Seducing an Angel

/8/

LADY Carling's at-home was for ladies only. Stephen wondered as he lifted the door knocker and let it fall back against the door if a large number of them would still be in the drawing room or if by half past four most of them would have taken their leave. Perhaps Lady Paget would already have left in an attempt to avoid driving in the park with him.

Perhaps she had not even come, though that would be foolish of her if she hoped to be received ever again by at least some of her peers. She must surely have come to London with a longer-term plan than merely finding a protector to help pay her bills for a few months, until the end of the Season.

Carling's butler took Stephen's card up to the drawing room, and Stephen caught the buzz of feminine conversation as the door opened upstairs and then closed again. /Some/ of the guests were still here.

"Lady Carling will be pleased to receive you, my lord," the butler said when he returned, and Stephen followed him back upstairs.

Many men would have been considerably disconcerted at the prospect of walking in on a company comprising exclusively ladies. Stephen was not among them. Most ladies, he found, were very willing to tease and laugh when they had one man at their mercy, and Stephen was always happy to oblige them and to tease and laugh right back at them. He was still somewhat out of humor today, it was true, but he had pushed most of his anger and irritability away while walking home from White's for luncheon. He could not remain angry for any protracted length of time.

Or at least, he /would/ not. No one would be granted that power over him.

He had apologized to Philbin, and his valet had made a stiff bow of acceptance and in so doing had spotted a virtually invisible film of dust over Stephen's boots, acquired when he had had the effrontery to /walk/ home in them when those particular boots were meant to be worn only indoors or inside a carriage, as his lordship very well knew. Did his lordship know /nothing/ of the damage such dust could do to the leather? And would his lordship remove them /right now/ before the damage was irreparable and Philbin found it quite impossible to hold up his head before the other servants for the rest of his days?

Stephen had sat meekly down and allowed his boots to be pulled off, and the relationship had been restored to a happy normality.

Carling's butler opened the drawing room doors with a flourish and announced Stephen in deep, ringing tones that brought first silence to the room and then a burst of flutterings and twitterings from the ladies gathered there.

Lady Carling was on her feet and coming toward him, one hand outstretched.

"Lord Merton," she said. "How delightful."

"Never tell me, ma'am," he said, taking her hand in his and looking at her in mock horror, "that your at-home is only for ladies. And all the way here I have been composing an abject apology for being so late arriving."

"Well, in that case, Lord Merton," she said, "I will hear it anyway. We will /all/ hear it."

There was a chorus of assent from the ladies gathered there.

"Well, you see," he said, "I thought it would be mainly Carling's friends who would be here, and so I drove through the park on my way in the hope of brightening my afternoon by seeing some of my favorite ladies before I came. And when I found the park almost deserted, I drove over to Bond Street to see if any of them were /there/, lured by the shops. Then I tried Oxford Street, but all to no avail. And /now/ I discover that every single one of the ladies I most wished to see has been here all the time."

His outrageous flatteries were met with derision and laughter, and he looked about at them all, a grin on his face. All three of his sisters were there. So was Lady Paget, seated beside Nessie. She was smartly dressed in green again, though it was a sage green today instead of emerald. Her clothes must be one of the few assets she had been allowed to keep after her widowhood. She was wearing no jewelry, just as she had not been last evening.

She did not join in the laughter and teasing of the other ladies. But she did smile – that faint, slightly mocking smile she had worn at the ball last evening and in her bedchamber early this morning. It was a smile he had quickly realized was part of a mask she wore to cover any suggestion of vulnerability she might be feeling.

The sun shining through the window was on the side of her face and in her hair. She looked vividly, almost shockingly beautiful.

"Ladies," Lady Carling said, linking an arm through his, "shall we send him away again? Or shall we keep him?"

"Keep him," a few ladies said, amid laughter.

