Seducing an Angel

22

CASSANDRA arrived at Warren Hall, Stephen's principal seat in Hampshire, on a sunny, breezy day in July. She was going to stay at Finchley Park, one of the Duke of Moreland's properties a few miles away, until her wedding, but it was here Stephen was bringing her first. He wanted to show her what was to be her home.

As soon as the carriage turned between the high stone gateposts that marked the entrance to the park, Cassandra fell in love with it. The driveway wove its way through a dense forest of trees, and there was an instant impression of seclusion and peace and – strangely – of belonging.

Perhaps it was because Stephen's hand was in her own and he was so obviously happy to be here.

"It has been my home for only eight years," he said, watching the passing scenery and her with equal attention. "I did not grow up to it.

But it felt immediately… /right/ when I first saw it. As if it had been waiting for me all my life."

"Yes." She turned her face from the window to smile at him. "I think – I hope – it has been waiting for me too, Stephen. It seems I have always been waiting for my life to begin, and now at the grand age of twenty-eight I have the odd feeling that it is happening. Not /about/ to happen, but happening. The present, not the future. Have you noticed how so much of our living is done in the future, Stephen, and so is not really living at all?"

It was only with Stephen she could talk in such a way and be sure to be understood. The future had almost always been the only part of her life that had seemed bearable. At times even the future had crashed to a halt, and she had been left without hope. Mired in despair. But no longer. For once in her life she was living the present and enjoying every moment of it.

He squeezed her hand.

"It seems that good things often have to happen at someone else's expense, though," he said. "Jonathan Huxtable had to die at the age of sixteen for me to inherit, and Con had to be illegitimate."

"Jonathan was his brother?" she said.

"He had some sort of… illness," he told her. "Con once told me that his father always called the boy an imbecile. But Con also told me that Jonathan was pure love. Not loving, Cass, but love itself. I wish I had known him."

"So do I," Cassandra said, returning the pressure of his hand. "How did he die?"

"In his sleep," Stephen said. "On the night after his sixteenth birthday. Apparently he had already outlived the span predicted for him by the physicians. Con says Jonathan would have loved me – the one who would take his place when he died. Is it not strange?"

"I think I am beginning to understand," she said, "that love is /always/ strange."

But they had no further chance to explore that idea. The carriage had drawn clear of the trees and Cassandra, moving the side of her head closer to the window, could see the house, a large, square mansion of light gray stone with a dome and a pillared portico and marble steps leading up to the main floor. There was a stone balustrade surrounding what seemed to be a wide terrace before the house, though there was an opening in front for steps leading down to a large parterre garden of flowers and paths and low shrubs.

"Oh," she said, "it is beautiful."

Was it possible that this was to be her home? Her mind touched briefly upon the imposing splendor of Carmel, which she had always found somehow gloomy and oppressive – even during the first six months of her marriage.

But she pushed the memories away. They were of no significance to her any longer. They were the past. This was the present.

"It is, is it not?" Stephen said, sounding both pleased and excited.

"And it is going to have a new countess in two weeks' time."

He had purchased a special license rather than deal with all the bother of banns. Even so he had suggested that they wait two weeks instead of marrying immediately. Perhaps they /ought/ to marry without delay he had said, given the circumstances, but he wanted them to have a wedding to remember, surrounded by their closest family and friends. And he wanted, if she did not mind terribly much, to marry in the small chapel on the grounds of Warren Hall, rather than in London or even at the village church.

Cassandra had not minded the wait, though she had felt her own lack of family and friends. Not a /total/ lack, though. Wesley was coming – he had gone straight to Finchley Park with the duke and Vanessa and would meet her there this evening. And Alice and Mr. Golding, and Mary and William and Belinda, were going to come the day before the wedding.

All of Stephen's family members were coming. So were the duke's mother and his youngest sister and her husband, and Sir Graham and Lady Carling, and Lord Montford's sister with her husband. And Mr. Huxtable, of course. And Sir Humphrey and Lady Dew were coming from Rundle Park near Throckbridge in Shropshire, with their daughters and their husbands, and the vicar of Throckbridge, who had been Stephen's main teacher until he was seventeen.

The Dews, Cassandra learned, had been like a part of the Huxtables' family while they had lived in Throckbridge. They had allowed Stephen to ride the horses from their stables. Vanessa had been married to their younger son for the year before his death from consumption. They considered Vanessa's children to be their grandchildren.

