Seducing an Angel

20

IT was almost fortunate, Cassandra thought during the following week, that her temporary betrothal and preparations for the ball kept her so very busy. For it was difficult to be patient. Her lawyer had warned her that though he expected a speedy and successful resolution to her claim, nevertheless they could not reasonably expect to hear anything for two weeks, perhaps longer. In the meantime, she must not worry.

They did not, of course, hear anything. And she did, of course, worry.

But life had become impossibly busy. There was a dinner party to attend at Wesley's one evening. Cassandra had not taken him into her confidence, as she had Stephen's sisters. He would not approve. And he would surely blame Stephen, which would be grossly unfair. He was delighted by the engagement. He saw it as a solution to all her problems.

"For even if you recover your money and jewels, Cassie," he said, "you will still be alone, and there will still be people who will think the worst of you. Merton will be able to protect you from all that."

She /had/ told her brother what William had said about Nigel's death.

She had also told him that William had been persuaded to say nothing to anyone else at least until her claim had been settled. Wesley reluctantly agreed that it was probably a good idea not to stir up the old scandal again just when people were beginning to lose interest.

There was another dinner party and small soiree to attend at Sir Graham Carling's, and a private concert to which Cassandra had received an invitation the very day notice of her betrothal appeared in the papers.

There was a garden party the day after that, and again she had received a personal invitation.

Every day Stephen took her driving or walking in the park. On the day of the garden party, he took her for a morning ride on Rotten Row instead, having hired a horse for her for the occasion. It seemed to be years since she had last ridden and probably was. She had almost forgotten how exhilarating it was to be seated sidesaddle on a horse's back, feeling its power and energy beneath her and controlling it all with the skill in her own hands.

But it was the preparations for the ball that consumed so much of her time that she even suggested on one occasion that perhaps she ought to give up sleeping until she had time to indulge in it again.

There were lists – endless lists – to be drawn up and acted upon. There were invitations to send and flowers to order and an orchestra to engage and a menu to be planned and a program of dances to be drawn up and… Well, the tasks were never-ending, it seemed. Stephen's sisters could have done it all very well without her, Cassandra knew. Indeed, even /one/ of them could. They might have grown up in a country vicarage, but they were now perfectly competent ladies of the /ton/. They insisted, however, that they work together and that Cassandra make one of their number.

"It is going to be such /fun/," Vanessa said, having chosen to ignore Cassandra's claim that she would never actually marry Stephen, "to have another sister. I have two sisters-in-law from my first marriage and three from my marriage to Elliott, but there is always room for more.

There is /nothing/ as wonderful as family, is there?"

Cassandra began rather wistfully to believe that indeed there was not.

Stephen's sisters did not live in one another's pockets. They had their own separate lives, and they lived in different parts of the country except during the spring, when they met in London for the parliamentary session and the Season. But there was a closeness among them that made her heart ache with envy and longing.

She met Viscountess Burden and the Countess of Lanting, sisters-in-law of Vanessa and Katherine, during the week and even they claimed to be eager to welcome Cassandra into their larger family.

Yes, family – and sisterhood – were precious commodities indeed.

And life was busy.

Even at home it was not tranquil.

William was a wealthy man. Even apart from his portion as Nigel's son, he was rich, having amassed something like a fortune in the fur trade during his years in America and Canada. Now he was ready to settle down.

He wanted to buy land, to become a gentleman farmer with Mary at his side and his family already begun.

But Mary had dug in her heels. She would have been out wandering the roads of England as a vagabond, or in jail somewhere as a vagrant, if it were not for the kindness of Lady Paget, who had little enough of her own, the good Lord knew, when she was sent away from Carmel but who had taken Mary and Belinda – not to mention Roger – with her when she went. Mary was /not/ going to abandon her ladyship now just because Billy had come home, not, at any rate, until she was married right and tight to the Earl of Merton, who was a proper gentleman no matter what he did when he first met her ladyship – though /that/, no doubt, was on account of the fact that he fell in love with her, as what man would not when she was so beautiful? He had more than made up for his sins since. And if Lady Paget chose /not/ to marry his lordship, though it would be remarkably foolish of her not to – /not/ that Mary had any right to judge her betters, especially to call /them foolish/ – then Mary would stay with her until she got her money and settled somewhere with proper servants.

