Patricia Rice (26 page)

“Wyatt!” Cassandra cried. “Do make them go away. They’ve put
a hole in my lovely carpet. Just look at it! And the tea will stain if it’s not
scrubbed at once.”

Mirth twitching the corners of his mouth, Merrick did as
told. Only Cassandra could entertain a scene like this and worry about the
carpet. With a firm hand he separated the marquess and the butler from the
bodyguard he had ordered to watch the house. He shoved Duncan into Bertie’s
protective custody.

“Make a habit of undressing before ladies, Eddings?” Wyatt
asked coolly.

“Deuce take it, Merrick, what are you doing here?” Duncan
grabbed for his trousers. “You’re showing quite an interest in my little
sister, ain’t you?”

Cassandra gasped at Duncan’s irate accusation, but her
brother didn’t seem to be cognizant of his accuracy. He gathered up his
clothing and glared at Merrick, who blocked his escape.

“Sound tends to carry in the country, Eddings,” Merrick said
without expression. “You’d best remember that before you send the ladies into
hysterics again.” He bowed and stepped aside so Duncan could pass.

“I’ll wager no lady’s cries are heard from your chambers,
St. Wyatt. Do you fear the sounds carrying or do you not know how to produce
them?”

Bertie stepped in to prevent Merrick from striking him, but
to his surprise, the earl merely smiled.

“I trust you have a pleasant journey homeward, Eddings.
Shall I have Jenkins here escort you?”

Duncan brushed past him with fury, shouting at Jacob to
follow and repair his ruined clothing. Jacob glanced from Wyatt to Cassandra,
and at the earl’s faint nod, hurried after the marquess.

Wyatt bowed. “Excuse us for intruding, my lady. Shall we
wait below until order is restored, or would you prefer that we leave?”

He was laughing, she could tell, but he had been concerned
enough to leave one of his men to watch over her. Cassandra shook her head at Lotta
and replied unsteadily, “If you would care to wait, perhaps we could provide
you with some breakfast. Have you eaten?”

Calm restored some while later, Cassandra clung to Wyatt’s
arm as she waved farewell to her disgruntled brother. Bertie’s presence
inhibited her, but not enough to keep a formal distance. She felt Bertie’s
curious glance when she continued to hold the earl’s arm even after they
stepped outside for the men to claim their horses. She shouldn’t be so obvious,
but she didn’t want Wyatt to leave. She desperately needed to talk to him.

Merrick covered her hand with his and cast her a worried
look. As Bertie mounted, the earl murmured under the guise of saying farewell, “I’ll
be back. Practice our song and pick me some roses and I’ll be here before you’re
done.”

Cassandra breathed in relief and released him. “It was so
good of you to stop by, my lord, And, Bertie, you will remember me to Thomas,
will you not? I expect to see him up and about when next I come.”

Bertie grinned and raised his hand in salute, but when he
and Merrick were down the road, he turned an angry glare at his old friend. “What
the deuce plays here, Wyatt? I’m not some blind schoolboy. She holds a
tendre
for you, and if I’m not mistaken,
you are encouraging her. That’s not at all like, you know.”

Wyatt stared stiffly ahead. “Sometimes I try to imagine what
it must be like to have grown up knowing nothing but a drunken, abusive father
and life on the thin edge of poverty. A person would have to learn to be very
strong to survive such surroundings.”

Bertie studied him, then applied his own knowledge of life
to the situation. “A person with a family like that would know nothing of love.
She would be very weak when confronted with it.”

“Just so, Bertie, just so.” Merrick rode on ahead and said
nothing further.

Wyatt found Cassandra wandering in the remains of the
cottage rose garden when he returned. In these last six weeks or so that they
had been together he had come to learn her many moods, but “pensive” had never
been among them. He felt a momentary tug of fear as he watched her now. The
visit from Duncan had obviously set off some unpleasant train of thought.

With foreboding, Wyatt trod through the overgrown garden.
The fact that she was too absorbed in thought to notice his presence seemed
even more ominous. He snapped a yellow rosebud from its scraggly branch and
laid it on top of the blossoms in her basket.

