The Viscount’s Sinful Bargain

by Archer, Kate

  *

  Cassandra did sleep through the night, the wine and her own tiredness helping her on her way. She might have woken later than she did, had it not been for the commotion both indoors and out that penetrated the walls of her bedchamber. She could hear May and George barking like mad below her, and noticed that her door was slightly ajar. May had finally discovered how to let herself out.

  She slipped out of bed and pulled the curtain aside to discover the reason the dogs so enthusiastically raised the alarm.

  It was only ten o’clock, and yet the street was congested with carriages. They were not tradesmen’s carriages, nor carriages for hire, but well turned out private carriages.

  Though the branches of a tree blocked some of her view, she could see two things clearly.

  Lord Hampton was back on Lord Dalton’s steps, this time ensconced in a chair as if he never intended to leave, and the various occupants of the carriages were pointing and laughing.

  They laughed at Lord Hampton, who appeared entirely unconcerned. But they also laughed and pointed at her own house.

  Somewhere far below, she heard Racine shouting, “Move along now! There is nothing to see here!”

  Cassandra rang for her maid. She must be dressed in all haste.

  *

  Peggy had helped her mistress into her clothes with nary a complaint on her choice. Cassandra hurried down the stairs.

  She found Racine appearing rather haggard in the front hall. He did not speak to her, but rather, pointed to the drawing room.

  Cassandra hurried in and stopped short.

  The drawing room was filled with bouquets of red roses. They were in every available vase, bunches were laid on tables, and some even propped up on windowsills. In the middle of it all, the dowager and Lady Marksworth sat at tea.

  The dowager, appearing rather gleeful, said, “They are all from my idiot grandson and they all say the same thing—I am sorry. They were left on the doorstep in a pile so high that poor Racine had a time of it getting them all indoors.”

  “That accounts for the mayhem out of doors,” Lady Marksworth said. “Racine tells us that some fellow informed him that Lord Hampton camping out across the road was talked of everywhere last evening. It has become some sort of event to rouse oneself and drive by to view the scene.”

  “And now half of them have seen all of this on your doorstep!” the dowager said, waving her arm at the roses.

  Cassandra sat down, furiously trying to comprehend what she saw, and how she should feel about it. She was both complimented and furious.

  “Lady Marksworth,” the dowager said, “might I have a moment alone with your niece?”

  Lady Marksworth nodded and rose, determinedly avoiding her niece’s eye. Cassandra felt a wave of trepidation. What could the dowager wish to say to her that could not be said in front of her aunt?

  After the door had closed behind Lady Marksworth, the dowager hopped up in her energetic fashion and sat next to Cassandra, taking her hand.

  “It is my understanding from all of this that my idiot grandson is prepared to stay where he is until the end of time if necessary. So I was wondering, will it be necessary? Or could you find some affection in your heart for him?”

  “If I could give you an answer,” Cassandra said slowly, “I would. I do not care for any pretense between us, and rather think you do not either.”

  “You are correct in that opinion, my dear,” the dowager said.

  “Though I would prefer to give you an answer, I really cannot. My feelings are all in a jumble and I cannot say where they will settle.”

  “Ah well,” the Dowager said. “If he is to remain out there until the end of time, I daresay it serves him right. I have a great affection for my grandson, but then I have a great affection for you, too.”

  Before Cassandra could answer, May and George’s ears had suddenly perked up and they leapt off their sofa and raced to the door. The drawing room door being closed might have once been an impediment to their progress, but May reached up and pawed at it until she turned the knob and they were out like a flash.

  Cassandra heard Racine shout, “May! George! No! Come back!”

  She leapt to her feet and ran to the window just in time to see a carriage bearing down on May. Her heart gripped in terror.

  “May! No, May!” she cried.

  The carriage wheels were nearly upon the mastiff. May turned, seeming to finally perceive the danger. Lord Hampton suddenly appeared on the other side of the road and threw himself upon her.

