by Sophia James
‘And you have.’
She nodded. ‘For Jamie’s sake, I had to.’
The strength of her washed across him. She sat there and told him that in adversity she had found a version of herself that she liked. He wanted to reach over and bring her ruined hand to his lips and kiss each finger one by one. She was no empty-headed maiden trying to fit in with others’ perceptions of her and whereas Acacia had been hardened by the problems in her life, Cassandra had been freed by them.
He wished he had skipped the course of soup and gone instead for more simple fare because the hours were running away with the task of eating and there was still dessert. He was glad the removes of soup had been taken away and hoped the offering of lobster, ham and venison might disappear just as quickly. He could not remember a meal taking quite as long as he helped himself perfunctorily to one of the many plates of vegetables.
* * *
Cassandra felt hot and uneasy. The food was beautifully cooked and expensive and yet she could barely eat it. A clock in the house kept striking out the minutes of every hour and time seemed to be racing towards the real reason as to why she was here.
She wanted to sleep with Nathaniel Lindsay, she did. She wanted to feel him inside her moving with the passion only he could engender and she longed for the quiet repose of skin against skin, their bodies speaking in a way words never did.
But the scars of Lebansart were a reminder of all that had gone wrong between them and she dreaded him seeing them and asking about what had happened. She breathed out heavily and knew that he watched her with his beautiful pale-grey eyes, the dimple in his right cheek seen under the bright candelabras.
She would not survive again if he turned her away. For all her bravado and independence she understood that. The lobster felt dry in her mouth as she tried to swallow it, helping herself to a generous sip of white wine with the taste of summer in its bouquet. She seldom drank anything stronger than tea, save for in his company, where fortitude was as necessary as breath.
Cassie wished the meal would end and that the servants might disappear. She wanted him to lead her to his chamber with the minimum of chatter and undress her with the maximum of speed. She wanted to look into his eyes when he saw the scars and see acceptance or indifference, it did not matter which. It was the bewildering bloom of distaste that she hoped so fervently to avoid.
He suddenly stood. ‘Perhaps we might leave the rest for later, Cassandra.’ Those attending to the table stepped back and waited while he helped her from her seat.
As they reached the hall leading to the stairwell he petitioned her to tarry for a moment whilst he returned to give his instructions to the staff. She could hear his voice asking them to clean up and then retire for he would not be requiring their services further this evening. The resulting silence was full of question and speculation, but even that did not worry Cassie.
Then he was back again, taking her hand and escorting her up the wide marble staircase into the second floor of the house. His room lay at the end of a corridor, a set of French doors with an ornate gold handle and a substantial lock. As she walked through she heard him turn the key. Privacy. She was thankful for it.
His chamber was decorated in all shades of pale, a restful luxurious interior that threw her off balance. The heavy brocades of paisley and floral at the Northrup town house looked tacky and overdone in comparison. This room was one of bleached furniture and patinas harking back to the age of a faded beauty. She wondered if he had had a hand in choosing the decor.
A whole line of leatherbound books sat on the table beside the bed. When he saw where she looked he commented, ‘I read a lot.’
She remembered he had told her of that once and she had wondered. No amount of guessing could have placed him as a cultured English lord, however, with the lineage of an old family on his shoulders and a library of books at his disposal.
‘You keep surprising me,’ she managed to say.
At that he laughed, loudly, the first truly free emotion of the evening. A frisson of need made her stiffen. ‘I could say the same, Cassandra. Few people manage to keep me as intrigued as you do and so effortlessly.’
He had come closer now. If she stepped forward she could have rested her head against his heart. With all her willpower she stopped herself doing just that.
Not yet, a voice inside her called. He needs to understand exactly who you are.
Her fingers came up to loosen the ties at her bodice. They were shaking in their pursuit of truth as fire began to build behind the slate of his eyes. The yellow silk had been chosen carefully. With just a few twitches of fabric it fell from her shoulders, the thin bodice of lawn the only thing now that kept his glance from her shame.
Then that was gone, too, three slices of raised red skin at the top of her right breast on show.
‘I did not give the names as easily as you had imagined, Nathaniel. I paid for their lives in my own blood, too. I knew that I was pregnant, you see, and if I did not give him something he might...’
‘God.’ One finger reached out to trace the injuries, horror and anger on his face.
But not at her. It was Lebansart his wrath was directed at.
‘The bastard did this to you?’
She nodded because suddenly she could not speak, the back of her throat closing in an aching heaviness.
‘He could have killed you. Both of you.’
‘I th-think he thought he had.’
‘Ah, sweetheart.’ His voice broke as he simply leant down and kissed the scars, one by one. Healing their ugliness, she was to think later, and dissipating their power over her. Forgiveness was a quiet and gentle emotion, the light and earnest feel of his tongue and the smooth sweep of his lips, but it held all the weight of a new beginning.
