“Yes?” Tom prompted softly as she hesitated.
“You bought an entire newspaper business … for my sake?”
Tom thought for a long moment before answering. Now his voice was different than she’d ever heard it, quiet and even a little shaken. “There are no limits to what I would do for you.”
Cassandra was speechless.
As she sat there in helpless silence, she realized that for once, no one else in the family was certain what to do either. They were all dumbfounded by Tom’s statement, as well as the dawning understanding of why he was there.
As Tom beheld the row of blank faces before him, a crooked, self-mocking smile emerged. He shoved his hands in his pockets and paced a little. “I wonder,” he ventured after a pause, “if it might be possible for Lady Cassandra and I to—”
“Absolutely not,” Lady Berwick said firmly. “No more unchaperoned conversations with … gentlemen.” A deliberate pause before the last word implied her doubt as to whether it applied to him.
“Severin,” Devon said, his expression implacable, “Cassandra has endured enough for one day. Whatever you wish to say to her can wait.”
“No,” Cassandra said anxiously. She was well aware of Devon’s opinions about Tom, that although he was worthy as a friend, he would be an unacceptable husband. But after what Tom had just done for her, she couldn’t let her family send him away so abruptly—it would be rude and ungrateful. And although she still remembered Devon’s assessment of Tom’s character, she didn’t agree with it now.
Not entirely, at any rate.
Trying to sound dignified, she said, “At least allow me to thank Mr. Severin for his kindness.” She slid a pleading glance to Kathleen behind Lady Berwick’s back.
“Perhaps,” Kathleen suggested diplomatically, “Cassandra and Mr. Severin could talk at the other end of the library while we remain here?”
Lady Berwick relented with a reluctant bob of her head.
Devon let out a quiet sigh. “No objections,” he muttered.
Cassandra rose on weak legs and shook out the folds from her skirts. She went with Tom to the other half of the library, where rows of tall, multipaned windows bracketed a glass door that opened to a side entrance of the house.
Tom drew her to a corner, where a slant of weak light from the pebble-colored sky came through the windows. Lightly his fingers came to her arm, just above the elbow, a careful pressure she barely felt through the sleeve.
“How are you?” he asked gently.
Had he started any other way, she might have been able to maintain her composure. But that simple question, and the wealth of concern and tenderness in his gaze, caused the blank, sick feeling to melt away, far too fast. Cassandra tried to answer, but no sound emerged: She could only breathe in quick, shallow pulls. In the next moment, she shocked both of them, and undoubtedly everyone else in the library, by bursting into tears. Mortified, she put her hands over her face.
In the next moment, she felt him pulling her into a deep embrace. His voice was low and soothing in her ear. “No … no … it’s all right … easy, now. My sweet darling. Poor buttercup.”
She choked on a sob, and her nose trickled. “H-handkerchief,” she wheezed.
Somehow Tom deciphered the muffled word. He eased her away just far enough to reach into his coat, and produced a folded square of white linen. She took it and swabbed her eyes, and blew her nose. To her relief, Tom pulled her close again. “Do I really need to have an audience for this?” she heard him ask irritably over her head. After a moment, he said, “Thank you,” although he didn’t sound all that grateful.
Gathering that her family was leaving the library, Cassandra rested against him.
“You’re shaking,” Tom exclaimed softly. “Sweetheart … you’ve been through hell, haven’t you?”
“It’s been h-horrid,” she sniffled. “So humiliating. I’ve already been uninvited to a dinner and a ball. I can’t believe Lord Lambert would behave so ab-bominably and spread lies about me, and people would believe him so easily!”
“Shall I kill him for you?” Tom asked, sounding alarmingly sincere.
“I’d rather you didn’t,” she said in a watery voice, and blew her nose again. “It’s not nice to murder people, even if they deserve it, and it wouldn’t make me feel better.”
“What would make you feel better?” Tom’s tone was gentle and interested, his hands comforting as they moved over her.
