Seducing an Angel

/11/

HE ought simply to leave as soon as he was dressed, Stephen thought.

But he did not do so. He could not.

He knew nothing about the normal sort of relationship men enjoyed with their mistresses. But then, he could not think of her as his mistress despite that damnable exchange of money that her circumstances had made necessary. … /when we are together in this room and this bed, we are employer and mistress… man and woman. We are not persons to each other. We are bodies. You may use my body as you will… but all the money in the world will not buy you me/.

He did not /want/ to buy her. He wanted to… /know/ the woman into whose bed he was buying his way. Was there something so wrong about that?

She did not want to be known. /I am off limits to you. I belong to myself. I am your paid servant. I am not and never will be your slave. You will ask me no more personal questions. You will intrude no further into my life/.

Of course, she knew no more than he about the normal relationship between a man and his mistress. He doubted she had slept with any other man except her husband until last night. Despite the siren's act, which she tried so persistently to play, she was not a courtesan.

She was merely a desperate woman trying to make a living for herself and a few hangers-on. Though that was probably an unkind description of the people who lived with her. The former governess who had been walking in the park with her two days ago was probably past the age when she might find further employment with any ease. The maid was an unmarried mother and would be virtually unemployable as long as she chose to keep the child with her.

Stephen got to his feet and went to stand at the window while he waited for Cassandra to finish dressing. He opened the curtains and gazed out at the empty street. It was probably not a good idea to stand thus in the window, though, a candle burning behind him. The neighbors across the street might know that only women lived here.

He pulled the curtains across the window again and turned to lean back against the windowsill, his arms crossed over his chest.

Cassandra came out of the dressing room at the same moment. She looked at him and then took the chair. She arranged the skirts of her pale blue dress unhurriedly about her. A faint, mocking smile lifted the corners of her lips. She had tied back her hair again but not put it up.

Finally, when he said nothing, she looked up at him and raised her eyebrows.

"I beg your pardon," he said, "for prying into your life and causing you pain."

Her eyebrows stayed arched upward.

"You did not cause me pain, Lord Merton," she said. "As I remember it, you caused me a great deal of pleasure. I hope I caused you at least an equal amount."

"Where do your servants sleep?" he asked her. "And the child."

"On the floor above this," she said. "You need not fear that our pantings and moanings have been penetrating walls and keeping anyone from sleep. And they are not my servants. They are my friends."

She was not a likable woman when her mask was in place, as it so often was. The very best thing in the world for him would be to leave. The money he had sent her yesterday morning would keep her and the others for a short while. After that… Well, she was not his responsibility.

But the trouble was that the woman who wore the mask did not exist, and he did not /know/ the woman behind it. He did not know if he would like her or not.

She did not want to be known.

She had killed her husband.

Good God, what was he /doing/ here?

But she had brought with her to London an aging governess, a waif of a maid who had lost her job, the maid's very young child, and the damaged dog. She had determinedly sought him out as a protector so that they would not all starve – them, as well as herself.

"This is their home," he said. "I sully it when I come here to exercise my rights as your employer. I impinge upon the innocence of that child."

That fact had bothered him since he saw her yesterday afternoon, rosy-cheeked and tousle-haired and wide-eyed. One of life's precious innocents. He had even thought at the time that perhaps she was Cassandra's. It made no real difference that she was not. This whole situation was… distasteful.

She had crossed her legs and was slowly swinging one leg. She gazed at him for a while without saying anything. Her smile still lingered.

"A gentleman with a conscience," she said eventually. "It seems a contradiction in terms. It must be very inconvenient to you, Lord Merton."

"Often," he agreed. "It is what a conscience is intended to be if it has not become jaded. It is the guide by which I try to live my life and make my decisions about the course it will take."

"Is it conscience that kept you here after you were dressed?" she asked him. "Or a lingering lust for what you would lose if you left then? If it was the latter, you need not worry. You will never lack for bedfellows whenever you want them – and would not even if you were not titled and wealthy. If it is the former, it must be that you pity me and my pathetic little entourage. Do not. We will survive without you, Lord Merton. We are really none of your concern, are we?"

He answered her even though the question had been rhetorical.

"No," he said. But he did not move.

"What is your purpose, then?" she asked. "Do you wish to set me up in some love nest? It is what other gentlemen do, especially the married ones. It would be very cozy, and you could visit me there whenever you wished without fear of sullying anyone's innocence. I would be like other women who take employment. I would have my home here and my place of employment there."

Her foot swung a little faster. Her voice was low and mocking.

"It will not do, Cassandra," he said.

She sighed audibly.

