He closed his eyes. “She was bare-breasted, her skirts up around her knees, straddling his lap. When she saw me she screamed. I ran. I just kept running and running—and nothing was ever said about it. Nothing at all. But she was so cold, and after that I saw even less of her. She treated me as if I were someone she barely knew—a neighbor’s child. For years I thought it was my fault, something I’d done.”
Cass knew his effort to sound matter-of-fact was hard-won. She squeezed her eyes shut, certain that if she cried he would stop.
“As for the others, my brother was a lout who liked beating me black and bloody better than anything else, and my sisters simply ignored me, as if I didn’t exist—just absolute contempt.”
“You were the youngest?”
“Yes.” He put his hand in her hair and absently massaged her scalp. “I took to torturing my nannies, and later my tutors, as a way to get attention. I learned that the more trouble I caused the more people looked at me, really saw me. Of course, I was always having to escalate the mischief, to outdo myself. I think my family actually began to be afraid of me. That was exhilarating, in a way. But it made the isolation worse.”
His voice changed and she looked up. “Then Oliver came. I was nine, so he must’ve been about thirty. But he seemed older, like some Old Testament prophet. Everything changed when he came. He wasn’t shy in dealing out punishment, but that wasn’t the way he controlled me. I’d had a hundred thrashings before I was eight; they meant nothing. Oliver gave me something no one ever had, and I guess it was self-respect. I know that sounds trite.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“He told me there was something fine in me, and I believed him. Probably because I was in awe of him and he seemed like the kind of man who only spoke profound truths. He said it was a horrible accident of birth that had set me down in the middle of a hive of Philistines—that was the way he talked—and I simply had to bide my time. He taught me my family wasn’t worth so much pain. He said they were beneath me, that I was destined for higher things, and I had to wait out my sentence with them like an indentured servant. I know now that was claptrap, but at the time it was like gospel, a piece of good news that answered all the questions and made everything fit.”
He rubbed his face with his hands and spoke through his fingers. “He established a daily routine, and that felt new and wonderful to me. Everything had been so chaotic before. I went from a hooligan to a model boy in about a month. All to please my tutor. To bring a smile to that thin, saintly face was like watching the sun come out. I lived for it. And of course I made him into my father. That was inevitable.”
“And then?” she asked when he stopped.
“And then…” He went back to staring at the ceiling. “And then he went away. I walked into his room one day to show him a sonnet I’d written in Greek. He was packing.”
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen. ‘Going on a trip’?” I said. He’d gone to London before, sometimes for as long as a week. I always hated it when he left; I got ready for the bad news. ‘No, Philip, I’m going away for good. I’m leaving tomorrow.’ He said other things—he would miss me, he would write—but I couldn’t hear any of it. I walked out without saying a word.”
Cass put her lips on his forearm and stayed that way.
“I hid all night in the park, listening to the servants calling me, watching their lanterns through the trees. In the morning a coach pulled up in front of the house and Oliver came out, carrying his bags. I’d been waiting for him. I ran at him with a stick, a huge stick, high over my head. I could have killed him if I’d tried. Instead I smashed the bags out of his hands and then I started beating on the carriage wheels. The horses were terrified, rearing. A couple of footmen grabbed me, then the coachman, the butler. I wouldn’t let go of the stick. They got me on the ground, and I was cursing and screaming and crying. When Oliver tried to speak, I only screamed louder. I didn’t stop until the coach was out of sight.”
Cass’s arm stole around his waist but she kept her face buried against his side. Hot, scalding tears stung her throat; she wanted to weep for the child whose idol had first taught him to despise his family and then abandoned him to it. She felt his perspiration under her arm and heard his quick breathing, and knew he was reliving that day.
“There were a few letters from him after that,” he resumed after a long time. “I never answered them and they soon stopped. I went back to my old ways with a vengeance, to spite him for leaving me. I wanted to forget every lesson he’d ever taught me about moderation and civility and restraint. Only now my vices were much more sophisticated. I’d tell you what they were, but I wouldn’t want to shock your tender sensibilities.”
She listened gravely and didn’t return his cynical smile.
“After university and the obligatory tour of the Continent, I settled down to some serious degeneracy, using my father and my brother as guides. Gambling, whoring, drinking, every imaginable vanity; idiotic friends, women who were no better than—well, you see the picture. I told you it wasn’t going to be pleasant.”
“Were you ever happy, living that way?”
“No, I was miserable. But I was too stubborn to change. For one thing, I thought of it as my heritage. My destiny, almost. It was the way men in my family behaved. And for another, to straighten my life out would have been to give in to Oliver, and I was still too full of rage to allow that. I carried the anger with me for years, long after I knew it made no sense.”
He fell silent. She ran the backs of her fingers up and down his ribs, wishing she knew something to say that would soothe him. “And then you met him again?” she prodded after a time.
