by Sophia James
‘I think he was after the watch Grandfather brought home with him from South Africa, Papa. He said the other week that he was certain it was supposed to be given to him.’ Maureen sounded distant, as though the problems of this household were becoming less and less of a concern to her.
‘The acquisition of family heirlooms is the only reason he ever comes calling and Lord knows he has more in the way of chattels than we do.’
‘Why do you give him things, then?’ Cassie joined in the conversation now, interested in his answer.
‘Because he never loved a woman like I did or had children. Offspring. Heirs. His life is as barren as a moor and as empty. It seems he uses the clubs selling pleasure these days as a reason for living. God knows he is always trying to deter me from funding your charity.’
Cassie frowned. ‘He told me at the Forsythe ball the other week that I should be placing my efforts into the marriage mart and that the frippery of charitable works would put any man off an alliance with our family.’
‘And yet he himself has never entertained the idea of a bride?’ Maureen’s words were laced with question.
‘Oh, he did once. He asked your mother to marry him and she refused. I don’t think he ever forgave her for marrying me instead.’
Cassandra had heard this before from her mama. Alysa was a woman who barely spoke of the personal, but once when Uncle Reginald had come to the door she had pretended she was out and had given an explanation for the lie. Her love of science was the reason. Reginald for all his money and handsome looks could never abide a woman with a brain and if Alysa had a goal in life it was to understand the theory behind the small and unseen badness in a sick person.
‘She had a lucky escape, Papa, and I am certain she knew it.’
‘But it has made him mean and small-minded.’
Their father was usually far more reticent about discussing any of his feelings so Cassie determined that he must be worried about something. She had no further opportunity to ask questions, though, as he finished his breakfast and left the table. Back to the laboratory, she thought and watched as he left, a man slightly bent over by life and loss. She hoped she would not be like that in thirty years.
A few moments later a knock on the door took their attention. These days any unexpected caller had the effect of making Cassandra’s heart race wildly just in case it was Nathaniel Lindsay, but when their butler showed in Elizabeth Hartley from the school, a new worry surfaced. She looked alarmed and anxious, her more usual languid demeanour disappeared beneath a flushed face and bright eyes.
‘Another girl has been pulled out of the river. We have just been informed of it and we think it may be Sarah Milgrew, for she has not returned home for two nights.’
Both Cassie and Maureen stood.
‘When did you last see her?’
‘She said she had to go out around six the day before yesterday and never came home. She had some information of her lost sister, it seems, and was hurrying out to find her.’
‘How did the word come?’
‘A young boy came to the front door and asked for her by name. When I looked in her room there was no note or anything. After we heard the news this morning, though, Mrs Wilson said I was to fetch you and that you would know what to do.’
Both sisters looked at each other. ‘We will come, of course,’ Cassandra said. ‘Where has the body been taken?’
‘To the police station in Aldwych.’
‘Then I need to be there. If you stay here, Maureen, until I return we will all go to the school together.’
* * *
Twenty minutes later she was pulling up in front of the Aldwych constabulary in a hired brougham. God, how she hated what she had come to do, but as there was no one else for the job she took a deep breath and stepped down from the carriage, walking right into the path of Lord Nathaniel Lindsay.
Because her mind was on the dreadful business of the discovered body it took her a second to register his presence and react. The bloom of anger and discomfort could be felt on her cheeks.
‘It is Sarah Milgrew, Cassandra. I have just identified her.’ His words replaced embarrassment with a deep and shocked horror. ‘Her throat was cut just like the last girls’.’
He was not being careful with his facts and for that Cassie was glad. She did not wish to be treated like a woman who would need the truth filtered and sanitised. His grey eyes were filled with the sort of anger she had seen them to contain in France.
‘The constabulary said that there is nothing else that they can do at the moment. I have asked them to keep me informed of any new developments, however, and they said they would send someone over if there was other information uncovered. I have my own leads, too, that I shall want to investigate.’
‘You have an idea of who it might be?’
‘Sarah Milgrew’s home town of Wallingford might allow us some answers. I will travel across there in the morning.’
‘If you could keep us up to date, too, we would be most grateful.’
‘Of course. Would you like me to drop you at home?’
‘If you have the wish to.’ Sadness had hollowed her; sadness for Sarah and for the other girls who had died.
‘My carriage is this way.’ For the first time he touched her, his hand at her elbow guiding her past a group of people walking the other way; an aloof and detached touch that was discarded as soon as they reached the conveyance. Once inside he kept talking.
‘Surely someone else could have been sent from the Daughters of the Poor other than you to identify the body?’
‘There are no men on the pay roll, if that is what you are suggesting.’
‘Older women, then. Married women.’
The barb dug deep, lancing all the hurt and anger. ‘I might remind you, Lord Lindsay, that I was married even though you seem to have forgotten the fact entirely.’
‘Hardly.’ His eyes ran across her body in the way of a man who remembered everything.