"Then this is the end, is it?" she said. "I hope you will not mind not having /all/ your money returned, Lord Merton. I have spent some of it, you see. I am very extravagant. But I have serviced you for two successive nights and ought to be paid something."

She seemed to notice her swiftly swinging foot and stopped it abruptly.

It would be so easy simply to say yes, this /was/ the end. It was what he surely wanted. He could go home to Merton House, sleep for what would be left of the night when he got there, and put this whole sorry episode behind him when he got up in the morning. He would be free of an entanglement he had not really wanted from the start.

He could resume the familiar life that he enjoyed.

He could not say yes.

"Cassandra," he said, leaning forward slightly, "we must start again. /May/ we start again?"

She laughed at him.

"But certainly, Lord Merton," she said. "Shall I undress? Or would you prefer to do it for me? Or… would you like me to lie down as I am?"

She had not misunderstood him at all. But for reasons of her own, she had decided to needle him. Perhaps, he thought with a painful flash of insight, she hated herself for what she had chosen to do with him.

Perhaps she hated herself for the killing she had some-how got away with – as far as legal proceedings went, anyway.

"Stay where you are," he said. "There will be no more sex tonight, Cassandra, and none for the foreseeable future. Perhaps never for the two of us."

Her lip curled.

"And so," she said, "by suggesting that we start again you are inviting me to seduce you all over again, Lord Merton? It will be my pleasure.

Never say never. I am better than that."

He crossed the room to her in a few quick strides, went down on his knees in front of her chair, and possessed himself of both her hands.

She gazed at him, startled, and the mask slipped.

"Stop it," he said. "Just stop it, Cassandra. That game is over. And game is all it ever was. That was not /you/. Or /me/. I am sorry for what I have done to you. Truly sorry."

She opened her mouth to speak and closed it again, the words unspoken.

She tried to look scornful and failed. He tightened his grip on her hands.

"Cassandra," he said, "if we are to go on, we must do it as friends. And I do not use that word as a euphemism for nothing at all. We must become friends. I need to continue helping you, and you need help. It is, perhaps, not quite an ideal basis for friendship, but it will have to do. I will support you for as long as you need support, and you will give me your confidence and trust and company in return. Not your body.

I cannot pay for your body. I /cannot/."

"Goodness me, Lord Merton," she said, "you /must/ be desperate if you are prepared to pay for friendship. Is being an angel such a lonely business, then? Does no one want to be your friend?"

"Cass," he said, "call me Stephen."

Why was he bothering? Why /was/ he?

Her smile was back – and then was not.

"Stephen," she said. It was almost a whisper.

"Let us be friends," he said. "Let me visit you openly here, with your former governess as your chaperone. Let me bring my sisters to visit you. Let me escort you about London as I did yesterday afternoon. Let us get to know each other."

"Are you so desperate, then," she said, "to have access to my secrets, Lord Merton? Are you itching to know all the titillating details of the way I killed Nigel?"

He let go of her hands and got to his feet again. He turned away from her and ran the fingers of one hand through his hair. He looked at the rumpled bed, where they had made love just a short while ago.

"/Did/ you kill him?" he asked.

Why had he not fully believed her the first time he asked? Why had he not recoiled in horror and put as much distance between himself and her as he could?

"Yes, I did," she said without hesitation. "You will not get me to deny it, Lord Merton – /Stephen/. You will not get me to invent a convenient stranger, a vagrant, who for no reason whatsoever but an inherent villainy climbed through the library window, shot my husband through the heart, and then took himself off again without even stealing anything of value. I did it because I hated him and wanted him dead and wanted to be free of him. Do you /really/ want to be my friend?"

Why did he /still/ not quite believe her? Because such a thing was unimaginable? But Lord Paget had died because a bullet had been shot into his heart. He tried to picture her with a pistol in her hand and closed his eyes briefly, appalled.

Was he mad? Was he besotted with her? Surely he was not. Of course he was not. He must simply be mad.

"Yes," he said with a sigh. "I do."

"The whole /ton/ would believe you were courting me," she said. "Your wings would soon be tinged black, Lord Merton. You would soon find yourself being shunned. Or becoming the laughingstock. Everyone would think you were my dupe. They would think you remarkably foolish. They would think you could not see beyond my beauty. I /am/ beautiful. I say that without vanity. I know how other people look at me – women with envy, men with admiration and desire. Women would turn from you in disappointment and disdain. Men would look at you with envy and scorn."

