Authors: Mary Balogh
The ballroom
smelled
like a garden too. And it seemed filled with fresh air. It would not seem so for much longer, of course. In about an hour’s time the guests would begin arriving and even all the open windows would not keep the air cool. Meg had predicted that this ball would be a squeeze to end squeezes, and Stephen tended to
agree. Not only were balls at Merton House rare, but this one was to celebrate his betrothal to an axe murderer. That term was still bandied about in clubs and drawing rooms, he gathered, though he doubted anyone believed any longer in the literal truth of it. He wished the truth could be told, but on the whole he thought it might be wiser to allow the whole subject to drop.
He had just hosted a family dinner to precede the ball—something he had arranged. His sisters and their husbands and Con and Wesley Young had attended. Now they were all strolling about the ballroom, relaxing, before the room filled with ball guests.
The musicians had set up their instruments on the dais, Stephen could see, but they had gone belowstairs for their dinner.
“Is it as lovely as you imagined it?” he asked Cassandra, coming up behind her and wrapping an arm about her waist.
“Oh, lovelier,” she said, smiling at him.
She was wearing a sunshine yellow gown, as promised. It shimmered when she moved. It was fresher than gold, brighter than lemon. Its short puffed sleeves and deep neckline were scalloped and trimmed with tiny white flowers. So was the deep flounced hem. She wore the heart-shaped necklace her brother had given her, and the almost-matching bracelet of tiny diamonds arranged in the shape of hearts that he had given her as a betrothal gift.
She would return it when she ended the engagement, she had told him when he gave it to her earlier this evening—the only reference either of them had made all week to that potential event in the future.
“It is going to be a perfect evening,” he said. “I am going to be the envy of every man present.”
“I think it altogether likely,” she said, “that all the unmarried young ladies will be wearing deepest mourning. You will be a dreadful loss to all but one of them when you do eventually marry, Stephen.”
“This summer?” he said, and grinned at her.
He turned his head toward the doorway. He could hear Paulson’s voice, unusually loud, unusually agitated.
“The receiving line has not yet been formed, sir,” he was saying. “No one is expected for another hour. Allow me to show you into the visitors’ parlor for a while and bring you refreshments there.”
Stephen raised his eyebrows. If the early guest had been persistent enough to get this far into the house despite Paulson’s vigilance, it was probably futile still to be suggesting the visitors’ parlor. He strode toward the doors, and Cassandra followed.
“Receiving lines be damned and balls and expected arrival times and visitors’ parlors, you fool,” a harsh, impatient voice replied, presumably addressing Paulson. “Where is she? I am determined to see her even if I have to ransack the house. Ah, the ballroom. Is she in there?”
Stephen was aware of all his family turning in some surprise to the ballroom doors as a gentleman appeared there, a black cloak swirling about his legs, a tall hat upon his head, a thunderous frown upon his face.
“Bruce,” Cassandra said.
The man’s eyes alit upon her at the same moment, and with a slight movement of his head Stephen dismissed Paulson.
“Paget?” Stephen said, stepping forward and extending his right hand.
Lord Paget ignored it—and him.
“You!” he said, addressing Cassandra harshly and pointing an accusing finger at her. “What the
devil
do you think you are up to?”
“Bruce,” Cassandra said, her voice low and cool, though Stephen could hear a slight tremor in it, “we had better talk in private. I am sure the Earl of Merton will allow us the use of the visitors’ parlor or the library.”
“I will not,
by thunder
, talk in private,” he said, striding a few paces
into the room. “The whole world needs to know what you are, woman, and the whole world will hear it from me, starting with these people. What the devil—”
Stephen had taken one step closer. Paget was not a small man. He was of slightly above-average height, in fact, and he was not puny of build. But Stephen took hold of his cloak at the neck and of his shirt beneath it and lifted the man onto his toes with one hand. He moved his head forward until there was a scant three inches of space between his nose and Paget’s.
He did not raise his voice.
“You will not talk at all in my home, Paget,” he said, “except with my permission. And you will not use language that is offensive to the ears of ladies even when that permission is granted.”