"It would be a pity, Ethel," the dowager Lady Sinden said, raising a lorgnette to her eyes and regarding Stephen through it, "to doom our poor Lord Merton to wandering the streets and haunting the park for the next hour while he waits for his /favorite/ ladies to leave your drawing room. It would be best to keep him here and thus keep him happy. Is it your curricle you have been driving half over London, Merton? Or a more sensible carriage?"

"My curricle, ma'am," he said.

"Then you cannot take /me/ riding in the park afterward," she said,

"even though I am sure I must be your /very/ favorite among the present company. I stopped riding in curricles when I turned seventy a number of years ago. I can get up into them, but I cannot get down out of them without two stout footmen having to lift me bodily down."

"They must be weaklings of footmen even if they /are/ stout, ma'am,"

Stephen said, still grinning at her. "I could lift you down with one arm. You can weigh no more than a feather."

"Impudent puppy," she said with a bark of laughter that set her three chins to swaying.

"But alas, ma'am," he said, "I cannot prove it to you today. I have come because I have already persuaded another lady to drive in the park with me, and she is here."

"And who is the fortunate lady?" Lady Carling asked as she drew him down to sit beside her on a sofa. "Did I promise such a thing last evening and have simply forgotten? But how could any lady /possibly/ forget such a thing?"

She leaned forward to the tea tray in order to pour his tea.

"Alas, ma'am," he said, "Sir Graham was at your side and I dared not even ask. He might have throttled me. Lady Paget has agreed to drive with me."

There was a small silence in the room.

"Stephen has a sporting curricle," his sister Kate said, "a quite terrifying-looking beast. But he is a notable whip, Lady Paget. You will be quite safe with him."

"It had not occurred to me," Lady Paget said in her low, velvet voice,

"that I might not be."

Her eyes met Stephen's as he raised his cup to his lips, and for a moment he felt a return of this morning's anger. She was beautiful and she was desirable and she had him tangled in her web, like a spider with a fly. An ugly image. But an apt one.

"And it is a beautiful day for a drive," Meg said. "I thought it would rain this morning, but now, look, there is not a cloud in the sky. I do hope this weather bodes well for the summer."

"It is more likely, Lady Sheringford," Mrs. Craven said, shaking her head and looking mournful, "that we will suffer for this fine spell all through July and August."

The conversation fell into comfortably familiar channels until Stephen had finished his tea and got to his feet.

"Thank you for admitting me to your party, ma'am," he said to Lady Carling. "But if you will excuse Lady Paget and me, we will take our leave now. My horses will be getting frisky."

He bowed to all the ladies and smiled at each of his sisters – and held out an arm to Lady Paget, who had also risen to her feet. She slipped one hand beneath his elbow as she thanked Lady Carling for her hospitality, and they left the room together.

There would be no great rush of conversation after the door closed behind them, Stephen realized – his sisters were there. But there would be a great deal of it over various dinner tables this evening and in other drawing rooms tomorrow.

And yet, if he was not completely mistaken, a few invitations would soon begin to trickle into Lady Paget's house. A few hostesses would realize the advantages of having her at their entertainments before the novelty of her notoriety had begun to wear off. And by that time invitations might be sent to her as a matter of course.

"It is a smart curricle," she said as they stepped out of doors and the groom who had been walking his team back and forth in the street brought the vehicle up to the steps. "I wish you would take me directly home, though, Lord Merton."

"We will go through the park, as planned," he said. "It will be crowded at this hour."

"My point exactly," she said.

He took her hand in his, but she did not need any other assistance to ascend to the high seat. He went around the vehicle and climbed up beside her before taking the ribbons from the groom's hand.

"Are you so eager, then," she said, "to flaunt your new mistress before all your male friends, Lord Merton?"

He turned his head to look at her.

"You choose to insult me, Lady Paget," he said. "You will find me more circumspect, I hope. In private you are my /lover/. It is a relationship that concerns no one but you and me. In public you are Lady Paget, an acquaintance, perhaps even my friend, whom I choose to escort about town from time to time. And that description applies when you are with me and when you are not. Even when I am alone with my /male friends/."

