head at the pointlessness of trying.

She sat up and climbed out of the Mercedes. She was wearing a very short blue and black tartan skirt, a leather jacket over a tight, midriff baring t-shirt, and black dockers. She also wore studded leather wristbands, and a dog collar. And as she stood up and glanced up at the house, the thin blue elastic waistband of her thong showed clearly and intentionally above her low riding skirt.

The skirt, in fact, was less than a foot of fabric, hanging very low on her hips, and barely covering her firm young buttocks. But that was fine with Miranda. With her black lipstick and deep black eyeliner she knew she'd curdle the lunch of her uptight uncle and aunt, not to mention her two boorish cousins.

Fuck them, she thought.

"What a dump!" she said.

In fact, it was an enormous country house, complete with two high towers, an enormous ballroom, a large library, and dozens of sitting, entertainment and bedrooms, each of which was large enough for the average middle class family home to sit comfortably within.

Cameron unloaded the two large trunks from the boot, and as both were on wheels, rolled them up to the stairs, then carried them, his enormous arms bulging, up the rest of the way to the ten-foot-high double doors.

He set them down and slammed down on the huge, old-fashioned knocker, and a few moments later, as Miranda stood, aloof and awash in teenage insouciance, the door was opened by a man who could almost have been Cameron's twin. He too was large, broad shouldered, and blank faced.

"Miss Smithson to see Mr. Doyle," Cameron said.

"She's expected," the man at the door replied.

He ignored her, reaching out to take one of the cases, and he and Cameron lifted them up into the house, then wheeled them away from the doors as they looked at her. She glared at both, then shrugged and followed them inside.

The entrance hall was as large and gaudy as she expected, and she sniffed disdainfully at the coats of arms hanging above and the suits of armour on pedestals in the broad corridor which led up the centre of the house.

She walked behind the man, she supposed was the butler, and ahead of Cameron. She was led straight up the corridor, and then through a heavy, rounded door into a smaller hallway. To one side was another large, heavy wooden door, and the man threw it back.

Inside was a staircase which curved up around the inside of what was obvious the rear tower.

For the first time, Miranda showed a spark of interest. She followed the man as he started up the stairs, and Cameron followed behind. They curved up and around and through a narrow door blocked by a thick wooden door. There were several small doors to the side here, but the man led them further up the staircase.

Interesting, Miranda thought, but for the first time wondered why she was going up into the tower. Surely there were bedrooms closer to the ground. Were her dear aunt and uncle sending her a message that she should stay away from them during her visit?

They curved up another forty or fifty stairs and through another thick door, but still continued walking. Miranda's legs were growing tired, but she had no intention of suggesting weakness while the two men were carrying her heavy trunks.

At last they came to a final landing and another heavy wooden door. Here the man set down her trunk and then produced a large key. He thrust it into an old-fashioned lock, and pushed open the deep-set, heavy wooden door.

Miranda walked freely through, interested in seeing what the view was like.

The room was, of course, rounded. And it had obviously been greatly updated. It looked more like a loft apartment, and she gazed around with some appreciation. There was a pair of leather seats by the fireplace at one side, a large bed on an elevated platform to the other side, and through a glass wall, a large open bathroom with a large tub and a corner shower which looked large enough to hold a dozen people.

"Very nice," she murmured.

The two men set her trunks down by the bed, where tall, broad, polished dark wood chests awaited the contents. Then turned and left with hardly a word. Miranda barely noticed them. She was trying to look out one of the high windows, but could see very little. It was narrow, deep set, and there were bars crossing it top to bottom and side to side.

There were three other, similar windows, and a wooden door which promised to give onto a balcony, but which proved to be locked. She turned to ask the man for the key but he was gone. Shrugging, she wandered around the room, tried the television, bounced on the bed a bit, and then examined the shower.

It was quite in her style, too. The corner shower had two showerheads which curled up and in from the walls. Shoulder high tiled walls almost met at right angles, but left an opening for her to walk between.

Very nice, she thought. The mirror was gothic, with a pair of sconces framing it which were meant to look like antique lights. The toilet was black, her favourite colour.

And up high above on the wall was a television camera with a small red blinking light. She looked at it in surprise, then amazement. Who would put a Television camera on the wall above the bathroom!?

And then, as her eyes followed the line of the wall she saw another, and a third, and a fourth, all of them placed precisely, quartering the open loft apartment.

Well, she was certainly not going to stay there where there were cameras! Even if they weren't operating she would feel like she was being peeped on!

She strode across the floor to the door and tried to turn the large handle. It held tight. She tugged and turned in one direction, then the other, then kicked at the door and shouted. It was bloody locked! Those flaming idiots had locked her in!

Then the television came on, and she saw, to her amazement, her uncle and aunt sitting sedately on a settee facing the camera.

"Hello, Miranda," her uncle said, in his stuffy, overbearing voice. "We do hope you like your new accommodations."

Miranda crossed the floor to stare at the TV.

"The bloody door is locked," she said, still amazed at seeing them on the television.

"Yes, we know. This will be your new home for a while now," her uncle said.