His knuckles were pressing lightly but deliberately against the man’s windpipe so that his face turned slightly purple.
“
Ladies
?” Paget said. “The only female I see before me, Merton, is no lady.”
Stephen’s frayed temper snapped. He slammed Paget back against the wall two feet behind him, his hand still at the man’s throat. His free hand, closed into a fist, was poised at shoulder height.
Paget’s hat tipped to an impossible angle and tumbled to the floor.
“Perhaps,” Stephen said, “my ears have deceived me, Paget. But assuming they have not, I will hear your apology.”
“Apology be damned,” Wesley Young’s voice said from just behind Stephen’s shoulder, quaking with fury. “Let me at him, Merton. No one talks to my sister that way and gets away with it.”
“You had better apologize, Paget,” Elliott’s cool voice said from the other side, “and then do as Lady Paget has suggested. There are guests expected here soon, and no one wants them to find you with a bloodied nose. Least of all you, I would imagine. Take your discussion to a private room. Lady Paget’s brother and her betrothed will be happy to accompany you, I am sure.”
“I do apologize for my language to the
ladies
in the room,” Paget said from between his teeth, and Stephen was obliged to lower his fist and release his hold on the man’s clothing though his meaning had been insolently clear. The apology did not include Cassandra.
Paget straightened his cloak and turned his glare on her.
“In a different time and place,” he said, “you would have been burned at the stake as a witch long ago, woman, before you could do any real harm. I would have enjoyed watching and stoking the fire.”
Stephen’s fist bounced his head off the wall, and blood spurted from his nose.
“Bravo, Stephen,” Vanessa said.
Paget drew a handkerchief from a pocket somewhere inside his cloak and dabbed at his nose before glancing at the scarlet blood.
“I suppose, Merton,” he said, “she has persuaded you and every other man in London—and even some of the ladies—that she did
not
murder my father in cold blood. And I suppose she has you convinced that the same thing will not happen to you when she has tired of you and wants to be free to find herself a new victim. And I suppose you fully support her outrageous claim to my father’s money and all the jewels he lavished upon her before she shot him through the heart? She is the very devil, but she is clever.”
“No, don’t, Stephen,” Margaret said. “Don’t hit him again. Violence brings a moment’s satisfaction but no real solution to any problem.”
A woman’s logic.
“No, don’t, Wes,” Cassandra said.
Stephen did not take his eyes off Paget’s face.
“And I suppose,” he said, his voice soft, “you have persuaded yourself through a lifetime of self-deception that your father was not an intermittent drinker and a vicious abuser when he had been drinking? I suppose you think that violence perpetrated against women is not strictly speaking violence if it is against a wife. Wives
must be disciplined and husbands have a legal right to administer that discipline. Even when that violence causes a woman to lose the child she is carrying.”
“Oh, Stephen,” Katherine said, her voice high-pitched and half strangled.
“My father very rarely drank,” Paget said, looking about him with fury and contempt. “He drank far less often than most men. I will not have his memory besmirched by the lies this woman has told you, Merton. When he did drink, he could be rough, it is true, but only when the person concerned deserved punishment. This woman had every man in the neighborhood fawning over her. There is no knowing what she—”
“And your mother too?” Stephen asked softly. “Was your mother as deserving of punishment? Even the last one?”
He was overreaching himself. He was angry and had not given himself time to consider his words.
But Paget had blanched. He mopped up a few more trickles of blood from his reddened nose.
“What has she told you of my mother?” he asked.
“Even if Cassie killed Paget,” Wesley Young said, “I would support her. I would
applaud
her. That bastard deserved to die. And I will apologize to the ladies, but I will not withdraw the word. However, she did
not
kill him.”
“What has she told you of my mother?” Paget asked again, just as if Young had not spoken.
“Only what rumor whispered,” Stephen said with a sigh. “We all know how unreliable rumor can be. But what my betrothed suffered for nine years at the hands of her husband, your father, is not rumor. And what is more, Paget, you know it. And you know that
if
she killed him, she did so to save her own life or the life of someone else endangered by his violence. You probably even know that she did
not
kill him. But it has been convenient to you to pretend that
you
do
believe it and that at any time you can have her arrested and punished for the crime. You have been enriched by the belief and by the way you have bullied her into believing in your power.”
