Authors: Mary Balogh
Alice had not said yes—or no. She had waited to see if Cassandra could spare her. But she had been almost vibrating with suppressed excitement and anxiety. Ten minutes after Cassandra had arrived home, five after Wesley had left, she had been seated at the escritoire in the sitting room, writing Mr. Golding a letter of acceptance.
She was in her own room upstairs now, trying to decide what clothes she would take with her.
Cassandra slipped her feet into her dancing slippers and went downstairs to wait for Wesley. Her timing was perfect. He rapped on the door as she was descending the stairs, and she was able to wave Mary back to the kitchen and open the door herself.
“Oh, Cassie,” he said, looking her over admiringly. “You will cast every other lady into the shade.”
“Thank you, sir.” She laughed and twirled before him, suddenly lighthearted. “You look very handsome yourself. I am ready to leave. We do not need to keep the carriage waiting.”
But he stepped inside anyway and closed the door behind him.
“I am still outraged about your jewels,” he said. “A lady ought not to be seen at a ball without any. I have brought you this to wear.”
She recognized the slightly scuffed brown leather box as soon as she saw it. One of her favorite activities when she was a girl had been to lift it out of her father’s trunk and open it carefully to gaze inside and sometimes to touch the contents with a light fingertip. Once or twice she had even clasped it about her neck and admired herself in a glass, feeling horribly wicked all the time.
She took the box from Wesley’s hand and opened it. And there was the silver chain as she remembered it, though it had been
polished now to a bright sheen, with the pendant heart made of small diamonds. Their father had given it to their mother as a wedding gift, and it was the one possession of any value that had not been sold during any of the lean times, or even pawned.
It was not an ostentatious piece and was probably not of any great value. Indeed, the diamonds might even be paste for all Cassandra knew. Perhaps that was why it had never been sold or pawned. But its sentimental value was immense.
Wesley took it out of the box and clasped it about her neck.
“Oh, Wes,” she said, fingering it, “how wonderful you are. I will wear it just for tonight. And then you must put it away and keep it for your bride.”
“She would not appreciate it,” he said. “No one would except us, Cassie. I would rather you kept it as a sort of gift from me. Though as far as that goes, I daresay it belongs to you as much as it does to me. Devil take it, you are not
weeping
, are you?”
“I think I am,” she said, dabbing at her eyes with two fingers and laughing at the same time. And she threw her arms about his neck and hugged him tightly.
He patted her back awkwardly.
“Is your maid
Mary
?” he asked.
“Yes.” She stood back from him, still fingering the necklace as she looked down at it. “Why?”
“No reason,” he said.
A minute or so later he was handing her into the carriage he had hired for the evening, and they were making their ponderous way through the streets to the Compton-Haig mansion.
How different her arrival was this time. This time she was handed down to the red carpet by a liveried footman and made her way inside the house on her brother’s arm. This time she felt free to look around and appreciate the marble hallway and the bright chandelier overhead and the liveried servants and the guests all decked out in their evening finery.
This time a few people caught her eye and nodded to her. One or two even smiled. She could happily ignore those who did neither.
Wesley led her along the receiving line, and this time she could meet the eye of everyone in it because she had been invited and because her name could no longer inspire the shock it had created last week.
And this time, as soon as they had stepped inside the ballroom and she was looking about her, admiring the banks of purple and white flowers and green ferns, Sir Graham and Lady Carling came to speak with her and to be introduced to Wesley, with whom they did not have an acquaintance. And then Lord and Lady Sheringford came to bid them a good evening, and Mr. Huxtable came to ask Cassandra for the second set. A couple of Wesley’s friends came to speak with him, and one of them—a Mr. Bonnard—reserved a set later in the evening with her.
“Damn me, Wes,” he said, lifting a quizzing glass halfway to his eye, his head held firmly in place by the height and stiffness of his starched shirt points, “I did not know Lady Paget was your sister. She certainly got all the looks in the family. There were precious few left for you, were there?”
He and the other friend, whose name Cassandra had already forgotten, brayed with identical merriment at the witty joke.
And then Stephen was there, bowing and smiling and asking, a twinkle in his eyes, if Lady Paget had been kind enough to remember to reserve a set for him.
She fanned her cheeks.
“The first and second sets are spoken for,” she said, “and the set after supper.”
“I sincerely hope,” he said, “none of those dances are the waltz. I shall be severely out of sorts if they are. May I dance the first waltz with you, ma’am, and the supper dance too if they are not one and the same? And one other set if they are?”
He was openly distinguishing her. It was not poor etiquette to
dance twice in an evening with the same lady, but it was something everyone present always noticed. It usually meant that the gentleman concerned was seriously courting the lady.
She ought to say yes to only one dance. But his blue eyes were smiling, and the lawyer had said two weeks, even though he had admitted that it might be one month, and after that she would be leaving London forever to find herself a pretty little cottage in an obscure English village, and she would never see him again. Or have to face the
ton
again.
“Thank you,” she said, her hand falling still as she smiled back at him.
And she remembered how, only a week ago, she had stood alone in just such a ballroom as this, looking consideringly at all the gentlemen before picking him out as her prey.
Now there was a little corner of her heart that might always belong to him.
The more fool she.
“Shall we?” Wesley said, and she could see that couples were beginning to gather on the dance floor for the opening set.
The evening was not, after all, to pass without some unpleasantness.
Mr. Huxtable came to claim the second set very early and led Cassandra onto the floor long before most other couples came to join them. It was clear to her that he wished to talk with her—but that he did not want to do so in anyone else’s hearing.
