The Unofficial Suitor (13 page)

“I know what to do,” Cassie said, pushing the maid out of the room.

* * * *

Entering the kitchen where the two men were conversing in low tones, Annie took her shawl from its hook and picked up her market basket, whereupon the stranger immediately stood up from the table and swaggered over to block her path.

“Where are you going with such a big basket, girlie?” he asked with a leer for her and a wink for Piggot.

Yet despite the crudity of his manner, he made no attempt to touch her, which was, as she had learned on numerous occasions, quite out of character for such a man. As unbelievable as it had seemed at first, she began to suspect Lady Cassie was right about his identity.

“I’m merely going to the market, sir,” Annie replied softly, doing her best to act as if she were flustered by his approach, even though she could easily have evaded him and darted through the door.

Sweeping his cap off, the man bowed in a mock-courtly fashion. “Never let it be said that Digory Rendel allowed a young lady to carry a heavy burden when he was around to assist her.”

Relieved to hear his name and know he was in truth Cassie’s brother, Annie handed over the basket. Seeing what she had done, Piggot, who had made numerous unsuccessful attempts on her virtue, gave an angry growl and started to get to his feet, but the smuggler casually brushed back his coat so that the handle of his dirk was clearly visible, and with a muttered oath, Piggot sank back down on the bench.

When they were well away from the house, the smuggler cast off his rough manner as easily as he could have shrugged off the ill-fitting coat he wore. “I assume Cassie told you who I was,” he said, his voice now well modulated instead of coarse.

“She said you were her brother.”

“Bastard brother,” he corrected absently.

“Those were not her exact words,” Annie said, reasonably sure that his casual tone hid pain at his situation in life—deeply buried, perhaps, but real pain. Still, her years of following the drum had taught her not to pry into other people’s feelings, so she did not press the point. “Lady Cassie is meeting us in the alley beside the butcher shop.”

They walked side-by-side for a few minutes, then he asked, “Why have you stayed on in that house? You have undoubtedly discovered for yourself what manner of man the earl is. I would think you would have resigned your position before now, not but what I am happy for Cassie’s sake that you have not.”

Dispassionately and succinctly Annie described her situation in life, concluding with a brief description of the ways her husband had taught her to defend herself.

“I am afraid your knife may not be adequate if the earl becomes determined,” Digory said. “In which case you may come to me for protection.”

Involuntarily she stiffened. Although more subtle and charming, he was unfortunately cut from the same cloth as all men.

“Excuse me,” he said with a grin, “but I fear I did not express myself properly. I shall try again. If you are ever in need of assistance, financial or otherwise, you may count on me to take care of you as if you were my own sister. There, have I made my meaning plainer?”

His smile was infectious, and for the first time since her husband had died in her arms, Annie tentatively began to let down her guard.

“Do you have any brothers of your own?” Digory asked casually.

It took her a moment before she could answer. “I had three,” she said simply. “But none of them lived to reach the age of ten years.”

“And your parents?”

“They died when I was sixteen, so I married Jamie, he took the King’s shilling, and I spent the next several years following the drum in Portugal and Spain.”

“Why have you never returned to Scotland? Are you not homesick?”

She thought for a moment. “Home for me was wherever Jamie was. There is no one and nothing for me now in Old What.” At Digory’s look of inquiry, she added, “Old What is in Aberdeen, in the parish of New Deer.”

Before he could question her further, they reached the butcher shop and found Lady Cassie there before them, well disguised in an all-enveloping cloak. Seeing them standing side by side, Annie could detect little family resemblance between the two of them except for the color of their eyes and hair. Cassie threw her arms around the “smuggler,” and for a half moment Annie wondered if they might both have conned her into assisting with an illicit assignation, but there was nothing lover-like in the way they spoke to each other.

“Oh, Digory, you have come to rescue me after all! And just in the nick of time!”

“Rescue you? What is this nonsense? You don’t need rescuing. I have been reading of your successes in the Gazette. You have already been declared an Incomparable. You should have no trouble catching a husband.” He kissed her affectionately on the forehead, but even to Annie’s suspicious eyes, it was in all respects a brotherly kiss.

