Lisbon (54 page)

“Otherwise we must call a hackney,” said Robbie Dunlawton softly.

Perhaps something in the Scot's level gaze decided Yates. He brought the family coach round and it proved much more comfortable than a hackney, as Cassandra pointed out, with deep wine velvet cushions and big fur lap robes to wrap around their legs.

The ball was in full swing when they arrived, the sturdy Scot and the scintillating young girl. Lady Merryfield, who before she had married a viscount had been plain Jane Lane, had once smiled very kindly upon dashing and sinister Rowan Keynes. Now a tolerant and gracious hostess whose cosmopolitan affairs were great events of the London season, she welcomed them both warmly.

“But you ve grown up!” she cried, standing back to look at Cassandra. “Lord, it makes me feel old! How nice of you to bring her, Robbie. I had no idea she was in town. You must lead me out for a measure while one of these eager young blades leads out Cassandra.” She indicated with a negligent sweep of her arm the five young men who had appeared magically from nowhere at sight of the beautiful blonde in white velvet.

At this command from his hostess, Robbie had no choice but to relinquish Cassandra to the pack. He led stout, bubbly Lady Merryfield out upon the floor.

Cassandra found herself suddenly surrounded by what seemed a sea of smiling masculine faces, all clamoring to lead her out.

“I really have never learned to dance properly,” she admitted, blushing.

Not a man there who wouldn't be honored to teach her!

That night the “beautiful blonde in white velvet,” as the article about Lady Merryfield s ball in the
Gazette
called her, took London by storm. Another paper called her

“The Fair Maid of Cumberland. Her dance card was filled up instantly. People crowded around to meet her. She met so many people that she couldn’t remember their names. She was invited everywhere.

Only one flaw marred the evening. A dark lady in wine velvet, whose beauty, though great, was a little frayed around the edges, stopped and stared at sight of her, then asked to be presented.

“So you are Rowan’s daughter,” she murmured with a measuring glance. “You look nothing like your father.

“I am said to resemble my mother.”

“So indeed you do. Were it not for your coloring, I would have thought you to be Charlotte. I am told you arrived with the earthquake. Tell me, did you bring it with you?”

There was a little chill in the air at that remark, and Cassandra stiffened. But Robbie, standing nearby, eased the tension with a shout of laughter. “If sixteen-year-old lassies are bringing earthquakes to London, I fear mature matrons such as yourself may bring us a tidal wave!”

Katherine Talybont—she was now Lady Scopes, wife of an obscure West Country knight—bit her lip at being called a “mature matron,” but she managed a thin smile, for the company was joining Robbie in good-natured laughter.

Robbie took Cassandra swiftly away. Only he saw the menacing expression in Katherine’s eyes as they followed the departing Cassandra, and it gave him a deep feeling of unease.

The Talybonts had never accepted their widowed daughter-in-law. Katherine had been forced at last, by mounting debts, into marriage with Sir Wilfred Scopes, who could afford to bring her to London but once a year—and then briefly. All this she laid at Rowan’s door. His younger daughter had come to grief—it gave Katherine great satisfaction to hear that he had spent months searching the countryside for Phoebe. But now this older daughter with the dazzling good looks inherited from Charlotte was threatening to eclipse all the “Incomparables” of the season—as the London papers dubbed leading debutantes.

Perhaps Cassandra could be brought down as well.

A frightening smile crossed Katherine’s handsome features. All she needed was an opportunity. . . .

Meanwhile, Cassandra asked Robbie in a troubled voice, “Do you think sinners bring earthquakes?”

“Not a bit of it,” was his firm response. “I think the earth shakes us about when it chooses, and neither God nor man is likely to do much about it!”

This cynical observation was interrupted by a large lady in a plum gown almost covered with yards of blond lace, who bustled up in the company of Lady Merryfield and introduced herself as Lady Stanhope. Robbie drifted away.