Though Mary wanted to see those servants with her very own eyes first, because there was no knowing what riffraff there might be in London who thought they could cook and clean for a lady. Mary was staying, at least for now, and if Billy did not like it and wanted to go off looking for land before she was good and ready to go with him, then so be it.

Every time Mary delivered this lengthy speech or some variation on it, she ended up in tears, her apron up over her face, and William had to offer a shoulder for her to cry on while he patted her back and grinned and assured her that he had no intention of going anywhere before Cassie was settled. And Mary must be a goose if she thought he would go.

Alice was no better. She returned from her three days in Kent looking ten years younger. Her eyes glowed. So did her cheeks. So did her whole person.

"Cassie," she said before she had been back in the house ten minutes,

"they are wonderful people, Allan's family. They are a close-knit group and yet they opened the arms of friendship to me. More than friendship, actually. They treated me like one of themselves." /Allan/ now, was he?

"I am so glad," Cassandra said. "You are to see more of Mr. Golding, then?"

"The silly man wants me to marry him," Alice said.

"Silly indeed," Cassandra agreed. "Did you say yes?"

"No," Alice said, setting her cup in the saucer with a slight clatter.

The cup never had made the full distance to her mouth.

"No?"

"No," Alice said firmly. "I asked him to give me time to think about it."

Cassandra set her own cup and saucer down on the table beside her.

"Because of me, I suppose," she said.

Alice pursed her lips but would not deny it.

"Alice," Cassandra said with a severity that was not feigned, "if you and Mary between you force me into marrying Stephen, I will have the greatest difficulty forgiving either of you."

Alice merely looked mulish.

"Of course," Cassandra said, "both of you would deny that you had done any such thing. You are both postponing your futures or even denying them altogether just in case I do /not/ marry him. I will not allow such tyranny. I will give both of you notice – very /short/ notice. I will terminate both your employments."

"What employment?" Alice asked. "I have not been paid in almost a year.

I think that means I am no longer your servant, Cassie. I am only your friend. You cannot give your friends the sack. And if you try to get rid of Mary, she will only give you the length of her tongue and burst into tears and make you feel like a worm. And then she will stay and refuse to let you pay her, and you will feel like a giant worm. And Mr. Belmont will stay with her because, to his credit, he is besotted with her – and with Belinda. And you will be forever tripping over him as he mends everything in this house that needs mending – a never-ending task if ever I saw one. You will end up feeling like a /dragon/."

Cassandra shook her head and picked up her cup and saucer again.

"I am going to buy a cottage with /one bedchamber,/" she said, "and there will be no room in it for anyone but me."

Having had the last word, she drank her tea to the dregs with some satisfaction.

And why were Alice and Mary suddenly on Stephen's side when less than two weeks ago they had both thought him the devil incarnate? But that, of course, had been before they met him. How could /any/ woman resist those angelic looks once she had set eyes upon him? And how could any woman resist his warm charm when it was directed her way? He did not play fair. For every time he came to the house – and he came every day – he had a word and a smile for Mary and a word and a smile for Alice.

Oh, he did /not/ play fair. For of course, /she/ had to look upon all that beauty every day too, and /she/ had to expose herself to all that charm. And /she/ had memories of more than just good looks and charm.

And always at the back of her mind was one needling question: Why could she /not/ marry him when there was not a bone or muscle or blood cell in her body that was not giddy with love for him?

She had not killed Nigel, and Stephen knew it. She was not so foolish that she still believed every man in the world to be rotten to the core.

She had been unfortunate to marry a man with a sad illness that was destructive both of others and of himself. It had not been her fault that he could not be cured of that illness. Neither had all the beatings she had suffered been her fault, though for all the years of her marriage she had blamed herself.