“Just this,” she said with a shuddering sigh. “Just hold me.”
“For as long as you want. I’ll do anything for you. Anything at all. I’m here, and I’ll take care of you. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
Sometimes there were words a woman needed to hear, even if she didn’t believe them.
“Thank you for coming to me,” she whispered.
“Always.”
The warmth of his lips strayed across her face, absorbing the taste of her tears. Blindly she lifted her mouth, wanting more of the soft, tantalizing pressure. He gave it to her slowly, gently parting her lips. Breathing in unsettled sighs, she reached around his neck. His kiss shaped and stroked and teased, settling deeper into her response.
Her fingers laced into the clean, satiny locks of his hair, urging his head down over hers, wanting more pressure, more intimacy. He gave it to her, in a kiss so full and famished, it made her weak, heat pulsing in every limb and collecting at the tips of her fingers and toes. It felt like something she could die from.
A tremor went through Tom’s frame. He crushed his lips amid the disheveled locks of her hair, his breath rushing down to her scalp like bursts of steam. She twisted, trying to recapture his mouth, but he resisted. “I’ve wanted you for so long,” he said gruffly. “There hasn’t been anyone for me, Cassandra. Ever since—No, wait. Before I say anything else—You owe me nothing, do you understand? I would have leaped at any chance to expose Lord Ripon as a lying fraud, even if you hadn’t been involved.”
“I’m still grateful,” Cassandra managed to say.
“God help me, don’t be grateful.” Tom took an unsteady breath. “I’ll hold you ’til the end of time, if that’s all you want from me. But there’s so much more I could do for you. I would treasure you. I would—” He broke off, leaning so close she felt as if she were drowning in the tropical azure and ocean green of his eyes. “Marry me, Cassandra—and we’ll tell them all to go to hell.”
Chapter 16
AS TOM WAITED FOR her answer, he gently framed Cassandra’s face between his hands. His thumbs stroked the fine-grained skin of her cheeks, delicately mottled with pink in the aftermath of tears. Her lashes were long, wet spikes, like the rays of stars.
“Tell who to go to hell?” she asked in confusion.
“The world.” It occurred to Tom that as far as marriage proposals went, his might have been expressed a bit better. “Let me reword that—” he began, but she had already pulled away from him. He swore quietly.
Cassandra went to a nearby bookcase and stared fixedly at a row of leather-bound volumes. “We’ve already come to an understanding of why marriage wouldn’t work for us,” she said unsteadily.
Tom knew she wasn’t in the best condition to have this discussion. Not by half. For that matter, he wasn’t either. But he was fairly certain waiting would gain him nothing, nor would it help her.
His brain instantly began collating a list of arguments. “I’ve decided it would work for us after all. Circumstances have changed.”
“Not mine,” Cassandra countered. “No matter what’s happened, or what anyone says, marriage isn’t my only choice.”
“You were discussing it with Ripon,” Tom said, annoyed.
Turning to face him, Cassandra rubbed her forehead in a brief, weary gesture. “I don’t want to quarrel with you. One might as well try to face down an oncoming locomotive.”
Realizing his demeanor was too combative, Tom softened his voice and let his arms relax to his sides. “It wouldn’t be a qu
arrel,” he said innocently, reasonably. “I just want the same chance to make my case that you gave to Lord Ripon.”
A corner of Cassandra’s mouth curled with reluctant amusement. “You’re trying to appear as harmless as a lamb. But we both know you’re not.”
“I have lamblike moments,” Tom said. At her dubious glance, he insisted, “I’m having one right now. I’m one hundred percent lamb.”
Cassandra shook her head. “I’m truly grateful for your offer, but I have no interest in a hectic, fast-paced life in the middle of the world’s largest city, with a husband who can never love me.”
“That’s not what I’m offering,” Tom said swiftly. “At least, it’s not all I’m offering. You should at least find out more about what you’d be turning down.” Catching sight of the abandoned chairs and place settings on the other side of the library, he exclaimed, “Tea. Let’s have tea, while I mention a few points for you to consider.”