“I have told you before, I do not want a husband.” Cassie pulled away from him and, hands on hips, positively radiated indignation. “If you are not going to help me avoid the future that Geoffrey is arranging for me, then you might as well go back to Cornwall.”

Turning to Annie, Digory asked with a smile, “Tell me, is marriage so bad a fate for a woman?”

“No, it can be wonderful,” Annie replied. “With the right man, of course.”

Cassie scowled and made a humphing noise, but Digory remained quite cheerful. “If you truly want me to go back to my boats, I shall, but I rather thought you would like me to make sure that your future husband is the right man for you.” He waited, but Cassie refused to look at him or reply. “Sulking will get you nowhere. You would do better to tell me who your most persistent suitors are, so I can investigate them.”

With a slight shudder, Cassie said, “As yet there is only one who stands out from the others, but I do not think my brother will find him an acceptable candidate for my hand. Although the man apparently has great wealth, he has no title.”

“And his name?”

“Hawke—Richard Hawke. He is a friend of Lord Westhrop, who is the grandson of Lady Letitia. I do not know why, but there is something about Mr. Hawke that frightens me.”

“Is he disrespectful? Does he seem cruel?”

Cassie thought for a moment. “No, he has always treated me with great respect, even kindness. But... Oh, I cannot explain. There is such an intensity about him, he quite unnerves me. Even when he is sleeping, he looks forbidding.”

No one, Annie decided, could look more forbidding than Digory now did. There was open anger on his face and undisguised menace in his voice when he spoke.

“Even when he is sleeping”? You had better explain yourself, Cassie, or I shall have this Mr. Hawke explaining to the point of my dagger.”

Her account of the stage coach journey was unobjectionable, but Digory was not satisfied, and at his insistence, Cassie related in complete detail everything that had happened between her and Richard Hawke on each and every occasion they had met. “As I said, I do not think Geoffrey will allow him to be a suitor for my hand,” she concluded, “but, Digory, you must do something to help me avoid driving out with him—you must!”

“A drive in the park will do you no harm. And as for the rest, what Geoffrey allows and doesn’t allow may not matter in the slightest. Men like the man you have just described to me do not generally allow anyone else to make the rules for them,” Digory replied, and all the blood drained from his sister’s face.

“I cannot marry such a man,” she whispered.

“As I said, I shall investigate further. If you have need of me, send a message to the Clarendon.” He turned to leave, but Cassie caught his arm.

“I mean it, Digory,” she said, her voice trembling with emotion. “I cannot marry such a hard man.”

“You need a man strong enough to protect you from your brother.”

“But I need a husband who—No, no, I mean if I needed a husband, which I do not, I would want a man who was gentle.”

Digory smiled. “A man has to be strong before he will allow himself to be gentle. You will find that it is generally the weakest men who take delight in being cruel toward those who are weaker than they are.”

“No matter what you say, I shall not marry Mr. Hawke,” Cassie said, but she was speaking to Digory’s back. He had turned and was sauntering out of the alley. Within seconds, he lost himself in the crowd that was passing. Turning to Annie, she repeated, “I shall not marry Mr. Hawke, no matter what either of my brothers says.”

“This brother has the right of it,” Annie said. “Every soldier and every soldier’s wife learns early on that weakness aligns itself with cruelty and cowardice.”

“But he frightens me, Annie.” Cassie pressed both hands against her stomach. “Every time he looks at me, I feel...”

The look in her eyes said more than her words, and Annie abruptly realized what the real problem was with Mr. Hawke. It was not anything he was doing that was frightening her mistress—it was how he was making her feel. As sometimes happened with young girls, Cassie was afraid of the womanly emotions he was arousing in her.

How could Annie tell her that these very emotions could lead to one of the greatest pleasures in life? At two and twenty, Annie was barely two years older than her mistress, but the gulf between them was too wide to cross. Annie had shared a marriage bed for four years before her husband had been killed, whereas Cassie had doubtless never even been kissed—except on the forehead by her brother, which was not at all the same thing.