“My mother died when she fell from her horse,” Paget said. “She tried to jump a fence that was too high for her.”
Stephen nodded. Time was marching onward. What time
was
it?
“Bruce,” Cassandra said, and Stephen turned his head to look at her. “If you have anything else to say to me, you must come and talk to me tomorrow. I live on Portman Street.”
“I know,” Paget said. “I just came from there.”
“I did not kill your father,” she said. “I cannot prove that I did not, and you cannot prove that I did. His death was ruled a tragic accident, and so it was. I have no wish to intrude further upon your life. I have no wish at all to live at the dower house or even in the town house. I want merely what is mine so that I can live my own life and never see you or trouble you ever again. You might as well give in to my lawyer’s very reasonable demands. You can have no defense against them.”
His temper was up again. He pointed a finger at her and drew breath to speak. But someone else had appeared in the doorway. For one horrible moment Stephen thought it was an early guest, though not so very early at that. But it was William Belmont.
“Lord,” he said, his eyes passing over the people gathered just inside the doors. “I got home half an hour ago and Mary told me you had called, Bruce—and that she had told you that Cassie was here. Mary usually has a bit more sense than to give away information like that, especially when you are the one who gave her the boot a month ago. You have a bloody nose, I see. Courtesy of Merton, I suppose? Or of Young?”
“I have nothing to say to
you
,” Paget said, his brows snapping together.
“Well, I have something to say to
you
,” Belmont said, looking
about again. “And since it looks as if you did not do the sensible thing and ask to speak privately to Cassie when you got here, then I have something to say to everyone present.”
“No, don’t, William,” Cassandra said.
“But I will,” he said. “He was my father, Cassie, as well as your husband. He was Bruce’s father too, and he ought to know the truth. So ought everyone who is preparing to welcome you into their family as Merton’s bride. Cassie did not shoot our father, Bruce. Neither did I, though I
was
there, you know, and got my hand on his wrist to wrestle the gun from him. He had started to cuff Mary around because I had told him earlier in the day, before he started drinking, that I had married her and that Belinda was mine. Cassie and then Miss Haytor had been drawn by Mary’s screams, and then I came into the house and was drawn by his raised voice coming from the library. He had his pistol pointed at Cassie. But when I went for him and tried to take the gun, he turned it quite deliberately and pointed it at his own heart and pulled the trigger.”
“Liar!” Paget cried. “That is a filthy lie.”
“Miss Haytor had already told the same story before I came here a few days ago and gave my identical version,” Belmont said. “And if you think I would be prepared to tell that story against my own father, Bruce, in order to protect my stepmother, then you know nothing about family loyalties. Or about nightmares. He killed himself while in a drunken rage. And if we are wise, we will acquiesce in the official verdict of accidental death and treat Cassie with the proper respect due our father’s widow.”
Paget’s head had dropped, and his eyes had closed.
“We are perilously close to the beginning of the ball,” Stephen said quietly. “The earliest guests will be here within a quarter of an hour, I daresay. Paget, let one of my brothers-in-law show you to a guest room, where you may bathe your nose and straighten your clothes. It does not matter if you are not dressed quite as you would if you had planned to attend a ball. Stay and attend this one anyway.
And smile and look glad for Cassandra. Tell anyone who looks willing to listen that the accidental death of your father was tragic but that you are happy to see your stepmother moving on with her life. Tell them it is what your father would have wanted.”
“Are you
insane
?” Paget asked viciously.
But Con had moved up on one side of him and Monty on the other, and both were smiling.
“You chose a good moment to arrive in London,” Monty said.
“I daresay,” Con said, clasping a hand on his shoulder, “Lady Paget wrote to you to announce her betrothal and beg for your blessing, did she, Paget, and you did even better than she asked and came in person.
You
even rode nonstop, did you, in order to arrive in time for the ball?”