Seducing an Angel

/16/

STEPHEN had suffered another night of disturbed sleep. He really ought not to have interfered in business that was absolutely none of his concern. He ought not to have called upon Wesley Young, and he certainly ought not to have questioned the maid even so far as to ask what had happened to the dog.

It was not in his nature to interfere in other people's business.

He half hoped he would not see Cassandra again. He wanted his old, placid life back.

Had it really been /placid/?

Was he that dull a dog – at the grand age of twenty-five?

He only half hoped never to see her again, though. The other half of himself leapt with what felt very like gladness when he did.

He was walking down Oxford Street with his sister Vanessa, since when he had called on her earlier she had complained of being in the mopes because the children were still sleeping and Elliott was out of town for a couple of days and would probably be home only just in time to dress for the evening's ball, for which she desperately needed a length of lace to replace a torn frill on the gown she wanted to wear.

The errand had already been accomplished when Vanessa exclaimed with pleasure and Stephen, following her gaze, saw Cassandra approaching on the arm of her brother.

That was when half of some part of his being – his heart? – leapt with gladness. She was looking elegant and lovely in a pale pink walking dress and the straw bonnet she had worn to the picnic. She appeared flushed and rather happy.

Stephen swept off his hat and bowed to her.

"Ma'am?" he said. "Young? A lovely afternoon, is it not?"

Young, seeing him, looked suddenly embarrassed.

"Indeed it is," Cassandra said. "How do you do, your grace, my lord?"

"I am extremely well," Vanessa said. "Sir Wesley Young, is it not? I believe we have met before."

"We have, your grace," he said, inclining his head to her. "Lady Paget is my sister."

"Oh, how wonderful," Vanessa said, smiling warmly. "I did not realize you had relatives in town, Lady Paget. I am so glad you do. Are you planning to attend Lady Compton-Haig's ball this evening?"

"I believe I will," Cassandra said. "I have had an invitation."

She had accepted it, then. Stephen had not known if he hoped she had or if he would have preferred it if she had not. Now he knew. He was glad she was to be there.

Was the happy glow on her face a result of her brother's being with her?

If it was, then Stephen no longer regretted having interfered.

"Perhaps, Lady Paget," he said, "you would be so good as to reserve the opening set for me?"

She opened her mouth to reply.

"I am afraid, Merton," Young said stiffly, "that is /my/ set."

"Then another later in the evening," Stephen said.

A smile played about her lips. Perhaps she was thinking that she had come a long way in a week.

"Thank you, my lord," she said in her velvet voice. "It would be a pleasure."

Sir Wesley Young clearly had no wish to prolong the encounter. With another half-bow he bade them both a good afternoon and continued on his way along the street with Cassandra on his arm.

"I do believe," Vanessa said as they resumed their own course in the opposite direction, "that Lady Paget could wear a sack and still look more beautiful than anyone else in London. It is most provoking, Stephen."

"You are quite lovely enough to turn heads, Nessie," he said, grinning at her.

She had always been the plainest of his sisters – and the most vivacious.

She had always seemed beautiful to him.

"Oh, dear," she said. "It /did/ seem as though I was fishing for a compliment, did it not? And I got it. How very gallant of you. It is time I went home, Stephen, if you do not mind terribly. What if Elliott has come home and I am not there?"

"Would he have a fit of the vapors?" he asked.

She laughed and twirled her parasol.

"Probably not," she said. "But /I/ might if I discovered I had missed ten minutes or more of his company."

He maneuvered her about a noisy group of people coming in the opposite direction without looking where they were going.

"/How/ long have you been married?" he asked her.

She merely laughed.

"Stephen," she said a little later, "do you like her?"

"Lady Paget?" he said. "Yes, I do."

"No, but I mean," she said, "do you /like/ her?"

"Yes," he said again. "I do, Nessie."

"Oh," she said.

There was no interpreting that single syllable and he did not ask for an explanation. Neither did he ponder the answer he had given to her questions. All he had admitted to, after all, was liking Cassandra. Or /liking/ her, rather. Was there a difference in the meaning of the word, depending upon whether one spoke it with emphasis or not?

He shook his head with exasperation.

Enough of this. /Enough/!

Sir Wesley Young had been inclined to scold his sister when he learned that she had put up no fight whatsoever to retain her valuables or to claim what was rightfully hers when the present Paget turned her out of his home. With a little effort she could have been a wealthy woman now instead of being destitute.

He did /not/ scold, however. He had been almost twenty-two years old when Paget died, and he had gone down to Carmel for the funeral. He had felt the rumblings of unpleasantness brewing while he was still there, but he had left before any open accusations had started to fly, assuring Cassie before he went that he loved her and always would, that she could come to him at any time for support and protection.

