Authors: Mary Balogh
Cass was expecting a
baby
.
His
baby.
And she was terrified of losing it.
So was he.
“I can do it alone, Stephen,” she said. “You don’t need—”
He kissed her. Hard.
“I do,” he said, “because it is my child and you are my woman. And because I
love
you. It does not matter now if you love me or not, but I will keep on wooing you in the hope that one day you will. And I will make you happy. I promise I will.”
“I have loved you almost from the first moment,” she said. “But, Stephen, it seems so unfair—”
He kissed her hard again and then smiled at her.
She smiled a little tremulously back at him.
“Have you seen a physician?” he asked her.
“No.”
“Tomorrow you will,” he said. “I’ll have Meg go with you.”
“She will be scandalized,” she said.
“You do not know my sisters very well yet, do you?” he said.
She rested her forehead against his chin.
“Cass.” Terror caught at him again. “I will keep you safe. I swear I will.”
Foolish words when she was going to have to go through a pregnancy and, he hoped, childbirth essentially alone.
It was no wonder many women were of the opinion that men were helpless, rather useless creatures.
“I know you will,” she said, wrapping her arms about his neck. “Oh, Stephen, I did not want things to happen this way, but I do love you. I do. And I will see to it that you never regret any of all this.”
He kissed her again.
He was feeling rather dizzy. It was done. Not at all as he had planned it. Not in any way as a result of all his careful wooing. But because one evening more than a month ago he had allowed her to seduce him and had then agreed to be her protector because she was destitute and he was angry.
An inauspicious beginning.
A beginning that had begun a child’s existence.
A somewhat sordid beginning that had somehow kindled a mutual love and passion.
Life was strange.
Love was stranger.
Cass was going to be his wife. Because she was with child. And because she loved him.
They were going to be
married
.
Stephen laughed and grasped her about the waist and swung her around in a complete circle until she laughed too.
22
C
ASSANDRA
arrived at Warren Hall, Stephen’s principal seat in Hampshire, on a sunny, breezy day in July. She was going to stay at Finchley Park, one of the Duke of Moreland’s properties a few miles away, until her wedding, but it was here Stephen was bringing her first. He wanted to show her what was to be her home.
As soon as the carriage turned between the high stone gateposts that marked the entrance to the park, Cassandra fell in love with it. The driveway wove its way through a dense forest of trees, and there was an instant impression of seclusion and peace and—strangely—of belonging. Perhaps it was because Stephen’s hand was in her own and he was so obviously happy to be here.
“It has been my home for only eight years,” he said, watching the passing scenery and her with equal attention. “I did not grow up to it. But it felt immediately …
right
when I first saw it. As if it had been waiting for me all my life.”
“Yes.” She turned her face from the window to smile at him. “I think—I hope—it has been waiting for me too, Stephen. It seems I have always been waiting for my life to begin, and now at the grand age of twenty-eight I have the odd feeling that it is happening. Not
about
to happen, but happening. The present, not the future. Have
you noticed how so much of our living is done in the future, Stephen, and so is not really living at all?”
It was only with Stephen she could talk in such a way and be sure to be understood. The future had almost always been the only part of her life that had seemed bearable. At times even the future had crashed to a halt, and she had been left without hope. Mired in despair. But no longer. For once in her life she was living the present and enjoying every moment of it.
He squeezed her hand.
“It seems that good things often have to happen at someone else’s expense, though,” he said. “Jonathan Huxtable had to die at the age of sixteen for me to inherit, and Con had to be illegitimate.”
“Jonathan was his brother?” she said.
“He had some sort of … illness,” he told her. “Con once told me that his father always called the boy an imbecile. But Con also told me that Jonathan was pure love. Not loving, Cass, but love itself. I wish I had known him.”
“So do I,” Cassandra said, returning the pressure of his hand. “How did he die?”
“In his sleep,” Stephen said. “On the night after his sixteenth birthday. Apparently he had already outlived the span predicted for him by the physicians. Con says Jonathan would have loved me—the one who would take his place when he died. Is it not strange?”
“I think I am beginning to understand,” she said, “that love is
always
strange.”
But they had no further chance to explore that idea. The carriage had drawn clear of the trees and Cassandra, moving the side of her head closer to the window, could see the house, a large, square mansion of light gray stone with a dome and a pillared portico and marble steps leading up to the main floor. There was a stone balustrade surrounding what seemed to be a wide terrace before the house, though there was an opening in front for steps leading down to a large parterre garden of flowers and paths and low shrubs.
“Oh,” she said, “it is beautiful.”
Was it possible that this was to be her home? Her mind touched briefly upon the imposing splendor of Carmel, which she had always found somehow gloomy and oppressive—even during the first six months of her marriage. But she pushed the memories away. They were of no significance to her any longer. They were the past. This was the present.
“It is, is it not?” Stephen said, sounding both pleased and excited. “And it is going to have a new countess in two weeks’ time.”
He had purchased a special license rather than deal with all the bother of banns. Even so he had suggested that they wait two weeks instead of marrying immediately. Perhaps they
ought
to marry without delay he had said, given the circumstances, but he wanted them to have a wedding to remember, surrounded by their closest family and friends. And he wanted, if she did not mind terribly much, to marry in the small chapel on the grounds of Warren Hall, rather than in London or even at the village church.
Cassandra had not minded the wait, though she had felt her own lack of family and friends. Not a
total
lack, though. Wesley was coming—he had gone straight to Finchley Park with the duke and Vanessa and would meet her there this evening. And Alice and Mr. Golding, and Mary and William and Belinda, were going to come the day before the wedding.
