Lady Thief (28 page)

Less than an hour after she had left her room, Cassandra found her way to the dining room where breakfast waited on the sideboard, kept warm in silver serving dishes. She helped herself, and when Anatole appeared to pour her coffee, she thanked him serenely and carried her plate to the table.

“His Lordship is doing his business accounts in his study, miss.”

She hadn’t asked—but she had wondered. Still composed, she merely said, “Thank you, Anatole. Pray do not disturb him on my behalf. I shall do quite well on my own. I believe I shall explore that splendid library I caught a glimpse of last night.”

“An excellent idea, miss.”

Cassandra was a little amused by his approval. Her first impression of him had not been good, but she was beginning to revise it—not so much because he was more polite to her now, but because she had the idea he was totally devoted to the earl—and she thought he would prove a valuable ally. . . .

Ridiculous thought. Why on earth would she need an ally in this house?

“I would like to speak to my coachman this morning,” she told Anatole before he left the dining room.

He bowed. “I will bring him to the library when you have finished breakfast, miss.”

He was as good as his word, delivering John Potter to the library some half an hour later and before Cassandra could do more than begin scanning the shelves. Her coachman came in, hat in hand, explaining that he was preparing to make his way to the stables where the coach had been taken.

She frowned. “It is still storming, John.”

“Yes, Miss Cassie, but we’ve strung ropes down to the stables so nobody’ll get blown away or lost—it’s that bad, you can’t see your hand in front of your face, I swear—an’ His Lordship’s man has a fire going in the stove, so we’ll be snug enough. He says as how there’s an old coach no longer useful, but the axle’s stout enough to replace our broken one; we’re going to change ’em over.”

“With His Lordship’s permission, I trust?”

“Oh, yes, miss.”

“Excellent, John.” She kept her voice cheerful. “Then we’ll be able to start forward again once the storm is over and the roads are passable?”

“The coach should be repaired by the end of the day, miss. But as to the storm—I’m told it’s expected to last at least another day or two, an’ maybe longer. With the wind we’ll have drifts as much as two or three feet deep in places.”

“What are you saying, John?”

He turned his hat in his hands and sighed heavily. “I’m sorry, miss, but I wouldn’t want to try pushing ahead for at least a few days after the snow stops.”

“Then . . . we may be here a week?”

John Potter mistook her careful question for one of anxiety and hastened to reassure her. “As soon as the snow stops, I’ll ride out an’ check the roads, Miss Cassie. Maybe they’ll be clearer than I expect—”

“It’s all right, John, I quite understand. If we must remain here a week, then so be it.” Cassandra smiled, hoping that he saw only resigned forbearance rather than the (really quite appalling) lighthearted pleasure she felt.

When she was alone once again in the library, which was a marvelous room with enough books to delight any reader, she took a more careful look around and was even more pleased by what she saw. The room was airy and more than spacious, yet as warm and snug as the rest of the house. The two tall windows were heavily curtained, effectively shutting out the sight of the storm and permitting very little of its wailing to be heard.

Cassandra, who had been raised to be self-reliant and independent and for whom reading was a particular pleasure, sighed happily and went to explore His Lordship’s shelves. She quickly discovered a treasure: a recent novel she had not yet read by one of her favorite writers. Obviously, the earl also enjoyed adventurous fiction—or, at least, considered it worth adding to his library.

Ten minutes later she was comfortably seated in a chair by the fire and completely engrossed in the exciting activities of pirates sailing the high seas.

In the normal way, once Cassandra was involved in a book, it required either a loud noise or a shake to get her attention. But it appeared that she was particularly sensitive to the earl’s presence, because even though the opening door made almost no sound at all, she looked up as if someone had shouted her name.

“Forgive me, ma’am—I didn’t intend to disturb you.” Back in his country buckskins, he looked unnervingly powerful as he stood in the doorway. His dark gaze was direct as ever and seemed to search her face.