And then, as rumors of just how nasty the situation had become reached him in London, he had developed very cold feet. He had feared being caught up in his sister's ruin. He had stopped writing to her.

He could not make the excuse that he had been only a boy, for the love of God. He had been a /man/.

And then, the final act of cruelty and cowardice, which would give him sleepless nights and troubled days for a long time to come, he believed, he had tried to prevent her from coming to London. He had lied about that walking tour of the Scottish Highlands. And when she had come anyway, and when he had come face-to-face with her in the park, he had /turned his head away and ordered the hired coachman to drive on/.

Oh, yes, there would be well-deserved nightmares over that one.

All he could do now, though, since the past could not be changed, was make amends as best he could and hope that at some time within the next fifty years or so he would be able to forgive himself. So he had asked around yesterday and this morning to discover the very best lawyer for Cassie's type of case, and he had made an appointment and taken her there this afternoon.

It all seemed very promising. Indeed, the lawyer was astonished that Lady Paget had even thought it might be difficult to recover her jewels, which were her own personal property, and to be granted what was her due according to her marriage contract and her husband's will. He was quite happy to take a modest retainer – which Wesley insisted upon paying – in the firm conviction that the matter would be settled within a couple of weeks or a month at the longest.

They had been walking home along Oxford Street when they had come face-to-face with Merton. Wesley was not pleased about it. Merton had been his conscience yesterday, or at least the prompter of his conscience, and Wesley did not feel particularly kindly disposed toward him. His conscience ought not to have needed prompting from any outside source.

However, the meeting did not last long, and Wesley returned his sister to the house on Portman Street, where Miss Haytor was eager to talk to her about the visit to some museum she had made with an old friend of hers – Mr. Golding, actually, who had been the only private tutor Wesley had ever had, though he had not stayed long and Wesley scarcely remembered him.

He went home to relax for a while before dining and getting ready for the evening's ball. But his man informed him that yet again there was someone downstairs in the visitors' parlor, wanting a word with him.

Wesley did not recognize the visitor, though the man got to his feet when he entered the room and came toward him, one hand extended. He was a strong, athletic-looking man with light brown hair and a deeply bronzed face.

"Young?" he said. "William Belmont."

Ah, yes, of course. He was the present Paget's brother, one of Cassie's stepsons. Wesley had met him at Cassie's wedding and again during one of his visits to Carmel a number of years ago. He had gone to America after that, had he not?

"I am pleased to see you again," Wesley said, shaking his hand.

"My ship from Canada docked a couple of weeks ago," Belmont told him,

"and I went immediately to Carmel to find everything much changed. Where is your sister, Young? She is here in London somewhere, is she not?"

Wesley was instantly wary.

"It would be best to leave her alone," he said. "She did /not/ kill your father. No conclusive evidence could ever be found against her and she was never charged with anything because there was nothing to charge her /with/. She is trying to make a new life, and I am here to see to it that she has a chance to do just that and that no one bothers her."

It ought to have been true too, from the moment of her arrival in town.

It was true now, however. Anyone who wanted to get to Cassie was going to have to go through /him/. And even though he was not particularly happy at the breadth of Belmont's shoulders, he was not going to be deterred.

But Belmont merely made a dismissive gesture with one hand.

"Of course she did not kill my father," he said. "I was /there/, for the love of God. I have not come to stir up any trouble for her, Young. I have come to find Mary. Is she still with Cassandra?"

"Mary?" Wesley looked blankly at him.

"She left Carmel with Cassandra," Belmont said. "I assume she is still with her. And Belinda. I /hope/ they are."

Wesley still looked blank. Miss Haytor's name was Alice, not Mary.

"Mary," Belmont said impatiently. "My /wife/."

Cassandra felt very different dressing for this evening's ball than she had felt last week dressing for Lady Sheringford's. She had received an invitation to this one, and she had an escort – in addition to an engagement to dance the opening set and one other.

She looked forward to dancing with Stephen tonight with far more eagerness than she ought to be feeling.

She checked her hair in the mirror to make sure it was firmly enough pinned up that it would not fall down as soon as she started to dance. /That/ would be something of a disaster! She had become far too dependent during the past ten years upon the services of a lady's maid.

She drew on her long gloves and smoothed them out until they were no longer even slightly twisted.

The lawyer had thought she had an excellent case. He thought he could get her all that was owed her in a fortnight, though Cassandra would be perfectly happy with a month. She would be able to pay Stephen back and forget that she had ever done anything as sordid as offer herself to him as a mistress.

Though she did not regret the two nights she had spent with him. Or the picnic.

The picnic, she knew, would always be one of her most treasured memories.

He was going to be hard to forget.

But he had restored some of her faith in men. Not all were unreliable and untrustworthy and downright nasty.

