The Conquest of Lady Cassandra (16 page)

He did not speak. Not right away. He unfolded his arms and tapped his fingertips on the low terrace wall beside where he stood. He watched those fingers, as if making sure he played the correct tune on the stone.

“Mother wants you to come down to Anseln Abbey,” he said.

“Tell her that I will see her when she comes to town next month. She always makes at least one visit in autumn, to attend the theater and see her dressmakers.”

“I want you to come down too. I must insist on it. I will send my coach to bring you and Sophie. You need only stay a week if you prefer.”

He sounded so reasonable that this might appear to be a casual conversation between a brother and sister who enjoyed each other’s company. Alarm throbbed in Cassandra’s head anyway.

“Sophie will never agree to it.”

“I think you can convince her.”

“I am sure I cannot.”

His teeth flashed in the dark as he smiled. “Then you will come alone, if that is how it must be.”

“Why do you want me there?”

“Mother—”

“Mother knows that if she wants me there, I would be more likely to come if she made the request herself. Yet it comes from you. So why do
you
want me there?”

More finger tapping. A new tune. A faster one. “I need you to meet someone.”

“Oh, Gerald. Please,
no
. Who is it this time? Some second son in need of a settlement who is willing to take your scandalous sister off your hands?”

“It is past time for you to wed. Mother agrees. If not for Aunt Sophie—”

“If not for Aunt Sophie, you and mother might have browbeat me into marrying Lakewood, and I would have never forgiven either of you. As for now, Aunt Sophie is not what stands between you and me. She has nothing to do with it.”

“She has everything to do with it, only not the way I thought.”

“What does that mean?”

“I assumed she influenced you badly. Spoke against marriage since she has never married. Advocated certain…freedoms of a shameful nature because she is reputed to have enjoyed them. Your behavior has suggested as much.”

“You have realized your error in that? I am heartened, Gerald.”

“Oh, she influenced you, but it was not her doing. It was your own. Nor is it why you have refused every gentleman’s offer that has come along in the last few years.”

“You are correct there. My refusals were entirely my own doing, influenced only by the fact those gentlemen were uninteresting and, in truth, uninterested.”

“I don’t think so.”

“They wanted a settlement and connections, but not me, and were not even clever enough to pretend for politeness’ sake.”

“Well, a woman with your history cannot be too particular. But I think you really refuse to marry because she needs you. She needs your care. She protected you, and now you think to protect her. You dare not let her live on her own. You probably worry when you leave her for a few days, or even of an evening now.”

He was terribly close to the truth. So close that it frightened her. “You speak nonsense. She will bury you and me both, and her mind is twice as clear as Mother’s. She does not require that I devote my life to protecting her.”

“I am sure that I am correct.” He lowered his head so his face was very close to hers. “I’ll not have it, Cassandra.”

A chill shivered down her spine. “Leave her alone, Gerald. It is cruel and ignoble of you to involve her in your designs for me.”

“I do not plan to involve her. I plan to remove her for her own good, as is my duty as her closest male relative. I have found a home for her. It is not too far from Anseln Abbey, and run by a doctor who is assisted by his two sisters. It is—”

“Don’t you dare!”

“Lower your voice. You are creating a spectacle. Now, as I was explaining…”

His unctuous voice droned into her ear in its sotto voce confidences. She battled the urge to create a very big spectacle indeed. She wanted to hit Gerald, or scratch at his face. She wanted to tell him how insufferable he was. Her mind upbraided him in the strongest words she knew while she stood there mute and impotent.

She pictured Aunt Sophie reading at home, unaware of just how far Gerald’s scheme had progressed. She had promised to protect her aunt, but her brother was leaving little time for that.

“We will do it in a fortnight,” he repeated. “Write and let me know if you will have her things packed and ready, or if I should send servants.”

“You must not. It is unfair.”

“It is necessary. It is for the best. You will see that soon enough, once your emotions calm.” He pushed away from the terrace wall, to return to the party.