"A new countess," Cassandra said. "The Countess of Merton. I will be very glad to shed my Lady Paget persona, Stephen. It is the only reason I am marrying you, of course."

She looked into his eyes and laughed.

His lips were curved into a smile.

"That is such a lovely sound," he said.

She raised her eyebrows in inquiry.

"Your laughter," he said. "And what it does to your mouth and your eyes and to the whole of your face. I think there has been precious little laughter in your life, Cass. If I have given you that, it is of far more precious value than a name or a title."

And she found herself blinking and then laughing again as two tears spilled over onto her cheeks.

"Perhaps," she said as the carriage began to make its turn onto the terrace and she could see that there was a stone fountain on the part of it that jutted out toward the garden, "it was your young cousin who gave this place its aura of peace and love, Stephen. And perhaps it was you who gave it its air of happiness. And perhaps some kind fate, or angel, has kept me waiting all these years so that I would be ready to come here and be healed. And to heal anyone who ever shares this home with us. I will pass on the peace and the love and happiness to everyone who comes here, Stephen. And to our children."

She almost wished she had not spoken those last words aloud. Terror came rushing at her again – it was never far away.

He wrapped one arm about her, drew her close, and kissed her.

She was daring to trust happiness.

She was daring to trust.

Roger, stretched out on the seat opposite, snuffled in his sleep as the carriage slowed, and then stirred and lifted his head.

Then the carriage drew up before the house, and Stephen helped her alight, and the carriages bringing Margaret and the Earl of Sheringford and their children and Katherine and Lord Montford with their son were coming along behind.

She was home, Cassandra thought. Soon to be surrounded by family.

And with Stephen at her side.

Her golden angel.

It all seemed too much to believe.

Except that she was learning to trust.

Roger padded down from the carriage and lifted his head to pant at her and invite a tickle beneath the chin.

The chapel in the park at Warren Hall was small. It was rarely used now as there was a sizable, comfortable, and picturesque church in the village, and it was only a little more than a mile away from the house.

But the chapel had been traditionally used for family christenings and weddings and funerals, and tradition was important to Stephen, who had come to it late in life. He had spent many hours over the last eight years wandering about the churchyard outside the chapel, reading the headstones of his ancestors buried there, feeling a family affinity with them. There was a time when he had not felt particularly kindly disposed to his great-grandfather, who had cast out his son, Stephen's grandfather, for marrying a woman who was his social inferior, Stephen's grandmother. The estrangement had lasted through two ensuing generations until the senior branch of the family came to an end with Jonathan's death and a search of the junior branch had had to be made to find Stephen.

But family quarrels were sad things. Why perpetuate this one, even with a dead man? The head gardener had been instructed to tend all the family graves regularly.

And Stephen had always dreamed that he would marry at the chapel when the time came, though he had always known that his bride, whoever she turned out to be, might well have other ideas.

Vanessa had married Elliott here.

And he would marry Cassandra here.

The chapel had been decked with purple and white flowers. Candles burned on the altar. All the pews were occupied. There were hushed whispers from the family and friends gathered there. Someone spoke aloud – Nessie and Elliott's Sam – and was shushed to silence. Someone giggled – Meg and Sherry's Sally – and got sharply whispered at for her pains.

Stephen, seated in the front pew, his eyes on the wavering flame of a candle, drew a few steadying breaths. He was nervous, a fact that had taken him completely by surprise this morning since the last two weeks had dragged by and he had thought today would never come. His nose was itching, but he resisted scratching it when he remembered that he had done so a minute or two ago, and perhaps a minute or two before /that/.

Someone was sure to have noticed – Sherry or Monty, most like – and would tease him about it afterward.

He cracked his knuckles instead and then winced when it seemed to him that the sound had filled the chapel. Elliott beside him gave him a sidelong look, in which Stephen read a certain amusement.

It was all very well for old married men to be amused.

And then there was the sound of a carriage approaching outside the chapel, and since all the guests were here, most of them having come on foot, it could only be Cassandra arriving from Finchley Park. Soon there were sounds from the churchyard path outside, someone telling someone else to hang on a minute while he straightened the train of her dress.