“Not at all, my lord,” she returned politely, using a finger to mark her place as she closed the book. “I hope you do not mind, but I took the liberty of exploring this wonderful library.”

He came into the room rather slowly. “Of course I do not mind, ma’am—please feel free to explore any room you wish.” His deep voice was a little abrupt.

Cassandra was oddly unwilling to allow a silence to develop between them. “My coachman tells me you have supplied an axle with which to repair my coach.”

He shrugged, standing now near the fireplace and looking down on her with a very slight frown. “It is little enough, ma’am, and useless to me.”

“Then why are you frowning, my lord?” She hadn’t realized she was going to ask that until the question emerged.

“Was I?” His brows lifted, effectively altering his expression. “I beg your pardon. Business accounts are sometimes tiresome, ma’am.”

“As are household accounts; I understand perfectly, my lord.” She hesitated, then said diffidently, “Please don’t feel yourself obliged to entertain me while I am here. I have no wish to disrupt the routine of the household—or your routine.”

He smiled suddenly, crooked and slightly rueful. “Even if I wish it?”

Cassandra felt herself smiling back at him. It was doubtless the storm, she thought, making him feel restless and in need of companionship. That was all. But it was difficult to hide her own pleasure when she asked, “What did you have in mind, my lord?”

She felt the now-familiar fluttering sensation deep inside her for a moment, because there was something in his dark eyes she had never before seen in any man’s gaze, something heated and hungry. She was suddenly conscious of her clothing touching her flesh, of the dim wail of the wind outside, and the nearer crackle and pop of the flames in the fireplace. She could feel her heart beating as if she had run a long way, and it seemed difficult to breathe all at once.

It was as if all her senses had . . . opened up. As if all her life she had seen and felt everything through a gauzy curtain until that moment when he looked at her.

There was a part of Cassandra, a rational, sensible part, that urged her to be on her guard. This, then, was his charm, it had to be—this ability to make a woman feel that no one else had ever looked at her,
seen
her. It was utterly compelling. This was the seductive power the men in his family were known to possess, the ability to enthrall a woman until she threw morals and scruples aside to do anything he wished her to do.

The sensible part of Cassandra offered that warning, but before she could make an effort to—to what? save herself?—his dark eyes were unreadable once again, and he was smiling in a perfectly polite and casual way.

“Do you play cards, ma’am?”

The written adventures of pirates held no appeal for her now, and Cassandra was barely aware of laying her book aside. “Yes,” she heard herself say with astonishing calm. “Yes, my lord, I play cards.”

Chapter Three

H
e taught her a particularly intricate, often perplexing, and sometimes downright Byzantine card game which he had learned from a colorful ship’s captain on a journey across the Mediterranean, and she astonished him by not only grasping the rules but soundly defeating him in only the third hand dealt.

“How on earth did you do that?” he demanded.

Briskly shuffling the cards, Cassandra showed him a mock frown and laughing eyes. “You should know, my lord. It was you who taught me the game.”

“Yes, but it’s the devil of a game to win,” he told her frankly.

“Then we shall call it beginner’s luck, sir. Did you say you learned it from a ship’s captain?”

“I learned it from a rascally pirate who called himself one,” the earl replied dryly. “And the bas—the ruffian emptied my pockets three nights running.”

Cassandra picked up her hand and regarded him in amusement. “Does it have a name, this game?”

“None that I ever heard. In fact, I rather doubt it existed before Captain Bower invented it in order to fleece those of his passengers raw enough to sit down with him.”

“I cannot imagine you being raw, my lord.”

Ruefully he said, “Oh, I promise you I was. Hardly older than you are now, and not at all up to snuff. It was more than ten years ago.” He looked down at the cards he held, the light of amusement in his eyes dimming and his mouth hardening just a bit as his thoughts obviously turned painful or bitter.