“I will not allow it.” Tears swelled her throat, and she barely got the words out before he was out of hearing.

He paused. Light from a terrace lamp washed his face, revealing his smug smile. “I am Barrowmore. You are my rebellious, disobedient sister. No one cares what you think to allow.”

Y
ates kept his eyes on the terrace doors while he chatted with Southwaite and Kendale. Cassandra and her brother had been out there a good while. Whatever Barrowmore was telling her, it had led to more discussion than one would expect from siblings who were estranged.

“I think it is going well,” Southwaite said, surveying his guests.

“Your lady has more than acquitted herself well,” Kendale agreed.

Southwaite gave him a friendly look that still contained a degree of exasperation. “She has managed larger affairs than this over the years. There was no question that she would acquit herself well as a hostess. I referred to other things.”

“He is speaking of Lady Cassandra, Kendale,” Yates said. “The company has been very accepting of her presence.”

“They had no choice, unless they wanted to insult Southwaite and Barrowmore as well as the lady.”

“They did not have to attend at all,” Southwaite pointed out. “No doubt some hoped to enjoy the discomfort of both Cassandra and her brother, but instead it appears that a rapprochement is under way on the terrace. Word of that should spread as fast as the post can carry it.”

Southwaite appeared very satisfied with his efforts to make Cassandra’s reputation safer for Emma’s friendship.
Yates looked to the other lady who would enjoy Cassandra’s company once gossip did its work.

Lydia sat at the card table, across from her Aunt Hortense. Hortense had recently joined the play, but Lydia had been in her chair for more than an hour now.

“Your sister has taken to whist, it appears,” he said.

“With Hortense as a partner, she should fare well enough for a novice.”

“Actually, she has been winning all night,” Kendale said.

The three of them watched the play from afar.

“Are they wagering?” Southwaite asked, squinting to see.

“No point in playing if you don’t,” Kendale said. “It is only pennies.”

“That does not look like a stack of pennies in front of my sister.”

“Shillings, then. No one will go to the poorhouse,” Kendale said.

Southwaite set his glass down on a table. “It is not the amount that draws her, but the thrill. I think it would be better if that stack shrank a good deal. Ambury, come with me. We will insert ourselves in opposition to her and Hortense and ensure that my sister experiences the despair of defeat that inevitably comes in gaming.”

Just then the terrace door opened. Barrowmore walked in. Everything about the man, from his bearing to his bright eyes to the smile on his face, said that he had just enjoyed defeating an opponent more than was decent.

“Take Kendale if you want to teach her such a lesson. I do not have the heart for it.”

He was halfway to the terrace door before the last words had left his mouth.

C
assandra stood in a far corner of the terrace, near the low ribbon of wall that marked its edge overlooking the garden. No light from the lamps reached her, but she was clearly visible as a very pale column.

She did not move while he watched her. She just stood there, facing the summer plantings. Her posture and immobility suggested she reflected on something and did not see the dots of white amid the flowers below that glowed as much as she did.

He waited for her to compose herself, if that was what she was doing. Instead, the opposite happened. The thin pale lines of her gloved arms rose, and she buried her face in her hands.

He walked over, making it a point to put his body between her and two women who chatted near the center of that wall.

“Are you unwell?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

She shook her head, but her hands did not leave her eyes.

With a loud sniff that stopped the conversation behind
him, she composed herself. Her hands dropped. Tiny stars glinted on her face as the moonlight reflected off her tears.

“I am going home,” she whispered. “I cannot bear to go back in there. If I see him again, I shall do something that will finally give the gossips facts to savage me for, instead of fancy.” She opened her reticule, removed a handkerchief, and dabbed her cheeks. “Please tell Emma that I will explain all tomorrow. I will write to her.”

“I will call for the coach and—”

She was already moving, however. She descended the long stone stairs leading down from her corner of the terrace. The garden’s shadows swallowed her.