And then she was in the doorway and Stephen was on his feet without any memory of actually standing up. But everyone else was standing too, and he heard the echo of the vicar instructing them to do so.

She was wearing a high-waisted, short-sleeved dress of purple satin with an extravagantly flounced train. Daringly, she wore no hat but only purple flowers woven into her red curls.

Stephen's mind searched for a more effective word than /beautiful/ and failed utterly.

For a moment he forgot to breathe. And then it occurred to him to smile, but he discovered that he was already doing so.

Lord, why had no one warned him about wedding days?

Though, come to think of it, both Sherry and Monty had done nothing else all through a breakfast at which Stephen had not eaten a single mouthful. Meg had grown quite cross with Sherry, had she not? She had asked him if he could not see that poor Stephen was already slightly green and did Duncan actually want to make him /vomit/?

He could see Cassandra looking back at him as her brother stepped up beside her, presumably having finished adjusting her train. Her eyes, those enticingly slanted green eyes, looked larger than usual. Her teeth bit down on her lower lip, and Stephen knew she was as nervous as he.

And then she released her lip and smiled.

And he felt so happy that he stopped himself only just in time from laughing out loud.

How odd /that/ would have been.

He had flashing images of seeing her in Hyde Park, so heavily shrouded in black mourning clothes that it was impossible to see her face. And of seeing her at Meg's ball a day later, a vivid siren with her emerald green gown and startling red hair and mask of proud scorn.

And yet surely he had known even then. Surely he had.

He would /surely/ have recognized her anywhere in the whole universe in the whole of eternity.

His love.

Except that /love/ – that mysterious, vast, all-encompassing power – could not possibly be contained in a single word.

She was at his side and they were turning to face the vicar, and Young was giving her hand into the keeping of the man who would cherish it and her through a lifetime and beyond if it proved possible. And the vicar was addressing his dearly beloved in a voice that might have filled a cathedral, and Stephen was vowing to love, honor, and keep her, and she was vowing to love, honor, and obey him, and he was holding his breath as he took the ring from Elliott's damnably steady hand in the hope that he could put it on her finger without dropping it. And then he was smiling at her when he did /not/ drop it, and the vicar was pronouncing them man and wife.

And it occurred to him that he had missed his own wedding service, that it was over, and Cass was his wife, and if he did not lead her to the altar for communion without further delay he might well make an utter ass of himself and whoop for joy or something equally ghastly.

Cass was his /wife/.

He was /married/.

And then, before he knew it, the communion service was over, the register had been signed, they had left the church, smiling to left and right as they went, and everyone was out on the churchyard path, hugging and kissing both Stephen and Cass.

The blue sky was raining rose petals.

And at last Stephen laughed.

The world was a wonderful place, and if it was true that there was no such thing as happily ever after, then at least sometimes there was happiness pure and unalloyed, and one ought to grasp it with both hands and carry it forward to make the hard times more bearable.

Today he was happy, and from the look on her face, so was Cass.

The wedding breakfast, for which several neighbors had joined the wedding guests, had stretched well into the evening. But finally everyone had left Warren Hall. Even those people who had been staying here had now moved to Finchley Park so that the bride and groom might be left alone.

Her bedchamber was square and spacious, Cassandra had discovered. It had a large adjoining dressing room and a cozy sitting room beyond that. A door at the opposite side of the sitting room presumably led to Stephen's dressing room and bedchamber.

They shared a large suite of rooms overlooking the fountain and the flower gardens before the house.

Cassandra, brushing her hair even though her new maid had already brushed it to a bright sheen, looked out on darkness and listened to the soothing sound of the fountain through the open window and waited for Stephen to come.

He was not long. She turned to smile at him as he tapped on her dressing room door and let himself in.

"Cass," he said, coming toward her, his hands reaching out for hers,

"alone at last. I love them all, but I thought they would never leave."

She laughed.

"Your staff would have smirked for a month," she said, "if everyone had left early and we had retired to bed even before it was dark."

He chuckled.

"I daresay you are right," he said. "They will smirk for a month anyway when we do not go down for breakfast before noon."

"/Ah/," she said, "you plan to sleep that late, do you?"

"Who said anything about sleeping?" he asked.

"Ah," she said.