Cassandra looked up then. Her fleeting smile of relief
disappeared behind a cloud of apprehension. Gathering up her basket and
scissors, she started down the garden path, away from the cottage.

“I need your help, Wyatt.”

“You know you have it without asking, Cass. Just tell me
what I can do.”

Instead of sending him her usual flirtatious look of
gratitude, she glared straight ahead. “Can you have your man of business find
Rupert for me?”

Wyatt’s heart plunged to his feet. He caught her shoulder
and swung her around. “Why, Cass?”

“Does it really matter, Wyatt? You need a wife and we can
never marry. It’s been unfair of me to even pretend otherwise. If you cannot
help me with this, I will understand.” She turned back and hurried toward the
house.

Fighting a growing desperation, Wyatt caught her again. This
time he held her close, forcing her to feel the power of the emotions that
brought them together. She shivered, then melted against him. He embraced her
tightly when she rested her head against his shoulder.

“We are in this together, Cass. I will find Rupert for you,
but in return, you must promise never to leave me without telling me to my
face. No more disappearing acts, no notes on my pillow. I want you to come to
me and tell me why you are leaving so I have some chance of presenting my case.”

He knew her too well already. Cassandra rested in his arms
and wondered how she could ever explain that she could never marry him because
her brother would in all likelihood attempt to have him killed in order to
obtain his estate. Failing that, he would drain Wyatt dry. Even Wyatt wouldn’t
believe that.

It didn’t matter. Just living as they had been, they would
be found out sooner or later. Duncan would blackmail him blind. Wyatt’s gifts
would disappear to feed her brother’s rapacious habits, and she would be left
to explain their disappearances. Sooner or later Wyatt would be forced to call
Duncan out, and it would start all over again. She didn’t know how she had
allowed herself to be fooled into complacency for this long. Happiness wasn’t
meant for the likes of her.

“You won’t be able to argue me out of it, my love. Our time
is limited, we both know that. I had so hoped...” Cassandra shook her head,
unable to voice her dreams. This was a good-bye of sorts. There might be a few
days or weeks left to them, but the dreams were gone.

Wyatt heard the tears in Cassandra’s voice and lifted his
face to the sun in an effort to scald away the threat of moisture in his own
eyes. He wouldn’t let her go. He refused to believe that what they shared was
just lust. It would be easier if he were more like his peers who could take up
mistresses and discard them as they would a rumpled cravat. He had known from
the first that Cass had the power to make his life hell. He’d rather live in
hell than without her.

“I won’t give up, Cass. I’ll find Rupert, but I won’t let
you go back to him. You deserve better than that. There may come a time when
you realize there is more to life than a dull farmer such as myself, but I
would see you happy before I let you go.”

She nodded against his coat sleeve. “You may rest easy on
that account, my lord. I will never return to Rupert. I only wish to speak with
him.”

Merrick wasn’t fooled, but he sent a messenger to his
solicitor later that day anyway. It had been over a month since he had
requested that Rupert be found. Surely they must have word by now.

A week later, as he approached the cottage door, Wyatt
crunched the damnable letter in his pocket. The past days had worn his patience
and his nerves to ragged ends. He didn’t know why Cassandra had resolved to see
her husband again, but he knew Duncan had to be the source of her decision.

Standing before the wooden door that separated him from the
welcoming home of his dreams, Wyatt forced himself to raise the knocker. His
dreams were built on ashes. He knew that, and so did Cassandra.

While they stayed behind these four walls, they could
pretend he was the husband come home to his wife after a hard day’s work, but
the pretense was wearing thin. He was tired of the lies and the excuses and the
pretense when he wanted to give her a gift, dress her in the clothes she
deserved, take her about to dinners and routs, or even share their musical
evenings together. She belonged in his home, in his bed, his wife for all the
world to see.

The world could scorn him for his choice in brides, but he
didn’t give a fig. She was young in years, but old in the ways of the world,
perhaps older than he in that respect. She was beautiful and he was plain. She
was dashing and he was dull. She was an untamed spirit and he had succumbed to
rigid routine long ago. But all that disappeared the instant they were
together. The air trembled and the earth moved and all their differences melded
into one whole. He had no desire to live without her ever again.