She would remember him as her golden angel. She took up her ivory fan and opened it to make sure it was in perfect working condition.

During his outing with Alice this afternoon, Mr. Golding had invited her to join him in Kent for a couple of days at the end of the week to celebrate his father's seventieth birthday with the rest of his family.

It was surely a significant invitation.

Alice had not said yes – or no. She had waited to see if Cassandra could spare her. But she had been almost vibrating with suppressed excitement and anxiety. Ten minutes after Cassandra had arrived home, five after Wesley had left, she had been seated at the escritoire in the sitting room, writing Mr. Golding a letter of acceptance.

She was in her own room upstairs now, trying to decide what clothes she would take with her.

Cassandra slipped her feet into her dancing slippers and went downstairs to wait for Wesley. Her timing was perfect. He rapped on the door as she was descending the stairs, and she was able to wave Mary back to the kitchen and open the door herself.

"Oh, Cassie," he said, looking her over admiringly. "You will cast every other lady into the shade."

"Thank you, sir." She laughed and twirled before him, suddenly lighthearted. "You look very handsome yourself. I am ready to leave. We do not need to keep the carriage waiting."

But he stepped inside anyway and closed the door behind him.

"I am still outraged about your jewels," he said. "A lady ought not to be seen at a ball without any. I have brought you this to wear."

She recognized the slightly scuffed brown leather box as soon as she saw it. One of her favorite activities when she was a girl had been to lift it out of her father's trunk and open it carefully to gaze inside and sometimes to touch the contents with a light fingertip. Once or twice she had even clasped it about her neck and admired herself in a glass, feeling horribly wicked all the time.

She took the box from Wesley's hand and opened it. And there was the silver chain as she remembered it, though it had been polished now to a bright sheen, with the pendant heart made of small diamonds. Their father had given it to their mother as a wedding gift, and it was the one possession of any value that had not been sold during any of the lean times, or even pawned.

It was not an ostentatious piece and was probably not of any great value. Indeed, the diamonds might even be paste for all Cassandra knew.

Perhaps that was why it had never been sold or pawned. But its sentimental value was immense.

Wesley took it out of the box and clasped it about her neck.

"Oh, Wes," she said, fingering it, "how wonderful you are. I will wear it just for tonight. And then you must put it away and keep it for your bride."

"She would not appreciate it," he said. "No one would except us, Cassie.

I would rather you kept it as a sort of gift from me. Though as far as that goes, I daresay it belongs to you as much as it does to me. Devil take it, you are not /weeping/, are you?"

"I think I am," she said, dabbing at her eyes with two fingers and laughing at the same time. And she threw her arms about his neck and hugged him tightly.

He patted her back awkwardly.

"Is your maid /Mary/?" he asked.

"Yes." She stood back from him, still fingering the necklace as she looked down at it. "Why?"

"No reason," he said.

A minute or so later he was handing her into the carriage he had hired for the evening, and they were making their ponderous way through the streets to the Compton-Haig mansion.

How different her arrival was this time. This time she was handed down to the red carpet by a liveried footman and made her way inside the house on her brother's arm. This time she felt free to look around and appreciate the marble hallway and the bright chandelier overhead and the liveried servants and the guests all decked out in their evening finery.

This time a few people caught her eye and nodded to her. One or two even smiled. She could happily ignore those who did neither.

Wesley led her along the receiving line, and this time she could meet the eye of everyone in it because she had been invited and because her name could no longer inspire the shock it had created last week.

And this time, as soon as they had stepped inside the ballroom and she was looking about her, admiring the banks of purple and white flowers and green ferns, Sir Graham and Lady Carling came to speak with her and to be introduced to Wesley, with whom they did not have an acquaintance.

And then Lord and Lady Sheringford came to bid them a good evening, and Mr. Huxtable came to ask Cassandra for the second set. A couple of Wesley's friends came to speak with him, and one of them – a Mr.

Bonnard – reserved a set later in the evening with her.

"Damn me, Wes," he said, lifting a quizzing glass halfway to his eye, his head held firmly in place by the height and stiffness of his starched shirt points, "I did not know Lady Paget was your sister. She certainly got all the looks in the family. There were precious few left for you, were there?"

He and the other friend, whose name Cassandra had already forgotten, brayed with identical merriment at the witty joke.

And then Stephen was there, bowing and smiling and asking, a twinkle in his eyes, if Lady Paget had been kind enough to remember to reserve a set for him.

She fanned her cheeks.

"The first and second sets are spoken for," she said, "and the set after supper."

"I sincerely hope," he said, "none of those dances are the waltz. I shall be severely out of sorts if they are. May I dance the first waltz with you, ma'am, and the supper dance too if they are not one and the same? And one other set if they are?"