There was no real reason why she should not marry Stephen and reach for a little happiness after all the years of pain. Except that she felt used and sullied and world-weary, and Stephen seemed the opposite. She could not convince herself that she would not somehow be harming him by marrying him. That she would not be stealing some of his light.

And did he really love her? If that kiss had not happened to force him into offering her marriage and to make him gallantly claim to be in love with her, would he ever have freely wanted to do either?

Perhaps eventually, Cassandra thought, she would regain her confidence and self-esteem to such a degree that she would consider marrying again.

But not now. Not yet. And not Stephen.

But how could there ever be anyone else /but/ Stephen?

One thing she no longer doubted – in the privacy of her own heart. She loved him with all her being.

Stephen had not been as busy as Cassandra, or at least no busier than he usually was. He had offered his assistance with the planning of the ball, which was to be held at /his/ house to celebrate /his/ betrothal, but his sisters had looked at him collectively with the sort of fond impatience they had sometimes shown him when at the age of ten or so he had arrived home with torn breeches or muddy boots just when they were preparing for a church bazaar.

Men were not needed for /ton/ balls, it seemed, in any capacity but to dance with the ladies and make sure that none of them were wallflowers.

He concentrated most of his energies that week upon persuading Cassandra to marry him during the summer – without actually saying a word on the subject. He concentrated upon making her fall in love with him.

It was no longer a matter of gallantry.

It was a matter of his own lifelong happiness.

He did not tell her that, though. The very last thing he wanted to do was trap her into marrying him by engaging her pity. He had told her once that he loved her, but now actions must convince her that he had spoken the truth.

The ballroom looked quite stunningly gorgeous. It looked like a summer garden, complete with sunshine. Not that there /was/ sunshine, but the yellow and white flowers and the banks of green ferns gave the illusion of light, and the candelabra overhead had been washed and polished and rubbed into such brightness that the three hundred candles seemed almost superfluous.

The ballroom /smelled/ like a garden too. And it seemed filled with fresh air. It would not seem so for much longer, of course. In about an hour's time the guests would begin arriving and even all the open windows would not keep the air cool. Meg had predicted that this ball would be a squeeze to end squeezes, and Stephen tended to agree. Not only were balls at Merton House rare, but this one was to celebrate his betrothal to an axe murderer. That term was still bandied about in clubs and drawing rooms, he gathered, though he doubted anyone believed any longer in the literal truth of it. He wished the truth could be told, but on the whole he thought it might be wiser to allow the whole subject to drop.

He had just hosted a family dinner to precede the ball – something he had arranged. His sisters and their husbands and Con and Wesley Young had attended. Now they were all strolling about the ballroom, relaxing, before the room filled with ball guests.

The musicians had set up their instruments on the dais, Stephen could see, but they had gone belowstairs for their dinner.

"Is it as lovely as you imagined it?" he asked Cassandra, coming up behind her and wrapping an arm about her waist.

"Oh, lovelier," she said, smiling at him.

She was wearing a sunshine yellow gown, as promised. It shimmered when she moved. It was fresher than gold, brighter than lemon. Its short puffed sleeves and deep neckline were scalloped and trimmed with tiny white flowers. So was the deep flounced hem. She wore the heart-shaped necklace her brother had given her, and the almost-matching bracelet of tiny diamonds arranged in the shape of hearts that he had given her as a betrothal gift.

She would return it when she ended the engagement, she had told him when he gave it to her earlier this evening – the only reference either of them had made all week to that potential event in the future.

"It is going to be a perfect evening," he said. "I am going to be the envy of every man present."

"I think it altogether likely," she said, "that all the unmarried young ladies will be wearing deepest mourning. You will be a dreadful loss to all but one of them when you do eventually marry, Stephen."

"This summer?" he said, and grinned at her.

He turned his head toward the doorway. He could hear Paulson's voice, unusually loud, unusually agitated.