‘Well, as someone who spends his evenings in the bosom of the Venus Club you give all the impression of otherwise.’ My God, she thought as soon as it was out of her mouth. What had made her say that? The sharp edge of hurt probably and the wasted loss of hope.
His laughter surprised her. ‘You think I should stay at home and read instead?’
‘Rumour has it the girls there are very young.’
All humour fled. ‘Enough, Cassandra. You have no idea of my reasons for being there.’
‘Oh, I am certain I have, my lord. Do not all men have the same purpose once they set foot in such hallowed halls?’ Her temper was at full flight now, irreversible and unstoppable as years of her own loneliness and ruin came flooding in. ‘I just had expected better from you, the unwise hope of one who has made choices that come back to haunt, I suppose, and your penchant for such places makes a mockery of any history between us.’
‘The history of you abandoning me in Perpignan for the arms of Guy Lebansart, you mean, and staying in Paris for the whole of the next eighteen months with him?’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Nobody had to. I was there, remember, as you happily went off with him. A woman who looked as though she could barely wait to be in more than his arms.’
She hit him then, full across the face, the sound in the carriage terrible and absolute. But he did not pull back. Rather, he grabbed at her shaking hand and yanked her forward, his mouth coming down on hers in a single frozen angry grimace.
And he took exactly what he wanted, bearing down with a force she could not deny. One hand threaded through her hair, tethering her to him, and the other gathering both wrists, bundling retaliation into stillness. He did not hold back either, ravaging her mouth with fury, barely allowing breath. At first she fought him, and then before she knew it another feeling
altogether arose and she clung to his kiss as though her very life depended on it.
With a curse, he let her go.
‘I am sorry.’ He didn’t sound at all like he usually did, and the scar across his chin stood out in a raised white line. Neither did he look sorry. Rather he appeared as though with only the slightest of provocation he might act in the very same way yet again.
Unbridled and rampant. A lord who was used to an easy domain over others and was trying now to find a normalcy that had never been part of their relationship together in order to survive.
‘We bring out the worst in each other.’ More of his words slung with insult, though a small edge of them held another emotion. Shame, if she might name it, for his behaviour and for her own, each marooned in a half place of regret.
The silence was welcomed. The clip-clop of the horses, the call of the driver, the sounds of a busy London street. Normal and proper after everything else that was not. Her lips felt rough and dry, but she did not dare to lick them in case he interpreted such an action wrongly. With eyes downcast she swallowed back tears and sat perfectly still, pleased when the horses were called to a halt and the door was opened to the Northrup town house.
The footman helped her out. Nathaniel did not touch her or look at her. It was as if three feet were a thousand miles as she climbed down onto the white pebbles.
‘If I hear any other news about Sarah Milgrew I shall let you know, Miss Northrup.’
‘I would be indebted, Lord Lindsay.’
The polite manners of society hung across an undercurrent of weariness and then he was gone.
* * *
White’s was busy when he flung himself down on a leather wingchair opposite Hawk half an hour later and ordered himself a double shot of their strongest whisky.
‘A run in with the mysterious Miss Cassandra Northrup, I presume?’
Nat ignored Hawk’s jibe because the whole fiasco was just too confusing to dwell upon right now. ‘Another woman has been brought out of the river.’
‘Lord.’ Hawk sat forward. ‘Who is it this time?’
‘A girl whom the Daughters of the Poor had found and given a home to. The sister of one of those dragged from the Thames last month, I am guessing.’
‘Was there a meeting of the Venus Club that night?’
‘No.’
‘Damn.’
‘But the girl had made enquiries the evening before at the Sailors Inn concerning her sister. The tavern keeper remembers her asking. I also know the name of her home town, so perhaps something happened there?’
‘Bits and pieces dropping into the jigsaw. God, how I love this game.’
‘I doubt the youngest Northrup daughter would see it in those terms, Stephen. She was furious to hear I had been at a meeting of the Venus Club.’
‘You did not enlighten her of your true purpose?’
‘And run the risk of having her poke her nose into the whole conundrum? It is getting more dangerous by the day and she seems to think she is indestructible.’
‘I see your point.’ Hawk leant forward and frowned. ‘Have you been in a fight? Your face looks bruised.’
‘Cassandra Northrup hit me. Hard.’
Stephen began to laugh. ‘She makes you foolish, Nathaniel, and it’s about high time that one of us found a woman who managed to do that. Besides, she is your wife.’ He raised his glass and drank, his smile laconic. ‘It’s been years since you have given any woman the time of day and this one...’ He stopped as though picking his words carefully. ‘This one makes you feel again.’
Anger. Wrath. Irritation. Frustration. Helplessness. Fear. For what she was involved in and for the risks she took. Aye, Hawk was right in his summation of strongly feeling something. Nat stayed quiet.
‘There is another matter that I have heard amongst the whispers of gossip, Nat, and I am not sure if this is a good time to tell you of it.’
