Scars of Betrayal

by Sophia James

  It was foolish to imagine they could go back to what they had once had for it was far too late for that.

  ‘I heard that you and Acacia Bellowes-Browne have an agreement.’

  The muscle in his jaw tightened. ‘My grandfather’s hope, no doubt. I have no wish to be married again.’

  The words were underlined with a raw harshness, and Cassie had cause to believe him.

  Once was enough.

  The dance lost some of its appeal and she pulled back. She wished she might have been able to ask him other things, important things, things that might have led to a discussion on how he perceived her ability to look after a child. His child. She took a deep breath, smiling at her sister as she swept past them in the arms of Kenyon Riley.

  ‘They look pleased with themselves. Riley was buying all the drinks at White’s the other evening and alluding to a happy event that might be occurring in his life soon. Perhaps this is it?’

  ‘I hope so. My sister deserves each contentment that comes her way. She is sweet and kind and true.’

  ‘Unlike you?’

  Now the gloves were off.

  ‘If it helps at all I would do things differently if I was able to begin again.’ Her eyes ran across the scar that snaked down from the side of his mouth.

  Unexpectedly, he laughed. ‘Do you ever think back to the days before we reached Perpignan?’

  All the time. Every day. Many minutes of every day.

  She stayed quiet.

  ‘I returned to Bagnères-de-Bigorre last year when I was across the border in Spain. The high bath was still as beautiful.’

  ‘With the witchery of steam?’

  Their eyes met, etched with a memory of the place. Together, close, lost in each other’s arms through all the hours of the night and day. The delight of what had been jagged through her stomach and then went lower.

  ‘What happened to us, Sandrine?’

  Loss made her look away and she was happy when the music ground down to a final halt. After shepherding her back into the company of her sister and Kenyon Riley, Nathaniel quickly left. She saw him move across to stand with Stephen Hawkhurst, interest in his friend’s eyes as he glanced over towards her. It was said that Hawk was entwined with the British Service, too, and there was more in his perusal than she wanted to see.

  Raising her fan, she glanced away, the balancing act of appearing all that she was not and within the company of her sister, who positively glowed with delight, taking its toll.

  Acacia Bellowes-Browne was here, too, standing next to Nathaniel with her hand lightly resting upon his arm. Cassandra heard the tinkle of her laugh as she leaned closer and saw Nathaniel’s answering smile.

  A beautiful, clever woman with her past intact. The bright red of her gown contrasted against the dark brown of her hair. The hazel in her eyes had had poems written of them. Maureen told her that once, on returning from a weekend away at a friend’s country home, and Cassie still remembered the astonishment that the eyes of a lady might incite such prose from grown men.

  She was certainly using her eyes to the best of their advantage at this moment, flashing them at Nathaniel Lindsay with a coquettish flirtation and using her fan to tap him lightly on the hand as if in reprimand for some comment he had just made. Intimate. Familiar. Congenial.

  Turning away from it all, Cassandra recognised with a shock that envy was eating away at her.

  What happened to us, Sandrine?

  Life had happened with its full quota of repayment and betrayal. Jamie had happened, too; the responsibility of a child and the overriding and untempered love that would protect him from everything and everyone. No matter what.

  ‘Could I have the pleasure of this next dance?’ Stephen Hawkhurst stood before her, his eyes probing. ‘Though perhaps I should warn you I am no great mover before you give me your reply.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She liked the quiet way he spoke. ‘I, too, have not had a lot of practice at these things.’

  ‘Then we shall bumble around together. Nat was always the most proficient dancer out of the three of us at school,’ he said as they took to the floor, another waltz allowing them the ease of speech.

  ‘The three of you?’

  ‘Lucas Clairmont was the other, but he has been in the Americas for years now making his fortune in the timber trade. None of us have families that we could count on, you see, so the connection was strong.’

  He looked at her directly as he said this. ‘Adversity can either pull people together or it can tear them apart, would you not agree?’

  Cassie dropped her glance. Words beneath words. Nathaniel had the knack of using this technique, too.

  ‘Indeed I would.’

  ‘Could I give you a bit of advice, then?’ He waited till she nodded.

  ‘Sometimes in life risks can deliver the greatest of rewards, but do not be too patient about the time allotted to reap them or you may lose out altogether.’

  ‘I am not well received in society, sir. Tonight is just a small taste of that fact. To reap anything apart from disparagement might be impossible for me.’

  He laughed. ‘Look around you. How many men do you see who would not take risk over the mundane, who would not say to themselves if only I hadn’t played it so safe as they look in the mirror in their preparations for yet another night out in society in the company of manners and propriety?’

  Cassandra breathed out hard. ‘Do you know anything of what went on between Nathaniel and me at Perpignan?’

  ‘He once told me that what you did and what you said you did were two different things.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘In that he is wrong. There were others...others who died because of the mistakes that I made.’