"I cannot live my life," he said, "according to what my peers expect of me. I must live it as I see fit. I suppose there was a reason why you noticed me in Hyde Park a few days ago, and why I noticed you. And it was not simply that you were looking for a protector and that I had an eye for beauty – especially as you were heavily veiled. You might have noticed a dozen others. So might I. But it was each other we saw. And there was a reason why we met again just the following day at Meg's ball. The reason was not just that we would tumble into bed together and then part bitterly a short while later. I believe in causes. And effects."

"We were fated to meet, then?" she said. "And to fall in love, perhaps, and marry and live happily ever after?"

"We make our own fate," he said. "But some things happen for a reason. I am convinced of it. We met for a reason, Cassandra. We can choose to explore that reason – or not. No effect is fated."

"Only the cause," she said.

"Yes," he said. "I think. I am no philosopher. Let us start again, Cassandra. Let us give ourselves a chance at least to be friends. Let me get to know you. Get to know me. Perhaps I am worth knowing."

"And perhaps not," she said.

"And perhaps not."

She sighed, and when he looked back at her he could see that she had dropped all pretenses. She looked simply vulnerable – and lovely beyond belief.

A murderer? Surely not. But what did a murderer look like?

"I ought to have known," she said, "as soon as I saw you that you would be trouble. Instead, it was your friend I dismissed as potentially dangerous. It was he I thought I would not be able to control. The one who looks like the devil. Mr. Huxtable."

"/Con/?" he said. "He is my cousin. He is not evil."

"I thought angels were safe," she said, "and so I chose you."

"I am not an angel, Cassandra," he said.

"Oh, believe me, you /are,/" she said. "That is the whole trouble."

He smiled at her suddenly, and for a moment there was a gleam in her eye, and he thought she was going to smile back at him. She did not do so.

"Let me call on you tomorrow afternoon," he said. "Or this afternoon, I suppose I mean. A formal call. On you and your former governess. Pardon me, remind me of her name."

"Alice Haytor," she said.

"Let me call on you and Miss Haytor," he said.

She was swinging her foot again.

"She /knows,/" she said.

"And doubtless believes I am the devil incarnate," he said. "Shall we see if I can charm her out of her strong disapproval of me?"

"She also knows," she said, "that it is all my fault, that I seduced you."

"She can know no such thing," he said, "because it is not true, Cassandra. You signaled strong interest in me. I was not seduced. I chose to be interested in return. You /are/ beautiful. And desirable. I deserve Miss Haytor's disapproval. I made the wrong decisions concerning you and my attraction to you. Allow me to try to win her respect."

She sighed again.

"You will not just go away, will you?" she said.

They looked at each other.

"I will," he said. "If you tell me to go away and stay away, I will do it. If the /real/ Lady Paget tells me, that is. Do you want me to leave, Cassandra? Do you want me out of your life for now and always?"

She stared at him and then closed her eyes.

"I do," she said after a few moments, "but I cannot say it with my eyes open. Stephen, /why/ did I meet you?"

"I do not know," he said. "Shall we discover the answer together?"

"You will regret it," she said.

"Perhaps," he agreed.

"I already regret it," she said.

"Tomorrow afternoon?" he said.

"Oh, very well." She opened her eyes and gazed at him again. "Come if you must."

He raised his eyebrows.

"Come," she said. "And I shall tell Mary not to put a spider in your teacup."

He smiled.

"And now go," she said. "I need some sleep even if you do not."

He crossed the room to put on his cloak and take up his hat. He turned toward her. She was standing in front of the chair.

"Good night, Cassandra," he said.

"Good night, Stephen."

He walked home wondering what on earth he had got himself into now. His life seemed to have been turned upside down in the past two days.

Had they /really/ been fated to meet? For what possible reason – except that he help keep her and her friends from starvation?

But the reason was for them to discover. Some events, some moments, were dropped deliberately into one's life, he believed, by an unseen hand.

But that hand had no power to dictate one's response. It was up to the individual concerned to make something out of those events and moments.

Or not.

It rained all morning, but by early afternoon the rain had stopped, the clouds had moved on, the sun was shining, and the roads and pavements had dried off.

"It is a /perfect/ afternoon for a walk," Alice said stubbornly, having crossed to the sitting room window to prove with her own eyes that she was quite right. "We have been promising ourselves a walk in Green Park, Cassie. It will be less crowded than Hyde Park."

"When you arrived home for luncheon," Cassandra reminded her, "you declared that your feet would surely drop off if you had to walk one more step today."

Alice had spent the morning trying to discover agencies she had missed yesterday and revisiting those at which she had left her name, in the hope that something had turned up overnight.

She had said that about her feet before Cassandra had finally plucked up the courage to mention very casually that the Earl of Merton was to call this afternoon – a formal social visit to take tea with them, not official business.