"The receiving line has not yet been formed, sir," he was saying. "No one is expected for another hour. Allow me to show you into the visitors' parlor for a while and bring you refreshments there."

Stephen raised his eyebrows. If the early guest had been persistent enough to get this far into the house despite Paulson's vigilance, it was probably futile still to be suggesting the visitors' parlor. He strode toward the doors, and Cassandra followed.

"Receiving lines be damned and balls and expected arrival times and visitors' parlors, you fool," a harsh, impatient voice replied, presumably addressing Paulson. "Where is she? I am determined to see her even if I have to ransack the house. Ah, the ballroom. Is she in there?"

Stephen was aware of all his family turning in some surprise to the ballroom doors as a gentleman appeared there, a black cloak swirling about his legs, a tall hat upon his head, a thunderous frown upon his face.

"Bruce," Cassandra said.

The man's eyes alit upon her at the same moment, and with a slight movement of his head Stephen dismissed Paulson.

"Paget?" Stephen said, stepping forward and extending his right hand.

Lord Paget ignored it – and him.

"You!" he said, addressing Cassandra harshly and pointing an accusing finger at her. "What the /devil/ do you think you are up to?"

"Bruce," Cassandra said, her voice low and cool, though Stephen could hear a slight tremor in it, "we had better talk in private. I am sure the Earl of Merton will allow us the use of the visitors' parlor or the library."

"I will not, /by thunder/, talk in private," he said, striding a few paces into the room. "The whole world needs to know what you are, woman, and the whole world will hear it from me, starting with these people.

What the devil – "

Stephen had taken one step closer. Paget was not a small man. He was of slightly above-average height, in fact, and he was not puny of build.

But Stephen took hold of his cloak at the neck and of his shirt beneath it and lifted the man onto his toes with one hand. He moved his head forward until there was a scant three inches of space between his nose and Paget's.

He did not raise his voice.

"You will not talk at all in my home, Paget," he said, "except with my permission. And you will not use language that is offensive to the ears of ladies even when that permission is granted."

His knuckles were pressing lightly but deliberately against the man's windpipe so that his face turned slightly purple. /"Ladies?"/ Paget said. "The only female I see before me, Merton, is no lady."

Stephen's frayed temper snapped. He slammed Paget back against the wall two feet behind him, his hand still at the man's throat. His free hand, closed into a fist, was poised at shoulder height.

Paget's hat tipped to an impossible angle and tumbled to the floor.

"Perhaps," Stephen said, "my ears have deceived me, Paget. But assuming they have not, I will hear your apology."

"Apology be damned," Wesley Young's voice said from just behind Stephen's shoulder, quaking with fury. "Let me at him, Merton. No one talks to my sister that way and gets away with it."

"You had better apologize, Paget," Elliott's cool voice said from the other side, "and then do as Lady Paget has suggested. There are guests expected here soon, and no one wants them to find you with a bloodied nose. Least of all you, I would imagine. Take your discussion to a private room. Lady Paget's brother and her betrothed will be happy to accompany you, I am sure."

"I do apologize for my language to the /ladies/ in the room," Paget said from between his teeth, and Stephen was obliged to lower his fist and release his hold on the man's clothing though his meaning had been insolently clear. The apology did not include Cassandra.

Paget straightened his cloak and turned his glare on her.

"In a different time and place," he said, "you would have been burned at the stake as a witch long ago, woman, before you could do any real harm.

I would have enjoyed watching and stoking the fire."

Stephen's fist bounced his head off the wall, and blood spurted from his nose.

"Bravo, Stephen," Vanessa said.

Paget drew a handkerchief from a pocket somewhere inside his cloak and dabbed at his nose before glancing at the scarlet blood.

"I suppose, Merton," he said, "she has persuaded you and every other man in London – and even some of the ladies – that she did /not/ murder my father in cold blood. And I suppose she has you convinced that the same thing will not happen to you when she has tired of you and wants to be free to find herself a new victim. And I suppose you fully support her outrageous claim to my father's money and all the jewels he lavished upon her before she shot him through the heart? She is the very devil, but she is clever."