Cassandra continued to look skeptical.
“All you have to do is listen,” Tom coaxed. “Only for as long as it takes to drink one cup of tea. You can do that for me, can’t you? Please?”
“Yes,” Cassandra said reluctantly.
Tom didn’t let his expression change, but he felt a stab of satisfaction. During bargaining talks, he always tried to maneuver the other side into saying yes as early and as often as possible. It made them far more likely to agree to concessions later on.
They went to the settee and low table. Tom remained standing, while Cassandra took some items from the tea cart and arranged a new place setting. She gestured to the place on the settee where she wanted him to sit, and he obeyed immediately.
Cassandra sat beside him and arranged her skirts, and reached for the teapot. With deft, ladylike grace, she poured tea through a tiny silver strainer and stirred milk into the cups with a silver spoon. When the ritual was done, she lifted her own cup to her lips and glanced at him expectantly over the gilded porcelain rim. The sight of her wet eyes launched his heart into chaos. He was nothing but raw nerves and longing. She was everything he’d ever wanted, and against all odds, he had half a chance of winning her if he could just find the right words, the right argument …
“You once told me it was your dream to help people,” he said. “As lady of the manor, you’d be limited to knitting stockings and caps for the poor, and taking baskets of food to local families, which is all fine and proper. But as my wife, you could feed and educate thousands. Tens of thousands. You could help people on a scale you’ve never dared to imagine. I know you don’t care about my money, but you definitely care about what it can do. If you marry me, you might not be part of the select circles of the upper class, but your political and financial power would go far beyond theirs.”
Tom paused, covertly assessing Cassandra’s reaction. She seemed more perplexed than enthusiastic, trying to envision the kind of life he was describing. “Also …” he added meaningfully, “… unlimited shoes.”
Cassandra nodded distractedly, reaching for a cake, but then drew her hand back.
“You’d have freedom as well,” Tom continued. “If you won’t bother me about my comings and goings, I won’t bother you about yours. Write your own rules. Arrange your own schedule. Raise the children however you like. The house will be your territory to run any way you choose.” He paused to glance at her expectantly.
No reaction.
“Furthermore,” Tom said, “I’d give you all the benefits of companionship with none of the difficulties of love. No ups and downs, no turmoil, no thwarted expectations. You’ll never have to worry about your husband falling out of love with you, or falling in love with someone else.”
“But I want to be loved,” Cassandra said, frowning down at her lap.
“Love is the worst thing that can happen to people in novels,” Tom protested. “What good did Heath-cliff and all his passionate foaming at the mouth do for Cathy? Look at Sydney Carton—if he’d loved Lucie just a little less, he would have waited until her husband was guillotined, married her himself, and carried on with his successful law practice. But no, he did the noble thing, because love made him stupid. And then there’s Jane Eyre, an otherwise sensible woman so dazzled by lovemaking, she didn’t happen to notice the scurrying of an arsonous madwoman overhead. There would be far more happy endings in literature if people would just stop falling in love.”
Cassandra’s jaw had gone slack with astonishment. “You’ve been reading novels?”
“Yes. The point is, if you could just overlook this one small issue of my inability to form emotional attachments to other human beings, we’d be very happy together.”
She was still focused on novels. “How many have you read?”
Tom went through them in his head. “Sixteen. No, seventeen.”
“Which author is your favorite?”
He considered the question, weaving his fingers together and flexing them a few times. “So far, either Charles Dickens or Jules Verne, although Gaskell is quite tolerable. Austen’s marriage plots are tedious, Tolstoy is preoccupied with suffering, and nothing by anyone named Brontë bears even a passing resemblance to real life.”
“Oh, but Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester,” Cassandra exclaimed, as if the couple were the epitome of romance.
“Rochester is an irrational arse,” Tom said flatly. “He could have simply told Jane the truth and installed his wife in a decent Swiss clinic.”