Before Cassandra could respond to what he had said, Anatole came into the library where they were playing cards and asked the earl if luncheon at twelve-thirty would be satisfactory, and by the time he left the room, the earl’s abstraction had vanished and he was once more relaxed. What might have been a brief opening through which she could have learned more about his past was now firmly closed again.

The card game continued until lunchtime, with Cassandra winning once more and then playing the earl to a draw. Which meant, he said, that they were “evenly matched in terms of possessing labyrinthine minds.” Whether or not that was true, it was obvious that each enjoyed the other’s company far beyond what was merely polite.

After luncheon they played chess in the earl’s study, and it proved another game in which they had like minds and tendencies, both employing shrewd tactics and alert strategy. And so they whiled away the stormy afternoon, pausing from time to time in their conversation to listen to the wind reach a crescendo and then fade away only to shriek once again and send sleet rattling against the windowpanes.

“Nasty,” Cassandra observed.

“Very. Check, ma’am.”

“Now, how did you . . . Oh, I see. White must resign, my lord, for I can see you mean to pursue my king across the board.”

“I would never be so unhandsome as that, I promise you. Another game, ma’am?”

But the clock on the mantel chimed the hour just then, and Cassandra excused herself in order to go upstairs to change and freshen herself before supper. She had thoroughly enjoyed the day, and she returned to her room with a smile she didn’t think about hiding until Sarah greeted her with anxious eyes.

“Sarah, he is a complete gentleman,” she assured her apprehensive maid.

“Just be careful, Miss Cassie, that’s all!”

But Cassandra only laughed, certain that her maid’s fears were completely unfounded. Indeed, it seemed her own instincts were to be trusted, for the earl’s behavior during the next two days was so exemplary that even Sarah seemed reassured (or, at least, she stopped issuing dire warnings). He was an entertaining and appreciative companion, forthright without being in any way offensive, and though she did not want to admit it to herself, Cassandra knew she was drawn to him in a way she had never known before.

That moment when he had looked at her with naked intensity was something she remembered far too often for her peace of mind, but it was not repeated during those days. He made more than one flattering observation, but since his comments tended to be quite casual and matter-of-fact, she could be sure of nothing except that he considered her attractive—and for all she knew he would have been just as appreciative of any personable young woman appearing on his doorstep.

It did not occur to Cassandra that the severe isolation of the storm had created a kind of refuge for both of them, and that the return of good weather might change that. All she knew was that the glittering but restrictive world of London society seemed very far away.

 

 

The storm raged outside, with a fierce wind blowing the existing snow about even when no fresh precipitation fell, and those inside the house became so accustomed to the sounds of fury that their cessation in the early evening of Cassandra’s third full day at the Hall was something of a shock.

She came downstairs after dressing for supper and found that she was early; the earl was not waiting for her. Restless, she wandered into a small salon near the earl’s study, a room she had not so far explored except to note the presence of a pianoforte. There was a fire burning in the grate, though it had been allowed to die down a bit, and though the room was comfortable, it was not really warm. A candelabra set upon the pianoforte provided light that was only adequate, leaving the corners and much else of the room in shadows.

Cassandra sat down on the bench and sorted through several sheets of music until she found something familiar. She considered herself a fair musician without being in any way exceptional, and since she had had little opportunity to practice during recent weeks, her fingers felt a bit awkward on the keys. But it did not take many minutes for her to relax and find her touch, and the first tentative notes of a sonata soon became easier and more confident.

Nevertheless, due to her lack of patience, the piece required all her concentration, and she had no idea she was not alone in the room until the final notes faded into silence and he spoke.

“You play beautifully.”

Startled, she half turned on the bench to find the earl standing only a few feet away. He was turned so that the light of the candelabra flickered in his eyes, making them glitter with a strange intensity.

Trying to collect herself, struggling with a curiously compelling awareness of him, she said, “Thank you, my lord.” She wanted to go on, to make some innocuous comment about the excellent instrument or something equally as nonchalant, but she could not. Her throat seemed to close up, and she could feel her heart thudding.