  A horrifying sound reached her ears, a sound of collision.

  Cassandra could not see either May or Lord Hampton. The carriage blocked her view. The driver, no doubt fearing trouble, whipped his horses and sped off with no care for what he’d done.

  The carriages behind the accident had halted and an eerie hush descended on the street. May and Lord Hampton lay in a heap together on the cobblestones. Neither stirred.

  The dowager joined Cassandra at the window, and they gazed at the lifeless bodies across the road. The dowager clutched Cassandra’s arm. “No,” she said softly. “It cannot be.”

  Racine jogged across the silent street. He leaned over the two bodies. Cassandra felt her head swim. She held tight to the dowager’s arm.

  May gave the smallest wag and raised herself up on her forepaws, looking dazed. George barked to her from the steps and she struggled to her feet. She limped toward the sound.

  Racine was bent over Lord Hampton. Cassandra and the dowager stood still as statues, waiting to see what expression the butler would turn to them with. Cassandra saw him lay two fingers along the lord’s neck.

  Racine suddenly stood and shouted, “He is alive! Ben, fetch a litter. Jimmy, run for the doctor!”

  The dowager’s grip lessened on Cassandra’s hand. “Thanks be to God,” she said.

  “Yes,” Cassandra said softly. “Thank God.”

  George slinked back into the drawing room, with May limping behind her. Cassandra glared at them and pointed to their sofa. They willingly went to it and began grooming themselves furiously—a sure sign they understood the gravity of the trouble they’d caused.

  “I will see to a bedchamber they may carry him to,” Cassandra said. She hurried from the room just as Lady Marksworth came into it to see to the dowager.

  Cassandra dashed up the stairs to find a suitable room. She suddenly remembered her uncle’s room. Though he had long passed, Lady Marksworth had noted that she’d never redone it as it suited her to maintain one masculine chamber.

  She threw the door open, refusing to consider the lord laying lifeless in the street. She must only concentrate on what needed to be done. Cassandra raced down the hall to a small closet that held various materials for bandaging and brought them back to the room.

  She threw open the curtains so the doctor might have more light just as Racine and Ben came through the door with Lord Hampton on a litter.

  His eyes were closed and he was pale. There was a trickle of blood that ran in a steady stream down his forehead and onto his cheek.

  He had struck his head. Cassandra well knew the consequences of an injury such as that. He might never regain consciousness. He might simply stop breathing. She had seen Mr. Drescher die in just such a way after being thrown from a horse—he breathed until he did not.

  At the thought of the lord’s breath fading from him, Cassandra’s mind was at once all clarity. Where her thoughts had felt muddled, they now presented themselves as clear as crystal.

  She loved him. Of course she did. She had all along. She’d only let her hurt pride hide it from her. Now, he might be taken from her. How stupid she was! To allow embarrassment and stung feelings to overshadow love.

  He would die and it would be her fault. She had been the reason he’d been on Lord Dalton’s steps. It had been her dog who’d raced into the street.

  They would both be punished terribly for her idiocy—he, not to live the life he had been given, and she to
live a joyless one.

  Racine and Ben had carefully laid the litter on the bed and shifted the lord out of it. He moaned softly.

  Cassandra raced to him and took his hand. It was warm to the touch, it had not yet begun to go cold.

  His eyes fluttered open.

  “My lord,” Cassandra said, chafing his hands.

  “Edwin, to you,” he rasped.

  When she did not answer, he squeezed her hand. “Edwin, say it.”

  Cassandra looked away and said softly, “Edwin.”

  He attempted to sit up but did not get far with it and rested his head back on the pillow. “I am sorry,” he said hoarsely.

  “Oh, do not speak of that now!” Cassandra cried. “You are hurt!”

  “Ah,” he said, his voice rough, “had I known I must only be run down by a carriage to convince you to speak to me, I would have done it days ago.”

  “You should not speak,” Cassandra said. “You really should not. The doctor has been sent for.”