"You are angry," she said.

"Yes," he agreed. "I am angry. Or, rather, I /was/ angry. I daresay you did not mean to insult me. Are you ready to go?"

He smiled at her.

"I believe," she said, "we would both look remarkably foolish if we were to sit here from now until darkness falls, Lord Merton. I am ready."

He gave his horses the signal to start.

Just two days ago, Cassandra thought as the curricle turned in to Hyde Park, she had walked here quite anonymously with Alice, and she had gone almost unnoticed beneath her heavy widow's veil. It had been a rare treat. She had /always/ been noticed, even as a gawky, freckled child with hair that reminded people of carrots. She had been noticed as a growing girl, when her developing body had made her willowy and her freckles had begun to fade and people had stopped comparing her hair to carrots. And she had been noticed as a woman. She knew that her height and her figure and her hair drew men's eyes and held them wherever she went.

Her beauty – if that was what her appearance added up to – had not always been an asset. Indeed, it rarely had been. Sometimes – most times, in fact – it was something to hide behind. Her smile – that half-scornful, half-arrogant expression that lifted the corners of her lips and went together with a raised chin and languidly observant eyes – was no new thing. It kept other people from encroaching too closely upon the person who lurked within.

This morning the Earl of Merton had called it a mask.

Last evening her beauty had been an asset. It had got her a wealthy protector when she quite desperately needed one. Though she wished now she had chosen someone else, someone who would be content with visiting her stealthily at night for one purpose only and paying her regularly for services rendered.

"Why did you come to fetch me from Lady Carling's," she asked him, "when doing so forced you into making a very public announcement that you were going to drive me in the park?"

"I believe," he said, "that every member of the beau monde would know by this evening whether I had come to Lady Carling's or waited for you to return home first."

"And yet," she said, "you are angry with me. You were angry this morning, and you are angry again this afternoon. You do not really like me, do you?"

It was a very foolish question to ask. Did she want this liaison to end almost before it had begun? Was it necessary that he like her? Or that he pretend to? Was it not enough that he desired her? That he would pay to satisfy that desire?

"Lady Paget," he asked her, "do /you/ like /me/?"

Everyone else did. He was, she suspected, society's darling. And it was not just his extraordinarily handsome, angelic looks. It was also his charm, his ease of manner, his sunny demeanor, his… Oh, that extra something that no words could adequately describe. Charisma? Vitality?

Kindness? Genuineness? His beauty and popularity did not appear to have made him conceited.

He had taken his beauty and used it to make people his friends, to make them smile and feel good about themselves. She had taken her beauty and snared for herself first a husband and now a lover. He was a giver and she was a taker. /Was/ he?

Was /she/?

"I do not even know you," she said, "except in the biblical sense. How can I know if I like you or not?"

He turned his head to gaze very directly into her face – and she realized how very close they were, crammed together on the seat of his sporting curricle. She could smell his cologne.

"Exactly," he said. "I have no idea either if I will like you or not, Cassandra. But it seems strange to me that last evening you set out deliberately to seduce me while today you seem intent upon getting rid of me. Is that what you want?"

She wished his eyes were not so blue or his gaze so intense. There was no escaping blue eyes. Blue eyes made her uncomfortable. They drew her in deep and in so doing stripped her of everything she most wanted to keep in place – /not/ her clothes, but… Well, they were fanciful thoughts, and she had never had them before. She had never noticed before now that she disliked blue eyes. Probably she did not. It was just /his/ blue eyes.

He had called her Cassandra.

"What I want," she said, smiling at him and lowering her voice, "is /you/, Stephen. In my house, in my bedchamber, in my bed. All this is quite unnecessary."

She swept her arm about to indicate the park and the afternoon crush of carriages and horses and pedestrians they were fast approaching.