Yates returned to the drawing room. He could not see Emma. Over at the whist table, Southwaite peered severely at his cards. His sister Lydia played one of hers and smiled broadly at the consternation that her move caused Kendale.

“Please tell your wife that Lady Cassandra has chosen to return home,” Yates said quietly into Southwaite’s ear.

Southwaite nodded, barely paying attention while he debated what card to play. As Yates walked away, he noticed that Lydia’s stack of shillings had not shrunk at all. Rather the opposite.

T
he evening air soothed her body, but its calming caress could not reach inside her heart. She damned Gerald in mutters that only caused her agitation to grow. She stoked her anger with curses because beneath it a desolate emptiness threatened to swallow her.

She had been on her own for six years, but she had never felt as alone as she did right now, assessing her weakness and her brother’s power.

They had been close as children, playmates and confidants. When had Gerald become so mean? Probably by the time he inherited. She had been so absorbed with her pending first Season that she had not noticed him much back
then. Yet a formality descended between them after Papa died.

She had attributed the new demeanor to his new responsibilities. Surely, once he grew comfortable in the role of earl, he would be normal again. Only he had never reverted back to the brother she knew. Instead, he had become more full of himself by the day, and more unkind to her too.

Now he planned to execute the threat he had dangled. Her head wanted to burst from the outrage of knowing he would succeed. Who would stop him? Mama? Perhaps their mother did not even know.

She latched on to that idea. Mama and Sophie had been very close when they were younger. Hadn’t Sophie even gone with Mama to wait out the birth of Gerald in the country? As soon as she arrived home, she would write to Mama and tell her everything, and urge her to shame Gerald into putting aside his plans.

Having her own plan gave her some relief. Her head cleared, and her heart’s pounding slowed to a pace more normal. It was then that she heard the steps behind her, closing fast.

Panic pounded through her, urging flight. It had been very stupid to walk home, even if it would be faster than waiting for a servant to go for a hackney. Dear heavens, if she were attacked by a footpad, Gerald would probably put her away in that home along with dear Aunt Sophie.

“Wait. Do not run away.”

The voice reached her just as she hitched up her skirt to run. She knew that voice. She dropped her skirt and turned. Ambury strode the hundred feet still separating them.

“I have called for my coach. You should not be walking,” he said.

“I am not ill. I want to walk. If I have to sit still, I will end up screaming.” She turned on her heel and forged on.

His boots fell into step beside her. “Then I will escort you, to make sure you come to no harm.” He raised his hand
to his mouth and a shrill whistle shattered the silence. She turned her head and saw the lamp of a carriage slowly grow larger. The clipped sounds of horse hooves sounded down the lane.

She did not have the will to object, nor any good reason other than she wanted to be alone. The carriage caught up, then slowed and followed at a discreet distance.

“What did he say to make you weep?” Ambury asked.

“Nothing rude, if that is what you think. He did not upbraid me for my behavior, or throw the recent gossip in my face and treat it as fact.” She took a deep breath. “He did not scold me that I have dishonored the family and broken my mother’s heart. He did not call up my father’s memory and speak of how distraught he would be if he were alive and I were unmarried and so suspiciously independent.” The litany of Gerald’s normal scolds poured out, bitterly.

“Yet he left you in tears.”

The worst of her frustrated fury deserted her, leaving only sorrow and a sense of impending doom in her heart. And beneath it all, an exhaustion from fighting the world all alone.

“He wants me to go down to see my mother. Also to meet some man he has decided I should marry.”

“It cannot be the first time he has tried matchmaking.”

“It is as predictable as the rising sun. It is the worst during the Season. Then the fellows come here to town, and he is not constrained by whether he can lure me to the country. Last Season, every time I turned around, there one would be, presented by a friend or my mother or some relative. But I knew Gerald had arranged it all.” She tipped her head and gazed up at the sky. “A man should have a bigger quest in life than marrying off his spinster sister, I think.”

“He may just want what he believes is best for you.”

“Do you believe that? Do you think that Gerald is a good brother doing his duty as he sees it?”