  “Of course I must speak. This may be my last opportunity.”

  Cassandra took in a breath. What did he mean, his last opportunity? Did he feel himself dying? She had sat at enough bedsides to comprehend that the dying often knew when it crept close. He could not die. He simply could not.

  “Do not talk of dying, my lord… Edwin,” Cassandra said.

  Edwin smiled and then winced. “I have no intention of dying just now. I have yet to win the heart of Miss Knightsbridge.”

  Cassandra looked away. “Oh, that,” she said quietly.

  “Yes, that. I cannot undo what has been done. I, we, can only go forward, if I can convince you of it.”

  “I am sure now is not the right—”

  “It is exactly the right moment,” Edwin said, his voice low and guttural. “I will be miserable all my life if I do not have my heart’s desire.”

  Cassandra had no words. She’d rehearsed no end of words to punish, but none to acquiesce. Her feelings had crystallized only a moment ago and words had not yet attached to them.

  Lord Hampton smiled, seeming to comprehend that something in her feelings had shifted. “To convince you of the attractiveness of my offer, I vow that I will buy you an arsenal of guns and you may shoot my estate to pieces if it pleases you.”

  “Well,” Cassandra said softly, “you did rescue my dog. I am very fond of her.”

  “And then there is the little matter that I love you. Entirely. I think someday you might come to love me too.”

  “Perhaps,” Cassandra said slowly, even now resisting a surrender. “I suppose anything is possible.”

  Edwin struggled to prop himself up on his elbows. “Then you will? You say yes? You must say it! I have asked you to wed and you have said you will.”

  Cassandra pushed the lord back on his pillow. “I agree to it at great cost to myself and only if you will stay still.”

  The dowager rushed into the room, “The doctor will be here in moments. Good, he is awake. That is promising.”

  “We’re to be married,” Edwin said to his grandmother. “She’s said it, let you be a witness. She cannot change her mind now.”

  The dowager’s expression showed worry. “Lord, he’s delirious. That is not a good sign.”

  “He is not delirious,” Cassandra said quietly, finding herself somewhat embarrassed to have reversed herself so entirely.

  “I promised her a lot of guns,” Edwin said.

  The dowager crossed her arms. “I hope, dear grandson, you also spoke of love.”

  “Most ardently,” Edwin said. “I believe she will come to love me too, over time.”

  “We shall see,” Cassandra said, turning her head away.

  “Cassandra Knightsbridge,” the Dowager said rather sternly. “Now is not the time to prevaricate.”

  Cassandra blushed up to her ears. She did not know how the dowager had divined her real feelings, but it appeared that she had. Perhaps she had before Cassandra even knew them herself. “If you imply,” she said to the Dowager, “that I love him already, well then I do. Though it is certainly not my fault!”

  Edwin squeezed her hand tight in his own. “My darling, darling girl,” he whispered.

  The dowager turned to Ben, who stood near the door, red in the face. “Do be good and fetch my writing things. There is a gentleman here who needs to pen an appeal to a certain young lady’s father before the sun has set.”

  “Ma’am! He is grievously injured,” Cassandra said. “He will not have the ability to write a letter so soon.”

  The dowager turned back to Cassandra. “My dear, if he has one ounce of strength left in his limbs, he will manage it. We have not come this far to cry off now.”

  “Just so,” Edwin said.

  “I will send your maid in to chaperone while we wait for the doctor,” the dowager said, “though I warn you, I will be remarkably slow about it.”

  Cassandra blushed up to her ears. The dowager, seeming pleased that she had arranged things to her satisfaction, bustled from the room.

  “You have truly forgiven me?” Edwin asked with some trepidation.

  “I have,” Cassandra said, playing with the torn cuff of his sleeve.

  “I expect when I irritate you on some matter, which I am highly likely to do, you’ll wonder to yourself why you ever did forgive me.”

  “Perhaps,” Cassandra said. “But then I will remind myself that I have come out of this experience far different than I went into it. Goodness, when I first arrived, I was so frightened of the ton and doing everything right and not disappointing anybody.”