He was an extraordinarily handsome man, she thought as they came to a stop in the middle of the floor and turned to face each other. He was handsome despite, or perhaps because of, his slightly crooked nose. Many women must find him impossibly attractive. She was not one of them. She did not like dark, brooding men who carried an aura of danger about with them. She was very glad indeed
she had not chosen
him
last week. Would she have succeeded? Could she have seduced him—and trapped him into paying her a large salary to be his mistress?
“I do not need to sidle by slow degrees into what I wish to say to you, do I?” he said now.
Oh, he was very dangerous indeed.
She was startled but would not show it. She waved her fan slowly before her face.
“Absolutely not,” she said. “I would prefer plain speaking. You wish to warn me away from your cousin, I daresay. He needs someone big and dark and strong like you to protect him and frighten away dangerous women like me, does he? Though I have always thought the devil’s function was to destroy innocence, not protect it.”
“Plain speaking indeed,” he said—and smiled at her with what looked like genuine amusement. “Merton is
not
a weakling, Lady Paget, though many people may think so. Unlike many men, he does not seem to feel the need always to be flexing his muscles in order to demonstrate how tough and manly he is. Did you choose him because you thought he
was
weak?”
“
I
chose
him
?” she asked haughtily.
“I saw you collide with him in Margaret’s ballroom,” he said.
“An accident,” she said.
“Deliberate.”
She raised her eyebrows and fanned her face.
“It is really none of your business, is it?” she asked him.
“When outdone in an argument,” he said, “it is always good strategy—or perhaps the
only
strategy—to fall back upon a cliché.”
Would the musicians
never
be finished tuning their instruments? Would the dancers never be finished with their conversations on the sidelines? How many people were watching the two of them? Cassandra smiled.
“How do you fit into Lord Merton’s family, Mr. Huxtable?” she asked him.
“He has not told you?” he said. “I am the ultimate bad, dangerous cousin, Lady Paget, the one who is bound to hate all the others with a passion and be ever ready to do them harm. My father was the Earl of Merton, and I was his eldest son. Unfortunately for me, my mother fled to Greece when she knew she was expecting me, and by the time her father—my grandfather—hauled her back to England, breathing fire and brimstone every step of the way, and demanded that my father do right by her or take the consequences, I had run out of patience and decided to put in an appearance two days before the happy couple wed. I was therefore quite indisputably illegitimate. Unfortunately for my father, a whole string of my younger brothers and sisters died either at birth or soon after, the only survivor being the youngest, who was also—in the words of my father himself—a blithering idiot. Jonathan became earl after my father’s death, but he died on the night of his sixteenth birthday, and the title passed to Stephen.”
Cassandra read a whole world of pain and bitterness in the brief, rather flippantly related story, but it had not been told in order to arouse her sympathy, and she allowed herself to feel none.
“I am surprised, then,” she said, “that you really do not hate him. He has what ought to have been yours. He has your title, your home, your fortune.”
Other couples were beginning to drift onto the floor.
“Yes,” he said, “it
is
surprising.”
“Why do you
not
hate him?” she asked.
“For one very simple reason,” he said. “I know someone who would have loved him, and I love that someone.”
He did not explain, though she waited.
“Are you hoping that Stephen will marry you?” he asked.
She laughed softly.
“You may rest easy on that score,” she said. “I have no designs upon Lord Merton’s freedom. I have known the kind of servitude marriage brings to a woman, and once was quite enough.”
They were very soon going to be within earshot of couples in every direction. The musicians had fallen silent and were ready to strike up the tune of the first country dance in the set.
“Shall we talk about the weather?” she suggested.
He chuckled deep in his throat.
“Thunderstorms and earthquakes and hurricanes?” he said. “They sound safe.”
17
S
TEPHEN
could not make up his mind whether Cassandra’s gown was pure red or a bright burnt orange. It was somewhere between the two, he supposed. It shimmered in the light of the candles and was really quite magnificent. It dipped low in front to accentuate her bosom. Its soft folds, falling from a high waist, hugged her curves and outlined her long, shapely legs. Her bright hair was swept high on her head while wispy ringlets curled along her neck.
She always carried herself proudly. But tonight she looked almost happy. How very different she looked from the mysterious lady with the scandalous reputation who had boldly forced her way into Meg and Sherry’s ball last week and then looked about her as if she held everyone else gathered there in contempt.
She danced every set before the waltz—which was also the supper dance. She even danced once with Con and smiled at him and conversed with him whenever the figures of the dance brought them together.
Stephen danced every set before the waltz too. He danced with young ladies who were making their come-out this year and had been signaling their interest in him from the start. It was not a fact that made him in any way conceited. He was, after all, one of
England’s most eligible bachelors. He conversed easily with them all and smiled at each partner in turn and focused his attention upon each.
But he was always aware of Cassandra.
He was beginning to wonder if his life would ever return to normal—whatever that was.
He looked forward to the supper dance and thought the time would never come.
He must be careful, though. He must not do anything impulsive that he might regret for the rest of his life.
He was not ready for matrimony. He was only twenty-five. He had told himself that he would not even give marriage serious thought until he was thirty. And even then he would take his time, choosing someone who could look beyond his title and wealth to like
him
. Perhaps even to love him. And someone he could genuinely like and admire and love.
The supper dance came at last, and he approached Cassandra to claim it. She was standing with her brother and a group of guests with whom Stephen did not have a close acquaintance. She turned to watch him approach.
“Lady Paget, ma’am,” he said, bowing, “this is my set, I believe.”
“And so it is, Lord Merton,” she agreed, using her velvet voice. And she reached out her hand to set on his sleeve.
Such formality. The picnic seemed like a dream. Strange that he should remember the picnic far more than he did the two nights he had spent in her bed.
“The supper dance is also the waltz,” he said as he led her away. “May I dance the last set of the evening with you too?”
“You may,” she said.
They faced each other on the floor as other couples assembled about them.