"It is amazing what a little luncheon and a cup of tea and an hour's sit-down can do to restore one's energy," Alice said brightly. "I am ready to go again – and this afternoon I will not even get wet."

"I agreed that I would be here when he came, Alice," Cassandra said. "It would be ill-mannered to be from home after all, and you taught me never to be bad-mannered. Besides…"

"Besides /what/?" Alice was cross. She had turned from the window, a frown on her face.

Cassandra had no work on her lap – she could not seem to settle to anything these days. She had no excuse to look anywhere else but back at her old governess.

"I think our… /liaison/ is at an end, Allie," she said. "In fact, it is. He found it distasteful – mainly, I believe, because Belinda lives here. He said something about sullying innocence. Though it was not only that. I think he really must be an angel. I led an angel astray. He feels guilty. He wants to make amends. He wants to start again, and he wants us to be /friends/. Have you ever heard anything so absurd in your life? But he wants to keep on paying me too, and I do not know how I am going to make myself say no, though of course I ought. I cannot accept a handsome salary just for being someone's friend, can I?"

"Come for a walk," Alice said firmly, "before it is too late. Just get your bonnet, Cassie, and never mind about changing your dress."

Cassandra shook her head and looked down at her hands in her lap. She examined her fingernails. They needed cutting. She was wearing her sprigged muslin dress for the occasion. Pretty clothes were something she /did/ have left. Nigel had always insisted that she dress well.

"I do not want even to set eyes on him," Alice said, "let alone sit and take tea with him. I don't /like/ him, Cassie, and I do not need to meet him to know that. He hurt you."

"No, he did not." Cassandra looked up with troubled eyes. "If any hurting was done, it was the other way around. He has not hurt /me/. He is… lovely, Allie."

Lovely and terribly troubling.

All morning – and all last night after he had left – she had thought about his lovemaking and the aches and yearnings it had aroused in her. And that pain that was not pain. It was sexual desire she had been feeling.

She had admitted that eventually. She had never before felt sexual desire. She had not even known there was such a thing for women.

And all morning she had been thinking about their conversation afterward. /I suppose there was a reason why you noticed me in Hyde Park a few/ /days ago, and why I noticed you… And there was a reason why we met again just the following day at Meg's ball. I believe in causes. And effects/.

If there was a reason for everything, why had she met Nigel? /Some things happen for a reason. I am sure of it. We met for a reason, Cassandra. We can choose to explore that reason – or not. No effect is fated/.

He had found a way for fate and free will to exist side by side. How clever of him. /Let us start again, Cassandra. Let us give ourselves a chance at least to be friends. Let me get to know you. Get to know me. Perhaps I am worth knowing/.

Did he not feel he knew enough about her? She had told him – twice – that she had killed Nigel. What was there more to know about someone who had admitted to doing that? /Perhaps I am worth knowing/.

"Perhaps," she said to Alice, "he is worth knowing."

"After what he has done to you?" Alice came back to her place and sat down with a thump. "And don't talk to me about your having seduced him, Cassie. You had reason to do it, though heaven knows I opposed it quite vigorously from the start. He had no such excuse for allowing himself to be seduced, except that he is a /man/. If he needs a woman that badly, why does he not marry? That is what wives are for!"

Cassandra looked at her and, for the first time all day, smiled with genuine amusement.

"Well." Alice's cheeks turned pink. "It is /one/ thing they are for.

Don't you go misunderstanding me, Cassie. Women are worth a great deal more than /that/, as I have tried to instill in you from childhood on. I /still/ think we ought to go to Green Park. It may be raining again tomorrow. And it is I who ought to be finding some source of income. And I /will/. I bought a paper this morning. It was a dreadful extravagance, but there is notice there of several positions for which I intend to apply. Some of them are unsuitable, it is true, but there are several distinct possibilities. A woman's usefulness cannot possibly be over at the age of forty-two. I refuse to believe it."

Cassandra smiled at her and noticed that her former governess's eyes were swimming in tears.

"Cassie," she said again, "it is /I/ who must look after us. You know it as well as I do."

"It is you who have always looked after me, Allie," Cassandra said.

"/Always/."

Alice dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

"It is important to you that we receive the Earl of Merton, then, is it?" she asked.

"Yes." Cassandra nodded. "And he asked particularly that you be with me, you know – as a chaperone."

Alice made a rather ugly sound, like a snort.

"I /must/ have told you that story sometime during your growing years," she said, "about the stable doors being shut after the horse had bolted."

It was too late for them to go walking now even if they wanted to. A carriage that was passing along the street outside drew to a halt outside the door. Cassandra could hear it clearly from where she was sitting.

Their visitor had arrived.