And she released her hands from his and loosened the sash of his dressing gown. He was naked beneath it. She opened it back and moved against him, feeling his warm, strong nakedness against the fine silk of her nightgown.

"Stephen," she said, her mouth against his throat, "you have no regrets?"

He slid his fingers through her hair until his hands cupped her face and lifted it toward his.

"Do you?" he asked.

"Unfair," she said. "I asked first."

"I believe," he said, "that life is made up of constant occurrences of decisions to be made. Where do I go now? What shall I eat now? What shall I do now? And every decision, small or large, leads us inexorably in the direction we choose to take our lives, even if unconsciously When we saw each other in Hyde Park and again at Meg's ball, we faced choices. We had no idea where they would lead us eventually did we? We thought they were leading in one direction, but in reality they were leading here, via numerous other choices and decisions we have made since. I do not regret a single one of them, Cass."

"Fate has led us here, then?" she said.

"No," he said. "Fate can only present the choices. /We/ make the decisions. You might have chosen someone else at Meg's ball. I might have refused to dance with you."

"Oh, no, you could not have done that," she said. "I was too good."

"You were," he admitted, grinning.

"I might have let you go," she said, "when I understood that you would carry on with our liaison only on your own terms."

"Oh, no," he said, "you could not have done that, Cass. I was too good."

"But what are you good for /now/?" she asked him, lowering both her voice and her eyelids. "Only to talk through your wedding night?"

"Well," he said, "since words do not appear to be satisfying you, I had better try action."

They smiled at each other until their smiles faded and he kissed her.

She knew his body. She knew his lovemaking. She knew how he felt inside her. She knew the sight of him and the smell of him and the feel of him.

But she knew nothing, she discovered over the next half hour – and through the night that followed. For she had known him in lust and in guilt, and she had felt his pleasure and her own almost-pleasure.

She had not known him in love.

Not before tonight, their wedding night.

Tonight she recognized his body and his lovemaking, but tonight there was so much more. Tonight there was /him/. And there was /her/. And four separate times there was /them/. Or, since even that word suggested a plurality and therefore a duality, there was the entity they became when they soared over the precipice of climaxing passion together to that place beyond that was not a place and was not any state that could be described in words or even remembered quite clearly afterward – until it happened again.

"Cass," he said sleepily when daylight was already showing its face at the window and a single early bird was already practicing its choral skills from somewhere nearby, "I wish there were a thousand ways to say /I love you/. Or a million."

"Why?" she asked him. "Would you now proceed to say them all? I would be asleep long before you had finished."

He chuckled softly.

"Besides," she said, "I cannot imagine ever growing tired of hearing just those three words."

"I love you," he said, rubbing his nose across hers after propping himself on one elbow.

"I know," she told him before he rolled onto her and showed her again without words.

"I love you," she said afterward.

But he only grunted sleepily and was asleep.

Another bird, or perhaps the same one, was singing to someone else too, someone who was already up in that early dawn. He had not spent the night at Warren Hall. Nor had he gone to Finchley Park with the rest of the family. How could he when he and Elliott had scarcely spoken to each other for many years?

Elliott had accused him of stealing from Jonathan, who was easy prey.

And Elliott had accused him of debauchery, of having fathered the bastard children of a number of women in the neighborhood.

Elliott, who had once been his closest friend and partner in crime.

Constantine had never denied the accusations.

He never would.

He had spent the night at the home of Phillip Grainger, an old friend of his in the neighborhood.

He stood now in the churchyard outside the little chapel where Stephen had married Lady Paget the day before. There were still rose petals dotted about on the path and grass, hurled at the bride and groom by the children.

He stood at the foot of one of the graves, looking down broodingly at it. His long black cloak and tall hat, worn against the chill of the early morning, gave him an almost sinister appearance.

"Jon," he said softly, "it seems that the family will go on into another generation. Nobody has admitted anything yet, but I would wager a bundle that Lady Merton is already with child. I think she is decent after all.

I know /he/ is, though I used to wish he weren't. You would like them both."

A few rose petals, browning around the edges, littered the grave. Con stooped down to remove them, and he brushed one petal off the headstone.

"No," he said, "you would /love/ them, Jon. You always did love extravagantly and indiscriminately. You even loved me."