‘Something about Cassandra Northrup, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
Nathaniel took a breath in because by the tone of voice that Stephen was using he knew the news was bad. ‘What is it?’
‘She has a son.’
The bottom fell out of his world in one dizzying and frantic sort of disbelief. Of all the things he had expected Hawk to say this was not one of them.
‘How old?’
‘Word is that she returned from Paris with him in tow.’
Nat’s hands scraped through his hair as he tried to recover a lost composure.
Was the child his?
Anger filtered his world with a red haze, the beat of his heart drumming in his ears as he put down his glass. Had Sandrine been pregnant in Perpignan and not told him? His mind skirted back to the timings.
After his behaviour in the carriage he felt it unwise to confront Cassandra with this new question, for the answer she gave back would determine everything. He wished that he could have gone then and there to her and sworn that the parenthood of her son did not matter to him.
But he knew that it did. With care, he straightened in the leather seat.
‘Is it yours?’
Stephen’s voice came through a billowing loss and for the first time in a long while Nat found himself unable to formulate even the smallest of thoughts.
* * *
Cassie held her son close against the night and listened to his breathing, the moon coming in between the curtains of patterned velvet, illuminating the bed with its paleness.
Jamie came to her room in the night with a wail of worry, another dream disturbing slumber and leaving him upset and frightened. Often she instructed his nanny to let him come to her in the early hours before the dawn if he awoke for she liked sleeping with him.
She wondered if he remembered his time in Paris, the uncertainty, the desperation. She hoped he held no recollection of her crying out for Nathanael and searching for a face that might look like his in the Place des Vosges or the busy markets of Les Halles. She had walked the length and the breadth of the city, hoping that she might see him once in the uniform of an army officer, in the Luxembourg Gardens and the Parc du Champ de Mars opposite the L’Ecole Militaire. Just to explain. At the Hôtel des Invalides she had waited on the esplanade and searched. This face and that one. Men ravaged by battle and memories, but none of them were Nathanael Colbert.
Today in the carriage she had hated him. No, she shook her head for that was not quite true. Even membership in a club renowned for its debauchery could not dull the hopes she harboured. His kiss had been full of anger, a savage punishing caress, but underneath the fury, passion simmered. She had felt it sliding beneath intent and taking root, anger compromised by lust.
Crying over the loss of Sarah before finally going to sleep and then being woken when Jamie had padded into her room in the small hours of the morning, Cassandra felt dislocated.
Life and death was entwined irrevocably and now, as the moon waned and the dawn called she knew that she would have to be honest no matter what the consequences. Jamie was a boy who needed a father and it was only right that she gave Nathaniel Lindsay the chance to get to know his son.
Their son. A child born from love and from passion.
Tears pooled behind her eyes. Jamie was the reason she had lived, a calling hope when everything else had been lost. He had looked like Nathaniel from the first moment he had been born, wise eyes staring up at her under a shock of black hair. And every single year the resemblance had grown.
Turning over, she looked at the ceiling and remembered the kiss in the carriage. She wanted that feeling again, pounded by strong emotion and rescued from the inertia that had made her feel so flat for all the months and years without him. But she could not blackmail him into loving her by offering their son as bait. No. She would have to let Jamie go and trust Nathaniel to be
the sort of father she imagined he would be. Then she would need to step back. The realisation brought her arms in an involuntary protest around the small sleeping body and she dozed with him snuggled in beside her until the morning.
She would tell him as soon as she saw him next.
* * *
Nathaniel was waiting for her by his carriage outside the school in Holborn two mornings later and it seemed to her as if he had been there a while.
‘I want to talk to you.’ He did not bother with the niceties of greeting, cold grey eyes levelled at her with more than a hint of anger.
‘Here?’
‘Perhaps the park opposite? Could you accompany me for a walk?’
A tight request, just holding on to politeness.
‘Very well.’
She was unsettled by his demeanour. She had sworn to herself she would give him the truth about Jamie and yet now the thought of actually broaching such a topic made her feel sick. Today he looked nothing like the man she had made love to in the high passes of Languedoc. No, today plain fury seemed to radiate from him.
A few words and her life might be completely different and torn apart. Jamming her teeth together, she did not say a thing, watching him as he shepherded her behind a small green hedge and turned.
‘Why did you take so long to return to England? From what I have been able to gather it was almost two years before you came back.’
Her eyes snapped up to his. Something had changed. He knew of Jamie. She could see it in his face and in his stillness. He always had that, a crouching sense of both calm and danger. His silence had its own voice, too. She had known this moment would come, of course, through four long years of imaginings. How often had she sat in the dead of night and wondered how this secret would be told.
‘Hawk implied you had a child in France.’
Not like this. Not like this. Not asked with anger. Not out in the open where anyone might interrupt and the time to explain was not on her side. She cursed Stephen Hawkhurst for imparting the information.