Her hand came through his hair, shorter now than it had been in France, the dark sheen of it almost blue.
‘Love me, Nathaniel, and make me forget.’
In response he lifted her to him and brought her to his bed, the wide velvet counterpane beneath her as he peeled the dress and bodice away. Her stockings were next and the small slippers bought only a few days before. Then he loosened her hair from its tie and draped the length of it down beside her.
Caught in the light and in his gaze she stayed very still. ‘You are even more beautiful than I remember.’ His voice held reverence and awe.
He was fully dressed as he stroked one breast, smiling when the nipple puckered at his ministrations. Then his fingers fell lower, across her stomach and down into the place between her thighs, pushing into the wet warmth with a gentle insistence. And all the time his eyes never left her own, the fire within them banking and a look that said she was his. Need made her loins rise from the bed to meet him, her legs opening wider to allow him in, and she looked away because she knew that the roiling waves of release were about to come and she did not want to see his reaction to such a surrender.
Her muscles caught around his fingers, stilling the plunder and keeping him there inside her tight, and when she began to shake he pushed in farther still, eliciting a groan that held a primal relief.
She was no longer cautious or circumspect. All she could think of was the aching craving urgency in her body and the balm and ease of tension.
They belonged together, Nathaniel and she, and it had nothing to do with marriage or legality or expectations.
It was far simpler than that. It was how their skin called to each other and how the shape of his b
ody so perfectly fitted hers. It was in the scent of him and the beauty and the strength. It was in his honesty and morality and bravery and forgiveness.
A single tear traced its way from her left eye down onto the pillow beneath. She had not expected absolution, but how she had wanted it. From him. From the only other person in all of the world who might understand what she had lost and what she had gained.
Her saviour. Now and then.
‘I will love you for ever, Nathaniel.’
* * *
Cassandra’s eyes were clear and her voice was strong as she said it, no half-meant troth given with a lack of honesty or intent.
‘For ever?’
This time he was ready and there was no question in his reply. With care he crossed the room and opened a drawer, pulling out his mother’s ring from a velvet box. The emerald glinted in the light as he walked back and he saw she was now perched on the edge of his bed, watching.
With care he bent on one knee and the smile that he had missed so much came easily to her lips.
‘I never stopped loving you, Cassandra Northrup. Will you marry me?’
‘I already have, Nathaniel Lindsay.’ The words were wobbly and tears pooled in her eyes.
‘Again then. Properly this time. With everyone around us.’
‘Yes.’
Bringing her hand up, he placed the ring upon it. His mother’s ring was still oversized and the ancient gold needed a good polish, but on Cassandra’s finger it looked completely right.
A circle. Of life. Lost and found. He knew his mother would have loved Cassandra, loved her rarity and her honesty. The only thing she wore was a smile and this ring and she looked to him like a goddess sent from above. To heal loneliness and doubt, to bring laughter and adventure and truth.
When her hands came to the buttons on his shirt he stood still, tugging the garment off on completion and then doing the same with his trousers and boots. Life had marked them both. Inside and out. But it had also melded them together into a shape that could not withstand the world alone. He smote the candles above and the one on the stand near the bed and in the light of the fire he turned. They came together as husband and wife, his seed spilled without a care for caution.
Home. Safe. The night outside and the warmth within.
‘I want as many more Jamies as you might give me,’ he whispered finally when sense had returned.
‘Starting tonight, Nathaniel.’ The light in her eyes danced as her fingers closed around his shaft and all that had been wonderful before began again.
* * *
Much later they spoke. She leaned against him, her head upon his chest as he lifted himself to sit against the cushioned bed end.
‘Lebansart left the minute after I gave him the names on the document. Louis Baudoin had already died from having allowed me to see the paper and in the end it killed Celeste, too...’
His finger came across her lips, stopping the flow of words. ‘You don’t have to tell me any more if you do not wish to. It doesn’t matter now.’
‘But I want to. If I had not interfered, my cousin’s soul may have been saved, for she died by her own hand less than a day later.’
‘Guilt has as many lives as you wish to give it, Cassandra. You were young and trying to do your best to save those you loved, but it’s time now to stop the blame.’
‘I hated her sometimes,’ she whispered, the very words so dreadful she could not give them the full power of sound.
‘Celeste?’
‘She made me stay there with her. I could have escaped, but she held me there with her weakness and her need. In the end she understood just how foolish she had been, but for a long while she revelled in it. The wine. Louis Baudoin. The danger. I could never trust that she would not be harmed by her lack of foresight and so I stayed.’
‘To protect her?’