"No, don't, Stephen," Margaret said. "Don't hit him again. Violence brings a moment's satisfaction but no real solution to any problem."

A woman's logic.

"No, don't, Wes," Cassandra said.

Stephen did not take his eyes off Paget's face.

"And I suppose," he said, his voice soft, "you have persuaded yourself through a lifetime of self-deception that your father was not an intermittent drinker and a vicious abuser when he had been drinking? I suppose you think that violence perpetrated against women is not strictly speaking violence if it is against a wife. Wives must be disciplined and husbands have a legal right to administer that discipline. Even when that violence causes a woman to lose the child she is carrying."

"Oh, Stephen," Katherine said, her voice high-pitched and half strangled.

"My father very rarely drank," Paget said, looking about him with fury and contempt. "He drank far less often than most men. I will not have his memory besmirched by the lies this woman has told you, Merton. When he did drink, he could be rough, it is true, but only when the person concerned deserved punishment. This woman had every man in the neighborhood fawning over her. There is no knowing what she – "

"And your mother too?" Stephen asked softly. "Was your mother as deserving of punishment? Even the last one?"

He was overreaching himself. He was angry and had not given himself time to consider his words.

But Paget had blanched. He mopped up a few more trickles of blood from his reddened nose.

"What has she told you of my mother?" he asked.

"Even if Cassie killed Paget," Wesley Young said, "I would support her.

I would /applaud/ her. That bastard deserved to die. And I will apologize to the ladies, but I will not withdraw the word. However, she did /not/ kill him."

"What has she told you of my mother?" Paget asked again, just as if Young had not spoken.

"Only what rumor whispered," Stephen said with a sigh. "We all know how unreliable rumor can be. But what my betrothed suffered for nine years at the hands of her husband, your father, is not rumor. And what is more, Paget, you know it. And you know that /if/ she killed him, she did so to save her own life or the life of someone else endangered by his violence. You probably even know that she did /not/ kill him. But it has been convenient to you to pretend that you /do/ believe it and that at any time you can have her arrested and punished for the crime. You have been enriched by the belief and by the way you have bullied her into believing in your power."

"My mother died when she fell from her horse," Paget said. "She tried to jump a fence that was too high for her."

Stephen nodded. Time was marching onward. What time /was/ it?

"Bruce," Cassandra said, and Stephen turned his head to look at her. "If you have anything else to say to me, you must come and talk to me tomorrow. I live on Portman Street."

"I know," Paget said. "I just came from there."

"I did not kill your father," she said. "I cannot prove that I did not, and you cannot prove that I did. His death was ruled a tragic accident, and so it was. I have no wish to intrude further upon your life. I have no wish at all to live at the dower house or even in the town house. I want merely what is mine so that I can live my own life and never see you or trouble you ever again. You might as well give in to my lawyer's very reasonable demands. You can have no defense against them."

His temper was up again. He pointed a finger at her and drew breath to speak. But someone else had appeared in the doorway. For one horrible moment Stephen thought it was an early guest, though not so very early at that. But it was William Belmont.

"Lord," he said, his eyes passing over the people gathered just inside the doors. "I got home half an hour ago and Mary told me you had called, Bruce – and that she had told you that Cassie was here. Mary usually has a bit more sense than to give away information like that, especially when you are the one who gave her the boot a month ago. You have a bloody nose, I see. Courtesy of Merton, I suppose? Or of Young?"

"I have nothing to say to /you/," Paget said, his brows snapping together.

"Well, I have something to say to /you/," Belmont said, looking about again. "And since it looks as if you did not do the sensible thing and ask to speak privately to Cassie when you got here, then I have something to say to everyone present."

"No, don't, William," Cassandra said.