* * * *

Next week, Cassie thought. She should have told that wretched man that she was not free to drive out with him until next week. That would have given her an additional seven days to think of some way to avoid the forthcoming meeting entirely.

“Mr. Hawke,” the butler announced—or rather it was the footman, who was filling in as butler since the real butler had decamped with the majority of the other servants.

Footsteps approached her, but Cassie did not look up. Her heart, in fact, felt as if it had sunk down to her half-boots.

“Good afternoon, Lady Blackstone,” her unwelcome suitor said in his deep voice, which had become entirely too familiar to Cassie in the last few weeks.

Talk to him, Ellen! Cassie thought. Tell him every bit of gossip you have heard since you arrived in London—anything, everything—if only to postpone the inevitable for another fleeting moment.

But Ellen did not cooperate. “The weather has turned so beautiful, I shall not detain you a minute longer. Fetch your bonnet, Cassie. You will not wish Mr. Hawke to keep his horses standing.”

Fie on his horses, Cassie thought rebelliously. She sneaked a peek at the man who was standing in front of her, and it was even worse than she had feared. The minute their eyes met, she got the same sick feeling in her stomach, only this time it was even worse than when he had danced a country dance with her.

“I shall go ... I shall just ... my bonnet,” she finally managed to say. Maybe, she thought desperately, she could throw all her bonnets out the window, and then she would not be able to drive out, because no lady could set foot outside her house without a bonnet. That was another of those idiotic rules society had made expressly to plague young ladies, or so it seemed to Cassie, who was accustomed to going about the Blackstone estate bareheaded.

But again, she was not given a chance to procrastinate even another few precious moments. Annie was waiting in the hallway, the chosen bonnet in her hands. Adjusting it on Cassie’s head and tying the ribbons in a bow, the maid said in an undertone, “You will survive a drive in the park. You will discover within yourself more strength than you ever knew you had. When it is over, you will wonder at how foolishly you are behaving now.”

There was no reproof in the maid’s voice, but Cassie felt herself deeply ashamed that she was, in truth, acting the coward. How Digory would scoff if he saw her being such a timid little mouse—she, who had bragged she could take care of herself.

Stiffening her back, she turned to face the man who had followed her out into the hallway. The bonnet, she discovered, was perfect. Chosen, or so Ellen thought, because it suited the gown, it had actually been picked first and the dress decided upon only because it required this particular piece of headgear. Its particular attraction for Cassie was its most ridiculous brim, which extended so far forward that unless she looked directly up at Mr. Hawke, he would not be able to see her face at all.

Richard looked down at the young lady standing so demurely beside him, and he could not keep his mouth from curling up in a smile. Remembering how fiercely she had argued with the landlord on the journey to London, Richard did not believe she was as meek as she was now pretending to be.

Nor did he believe for a moment that she had just “happened” to be wearing headgear shaped like a coal scuttle—a bonnet, moreover, which could only have been designed by a woman who hated men. But he had never backed down from a challenge, and even now he did not despair in the slightest. Before their drive was over, he would somehow coax her into showing him her face.

He offered Lady Cassiopeia his arm, and as always, she hesitated, as if afraid to allow the slightest physical contact between the two of them. And as always, he had the urge to remind her that she had already slept with her head resting on his shoulder, but he was too much the gentleman to speak of that time.

Finally she allowed her hand to rest gently on his arm, her touch still tentative, as if at any moment she might jerk her hand away. The best thing to do, he decided, would be to distract her with conversation, so that she could become accustomed to him gradually, and perhaps, maybe, possibly—no, definitely—if he were patient enough, some day she would begin to feel comfortable in his presence.

“This morning I had my secretary, John Tuke, produce for me some articles about the newest technology available for mining. Tell me, what do you think of Humphry Davy’s invention? I believe he calls it a safety lamp and claims it will prevent gas explosions in mines.”

* * * *

After two days of cold, biting wind, the weather had turned balmy and the park was crowded with those who had come to see and be seen. Such was the congestion along Rotten Row that even though Lady Letitia’s coachman was quite good at avoiding certain specific people, on this occasion he could not take evasive action when another landau moved into position beside her carriage and a cloyingly sweet voice bid her good afternoon.