Authors: Mary Balogh
She smiled at him.
“You are the only person who has ever called me that,” she said. “I like it. I will remember it—that private name spoken in your voice.”
She kissed him briefly on the lips again and swung her legs over the side of the branch and joined him on his.
“This is the point,” she said, “at which one realizes that climbing a tree was not such a wise idea after all. One has to go back down, and descending is always ten times harder than ascending.”
But she laughed when he would have offered assistance and
swung her way down to the ground as if she had been climbing trees every day since she was a girl. She was smiling up at him when he jumped down onto the ground to join her, and he thought he had never in his life seen anyone lovelier.
Cass joyful.
It was a picture he would carry with him for the rest of his life.
Very close to his heart.
Dangerously
close.
For despite everything, she had killed her husband, and there was no denying that as a dark, heavy burden she must carry with her through life.
And there was no denying that it would be a heavy burden for him to consider shouldering if he were ever to consider falling in love with her.
If
?
Was it already too late?
What the devil did falling in love
feel
like?
15
S
TEPHEN
spent the morning of the following day at the House of Lords, participating in a debate on an issue that particularly interested him. He went to White’s afterward, as he often did, for a late luncheon with some of his friends and would probably have proceeded to the races with them if his mind had not been distracted by something—or someone—he had seen from a distance just before arriving at the club.
Wesley Young.
And of course his mind had been on Cassandra ever since yesterday. She had even inhabited his dreams. He had been standing on that tree branch again, kissing her, and they had floated off into the sky, happy enough until they tried to find their way back while she fretted over the fact that the dog needed to be fed and he tried to see where they were going through her windswept red hair.
Such an absurd dream.
He could not remember dreaming about a woman ever before.
“Does anyone know where Sir Wesley Young lives?” he asked now of no one in particular.
All of them shook their heads except Talbot, who seemed to recall that Young had bachelor rooms on St. James’s Street, not far
from the club. The house with the bilious yellow door and the semicircular fanlight above it.
“I remember standing in front of that door after having a few drinks, while Young fumbled with his key,” Talbot said. “And it did nothing to settle my stomach, I can tell you, Merton. It quite put me off drinking more than half a dozen glasses more once I was inside.”
The fact that he had seen Young not far from here might mean, Stephen thought, that he had been going home for luncheon—or leaving to take it elsewhere.
He disappointed himself and a few of his friends by deciding against going to the races. He went instead in search of the bilious yellow door, which turned out to be not quite so bilious after all when viewed in sunlight and with a sober stomach.
Stephen knocked upon it.
This was really quite irrational, he realized. And purely impulsive. He was not even sure why he was doing it except that he had somehow got himself—and his emotions—entangled with Cassandra and could not resist the reprehensible urge to interfere in her life.
He ought not to be doing it. She had not asked it of him.
He had not even made any arrangement to see her again after yesterday’s picnic. He had felt the need of a cooling-off period. Within four days he had got himself embroiled in madness. It was quite unlike him. He led a normally tranquil, rather predictable life, and he liked it.
His dream had not cooperated with his very sensible decision, of course.
Neither had his waking spells when, if he was honest with himself, he had lain in his bed wanting her, desire like a raging fever in his blood.
It simply would not do. He needed to
do
something for her and then resume the normal, perfectly happy course of his life.
Young’s valet opened the door and took Stephen’s card. He asked
him to wait in a downstairs visitors’ room—typically dark and gloomy—while he saw if Sir Wesley was at home, a sure sign that he was. If he had not been, Stephen would have been turned away at the door.
Young came in person within a few minutes, looking both surprised and mystified. He was dressed as though he had been about to step out.
“Merton?” he said. “This is an unexpected honor.”
“Young?” Stephen inclined his head.
He was auburn-haired and good-looking, though he had none of the vivid beauty of his sister. The family resemblance was unmistakable, though. He had a pleasant, good-humored face, a fact that irritated Stephen.
There was an awkward silence.
“Would you care to step up to my rooms?” Young asked, breaking it.
“No, thank you,” Stephen said. He had no wish to engage in small talk either. “I have given the matter much thought during the past few days, and I have come to the conclusion that there are absolutely no circumstances under which I can imagine myself riding past one of my sisters in Hyde Park and giving her the cut direct.”
Young seated himself in an old leather chair without inviting his guest to sit too. Stephen sat anyway in a lumpy chair opposite him.
“Especially,” he said, “if she were friendless and destitute.”
Young flushed and looked annoyed—not without reason, perhaps.
“You must understand, Merton,” he said, “that I am not a wealthy man—or perhaps you
cannot
understand that. It is important to me that I make an advantageous marriage, and this year I am—
was
—close to doing just that. It was selfish of Cassie to come to London now of all times, especially when I had specifically warned her not to.”
“Selfish,” Stephen repeated as Young got restlessly back onto his
feet and crossed the room to gaze into the empty fireplace. “Where else was she to go?”
“She might at least,” Young said bitterly, “have lived quietly here so that no one would have noticed her. But I have heard since that afternoon in the park that she had already appeared at Lady Sheringford’s ball and at Lady Carling’s at-home. And somehow she persuaded you to take her driving in the park at the very busiest hour. She has to understand that after what she did she is fortunate to be alive and free. She certainly cannot expect decent people to receive her. She cannot expect me to—But why am I explaining all this to you? I scarcely know you, Merton. And it is none of your business how I choose to treat my own sister.”
Stephen ignored the rebuke, though Young was quite right, of course.
“You believe what you have heard about her, then?” he asked. “Did you know Paget well?”
Young frowned down at the grate.