  “You? Frightened?” Edwin said. He laughed, and then clutched his head.

  “Do be still,” Cassandra said in a firm tone. “Yes, I was frightened. And I was terribly affected by other’s opinions of me.”

  “But you are not now?”

  “No, I am not now. I hope you meant what you said, for I have every intention of shooting your pheasant out of the sky to my heart’s content.”

  “If your heart is content, then so is mine,” Edwin said.

  *

  The doctor had seen to Lord Hampton and pronounced him having a slight concussion. He would not be any worse for it, though it would be some days before he could be moved. The doctor had also been prevailed upon to examine May, who had come out of the whole thing with only a few scratches and a strained hindquarter.

  The viscount had received Lord Hampton’s letter in good time, which had been prefaced with great apologies for not arriving in person due to the accident. Cassandra’s father wrote his daughter back that he would be as good as his word. She was to decide for herself who she would marry and she’d have to live with it if she chose wrong. It was perhaps not the most ringing endorsement, but it suited the couple well enough.

  Though the lord’s concussion may have been slight, the care he received at Marksworth House was not. Racine directed all manner of bone broths made and sent them up to the sickroom on a regular schedule. News of the accident spread like a fire, as was only too predictable. Perhaps it was also predictable that the story grew to Lord Hampton being run over by all four carriage wheels and somehow surviving it on the strength of his love for Miss Knightsbridge.

  The dowager stayed on at Marksworth House to assure the rest of the family that Edwin progressed well. That her son, the duke, was delighted to hear that his own son had finally decided to marry, and that he’d chosen Miss Knightsbridge, was a foregone conclusion. The duke admired Miss Knightsbridge’s fortitude in the face of difficulty and even went so far as to cease referring to his eldest son as an idiot.

  Not many an engaged couple had the opportunity to spend so much time together, almost alone. Peggy sat in a corner pretending to sew but mostly asleep, May and George came in and out as they pleased, and Cassandra and Edwin spent hours talking. Cassandra would invariably bring in a book she planned to read to the patient, but very little was actually read. They had much to discuss.

  Theirs was to be an unc
onventional marriage and they were thoroughly agreed that Cassandra must ride as she pleased and shoot when she felt the inclination. Their children would be raised the same—there would be no drooping violets in the lord and lady’s nursery.

  As for becoming a duchess, Cassandra had developed a different view, thanks to the dowager. She began to see its convenience—she might do what she liked and nobody would dare breathe a word about it. She might back the next Cassandra when some worthy girl ran into a difficulty. She might quash the bad intentions of those of Lady Montague’s ilk. But most of all, she might wake each morning to her beloved’s presence beside her. They were thoroughly agreed that wherever the lord went, his lady would go too. This duchess was never to be left behind, lonely on a country estate.

  Their respective mastiffs, Mayhem and Havoc, were to have the run of Carlisle House, chewed-up valuables be damned. With any luck, Cassandra and Edwin might find themselves overrun with a new generation of pups determined to destroy everything they owned.

  When Edwin was not planning his future with his intended, he was busy sending people here and there to organize it. He obtained a special license so there should be no delay to the marriage, and he arranged for a wedding trip to Italy.

  He would meet his intended at St. George’s, and he fully expected to find the soon to be viscountess and future duchess in a gown sparkling with diamonds. She would not care who said what about it, and neither would he.

  When he was finally permitted to rise and leave the sickroom, Edwin sent word to the gentlemen of the pact to meet at Dalton’s house at a proscribed hour.

  He found them there, sitting around the table in the library, while the ever-decrepit Bellamy shuffled round with brandy. It was as if nothing at all had changed, but of course everything had changed.

  “There he is,” Lord Dalton said, as Edwin entered the room. “Rumors of broken bones were obviously exaggerated.”

  “Let us hope some other things have been exaggerated,” Lord Cabot said.