But that was not the hand he’d been dealt, for Cassandra had entered his life, and he had fallen in love again. He’d had need of his brother.
He looked at the letter, admitting to himself at last that it was MaryAnn who instigated their betrayal.
How I fear the disdain that will rage at me when you have read this letter…
She knew Devon would be angry. Perhaps he had been.
It was all in the past now, however. Mistakes had been made. He was no stranger to them himself. Now, all he wanted was to forgive. He did not want to go on living his life as an outsider, bitter and alone. He wanted to reclaim the friendship he once shared with his brother—
A knock sounded at his door. He slipped the letter back into the box and went to answer it. “Charlotte.”
His sister was standing in the corridor clutching a dirty old letter box in her arms. Her hands were filthy. She looked as if she’d been digging in the garden. “I have something here that I think you should see.”
He recognized a look of distress on her face. She appeared almost ready to burst from a secret she was desperate to divulge. “Come in, Charlotte,” he said. “What do you have there?”
As soon as she entered the room, he shut the door behind her. She moved to the desk, set the box down, and spoke so fast he had a hard time making out what she was trying to tell him.
“This is full of old letters,” she said. “Iris found them ages ago hidden in one of the fireplaces—in the very room where Letitia is staying. She never told anyone else before now.”
“Iris? The maid?”
“Yes. She cleans the fireplaces, and we got to talking,” Charlotte said excitedly. “Perhaps this is something Father should know about. It is just the sort of madness that would make sense to him.”
He looked at her with curiosity, then crossed the room to inspect the contents of the mysterious box. He remembered his earlier conversation with Devon. We shall have to fight madness with madness.
Perhaps this would be the key…
In the south wing of the palace—at the same time Vincent was reading the letters Charlotte had discovered—quite another letter was being read by the Duchess of Swinburne, who was on her way to her daughter’s room with a box of chocolates.
The duchess had just rounded a corner when she spotted Lord Vincent’s scandalous mistress sneaking down the same corridor with a bloody bandage wrapped around her head.
Intrigued by the woman’s impetuous step, the duchess turned around, found the correct door, and tiptoed into the elusive mistress’s room. There, on the pillow, she found a most interesting letter to her own daughter’s fiancée, Lord Vincent.
She read every word with dread and alarm, then promptly slipped the note into her pocket. With great haste she left the room and continued down the corridor to speak with her daughter.
Chapter 21
My world makes perfect sense now. I know what I want, and I understand my life and my future.
—from the journal of Cassandra Montrose,
Lady Colchester,
July 9, 1874
I beg your pardon?” the duke said, brushing the mud off his knees in the garden and rising to his feet. “What is this you have?”
“Some letters,” Vincent replied. “Charlotte found them in Lady Letitia’s bedchamber, hidden behind the stones in the fireplace. They are very old.”
Vincent set the box down on the fountain wall, which encircled the statue of Venus.
“Who are they from?” his father asked.
“They are from the first Duchess of Pembroke, written to her sister. They are of a rather personal nature.”
Fascinated, the duke sat down on the wall and opened the box. He picked up the first letter on the stack, which was tied together with a black ribbon. “Are they naughty letters?” he asked mischievously.
Vincent felt as if he were addressing a schoolboy. “No, Father, at least not in the way you are thinking.”
He began to read one letter, then the next, and the next. By the time he got to the bottom of the stack, he was breathing hard and his eyes were darting back and forth from left to right as he read the private and shocking correspondence between the first Duchess of Pembroke and her older sister.
“The sister tells her not to do it,” the duke said. “She warns her that if she does, she will be cursed forever.”
Vincent watched his father carefully. “What do you think it means?” he asked, even though he knew very well what it meant and what his father would surmise. But he did not wish to plant any ideas in his head. He wanted the man to decide for himself.
“She hates her husband. She wants to poison him.”
Vincent still said nothing. He let his father finish reading.
He came to the last word of the last letter, then went searching inside the box for more. “That is it? There are no more? It doesn’t say what happened. What did she do?”
“I do not know.”
He looked up at Vincent with fire in his eyes. “The first duke died in his bed. You don’t think…Is it possible?” He stood up and walked across the ravaged garden, his boots sinking deep into the sticky muck. He read the last letter again, then turned to Vincent. “Brother Salvador led you to these letters, didn’t he? He has been waking me at night, always taking me to the gallery to look at the portraits. He always takes me to her.”
Vincent shook his head. “It was not a ghost, Father. It was one of the maids. The letters are real.”
“But Brother Salvador is real. He leads me to the portrait of the first duchess. I am always entranced by her beauty. That is why I was so certain Letitia was destined to be a Pembroke. She is beautiful also, just like the duchess in the portrait.” The color drained from his face.