  The names of those she had consigned to the afterlife came to mind, people planted through loyalty into a land that was not their own and then murdered for their service. Aye, the world ran red with the blood of martyrs and hers had been included in that.

  Lebansart.

  Silver-tongued Leb.

  His knife had been sharp and his words were sharper still.

  Bitch. Traitor. Murderer.

  Once she had been none of those things and now she was all of them, marked for anyone to see. Her penance.

  She smiled through the anger and held Hawkhurst’s returning puzzlement as though it were only of a small importance, a trifling consideration.

  ‘Do you ever think, my lord, that when the world shifts in its truths sometimes one just cannot go back?’

  ‘Often,’ he replied, ‘and I believe it is a shame.’ As they turned with the music, Cassandra caught the face of Nathaniel watching them, his eyes devoid of feeling.

  * * *

  ‘Cassandra Northrup is nothing like I expected her to be,’ Stephen said as they stood to one side of the room beside a pillar. ‘In fact, I would go as far to say that after that conversation I am half in love with her myself. But she’s hiding things. Big things. You can see it in her eyes when she looks over at you, Nathaniel, and she does that often.’

  Nat did not want to hear this, for the cords that had held them together had been cut so irrevocably.

  ‘Why did she go to Paris after Perpignan, Nat? She did not arrive back in England until eighteen months after you did. Why didn’t she just come home?’

  Lebansart. Sandrine’s face turned up to his as she had left, his hands curled into hers. He wished he did not care any more, but the days beneath the Pyrenees had defined their relationship, and he found he could not let her go.

  He hadn’t slept with another woman since. Not one. Just that single thought made him furious. Was he destined to be for ever trapped in his feelings from the past, unable to move on with all that was being offered now? A man for whom the holy words of matr
imony meant a loyalty that remained unquestioned and unbroken.

  ‘Well, I think it is safe to say that the youngest Northrup daughter has weathered her rocky start this evening, Nat, and I can well see why. Dressed in gold she looks like something out of a fairy tale.’

  A line of young swains milled about Cassandra, though she did not seem enamoured with the fact, for her frown was noticeable even at this distance.

  But Nathaniel had had enough of conjecture and, excusing himself summarily, he wound his way through the substantial crowd and out of the wide front door.

  Hailing his coachman, he settled into the cushioned seats and closed his eyes. For the first time ever in his life he was at a loss as to what he should do next and he didn’t like the feeling one little bit.

  Cassandra Northrup threw him completely, that was the trouble. And when he had held her in the dance all he had wanted was to bring her closer. Her scent, her eyes, the feel of her skin against his.

  She was a lethal concoction of beauty, brains and betrayal, but something else lingered there, too. Vulnerability, sadness and fright. What was it she was hiding? What had happened after Perpignan?

  Stephen had liked her and so did Acacia. In fact, even given the collective anger of society against her earlier in the evening, he had never met a soul who did not admire her personally, apart from her uncle.

  An enigma.

  And she was still his wife despite all that she thought to the contrary.

  He shouldn’t see her again, but he knew that he would, her invitation to accompany her at night through the back streets on her charity business too tempting to turn down. What if she was hurt? She was not strong enough to rebuff a grown man who meant business, a fact he had found out in the house in Whitechapel when he had easily subdued her.

  Another thought surfaced.

  She had changed in four years. He could see it in her stance and in her eyes and in the way she had held the knife in the room on Brown Street in the darkness.

  He had tried to teach her a few of his best tricks of attack in the final days before they had come down into Perpignan. The blade she had taken from Baudoin was a good weapon, light and comfortable in her fist.

  ‘Grip hard and keep it upwards for this one.’ He had turned her slightly, one foot away from each other. ‘Position your body behind the knife, for if you lose concentration even for a moment you will be dead.’

  ‘Like this?’ She had taken to the lesson with a surprising accuracy, her footwork balanced and the line of her arm strong. Perhaps it was the legacy of months of being a captive, never again stamped into every movement.

  ‘Being left-handed will give you an advantage because your attacker will not expect it so use this quickly before he has time to define it and go in under the arc of his forearm. Close contact negates skill to some extent so aim for the artery here on the outside of the leg. He will be protecting everything else.’

  So far he had explained the rudiments in the slow motion of tutelage, but now he grabbed a stick that looked solid and stood before her. ‘Try it on me.’

  She shook her head. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I might hurt you.’

  He began to laugh, the sound echoing around the small clearing, and Nat thought right then and there that this is what it felt like to be happy, here, with a beautiful girl dressed as a boy in the mountain passes of the Pyrenees.

  ‘You are a woman,’ he managed to say when he finally found his breath, ‘and I have been at it a while.’

  ‘Why did you start?’ She had lowered the blade and faced him, small curls of gold-red that had escaped her plait dancing in the wind.

  ‘Belonging, I think.’ He could not believe he had been so honest and that an answer to a question he had often asked himself should have been as self-evident. ‘My parents died when I was young and after that...’