Cassandra’s lips twitched. “Your version of the plot may be more sensible, but it’s not nearly as interesting. Have you tried any American novelists?”
“They write books?” Tom asked, and was gratified when Cassandra chuckled. Noticing he had now earned her full attention, he asked slowly, “Why does my novel reading interest you?”
“I’m not exactly sure. I suppose it makes you seem a bit more human. With all your talk of business and contracts, it’s hard to—”
“Contracts,” he exclaimed with a snap of his fingers.
Cassandra, who had been reaching for a tea cake again, jumped a little and snatched her hand back. She gave him a questioning glance.
“We’ll negotiate a contract, you and I,” Tom said. “A mutually agreed-upon set of marital expectations to use as a reference and amend as we go along.”
“You mean … a document drawn up by lawyers … ?”
“No, none of it would be legally enforceable. It would just be for our private use. Most of what we put down would be too personal for anyone else’s eyes.” He had her full attention now. “It will give us both a better idea of what the future will look like,” he continued. “It may help to ease some of your worries. We’ll start designing our life together before it even starts.”
“Design,” she repeated with a faint laugh, regarding him as if he were a lunatic. “As if it were a building or a machine?”
“Exactly. Our own unique arrangement.”
“What if one of us doesn’t uphold the contract?”
“We’ll have to trust each other. That’s the marriage part.” Seeing her steal another glance at the tea cakes, Tom picked up the plate and set it in front of her. “Here, would you like one?”
“Thank you, but no. That is, I would like one, but I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I’m trying to reduce.”
“Reduce what?”
Cassandra blushed and looked annoyed, as if he were being deliberately obtuse. “My weight.”
Tom’s gaze slid over her opulent and spectacularly curved form. Mystified, he shook his head. “Why?”
Cassandra’s color deepened as she admitted, “I’ve gained nearly a stone since Pandora’s wedding.”
“Why does that matter?” Tom asked, increasingly baffled. “Every inch of you is gorgeous.”
“Not to everyone,” she said wryly. “My proportions have expanded past the ideal. And you know how people gossip when one is less than perfect.”
“Why don’t you try not giving a damn?”
>
“Easy for you to say, when you’re so lean.”
“Cassandra,” he said sardonically, “I have two different colored eyes. I know all about the things people say when one is less than perfect.”
“That’s different. No one thinks of eye color as a lack of self-discipline.”
“Your body isn’t an ornament designed for other people’s pleasure. It belongs to you alone. You’re magnificent just as you are. Whether you lose weight or gain more, you’ll still be magnificent. Have a cake if you want one.”
Cassandra looked patently disbelieving. “You’re saying if I gained another stone, or even two stones, on top of this, you’d still find me desirable?”
“God, yes,” he said without hesitation. “Whatever size you are, I’ll have a place for every curve.”
She gave him an arrested stare, as if he’d spoken in a foreign language and she was trying to translate.
“Now,” Tom continued briskly, “about the contract—”
He was caught off guard as Cassandra launched herself at him with enough momentum to knock him off balance and back into the corner of the settee. Her soft mouth fastened to his, her body molding to his. It felt so paralyzingly good that his hands remained suspended in mid-air for one, two, three seconds, before his arms closed around her. Bewildered, he shaped his mouth to hers, and felt the supple flick of her little tongue against his, venturing past his teeth, touching his inner cheek. He went instantly hard, dying with the need to devour, stroke, squeeze, kiss, feel her everywhere. She fit her body into the space between his thighs with an instinctive little wiggle, and he couldn’t stifle a groan as a wave of pleasure nearly unmanned him.
Thank God they were lying down: He couldn’t have stood after that. A white-hot glow had filled his groin, radiating outward in rings of sensation: It would be a miracle if this didn’t end with him disgracing himself. Struggling for a measure of control, he lifted his right leg onto the settee and braced his left foot on the floor for balance. He slid his hands over her body, feeling the delicious shape of her through rustling layers of taffeta and velvet.
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