She nodded, the brisk anger in the movement revealing. ‘And finally I could not even do that.’
‘Voltaire once wrote that “no snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible”. Perhaps you should allow your cousin more of the burden of blame.’
Cassandra mulled his words over. Celeste had grown up reprimanding everyone except herself when things went wrong and in every situation had put her own needs first.
‘You think each person is accountable for their actions.’
‘I do. I am the next in line for the St Auburn title and all it entails, yet the duties that came with my job in Europe were never the ones my grandfather wished for me to entertain. It was his way of life or no way of life and he harboured a resentment I could never understand.’
‘Sometimes people disappoint you.’
He laughed. ‘I try to allow them not to.’
Lifting her head on to her hands, she looked at him. ‘Did your work in France teach you the knack of knowing what it is that others wish to hear?’
He frowned. ‘Hawk and Lucas helped me more with that. You have not met Luc Clairmont yet for he is in the Americas, but without them I wouldn’t have survived the loneliness of my childhood.’
She ran her finger across his chest, circling the skin around his nipple and liking the way it tightened. ‘I often worried that someone might come from England and arrest me after Perpignan, and in my dreams the punishment was always death. Perhaps that was a part of the reason I didn’t come home for so long. You worked for the British Service, but you never told anyone about me.’
His hand clamped down across hers. ‘I couldn’t. I never asked another question of that time because if I had found out you were dead....’
‘You kept me safe. Us safe.’
‘Then I am glad. But enough of talk, my beautiful wife, for there are still some hours before we need to rise.’
When he rolled her beneath him she simply relaxed, opening her mouth as his lips came across her own.
* * *
He heard the birdsong at dawn but remained perfectly still. Cassandra lay against him, one leg draped across his thigh and her head tucked into the crook of his arm. Her hair cascaded around them in all the shades of gold and red, wildly tangled and curling. He lifted up one tress and felt its softness.
His wife. They had slept for much longer than she could have wanted to and for that he was pleased.
No covert sneaking back home. He did not wish for only night-time trysts. He wanted to see the sunshine play across her skin and know the ecstasy of every hour of the day in bed. Not quite the slow-building friendship she had had in mind, but then nothing about their relationship had ever been ordinary. He wondered how she might explain this night away to her family.
Her breathing changed and her eyes opened, sleep filled and disorientated, but widening as they recognised daylight at the window. Yet still she made no attempt to leave.
‘You kept me up too late, sir,’ she whispered, and there was a smile in her rebuke.
‘Can I do so again tonight, Lady Lindsay? Or today if you should so will it?’
‘I cannot think your servants would be pleased at such a prospect.’ Lifting her head, she listened for a moment. ‘They are at work already, yet they have not come in?’
‘And rest assured that they will not, my love.’
Her left hand pushed back the heavy length of her hair and the ring of his mother glinted in the light.
‘However, the grapevines of those in servitude will be ringing and my name, undoubtedly, shall be bandied around the salons in shock.’
‘I’ll announce our wish to marry in The Times tomorrow and everyone in the ton will recognise you as my intended. No one then would dare to criticise.’
‘And your grandfather?’
‘Who knows? Such a pronouncement may even bring him from St Auburn as he has hoped for such an occasion for ever. Jamie’s existence will make him delirious.’
‘You almost make me believe that it could be this easy for us.’
‘Well, we have waited for years to be together again and that must be some kind of a miracle.’
She curled into him, holding tight. ‘I have missed you. Missed this. Missed talking and loving. Missed closeness.’
He felt her breath at his throat, gentle and honest. Like his life was now with her in it. He wanted to protect her for ever and love her until they were old and grey with a million memories shared between them. The harsh and raw realities of the past faded into this new serenity, Cassandra and Jamie in the very centre of a world reformed.
Her finger traced the tattoo on his forearm. ‘What does this mean?’
He smiled. ‘It’s one of the symbols from the healing temples of Asclepius. At the time, in the backstreets of Marseilles, I was looking for resurrection and renewal. Later on it always reminded me of the thin line between life and death.’
‘Being a spy must have been dangerous work. Your body is covered in scars.’
‘It’s the price one pays for not carrying arms and being out of uniform. Blending into a community is not always as easy as it might sound.’
‘But you have stopped?’
‘Almost.’
‘I am glad for it.’
‘And for the first time I think I could settle at St Auburn and run the place, farm the land, sit as a judge at the country courts, grow vegetables. All the things I once would not have seen sense in.’
She laughed.
‘With you and Jamie there it all feels possible.’
Cassie turned then to look at him, the light in her eyes bright and clear. He could never decide whether they were more green than blue. Today they seemed an exact mixture of both. ‘I think I loved you the first moment I saw you in Nay, with your dimple...here.’ She touched his cheek.