The Conquest of Lady Cassandra (13 page)

“I said you do not care for me, not that you do not want me. All men want all women, when you get down to it.”

“Not like this. I have wanted you for years.”

That touched her, although she should not allow it to. Deep inside, a corner of her essence trembled. It would be very nice if it were true. It moved her that perhaps someone had thought about her at all these last years, for any purpose other than silly gossip.

She turned around, lest she melt completely. Only that brought her face-to-face with him in the moonlight, very close. He appeared unbearably handsome. She wanted desperately to believe he did not just toy with her, or manipulate her, or merely seek to make her one more conquest, but she dared not.

“Years? It has taken you a long time to let me know. You are not known for timidity in your pursuits either, so that is odd.” She tipped up her head and looked him right in the eyes. “Do you feel free to act now because he is dead? Or because you have decided that I am indeed a woman of the world, and inclined to permit it?”

She expected her taunt to put him off. To anger him. To remind him why she had the reputation she did, and why he had avoided her for six years. A deeper intensity entered his eyes, and she braced for his wit to slice.

Instead, to her shock, he took her face in his hands. His lips brushed hers. “You incited me to act with your talk of leaving England. If I do not do this now, I might never have the chance.” He kissed her again. “I would go to my grave regretting that.”

What nonsense. Still, she let him kiss her one more time, and savored the titillation more than she ought. Then she covered his hands with her own and removed them from her face.

“I must go to Lydia and take her home,” she said.

He did not appear inclined to let her move away. She half hoped he would not. After a hesitation, he stepped aside. She left the sitting room alone, unseen, and unremarked. He was a discreet fifteen steps behind her when she entered the drawing room.

“O
pen your reticule,” Cassandra said to Lydia. “I need to move the money from mine to yours.”

“You keep it. I don’t want it.”

Cassandra stared at Lydia’s profile, dark beside her despite the moonlight coming in the windows of the coach. After everything else tonight, Lydia’s indifference to the money tested her temper badly. “I cannot take it. Now,
open your reticule
.”

Lydia gazed sightlessly out the window. The remoteness that had descended on her at the vingt-et-un table had not lifted.

Cassandra was in no mood to indulge her. She took the reticule and handed it to Ambury, sitting on the facing bench. “Hold this open, please.”

The two of them managed to transfer the night’s winnings from Cassandra’s reticule to its owner’s own just as the coach stopped in front of Southwaite’s house.

Ambury hopped down and handed Lydia out. “I will take you to the door. If Southwaite finds out about this, we will tell him that we both found ourselves at the same party.”

“He will not discover us. The servants do not tell on me, and my brother has been in bed for hours now. That is all he does of an evening. Go to bed with Emma.” She turned to Cassandra. “I think he is insatiable. Is that common?”

“Initially, I think perhaps so,” Cassandra said through the window.

“I do not think I would like a husband who was insatiable.” Lydia shook her head. “Poor Emma.”

It was not so much the conversation itself that made Yates uncomfortable but the husband under discussion, and the ladies who were doing the discussing

Once Lydia had been dispensed with, he returned to the carriage, where Cassandra looked at him through the window. When he reached for the door’s latch, she rapped her fan against his knuckles, stopping him.

“I will allow you back in if you promise to behave yourself.”

He crossed his forearms on the window’s lower edge. “How is it you want me to behave?”

“You know what I mean. You have been too bold.”

“Have I? I thought you were too sophisticated to require long wooing and empty words. I assumed you live like your aunt did, free of concern about the opinions of others and open to experiences that make me far from bold thus far. If I erred, then you are indeed merely wild, and only in need of taming.”

He expected her to react with playful wit or vexed indignation. Instead she just looked at him, her eyes black in the night.

“Taming?” She said the word curiously, as if she had never heard its sound before. “Did my brother put you up to this, Ambury?”

The question stunned him. During the moment when he was at a disadvantage, she reached out and rapped her fan on the outside of the coach.

The hackney driver snapped the ribbons. They drove off, leaving Yates to find his way home alone.