  ‘You had trouble finding yourself.’ Sheathing the knife, she came forward and wrapped her arms about him. Tight and warm. ‘I was the same. After Mama it seemed as though I had no compass.’

  ‘No true north,’ he answered softly.

  Her eyes fell to his lips and the smile she gave him held invitation as he brought his mouth across her own. They knew nothing of each other and everything, the truth of their bodies speaking in a way words never could, telling secrets, finding the honesty. They had been hurt and they had survived. Right now it was enough.

  All he could do was to keep her safe.

  Chapter Eight

  The note came on the third day after the Forsythe ball.

  Tonight. 11:00 p.m. Wear black.

  That was it. No directions. No meeting point. He held the letter up against the light and looked at her handwriting. Small and evenly shaped, no flourish of curve or wasted embellishment. No signature.

  She would come here, he was sure of it, because there was no other place that had been mooted. Perhaps she expected trouble and to give an exact location might have exacerbated it. Black clothes indicated hiddenness and the fate of the man murdered at Brown Street came to mind.

  The Daughters of the Poor seemed to be involved in more than the usual charity work of supplying funds. The faces of the women found near the Thames pointed to the dangers those antagonising the underbelly of London posed. One wrong move and Cassandra could be joining them, her throat cut from one side to the other.

  Swearing, he crossed to the cupboard and unlocked his guns. He would be prepared for the same force others hadn’t been and if anyone crossed his path and threatened Cassandra... For the first time in a long while he felt a sense of energy and release, and a vitality that had been lost in France. His eyes went to the clock. Almost six. Five hours to wait.

  * * *

  He was dressed in black from head to foot as she came through his window, the effect making him appear even more dangerous than he normally did.

  ‘We will be back well before dawn and I do not expect trouble, but if it comes then I should probably warn you that...’ She made herself stop babbling by an enormous effort of will. She was nervous, of him, of being here, of Nathaniel Lindsay looking so much like he had done in the Languedoc, the battered edge of a soldier in his clothes.

  ‘I have nothing else planned,’ he drawled and smiled, the languid, beautiful smile he had given her in Saint Estelle and in Bagnères-de-Bigorre before they had made love and she had forgotten that the world existed.

  Shaking her head, Cassandra tried to clear her mind of the past. The past years had been so busy with taking care of Jamie and of trying to protect others that she had barely left a moment for herself. The woman in her ached for Nathaniel’s touch, even though she knew she had long since forfeited the desire for him to care.

  ‘I have been told of a place where young women are being kept against their will.’

  ‘Who informed you?’

  ‘The woman who lives in a house across the road.’

  ‘And you can trust her?’

  ‘As much as I can trust anybody.’ She hoped he could not hear the hollow uncertainty as well as she could. Last time at Whitechapel a trap had been set and she hoped that it would not be the case again tonight.

  ‘Are you armed?’

  ‘Yes.’ Lifting the material of her sleeve, she allowed him to see the knife in a leather sheath. He was good at hiding surprise, she determined, for not a single muscle in his face changed in reaction.

  ‘Dangerous?’

  The word had her chagrin rising. ‘I am not the same person you met in France and I do not wish to be either. I shall never again be beholden to another and if you want to rescind your offer of help because of such
an admission then I will understand.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  Swallowing, Cassie tried to regain a lost balance. She was seldom off guard with anyone other than him, her certainty coming easily and without too much thought. ‘I will be in charge.’ She needed to regain the lead.

  He nodded.

  ‘Good.’

  Sometimes, she mused, I do not like who I have become, this person who is hard-hearted and tough-minded. Her thoughts went to Acacia, the beautiful woman whose eyes had had poems written about them, and she frowned.

  The crossroads in life had taken her in directions that had not all been her own choice and once she had traversed some pathways there was no going back. The burning boats of chance. Ludicrous to wish for some literary offering from a man, but there it was. She did. And not just any man, either, but the one who stood before her now, his pale grey eyes shaded, dressed entirely in black.

  She gathered her words in carefully. ‘I do not expect trouble, but sometimes it comes anyway. If it does, I will hold you in no account for the protection of my life.’

  * * *

  Nat could hardly believe the detachment she laced those words with. ‘Because you no longer see me as your husband?’

  The rush of red upon her cheeks surprised him before she turned away, a scarlet tide rising from her throat. Not all indifference, then. Already she had opened the window and climbed through into the cold darkness.

  A carriage was waiting at the end of the street, a hackney cab with a driver who did not turn to greet them, but looked straight ahead.

  ‘I pay him well for silence,’ she clarified as they got in. ‘The fewer people involved in this the better.’

  ‘Does your sister ever help you in these night-time sojourns?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Shock was inherent in every syllable.

  Suddenly he understood. ‘How ruined does society imagine you to be?’

  He caught the deep frown on her forehead through the gloom. ‘Very. Societal judgement on the moral poverty inherent in prostitution holds a power that is difficult to fight.’