"I have always thought," he said, "that a relationship between a man and a woman – even that between a man and his lover – ought to be about more than just what happens between them in bed. Otherwise it is not a relationship at all."

She laughed at him, and something tugged at her heart and was instantly quelled.

"If you believe sex is not enough," she said, "then you have not yet spent enough time in /my/ bed, Stephen. You will learn to change your thinking. Will you come tonight?"

She was not sure she had ever said the word /sex/ aloud before now. It was extraordinarily difficult to say.

"Do you wish me to come?" he asked her.

"But of course," she said. "How else am I to earn my living?"

He turned his head to look at her again and she read in his eyes not the desire of a man who looked forward to bedding his mistress again tonight but something that looked almost like pain. Or perhaps it was merely reproach.

He did not truly believe, surely, that they could ever be /lovers/. He could not be /that/ naive or unrealistic.

It was too late for further private conversation. It was partly a relief – she was wishing more than ever that she had chosen another man last evening, someone less innocent, less /decent/, someone more earthy, someone who would accept the connection between them simply for what it was – sex for money, regular sex for a regular salary. Someone who had not accused her of wearing a mask.

Even /thinking/ the word /sex/ was difficult.

Partly it was no relief at all to be among the crowd, to be on display as she had been last evening but even more so if that were possible. She was perched on a seat above most of the crowd. It was virtually impossible for anyone /not/ to see her.

She wondered if it was deliberate on Lord Merton's part, and guessed that it was. He surely had other carriages that he might have used. And yet he had not brought her to flaunt before his male acquaintances. He had been angry when she had suggested it.

He smiled cheerfully at everyone, touching his hat to the ladies, calling greetings, stopping to exchange a few words whenever someone showed a willingness to talk to /him/. Cassandra guessed it was far fewer people than usual. But whenever someone did stop him, he introduced her, and she inclined her head and sometimes spoke.

As with most of the guests in Lady Carling's drawing room, some people were willing to speak with her, Cassandra found, even if only to ask her how she did. But of course, she had had Lady Carling to sponsor her there, and she had the Earl of Merton here. There had been the Earl and Countess of Sheringford last evening.

Perhaps there were always a few kind people. Perhaps her cynicism had become too extreme. Perhaps she need not be the total outcast she had expected to be. Or perhaps now she was a curiosity to whom some people could not resist drawing close. Once the novelty had worn off, so would her welcome.

It was hard /not/ to be cynical.

It did not matter. In many ways she had always been an outcast.

Predictably, it was mostly gentlemen who stopped to speak with Lord Merton and therefore to be introduced to her. And Cassandra looked at them all and wondered if she might have chosen more wisely last evening.

But how could one choose wisely when one knew absolutely nothing about the man concerned except perhaps his name and the fact that he was probably wealthy? Though how could one know even that when so many gentlemen lived beyond their means and were up to their eyebrows and beyond with debt?

She had thought she had chosen a husband wisely. She had been eighteen then. She was twenty-eight now. Perhaps the only wisdom she had gained in the intervening years was to know that when one chose a man to give security and stability to one's life, one ought to choose a protector rather than a husband.

Freedom was worth more than anything else of value life had to offer.

Yet for a woman it was so very elusive.

Baron Montford came to exchange pleasantries with Cassandra and to chat with his brother-in-law for a few minutes. He had three other gentlemen with him, including Mr. Huxtable, who still looked somewhat satanic to Cassandra. He looked very directly at her with his dark eyes while the other gentlemen talked and laughed. At some time in his life his nose had been broken and not set quite straight, she could see. She was very glad she had not chosen /him/ last night. She had the feeling that his eyes could see through her skull to the hair at the back of her head.

And then, just as those gentlemen were moving on in the opposite direction from the one the curricle was taking and Cassandra looked around again, she saw a familiar face – that of an auburn-haired, good-looking young man, who was sitting in an open barouche beside a pretty young lady in pink. He was smiling at something she was saying to a couple of scarlet-clad officers on horseback.