Y
ates entered Brooks’s and surveyed the parties that had already formed. Pitt was holding forth to a thick collection of ministers and peers over to the left, his voice low and their expressions rapt. Presumably the war with France was being dissected, or perhaps the Irish situation.

One of those figures moved his attention from the prime minister. Penthurst noted Yates’s arrival, then angled his head ever so slightly. Yates instinctively followed the direction, and his gaze lit upon Kendale and Southwaite sitting thirty feet away.

“I am surprised to see you,” Yates said to Southwaite as he took a chair with them. “I had heard you returned to town, but duty does not require your presence at your clubs.”

“I am reclaiming the patterns of my life at my wife’s insistence.”

“He means he was overstaying his welcome in her bed, I think,” Kendale said. “However, he has not said much since
he came in, so I think his mind remained there even if his body did not.”

“I did not overstay any welcome,” Southwaite said with clear measure. “However, the rest of your suspicions are accurate. How did you know?”

“The damned self-satisfied smile gave you away,” Kendale said.

“We all look forward to the day when you smile thus, Kendale,” Yates said.

Actually, they looked forward to when Kendale smiled more than once a week. Prior to his older brother’s untimely demise, Kendale had served in the army, as was common for second sons of peers. Only instead of a jovial regiment of Horse Guards, he had insisted on a commission with a regiment that saw action. He left that service far more serious than when he entered.

“Do not hold your breath. I haven’t a romantic drop of blood in me, and will never be as drunk on a woman as our friend is now with his bride.”

Southwaite raised his glass of brandy in salute. “May you never fall, for if you do, I fear the earth will shake due to the heights from which you tumble.”

“Oh, he will fall,” Yates said. “He is too proud to heed our lessons and practice the feints and dodges required of a man determined to remain free.”

“Fine lessons they are, for all the good they did him.” Kendale jabbed a thumb in Southwaite’s direction.

“He was not caught unawares, as you will be. Next Season, some sweet girl with a shrewd mama is going to run you to ground before you even know the hounds have been let free. You won’t know what happened until you see your own tail nailed to her boudoir wall.”

“What shit,” Kendale muttered. “Feel free to continue, however. Unlike him, you are somewhat entertaining.”

“Has he been boring you? Southwaite, why not follow your mind’s directions and go home? You have forever to reclaim
the patterns of your life, and probably only another fortnight or so more of enthusiastic interest from your new wife.”

Southwaite frowned. “If anyone knows why I am here, it is you, Ambury.”

“I do?”

“Have you forgotten the messenger you sent? He said you wanted to speak with me on a matter of personal importance. It sounded urgent. I knew I might find you here tonight.” He folded his hands and waited. “It had better be good, especially after that warning about only another fortnight.”

Yates had sent no messenger. He thought he knew who had, however. He turned his head until his eye caught the view of Penthurst saying something to Pitt and his group.

How like the man to issue an order, then arrange to ensure the order would be obeyed.

“You may consider what I have to say a matter of interfering where I am not wanted. I have thought twice about doing so. Three times, in fact.”

Southwaite’s sobriety turned to concern. “If it even crossed your mind once, you need to tell me. You are not one to consider such a thing lightly to begin with.”

Kendale watched with keen interest. Southwaite’s expression made it clear there was no turning back.

“It has to do with your sister. She was at Mrs. Burton’s the other night. Gambling.”

Kendale whistled between his teeth.

Southwaite closed his eyes. “How much did she lose?”

“Nothing. She won.”

His eyes opened. “She won?”

“Seven hundred, I think. At least.”

“How is that bad news?” Kendale asked. “Please bring me such sorry tidings tomorrow, Ambury.”

“She may not win next time,” Yates said. “She was drunk from the excitement too.” He cleared his throat. “At least one onlooker commented to me that she was looking for adventure. I found the description apt, and thought I should inform you.”

“Well that you did. It must stop, of course. Be nipped at once. Although, I confess I would have liked to see her excited about something. Anything.” Southwaite shook his head. “Did you bring her, so that she would have someone watching out for her? If so, I owe you my gratitude.”