Lady Stanhope, who had five daughters yet to be brought out and whose eldest. Mavis, was currently being overlooked by London’s best beaux, descended upon Cassandra with a flurry of motherly clucks. What, her school had closed and she’d journeyed to London alone? And was now without a chaperon on Grosvenor Square? Why, that would never do! Cassandra must come and stay with her, Mavis would love the company! And Cassandra must bring that nice man, the Scotsman who had brought her, along—he wasn’t married, was he? Men with wives back home made such tiresome guests. So dreadful that nice people should be reduced to staying at inns during the London season!

Cassandra looked at Lady Merryfield, who nodded imperceptibly, and promptly said she’d be delighted. Indeed she hadn’t looked forward to staying in lonely Grosvenor Square with only servants for company. Yates was promptly dispatched to collect her luggage and bring it to Lady Stanhope’s.

Robbie was glad to accept too. He’d been a widower these ten years past and his two strapping sons had both died upon the sea. He wanted a pleasant place to retire and raise sheep—or so he had told himself. Now, with this sixteen-year-old pale gold butterfly fluttering into his life, he wasn’t so sure what he wanted.

After the ball, Yates, frowning as he maneuvered the coach horses through the icy snow-covered streets to Lady Stanhope’s residence in Chelsea, was astonished to hear

Robbie’s baritone voice serenading Cassandra with Scottish Lowland songs as the coach wheels crunched over the snow.

The next morning it stopped snowing and Lady Stanhope took Cassandra and her eldest daughter. Mavis, shopping. Having learned that Cassandra had not been shopping for more than a year, she bought her a complete morning outfit and one for afternoon—and charged both, along with a few little items for herself, to Rowan Keynes. “Your father will thank me for it, my dear,” she told Cassandra airily. Cassandra, starved for pretty clothes and good times, did not object. Rowan had never been aught but extravagant. If he tolerated her presence at all, he would wish her to be well-gowned.

Robbie met them and took them to tea. It was obvious that Lady Stanhope, herself a widow, had her eye on Robbie. Her laughter trilled at every word he spoke.

Amused, Cassandra cast a quick glance at Mavis, homely and rather silent. Mavis repressed a smile but her pale eyes sparkled. It made the girls into instant friends and they left arm in arm, with Robbie gallantly bringing up the rear alongside Lady Stanhope.

Life at Lady Stanhope’s for Cassandra—and for Mavis, now that Cassandra had arrived—was a round of parties. On the second night Tony Dunn turned up at a rout and tried to monopolize Cassandra. At first she flinched away from him, for he brought back memories of Cambridge and Jim. But Tony was quick to dispel that. He told her cheerfully that she and Jim would never have made a match, they weren’t suited, Jim was too stodgy for her, she needed a man like himself! He struck a posture that made her laugh, and laughing made her feel better. About Jim. About everything.

That week had been a continual round of parties, balls, routs, and sleigh rides. On one of those sleigh rides, sheltered behind a great overhanging tree, Tony had kissed her, and her young body had responded vibrantly. He had seized her more purposefully then, and might have gone farther—but that the big tree suddenly took a hand by dipping its branches to the wind and cascading a mound of snow upon them.

The incident had left Cassandra shaken.

“You should marry me and make an honest man of me,” Tony had said when next they met—for the feel of Cassandra in his arms had roused a hunger within him that would only be quenched by going all the way with her—and he was well aware that with a young lady of fame and fashion such as Cassandra, that would mean marriage.

“Should I, Tony?” She gave him a wistful look. Dark attractive Tony with his vaunted Norman blood and his home in Yorkshire’s West Riding. Lighthearted Tony who loved to make jokes, Tony to whom life was one vast playground.

“Yes, you should.” He bent over her and she smelled the Virginia tobacco he carried for his fashionable long pipe—Tony hated snuff. “You should indeed.

She laughed and drew away from him, for his warm presence
did
attract her, there was no escaping it. She was half in love with Tony—but only half.

Still, somehow in all the excitement of that first dazzling week—she was never quite sure how it happened—she got herself betrothed to Tony Dunn. At least a halfway sort of betrothal which Tony announced and she did not deny.