He nodded. “In a tavern, no less. Needless to say, I was drunk. It was the middle of winter and he was wearing a cape with a hood. He looked like my image of St. Paul or another one of those humorless, unforgiving saints. He reprimanded me—with this sad, disappointed look in his eyes, as if I were ten years old again.” He swallowed, remembering. “I felt such anger, Cass, and at the same time so much love.”
“What did you do?”
“I told him to—” He laughed harshly. “I suggested he go away and leave me alone.”
“But he didn’t.”
“No.”
“What happened?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I mean what happened after—”
“I know. I’m not sure. I was drinking heavily that night, more than usual, just to get his goat. The next thing I remember, I woke up in his house in Lincoln’s Inn and it was morning. And I was covered with blood. Not mine.”
She sat up, clutching the pillow to her chest. “Philip, my God!”
He stared straight ahead and spoke slowly and carefully, as though it were vital that she understand every word. “I had tried to kill a man. With a bottle. Oliver stopped it. I cut him, too. He gave the man’s family money and made them agree to keep it quiet. The man didn’t die, but it was close. Nothing more came of it.”
“Oh, no, I don’t believe it.” She leaned over him, making him look at her. “You couldn’t have done that, drunk or not. You couldn’t have.”
“I did. There’s no question.”
“You didn’t.”
He shook her off impatiently, sitting up and swinging his legs over the side of the bed. She sat back on her knees, cradling the pillow, staring at his rigid back. “You wanted to know what made me stop drinking and I’ve told you. Like it or not, that’s what happened. Believe it.”
She shook her head, not caring if she made him angry or not. “I will never, never accept that you tried to kill someone. I’ve seen you drunk and I’ve seen you sober, and I know it isn’t in you to do such a thing.”
He looked back at her. “Thank you for your faith, Cass, blind though it may be. It means more to me than you know.”
“It’s not faith, it’s common sense.” She shuffled toward him on her knees and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, ignoring his exaspe
rated sigh. He could believe what he chose, and so would she. “So you felt grateful to Oliver for helping you out of your trouble and you changed your life. Is that it?”
This time he heard something in her voice, a faint note of skepticism that surprised and annoyed him. “Something like that. Only I wasn’t fourteen years old anymore and I’d given up expecting him to walk on water. And I was shrewd enough to know it was no coincidence that we happened to meet shortly after some of my father’s friends proposed that I try for a seat in the House of Commons.”
“Do you mean that right from the beginning he—recruited you to work for him, be a spy for him?”
“That’s one way to put it. I already had a perfect cover—the profligate drunkard I’d been before. The idea was to make contacts among radicals like Wade in the guise of a dissolute royalist, then disseminate misleading information while keeping my supposedly drunken ears open for news about the Revolution Society or the Friends of the Republic. It worked, up to a point, but we needed someone who could get closer.”
“Me?”
“You.” He took her hand. “I know you don’t like Oliver, Cass. I don’t really blame you, but I wish you could know him as I do. It sounds incredible, but after all these years he still sees something worth saving in me, and he wants me to be something fine.”
“I don’t see anything incredible in that.”
He barely heard her. “No one knows me the way he does. And for all his faults, he’s still the closest thing to a father I’ll ever have.”
“What are his faults?” she couldn’t help asking.
“Single-mindedness. Loyalty to the Crown to the point of fanaticism.”
Coldness, insensitivity, intolerance, she enumerated silently. Aloud she said, “You still love him, don’t you?”
“Yes. He’s like an anchor for me. His existence gives me a purpose.”
The room was warm, but she felt a quick, uncomfortable chill on her forearms. She didn’t want to talk about Quinn anymore. She moved back and pulled the covers up to her neck. “The sun’s almost up. Come to bed.”
He lay down beside her and took her in his arms. She snuggled close, enjoying the rough feel of his leg between hers. They exchanged a lazy kiss, knowing it wasn’t leading to anything but sleep.
“I wish we’d known each other when we were children,” she murmured.
“I don’t know. I might’ve hurt you.”
She yawned. “No, you wouldn’t have. We’d have been best friends, done everything together. You’d have protected me and I’d have comforted you. And neither of us would ever have been lonely.”
He almost said it then: Cass, I’m so in love with you. He closed his eyes and listened to her quiet breathing. They both fell asleep wondering what Quinn would do when he found out they were married.
They stayed at the Rose and Thorn for three days. They knew they’d incur the coarse ribbing of friends when it was discovered that they’d hardly stirred beyond the four walls of the bedroom during the entire honeymoon, but they didn’t care. Sightseeing was the furthest thing from their minds. They were happiest in bed, and yet it wasn’t only passion that kept them so contentedly quarantined. They never spoke of it, but each knew they’d snatched this intimate piece of time out of somber reality like thieves; they wanted to experience it whole, without distractions, aware that soon enough they’d have to pay the price for their larceny. So Hadrian’s Wall went unexplored, the Solway Firth unseen. And still the three days disappeared as fast as water through cupped hands.
For Cass, they were the happiest days of her life. She’d never felt so cared for, so treasured. Not loved—not yet—but she didn’t expect that. Only one thing marred her gladness. On the last night, Riordan wrote a letter to Claudia.