He was openly distinguishing her. It was not poor etiquette to dance twice in an evening with the same lady, but it was something everyone present always noticed. It usually meant that the gentleman concerned was seriously courting the lady.

She ought to say yes to only one dance. But his blue eyes were smiling, and the lawyer had said two weeks, even though he had admitted that it might be one month, and after that she would be leaving London forever to find herself a pretty little cottage in an obscure English village, and she would never see him again. Or have to face the /ton/ again.

"Thank you," she said, her hand falling still as she smiled back at him.

And she remembered how, only a week ago, she had stood alone in just such a ballroom as this, looking consideringly at all the gentlemen before picking him out as her prey.

Now there was a little corner of her heart that might always belong to him.

The more fool she.

"Shall we?" Wesley said, and she could see that couples were beginning to gather on the dance floor for the opening set.

The evening was not, after all, to pass without some unpleasantness.

Mr. Huxtable came to claim the second set very early and led Cassandra onto the floor long before most other couples came to join them. It was clear to her that he wished to talk with her – but that he did not want to do so in anyone else's hearing.

He was an extraordinarily handsome man, she thought as they came to a stop in the middle of the floor and turned to face each other. He was handsome despite, or perhaps because of, his slightly crooked nose. Many women must find him impossibly attractive. She was not one of them. She did not like dark, brooding men who carried an aura of danger about with them. She was very glad indeed she had not chosen /him/ last week. Would she have succeeded? Could she have seduced him – and trapped him into paying her a large salary to be his mistress?

"I do not need to sidle by slow degrees into what I wish to say to you, do I?" he said now.

Oh, he was very dangerous indeed.

She was startled but would not show it. She waved her fan slowly before her face.

"Absolutely not," she said. "I would prefer plain speaking. You wish to warn me away from your cousin, I daresay. He needs someone big and dark and strong like you to protect him and frighten away dangerous women like me, does he? Though I have always thought the devil's function was to destroy innocence, not protect it."

"Plain speaking indeed," he said – and smiled at her with what looked like genuine amusement. "Merton is /not/ a weakling, Lady Paget, though many people may think so. Unlike many men, he does not seem to feel the need always to be flexing his muscles in order to demonstrate how tough and manly he is. Did you choose him because you thought he /was/ weak?"

"/I/ chose /him/?" she asked haughtily.

"I saw you collide with him in Margaret's ballroom," he said.

"An accident," she said.

"Deliberate."

She raised her eyebrows and fanned her face.

"It is really none of your business, is it?" she asked him.

"When outdone in an argument," he said, "it is always good strategy – or perhaps the /only/ strategy – to fall back upon a clichГ©."

Would the musicians /never/ be finished tuning their instruments? Would the dancers never be finished with their conversations on the sidelines?

How many people were watching the two of them? Cassandra smiled.

"How do you fit into Lord Merton's family, Mr. Huxtable?" she asked him.

"He has not told you?" he said. "I am the ultimate bad, dangerous cousin, Lady Paget, the one who is bound to hate all the others with a passion and be ever ready to do them harm. My father was the Earl of Merton, and I was his eldest son. Unfortunately for me, my mother fled to Greece when she knew she was expecting me, and by the time her father – my grandfather – hauled her back to England, breathing fire and brimstone every step of the way, and demanded that my father do right by her or take the consequences, I had run out of patience and decided to put in an appearance two days before the happy couple wed. I was therefore quite indisputably illegitimate. Unfortunately for my father, a whole string of my younger brothers and sisters died either at birth or soon after, the only survivor being the youngest, who was also – in the words of my father himself – a blithering idiot. Jonathan became earl after my father's death, but he died on the night of his sixteenth birthday, and the title passed to Stephen."

Cassandra read a whole world of pain and bitterness in the brief, rather flippantly related story, but it had not been told in order to arouse her sympathy, and she allowed herself to feel none.

"I am surprised, then," she said, "that you really do not hate him. He has what ought to have been yours. He has your title, your home, your fortune."

Other couples were beginning to drift onto the floor.

"Yes," he said, "it /is/ surprising."

"Why do you /not/ hate him?" she asked.

"For one very simple reason," he said. "I know someone who would have loved him, and I love that someone."

He did not explain, though she waited.

"Are you hoping that Stephen will marry you?" he asked.

She laughed softly.

"You may rest easy on that score," she said. "I have no designs upon Lord Merton's freedom. I have known the kind of servitude marriage brings to a woman, and once was quite enough."

They were very soon going to be within earshot of couples in every direction. The musicians had fallen silent and were ready to strike up the tune of the first country dance in the set.

"Shall we talk about the weather?" she suggested.

He chuckled deep in his throat.

"Thunderstorms and earthquakes and hurricanes?" he said. "They sound safe."