For who knew what would happen when her father returned? She didn’t want to leave this newfound life of gaiety and good times. And hadn't Tony said they would dash through the snow to Gretna if her father refused his suit?

Two weeks later Rowan returned to London. It was Tony who brought her the news. A friend of his had seen Rowan riding in from the west.

“I have to go home, Cassandra said.
I
 have to face him.

Tony wanted to go with her, but she wouldn’t let him. “Robbie will take me,” she said. “It will be much better that way.” And on the hackney ride to Grosvenor Square she told Robbie about Phoebe, about Jim—all of it. “I don’t know what my father will do,” she said, nervously twisting a glove she’d just removed. “Especially when he hears about Tony. I didn’t really
intend
to get myself betrothed, Robbie. Indeed I don’t remember saying yes.

But Tony told everyone I did, and when I said I hadn’t made up my mind, they all laughed and said Tony would persuade me.”

And perhaps he would, and carry her away to Yorkshire,
thought Robbie, and already his heart ached for her loss, this wondrous young beauty who had made him feel young again.

“Tell your father about it the way you just told me,” he advised. “He’ll understand the lad is pressing you. And you don’t have to marry Tony just because he tells you to.

“Yes, but I think I want to marry Tony. ’’ Cassandra gave Robbie a shadowed look. “I think I’m in love with him. I’m just not sure. ”

If you aren’t sure, it isn’t love,
thought Robbie with some satisfaction. He was careful not to speak those words aloud.

Rowan Keynes met them in the drawing room, still dressed in his riding clothes and looking tired. He hadn’t found Phoebe. No trace of her this time. God’s teeth, the girl was like him! Able to hide in plain sight, and move like a will-o’-the-wisp about England! And Phoebe was the daughter he loved. It hurt him to the heart every time he looked at Cassandra, for she wore Charlotte’s face. But Phoebe, willful Phoebe, was so like him, she was heart of his heart.

Almost ignoring Cassandra, Rowan shook Robbie Dunlawton’s hand. “I understand you’ve been chaperoning my daughter about, seeing that she doesn’t get into trouble,” he said bluntly.

A ghost of a smile crossed Robbie’s honest face. “Trying to, anyway.”

“Very decent of you. ” Still ignoring Cassandra, Rowan poured some wine. “Madeira?”

Robbie accepted a glass from his host. “Your daughter and I turned out to have a mutual friend—Lady Merryfield. ”

“So I’ve heard. She hailed me from her coach just as I was coming into town and told me all about it.”

And that meant he’d know about Tony too.
Cassandra’s hands felt cold. She stripped off her other glove and began 
to warm her hands at the fire. Her father had not offered her any wine—perhaps he meant to put her on bread and water!

“I’d be honored if you’d consent to be our houseguest— that is, if you can bring yourself to leave Lady Stanhope. ” Rowan s tone was ironic—everybody knew Lady Stanhope was husband-hunting.

“I think I can tear myself away.” Robbie grinned. He drained his glass. “Would you like a word alone with your daughter?”

“No need.” Rowan drained his own glass. “Cassandra, what have you got to say for yourself?”

“Well, the school closed and—”

“I know all that. Lady Merryfield tells me that you have managed quite well and are the toast of the town.” His voice was dry.

Cassandra’s color rose. She was not sure that wasn’t ridicule in her father’s tone. “Well, I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about—”

“About that young man, Tony Dunn? She told me about that too. I have yet to make up my mind on it. When you’re ready to consider him, send him to see me. Not until. ” He was looking at her with grim amusement, seeing her round-eyed amazement. “Well, what did you think I’d do? Have you drawn and quartered?”

All her worry had been for nothing! Whatever Lady Merryfield had told him, it had set well! “I didn’t know what you’d do,” Cassandra admitted frankly.

Nearby, Robbie laughed. “The young,” he commented with a twinkle.

It hit just the right note. Rowan turned to him with a smile.

“I’m dead tired,” he said. “I’ve been riding since morning. Do you think you could get Cassandra’s things gathered together and moved over here from Lady Stanhope’s? I prefer to have my daughter living under my own roof when I’m in London.”