“Are you writing Quinn?” she asked, coming in from watching the moon rise over the pond. She laid a rose she’d just picked on the table beside him.
“No.”
“Your parents?”
He shook his head.
She stopped asking, belatedly realizing it was none of her business. She went to stand in the doorway.
He looked up. “Do you remember the woman we met at the opera?”
She almost laughed, but she didn’t really feel like it. Did she remember? “You mean Lady Claudia.”
He nodded. “My marriage will come as a surprise to her,” he said carefully. “I feel I owe her an explanation.”
It took two tries to get the words out. “Are you in love with her?”
He pushed his chair back and went to her. “I thought I was,” he said gently.
“Were you engaged?”
“No. But we…”
“Had an understanding?”
“Yes.”
“I see.” She felt swamped with misery. But as he held her, she made a decision to turn her back on all the sadness and consequences and second-guessing. She had him now, and his arms around her were solid and real; she wouldn’t beg him to give her what he couldn’t. This would be enough. For now.
Later, while Riordan sat outside on their front step to watch the moon, she passed by the table and saw his unfinished letter. She froze, too far away to read it, too close to miss it. She took a small, silent step nearer.
And breathed a deep sigh of relief. This letter wasn’t to Claudia, it was to Wally. She scanned it idly, smiling. “Before life overtakes me again in all its myriad guises,” he’d written, “I wanted to take the time to thank you again for your help. I shall always be grateful for your quick thinking and resourcefulness at a time when, it goes without saying, I was quite incapable of pulling off the stunt unassisted. Without you, who knows—” It broke off there. Cass tried not to feel piqued because he’d called their marriage a “stunt.” People who read other people’s mail deserved exactly what they got, she chided herself, and went outside to join her husband.
Too soon, it was time to leave. Riordan hired another fast post-chaise, but they stayed overnight at inns along the way, drawing out the journey as long as they could. As they neared London they laughed and spoke less, but touched more. Riding through Warwickshire, arms entwined, they watched green and yellow fields through the window and thought about what they’d done. Riordan realized that all the dire consequences he’d feared from an involvement with Cass seemed trivial to him now. He had no idea what would happen next, but he regretted nothing. Whenever he tried to think about the future, all his mind conjured up were images of Cass in his house—having a meal at his table or pouring tea in the drawing room, holding out her hands to the fire in the library. How lovely it would be to see her clothes strewn about on the furniture in his bedroom, her hairpins littering the dresser. He’d walk into the room and see her there, half-undressed, doing something to her hair in front of the mirror. She sang off-key, he now knew; he looked forward to hearing her soft, absent-minded hum as she went from room to room, engaged in her daily tasks.
He tightened his arms around her and she sighed. “When will we reach London?” she asked, although she knew.
“Tomorrow.”
“So soon.”
“I’ve been gone nearly ten days now. Oliver— well, let’s not talk about Oliver.”
“No.”
He tilted her chin up. “Do you know, Cass, I’ve always wanted to make love with you in a carriage, ever since the night we met. Do you remember? You’d run away, and Oliver found you.”
“And you were obnoxious—threatening to shoot poor Freddy!”
He grinned. “But you hit me.”
“You deserved it.”
His hand caressed her breast slowly, coaxingly. “But you liked what we did in the garden, didn’t you?” She only smiled. He began to open her dress, thankful that this one buttoned in front. “I wanted you so badly, Cass. I wanted you right there under that tree.”
“You thought I was the kind of woman who would let you.”
“You would have let me, wouldn’t you?”
Her head went back against th
e seat. “Only because I thought you were Colin.”
“Liar.” His hands inside her shift were skillful and sure.
“This is what you really married me for, isn’t it?” she managed, trying to summon up some indignation.
“Let’s say it was a healthy part of it.” He bent his head. “What’s wrong with that?” he murmured, kissing her soft peak.
She couldn’t think of anything. Her eyes closed. “I’d like to know what some of the other parts were.”
He moved to her other breast. “Well, there was this part. And this part—”
She broke away with a gasp and tried to push her skirts down. “Philip, stop, we can’t here—”
“Why not?” He kissed her until she strained against him with a low groan. “There’s a cave near Stratford,” he whispered against her lips. “A little old man takes people through. Let’s go there and get rid of the old man and make love in a cave. Standing up, with our clothes on. Let’s, Cass. Say yes.”
She said yes. But he took it as permission to finish what they were doing first, and she didn’t correct him. It took much longer than expected. The next time they looked out the carriage window, they were miles past Stratford.
XI
WITH LONDON no more than an hour away, they stopped. The inn at Watford was dirty and noisy, but they didn’t care; they minded nothing that delayed the intrusion of harsh reality on their idyll. But morning came, as morning will, and then there was nothing to do but go home.
It had rained at dawn, but when their carriage pulled up in front of Riordan’s house in Portman Square, sunshine was breaking through pewter-colored clouds and drying up the puddles. They took it as a good omen.
Fortune's Lady Page 23