He did not come often to Warren Hall these days. It was a little painful, if the truth were known. But sometimes he yearned for Jon. Even for this, all that was left of his brother – the slight mound of a grave and a headstone that had already darkened and mossed slightly with age.

Jon would have been twenty-four now.

"I'll be on my way," Con said. "Until next time, then, Jon. Rest in peace."

And he turned and strode away without looking back.

THE world had been reduced to a cocoon of pain and a few blessed moments of respite in which her breath might be caught but no real rest could be grabbed.

It had been a long and hard labor, but Margaret had not stopped assuring her for hours on end that this was the very reason the birthing of a baby was called /labor/.

"Men know /nothing/," she had said after Stephen had come for one of his frequent visits but had put up no great resistance to being shooed out again. "They cannot even bear to /watch/ pain."

Perhaps, Cassandra had thought from deep within her cocoon, pain was difficult to watch when one had caused it but could do nothing either to stop it or to share it. But she did not spare many thoughts to such sympathies. She spared more to the conviction that she would not allow Stephen near her /ever again/. /Please, please, please, please, please/, she thought as she drew breath against another onslaught of pain that tightened her abdomen unbearably and ripped through her womb.

Please /what/?

Stop the pain?

Let this baby be born?

Let it be born alive?

And healthy? /Please, please/.

The seven months of her marriage had been almost unbelievably happy ones.

They had also been filled with terror.

Her terror.

And Stephen's, always masked with a brisk cheerfulness.

"She is doing well." The calm voice of the physician, who was a man and knew /nothing/.

"She is at the point of exhaustion." Margaret's voice.

"She is almost there." The physician.

And then a deep breath and a – /Please, please/.

An unbearable urge to push. And a pushing and a pushing until a voice urged her to stop, to conserve her energy until there was another contraction. And then – /Oh, please, please/.

A frantic, unending pushing until all the breath was gone from her body and the world was pain and pushing – And a gushing that suddenly released all the unbearable pressure and gave her a moment to breathe and – A baby's cry.

Oh.

"Oh," she said. "Oh."

"You have a son, my lady," the physician said. "And he appears to have ten toes and ten fingers and a nose and two eyes and a mouth that is going to give you notice for some time to come whenever he is hungry."

And Margaret was dashing from the room to tell Stephen, who nevertheless was not allowed inside the room until she had returned to wash the baby and bundle him inside a warm blanket and set him in his mother's arms while she cleaned both Cassandra and the bed and then stood back to smile at mother and child with flushed satisfaction.

Margaret and the physician left the room while Cassandra gazed in wonder at the red, ugly, beautiful face of her son.

Her /son/. /Where was Stephen/?

And then he was there, white-faced, with dark circles beneath his eyes as if /he/ had been in hard labor for many hours. As in a way he probably had, poor thing. He was approaching the bed as though he was afraid to come closer, his eyes on hers. As though he was also afraid to look at the blanket-bound bundle.

"Cass," he said. "Are you all right?"

"I am tired enough to sleep for a month." She smiled at him. "Meet our son."

And he leaned closer, his eyes wide with wonder, and gazed downward.

"Could anyone be more beautiful?" he asked after a few awed moments.

He was looking with a father's eyes – as she was with a mother's. Both Margaret and the physician had assured her before they left that the slight distortion of the baby's head would right itself within a few hours, a day or two at most.

"No," she said. "No one could."

"He is crying," he said. "Ought you to do something, Cass?"

"I think," she said, "he wants his papa to hold him."

Or his mother to offer a breast.

"Dare I?" He looked terrified.

But she lifted the bundle, which seemed to weigh nothing at all, and Stephen took their son from her, and he stopped crying immediately.

"Well," she said, "so much for what he owes his mama."

But Stephen was laughing softly, and Cassandra, relaxed and exhausted against her pillows, gazed up at him. At them.

Her two men.

Her two loves.

And perhaps, after a good long rest – a good /long/ rest – she would allow Stephen to touch her again after all.

Perhaps she would.

Well, /of course/ she would.

He was looking down at her, his eyes so full of love that they almost glowed.

"Thank you," he said. "Thank you, my love."

She had a /child/, she thought as she gazed back at him, too exhausted to do anything more than allow her lips to curve upward at the corners.

She had a living child.

And a life filled with love.

And hope.

She had Stephen.

What more could she possibly ask for?

She had her own private angel, after all.