"But I will," he said. "He was my father, Cassie, as well as your husband. He was Bruce's father too, and he ought to know the truth. So ought everyone who is preparing to welcome you into their family as Merton's bride. Cassie did not shoot our father, Bruce. Neither did I, though I /was/ there, you know, and got my hand on his wrist to wrestle the gun from him. He had started to cuff Mary around because I had told him earlier in the day, before he started drinking, that I had married her and that Belinda was mine. Cassie and then Miss Haytor had been drawn by Mary's screams, and then I came into the house and was drawn by his raised voice coming from the library. He had his pistol pointed at Cassie. But when I went for him and tried to take the gun, he turned it quite deliberately and pointed it at his own heart and pulled the trigger."

"Liar!" Paget cried. "That is a filthy lie."

"Miss Haytor had already told the same story before I came here a few days ago and gave my identical version," Belmont said. "And if you think I would be prepared to tell that story against my own father, Bruce, in order to protect my stepmother, then you know nothing about family loyalties. Or about nightmares. He killed himself while in a drunken rage. And if we are wise, we will acquiesce in the official verdict of accidental death and treat Cassie with the proper respect due our father's widow."

Paget's head had dropped, and his eyes had closed.

"We are perilously close to the beginning of the ball," Stephen said quietly. "The earliest guests will be here within a quarter of an hour, I daresay. Paget, let one of my brothers-in-law show you to a guest room, where you may bathe your nose and straighten your clothes. It does not matter if you are not dressed quite as you would if you had planned to attend a ball. Stay and attend this one anyway. And smile and look glad for Cassandra. Tell anyone who looks willing to listen that the accidental death of your father was tragic but that you are happy to see your stepmother moving on with her life. Tell them it is what your father would have wanted."

"Are you /insane/?" Paget asked viciously.

But Con had moved up on one side of him and Monty on the other, and both were smiling.

"You chose a good moment to arrive in London," Monty said.

"I daresay," Con said, clasping a hand on his shoulder, "Lady Paget wrote to you to announce her betrothal and beg for your blessing, did she, Paget, and you did even better than she asked and came in person.

You even rode nonstop, did you, in order to arrive in time for the ball?"

"And got here just in time," Monty said with a grin, "though you did not have a moment to spare to change into your ball clothes. It is an affecting story. The ladies will all be in tears if they get wind of it."

"We had better think of an explanation for the nose, though," Con said as they led him from the room between the two of them. "It ought not to be hard. A man meets with all sorts of accidents when he is in a hurry to wish his stepmother well in her new marriage."

Stephen reached out and took Cassandra's hand in his. She was looking very pale, and her hand was cold. He smiled at her and looked at William Belmont.

"You will stay too?" he asked. He had asked before, but Belmont had refused, since Mary was quite adamant in /her/ refusal to attend such a grand affair, even if she /was/ Mrs. William Belmont and sister-in-law of Lord Paget.

"Not me," Belmont said. "I am going home for my dinner, which was ready half an hour ago. Bruce adored our mother, you know, but he would never see the truth. He was afraid of it, I expect. He spent most of his adult years as far away from Carmel as he could get. As I did too, of course.

I ought to have done more for you than I ever did, Cassie. I am sorry for it now, though apologies are cheap, aren't they?"

And he turned and was gone.

Stephen lowered his head to look into Cassandra's face.

"All right?" he said.

She nodded. Her hand was beginning to warm in his.

"Such melodrama," she said. "Oh, Stephen, I am so sorry. You must be cursing the day your eyes first alit on me in the park."

He smiled slowly at her and kissed her briefly on the lips, though he was aware of his family close by, all buzzing in reaction to what had just happened.

"I bless the day," he said.

She merely sighed.

"Stephen," Meg said briskly, "it is time the receiving line was formed.

Your guests are going to start arriving /at any moment/."

Stephen grinned about him.

"And a man gets to celebrate his betrothal only once," he said.

His sisters proceeded to hug both him and Cassandra.

"You will have children with /Stephen/," he heard Vanessa whisper to Cassandra while they were in each other's arms. "They will never make up for the ones you lost, but they will warm your heart. I promise you they will. Oh, I /do/ promise."