The Earl of Merton's curricle was almost upon them. The officers rode on, the young lady smiled at the smiling young man, and they both turned their heads to look about at the crowd.

Their eyes alit upon Cassandra at almost the same moment. The two carriages were almost abreast of each other. Without thought Cassandra smiled warmly and half leaned forward.

"/Wesley/!" she cried.

The young lady put both hands up to her mouth and turned her head sharply away – as several others had done to a lesser degree during the past fifteen minutes or so. The young man's smile faded, and his eyes regarded Cassandra with dismay, wavered, and then looked away from her.

"Move on," he said with some impatience to the coachman, who really had nowhere to go until all the carriages in front of him moved on too.

The Earl of Merton had a little more space in front of his curricle.

Even so, it seemed to take an excruciatingly long time for the two vehicles to have completely passed each other.

"Someone you know?" Lord Merton asked quietly.

"Take me home," she said. "Please. I have had enough."

It took him a little while to draw free of the crowd, but at last they were moving at a faster pace along a path that was blessedly free of much other traffic.

"Young, was it not?" he said. "Sir Wesley Young? I have only a slight acquaintance with him."

"I would not know," she said foolishly, spreading her hands in her lap.

"I have never seen him before."

"He just /looked/ like a Wesley, then, did he?" He glanced across at her, smiling. "Don't let him worry you. Giving the cut direct is something some members of the /ton/ delight in doing. Many others have /not/ given it. I believe you will find more and more people accepting you and treating you with open good manners as the days go on."

"Yes," she said. And she watched her hands begin to tremble and then shake. She curled one into a hard fist and gripped the handrail beside her with the other. She clamped her teeth hard together so that they would not chatter.

"Ah," he said as they approached the park entrance at Marble Arch, and for a moment his gloved hand covered hers on her lap, "you really /do/ know him, then."

"My brother," she said, and clamped her teeth together again.

He had come to visit her a few times during her marriage. He had come to the funeral last year. And he had hugged her tightly afterward and assured her that he did not for a moment believe that she had had anything to do with the death. He had told her he loved her and always would. He had urged her to return to London with him, to live with him until she was over her mourning and grief and was healed enough to return home to live at the dower house.

And then, after she had said no and he had gone, he had written to her – twice. And then suddenly silence, even though she had continued to write to /him/. Until a month ago, when she had written to tell him that her life had become so intolerable that she had to leave, that she would have to impose upon his good nature until she had her life in order and somehow found a way to move on. He had written back then to tell her that she must on no account come to London since her notoriety had preceded her. Besides, he would be unable to offer her any help in the immediate future as he had promised friends to travel to Scotland with them to explore the Highlands. He expected to be gone for at least a year. He was allowing the lease on his rooms to lapse.

He loved her, Wesley had assured her in that final letter. But it was impossible for him to change his plans – too many other people would be inconvenienced. And Cassie /must not/ – he had underlined the words twice and so heavily that the ink had splattered into tiny blots above and below – come to London. He did not want her to be hurt.

"Your brother," Lord Merton said. "You were a Young, then?"

"Yes," she said.

He turned his team out onto the street, slowing to avoid a crossing sweep, who jumped back out of the way and then reached out to pluck out of the air the coin Stephen threw.

"I am sorry," he said.

That she was a Young? Or that her own brother had just given her the cut direct? Or both?

It was only after the funeral, of course, that things had got really nasty, that the accusations had started to fly, that /murder/ had been spoken of rather /than accident/.

Cassandra wanted to be at home. She wanted to be in her own room, the door firmly shut behind her, the bedcovers over her body and her head.

She wanted to sleep – deeply and dreamlessly.

"You need not apologize for something you did not do," she said, raising her chin and speaking as haughtily as she was able. "I was surprised to see him, that is all. I thought he was in Scotland. I daresay something happened to cause him to change his mind."