“He was the most amiable fellow you could hope to meet,” he said. “And generous to a fault. He must have spent a king’s ransom on jewels for her. You ought to have seen them all. I went to Carmel a few times to visit. I was disappointed in Cassie. She had changed. She had lost the warmth and sparkle of humor she had always had when we were growing up. She scarcely spoke. She clearly regretted having married a man who was no younger than our father, and I thought that very unfair to Paget, who doted on her. She knew his age when she married him, after all. Did she kill him? Well,
someone
did, Merton, and I cannot think anyone would have had any motive except her. She wanted to be
free
. She wanted to come back here and behave just as she is behaving. She obviously has you besotted, and everyone knows you are as rich as Croesus.”
“Would the sister you remember actually
kill
a man,” Stephen asked him, “in order to be free to enjoy life again?”
Young crossed back to the leather chair and dropped heavily into it.
“She was mother, sister, and friend to me when we were growing up,” he said. “But people change, Merton.
She
changed. I saw it with my own eyes.”
“Perhaps,” Stephen said, “she was made to change. Perhaps all was not as it seemed in that marriage. Your visits, I take it, were infrequent and not lengthy?”
Young frowned at his own boots and said nothing.
He knew, Stephen thought. He had probably always known—or strongly suspected, anyway. Sometimes it was easier not to know, though, to shut one’s mind to the truth.
“I was very young,” Sir Wesley said, as if reaching for an excuse.
“You are past your majority now, though,” Stephen said. “She needs a friend, Young. She needs someone of her own who will love her unconditionally.”
“Miss Haytor—” Young began. He had the decency not to complete the thought.
“Yes,” Stephen said. “Miss Haytor is her friend. She is not family, though. Neither is she a man.”
Young moved restlessly in his seat, but he would not look at Stephen opposite him.
“The young lady who was with you in the park,” Stephen said. “I do not have an acquaintance with her, I’m afraid.”
“Miss Norwood,” Young said.
“Do you still have hopes of marrying her?” Stephen asked.
“She was indisposed when I arrived to escort her to a garden party yesterday afternoon,” Young said with a twisted smile. “She was expected to be indisposed for some days to come. I saw her at Vauxhall last evening, though, looking in perfect health. She was with her parents and Viscount Brigham.”
“Then I would say,” Stephen said, “that you had a fortunate
escape. There will be those members of the
ton
who will respect you far more if you stand staunchly by your sister than if you pretend you do not even know her. And of course there will be those who will not. Which group would you rather impress?”
He got to his feet to leave.
“What is your interest in Cassie?” Young asked him, keeping his seat. “Is she your mistress?”
“Lady Paget,” Stephen said, “is in dire need of a friend. I am her friend. And although I know from her own lips that she had motive more than sufficient to kill the bastard who was her husband, something tells me she did not do it. I know nothing about the circumstances of his death beyond the fact that he was shot with a pistol,
not
hacked to pieces with an axe. But I will tell you this, Young. Even if at some time I discover beyond all doubt that it
is
true, that she
did
shoot him, I will still be Lady Paget’s friend. He
was
a bastard. Did you know that she had two miscarriages and one stillbirth, none of them necessary?”
Young looked directly at him then, the color draining from his face. Stephen did not wait for him to say anything. He took up his hat and cane from just inside the door and let himself out of the dingy parlor and out of the rooming house.
Well, how was
that
for interfering in lives that were really none of his business?
He found his steps leading him toward Portman Street and Cassandra’s house. He had no idea why. Perhaps he needed to confess what he had just done. She would, he suspected, be furious with him, and she had every right to be. But was he sorry? He was not. He would do it again given the chance.
And did he
really
believe Cassandra was innocent of murder? And even of the lesser crime of killing in self-defense? Was it just wishful thinking on his part?
She was not at home. It was almost a relief.
“She has gone out with Miss Haytor, my lord,” the maid told him.
“
Ah
,” he said. “Some time ago?”
“No, my lord,” she said. “Just this minute.”
But there was no sign of her in either direction along the street. She would not be back soon, then.
“Mary,” he said, “may I have a word with you?”
Now
what the devil was he up to?
“With me?” Her eyes grew saucer-wide, and she touched a hand to her bosom.
“Can you spare me a few minutes?” he asked her. “I will not keep you long.”
She stood back from the door to admit him, and he gestured toward the kitchen. She scurried ahead of him.
He noticed in passing that there was a distinctive gilt-edged card propped against a vase on the hall table, with Lady Paget’s name written on it in an elegant hand. It was an invitation to Lady Compton-Haig’s ball the following evening. He had a duplicate addressed to him on the desk in his study.
It was beginning to happen for her, then? She was beginning to be accepted into society?
The child was sitting on the floor beneath the kitchen table, the dog stretched out at her feet. He raised his eye to Stephen and thumped his tail lazily on the floor but did not otherwise move. The child was singing softly to her doll, which was wrapped in its white blanket. She was rocking it.
Mary turned to face Stephen, and it occurred to him that she really was rather pretty in a thin, pale sort of way. She had fine eyes, and the color his presence had put in her cheeks became her.
“Mary,” he said, and realized he could not ask what he most wanted to know. She probably did not have the answer, anyway. He felt suddenly foolish. “What happened to the dog?”
She looked down and twisted her apron.
“Someone,” she said, “a-a
stranger
, was trying to beat Lady Paget out in the stables, and Roger tried to defend her. He did too—she was not near so badly beat up as she usually—As might have been expected. But Lord—But the strange man caught hold of a whip and whipped the dog so vicious that he lost the sight of his eye and lost the tip of his ear, and his leg was crushed so bad that part of it had to be cut off.”
“Crushed with a whip?” Stephen asked.
“With a—a shovel, I think,” Mary said.
“And did this stranger—or Lord Paget—get hurt too?” Stephen asked.
She darted him a glance before returning her attention to her apron.