So why did he carry this letter in his pocket that would
tear their world asunder? He was tired of pretense, true, but wasn’t pretense
better than nothing at all? And he greatly feared he would be left with nothing
at all once he imparted this information to Cassandra.

That was the reason he was standing here with his solicitor’s
letter in his pocket. No matter how he felt, Cassandra was Rupert’s wife. If
she chose to return to her husband, Wyatt could not stop her, no matter how he
longed to do so.

As the door opened and a burst of red-gold exploded into his
arms, Wyatt knew the anguish of loss even in this moment of happiness. He
wrapped his arms around her, but it was like holding the wind. What insanity
had led him to believe she could ever be his?

Wyatt gave her the letter with Rupert’s address that night,
before they went to bed. Cassandra went white. Not opening the letter, she laid
it carefully on the mantel. With her back to him, she repeated the phrases she
had probably rehearsed all week.

“You made me promise to warn you when I decided to leave. I’m
leaving you now, Wyatt. It would be better for both of us if you would let me
go alone.”

Her words pierced him like bullets, and Wyatt felt his soul
ripping from his body as he stared at her slender back. “We’ve had this
discussion before. Will you give me an explanation for your change of mind,
Cass? Do I not deserve that much?”

“How can I say what you must already know?” she asked. “You
are better off without me. You need a proper wife and I cannot be it. I think
it would be better if you left now.”

That was nonsense and they both knew it. Wyatt wanted to put
his hands on her shoulders and turn her around and kiss her until she regained
her senses. But that wasn’t the way to logic. He hated emotional scenes, and
she would hate him for causing one. If she were determined to be cold about
this, so would he.

“I’ll leave if that is what you want, Cass, but don’t expect
me to believe a word you say. You’ve taught me too much to believe you’re
indifferent to my caresses or unhappy with my company. I’ll go, but I’ll be
back.”

He walked away, every footstep tearing another hole in his
heart.

By morning Cassandra had a single bag packed and her small
store of coins tucked safely in several different places. The letter with
Rupert’s address was in Jacob’s coat. She had sworn and cursed and tried to
persuade the two servants that they must stay behind, but both refused to obey.
Resignedly she watched as Jacob lugged two more satchels down to the growing
stack of luggage in the hall.

With luck, Merrick wouldn’t be back before she escaped. She
had felt the nails pounded into her coffin when he’d walked out, but better
hers than his. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and with the servants outside, she
succumbed to weakness, clinging to the mantel while shudders shook her.

She had never done anything so hard in her life. Why did
doing the right thing have to feel so bad?

Swallowing her sobs, she wiped her eyes, lifted her chin,
and marched down the stairs as if she were the treacherous witch everyone would
call her.

“I trust there will be room for all this in the mail coach,”
Cass grumbled as Lotta brought still another small case.

Jacob ignored the complaint and swung open the front door. “This
is the most shatter-brained scheme you’ve dreamt up yet. Rupert ain’t worth the
time nor the money, and I can’t see why you’re in such a hurry to find that
out.”

Cassandra had heard this all before. She picked up her bag
without his help. After Wyatt had left last night and she had explained her
intentions, Jacob had been particularly mutinous. At one point she had thought
him about to read her a lecture, but she had explained about Duncan and why she
couldn’t ever marry Wyatt, and he had grown quiet, if somewhat sulky.

As she stepped into the muted light of a gray day, she uttered
a cry of frustration. Up the lane cantered Wyatt, the capes of his greatcoat
billowing, followed directly behind by a coach and four.

He didn’t look the least friendly as he doffed his beaver
hat and bowed. With a few curt orders he had their bags stored in the boot of
the carriage. He didn’t even bother to dismount as the footman assisted her in.
Whatever his coach driver and footman might think of this improper journey,
they couldn’t say it was in the least romantic. They barely exchanged two words
before Wyatt signaled for the coach to move out.

It began to rain before the morning was over. The light mist
didn’t slow their rapid pace, and Cassandra’s stomach churned long before they
reached a place to halt for luncheon. Wyatt hired a private room, but she
refused to join him. She had burned her bridges last night. After using the
necessary, she returned to the carriage.