Gentlemen did not go touring Scotland during the spring, when the whole of the fashionable world was in London for the Season. And gentlemen who were really not very wealthy at all did not go touring for a whole year.

Gentlemen who were traveling in a group would not find it difficult to excuse one of their number who needed to change his plans because of a pressing family concern.

She surely had not believed him when she read his letter – so much shorter and terser than the letters he had used to write. She had chosen to believe because the alternative was too painful.

Now she could disbelieve no longer.

"Tell me about him," Lord Merton said.

She laughed.

"I daresay, Lord Merton," she said, "you know him far better than I.

Perhaps /you/ ought to tell /me/ about him."

The streets seemed unusually crowded. Their progress was slow. Or perhaps it only seemed that way because she was so desperate to be home and alone.

He did not say anything.

"Our mother died giving birth to him," she said. "I was five years old, and I played mother to him from that day forward. I gave him something he would have lacked otherwise – undivided and total affection and attention. Hugs and kisses and endless monologues. And he gave me something, someone, to love in place of my mother. We adored each other, which is unusual in a brother and sister, I believe. But though I had a governess from a very young age, and though Wesley was sent to school eventually, we clung to each other all through our growing years – or until my marriage when I was eighteen and he was thirteen, anyway. Our father was so often gone."

He had been a compulsive and notorious gambler. Their fortunes had fluctuated from day to day. There was never any fixed home or security, even in the good times. There had always been the knowledge, understood even by young children, that desperate times were just the turn of a card away.

"I am sorry," Lord Merton said again, and Cassandra realized that he was slowing before her house. She had not even noticed turning into Portman Street.

He secured the ribbons, jumped down from his seat, and came around the curricle to lift her down to the pavement.

"You have nothing to be sorry for," she said again. "No love is ever unconditional, Lord Merton. And no love is ever eternal. If you learn nothing else from me, learn that. It may save you from some pain and heartache in the future."

He took her hand in his and raised it to his lips.

"May I expect you tonight?" she asked him.

"Yes," he said. "I have some commitments this evening, but I will come afterward if I may."

"/If you may/." She smiled rather scornfully at him. "I am yours whenever you choose, Lord Merton. You are paying well enough for me."

She saw his lips tighten and understood what she was doing to herself.

She was showing him only darkness. Yet he was all light. And if light was stronger than darkness – though she was not at all convinced that it was – then it would not take him long to draw away from the aura of gloom she was no doubt casting over him.

She smiled a little differently, with facial muscles that were stiff with disuse.

"And if I may throw some of your own words from this morning back at you," she said, "you are mine whenever I choose. I choose tonight. I look forward to it with the greatest pleasure. I look forward to giving /you/ pleasure. And I will. That is a promise. I cannot bear to take without giving in equal measure, you see."

He stepped up to the door and rattled the knocker against it.

"I shall see you later, then," he said. "Think of those who have been kind to you today. Forget those who have not."

She held on to her smile. She added a sparkle to her eyes.

"I shall be too busy thinking of just one person," she said. "I shall think of no one but you."

The door opened and Mary looked out. Belinda was clinging to her skirt and peeping out from behind it. Roger came padding past them, bobbing down the steps on his three legs. He rubbed against her, his tongue lolling. He looked at the Earl of Merton and let out a token woof, which would not have scared a mouse within two feet of him.

Lord Merton looked from one to another of them, rubbed Roger's head briefly, touched the brim of his hat, and strode around his curricle to climb into the seat again. Cassandra watched him drive along the street.

"Is that /him/, my lady?" Mary asked rather stiffly.

Cassandra looked at her in some surprise. But there was no keeping anything from servants, even when there was a houseful of them.

"The Earl of Merton?" she said. "Yes."

Mary said no more and Cassandra swept past her into the house. It was a relief not to see Alice waiting there for her. She hurried upstairs to her room, Roger bobbing along beside her.