All of Stephen’s family members were coming. So were the duke’s mother and his youngest sister and her husband, and Sir Graham and Lady Carling, and Lord Montford’s sister with her husband. And Mr. Huxtable, of course. And Sir Humphrey and Lady Dew were coming from Rundle Park near Throckbridge in Shropshire, with their daughters and their husbands, and the vicar of Throckbridge, who had been Stephen’s main teacher until he was seventeen.
The Dews, Cassandra learned, had been like a part of the Huxtables’ family while they had lived in Throckbridge. They had
allowed Stephen to ride the horses from their stables. Vanessa had been married to their younger son for the year before his death from consumption. They considered Vanessa’s children to be their grandchildren.
“A new countess,” Cassandra said. “The Countess of Merton. I will be very glad to shed my Lady Paget persona, Stephen. It is the only reason I am marrying you, of course.”
She looked into his eyes and laughed.
His lips were curved into a smile.
“That is such a lovely sound,” he said.
She raised her eyebrows in inquiry.
“Your laughter,” he said. “And what it does to your mouth and your eyes and to the whole of your face. I think there has been precious little laughter in your life, Cass. If I have given you that, it is of far more precious value than a name or a title.”
And she found herself blinking and then laughing again as two tears spilled over onto her cheeks.
“Perhaps,” she said as the carriage began to make its turn onto the terrace and she could see that there was a stone fountain on the part of it that jutted out toward the garden, “it was your young cousin who gave this place its aura of peace and love, Stephen. And perhaps it was you who gave it its air of happiness. And perhaps some kind fate, or angel, has kept me waiting all these years so that I would be ready to come here and be healed. And to heal anyone who ever shares this home with us. I will pass on the peace and the love and happiness to everyone who comes here, Stephen. And to our children.”
She almost wished she had not spoken those last words aloud. Terror came rushing at her again—it was never far away.
He wrapped one arm about her, drew her close, and kissed her.
She was daring to trust happiness.
She was daring to trust.
Roger, stretched out on the seat opposite, snuffled in his sleep as the carriage slowed, and then stirred and lifted his head.
Then the carriage drew up before the house, and Stephen helped her alight, and the carriages bringing Margaret and the Earl of Sheringford and their children and Katherine and Lord Montford with their son were coming along behind.
She was home, Cassandra thought. Soon to be surrounded by family.
And with Stephen at her side.
Her golden angel.
It all seemed too much to believe.
Except that she was learning to trust.
Roger padded down from the carriage and lifted his head to pant at her and invite a tickle beneath the chin.
The chapel in the park at Warren Hall was small. It was rarely used now as there was a sizable, comfortable, and picturesque church in the village, and it was only a little more than a mile away from the house.
But the chapel had been traditionally used for family christenings and weddings and funerals, and tradition was important to Stephen, who had come to it late in life. He had spent many hours over the last eight years wandering about the churchyard outside the chapel, reading the headstones of his ancestors buried there, feeling a family affinity with them. There was a time when he had not felt particularly kindly disposed to his great-grandfather, who had cast out his son, Stephen’s grandfather, for marrying a woman who was his social inferior, Stephen’s grandmother. The estrangement had lasted through two ensuing generations until the senior branch of the family came to an end with Jonathan’s death and a search of the junior branch had had to be made to find Stephen.
But family quarrels were sad things. Why perpetuate this one, even with a dead man? The head gardener had been instructed to tend all the family graves regularly.
And Stephen had always dreamed that he would marry at the chapel when the time came, though he had always known that his bride, whoever she turned out to be, might well have other ideas.
Vanessa had married Elliott here.
And he would marry Cassandra here.
The chapel had been decked with purple and white flowers. Candles burned on the altar. All the pews were occupied. There were hushed whispers from the family and friends gathered there. Someone spoke aloud—Nessie and Elliott’s Sam—and was shushed to silence. Someone giggled—Meg and Sherry’s Sally—and got sharply whispered at for her pains.
Stephen, seated in the front pew, his eyes on the wavering flame of a candle, drew a few steadying breaths. He was nervous, a fact that had taken him completely by surprise this morning since the last two weeks had dragged by and he had thought today would never come. His nose was itching, but he resisted scratching it when he remembered that he had done so a minute or two ago, and perhaps a minute or two before
that
. Someone was sure to have noticed—Sherry or Monty, most like—and would tease him about it afterward.
He cracked his knuckles instead and then winced when it seemed to him that the sound had filled the chapel. Elliott beside him gave him a sidelong look, in which Stephen read a certain amusement.
It was all very well for old married men to be amused.
And then there was the sound of a carriage approaching outside the chapel, and since all the guests were here, most of them having come on foot, it could only be Cassandra arriving from Finchley Park. Soon there were sounds from the churchyard path outside, someone telling someone else to hang on a minute while he straightened the train of her dress.
And then she was in the doorway and Stephen was on his feet without any memory of actually standing up. But everyone else was standing too, and he heard the echo of the vicar instructing them to do so.
She was wearing a high-waisted, short-sleeved dress of purple satin with an extravagantly flounced train. Daringly, she wore no hat but only purple flowers woven into her red curls.
Stephen’s mind searched for a more effective word than
beautiful
and failed utterly.
For a moment he forgot to breathe. And then it occurred to him to smile, but he discovered that he was already doing so.
Lord, why had no one warned him about wedding days?
Though, come to think of it, both Sherry and Monty had done nothing else all through a breakfast at which Stephen had not eaten a single mouthful. Meg had grown quite cross with Sherry, had she not? She had asked him if he could not see that poor Stephen was already slightly green and did Duncan actually want to make him
vomit
?
He could see Cassandra looking back at him as her brother stepped up beside her, presumably having finished adjusting her train. Her eyes, those enticingly slanted green eyes, looked larger than usual. Her teeth bit down on her lower lip, and Stephen knew she was as nervous as he.
And then she released her lip and smiled.