“I found her there. I did see her home, however.”

“Please tell me she was not so rash as to go alone.”

“No, I do not believe so.”

“A man brought her? Who is he? Give me the scoundrel’s name. I swear I will—”

“She came with another woman, I think.”

It took a three count, no longer, for both Southwaite and Kendale to guess who that woman had been.

Kendale glanced his way with an I-told-you-so look. Southwaite closed his eyes in forbearance again.

“Thank you, Ambury. I will deal with all of this immediately.”

“How?” Kendale asked. “You let your wife be friends with that woman. How do you explain to your sister that she can’t be?”

The undeniable logic of the question hung in the air. Southwaite frowned while they ground through the conundrum. They all drank more brandy to douse the turning wheels.

“There is only one solution that I can see,” Kendale offered. “If you are not going to forbid Cassandra Vernham’s friendship to both of them—”

“If he does, it may be the shortest fortnight of pleasure known to a man,” Yates said.

“And you are not going to permit your sister to be friends with a woman of her reputation—”

“There is rather more to it than that,” Southwaite said.

“We do not know that for certain. We suspect she was at the heart of that duel, but we do not know,” Yates said. “And even if she was, the equity issue is the same, regarding your wife.”

“I suppose that is correct, in one manner of speaking.”

“
As I was saying
, if those two choices are out of the question, there is only one other. I dislike the woman so much that I hesitate to point it out, but you need to find a way to rehabilitate Lady Cassandra’s reputation so her friendship does not reflect badly on your sister or your wife.”

“Kendale, you have a delightfully simple, if misguided, view of the world,” Yates said.

“I think he makes good sense,” Southwaite said. “She is not truly ruined. She has not been totally ostracized by good society. There are those who receive her and invite her to parties. Who is to say if any of the rumors have been true? They have mostly been vague references to vague liaisons with unnamed men. She need only marry and—”

“I am sure her family has traveled that path often enough, to no avail.”

Southwaite’s wheels turned some more. “That would be the easiest way, but not the only possible one. An idea is forming. I need to speak with Emma.” He stood. “I think I will go home and discuss the entire situation with her now.”

Penthurst noticed Southwaite passing on the way out. He glanced down at Yates. A vague tip of his head acknowledged that duty had been served.

“He doesn’t have another idea to discuss with his wife,” Kendale said. “He just wants to get back into bed.”

“You are both right and wrong. He needs to raise a delicate matter with his bride. Debates with women always go better if they are pleasured first, Kendale. Consider that another bit of wisdom that you should tuck away regarding women, should the day ever come when you deign to court one.”

C
assandra received the letter in the midmorning post the next day.
“Meet me in Hyde Park. One o’clock. Emma.”
It appeared to have been jotted in a hurry, and the
handwriting communicated urgency. Worried, Cassandra dressed and prepared to comply.

She found Emma pacing back and forth, right inside the corner entrance.

“What has you so distraught?” Cassandra asked. “Have you discovered that Marielle’s jewels will not be offered to Fairbourne’s?”

“Jewels? Oh, goodness, I do not want to talk about that. I need to discuss something else entirely.”

Cassandra twined her arm through Emma’s and began strolling. “You will still be holding an auction in September, however?”

“I expect so.”

“Good. I may have another lot for it.”

“Wonderful,” Emma muttered.

“Your mind is elsewhere, I can see. Is your brother worse?”

“He is hale and fit enough to leave town to go shooting up in Yorkshire. He acts as if Fairbourne’s can manage itself.” She made a shooing gesture, pushing the topic away. “Better he be gone than in the way. Nor do I care when he returns. I have enough on my mind without debating his course or worth.”

“What has you in such a state?”

“You will laugh when you hear it. You will not think it dire at all. Darius has suggested that we host a dinner party.” She looked Cassandra in the eyes. “I have never hosted a party for good society. Nor will this be a friendly one. He wants to entertain some of the peers who have come to town, and their wives, and his aunts, and—” She threw up her hands helplessly.