“She doesn’t love me,” Vincent said. “We won’t be happy.”
The duke squeezed his eyes shut and cupped his forehead with both fists. “I always feel like I am forgetting something.”
“You often forget things, Father. It is simply your age.”
“Is this the origin of the curse?” the duke asked, his expression contorted with distress.
Vincent rose to his feet and strode toward him. “Maybe what needs to happen in order to thwart the curse is not for the sons of Pembroke to marry quickly, but to marry for love. Maybe if we do not, we will be doing exactly what the curse is warning us not to do.”
The duke frowned. “I still feel like I am forgetting something.” He looked at Vincent desperately. “Who do you love?”
“Cassandra Montrose. Lady Colchester.”
The duke frantically shook his head. “I don’t know her.”
“Yes, you do. You saw her last night. She was brought to the palace after the thunder storm.”
His father was breathing heavily. He walked around the fountain, then returned to stand before Vincent. “When Lady Letitia came to the palace, and you fastened the Pembroke Sapphire around her neck,” he said, “the rain stopped and the clouds parted. That was a good day. It was a sign.”
Vincent laid a hand on his father’s shoulder. “Lady Colchester arrived the same day with her baby. She brought your grandchild here.”
The duke frowned in confusion.
“Perhaps she was the one who stopped the rain, Father,” Vincent suggested. “Perhaps it was not Letitia after all.”
Even though he knew it was madness, Vincent was beginning to believe it himself—that Cassandra was the cure to all that was wrong in his own life. Everything had changed when she came back to him.
“I have a grandchild?” the duke asked.
“Yes. Her name is June.”
His father squinted anxiously. “The woman with the bloody head? The one who was struck by lightning?” His eyes lit up. “Maybe that was a sign. It happened so you would be forced to bring her here to the palace so that I would meet her.”
Vincent found himself nodding readily. “I believe you may be right.”
All at once his father’s eyes f
illed with panic. “I remember now. The first duchess with the sapphire…she came to ask me for money. Your mistress is gone.”
“What do you mean, ‘gone’?”
“We gave her money to make her leave.”
“Who did?”
“The first duchess and I. What is her name? Letitia. She wants to poison her husband. She will poison you.”
Vincent gently squeezed his father’s shoulder. “Did Cassandra accept the money?”
The duke’s eyes glazed over in defeat. “She’s gone,” he moaned. “She got into my coach and drove off with a tiny bundle in her arms. Was that the child?”
Vincent grabbed hold of his father’s frail shoulders. “Where? Where did they go?”
Thunder rumbled in the distance. The duke took one look at the rain clouds on the horizon, bowed his head and sobbed.
Vincent pounded his fist against Letitia’s door, rattling it in the jamb. When an answer did not come soon enough, he entered without waiting for an invitation, and found her sitting by the window with a plate of chocolates on her lap. “Where the devil is she?”
His fiancée looked up and sneered. “I wonder who you could possibly be referring to?”
“You know exactly who.”
Letitia set the chocolates aside and stood up, licking her fingers as she crossed the room toward him. “You should never overestimate the constancy of a whore.”
He had no time or patience for her spite. He took three sure and steady strides forward, placed his hands on her tiny corseted waist and pushed her up against the tall mahogany bedpost. She gasped with shock.
“Tell me where she went,” he said in a low, dangerous voice, the tip of his nose lightly brushing over hers.
She barely managed to get words out. “I have no idea.”
“Yes, you do, darling, and you are going to tell me.”
Despite her cool, malicious bravado a moment ago, she was now quivering in the solid grip of his resolve. “She has recognized the error of her ways and left you.”
“Not on her own, surely,” he replied. “She had nothing but the clothes on her back. Someone must have provided her with some assistance.”
Red-hot scorn glimmered in Letitia’s eyes. “Your father provided her with funds and a coach to take her to the train station, and rightly so. He knows what is good for you.”
“But my father is mad, and I am beginning to think you are, too.”
Breathing quickly, she glanced down at his mouth and wet her lips. “Kiss me,” she said.
“No.”
“But you have pledged yourself to me. Your father will disinherit you if you do not marry me. You have given me your word as a gentleman that I will be your wife.”
He smiled sardonically. “I am hardly a gentleman, Letitia. You’ve always known that. I am a rake and a libertine—a debauched scoundrel, disreputable and depraved. I am famous for my drinking, gambling, and whoring. So surely this will come as no surprise to you or to your mother, or to the whole of London for that matter.”
“What shall come as no surprise?” she asked, fear igniting in her eyes.
“That I intend to go back on my word, because I would rather slit my wrists than spend a single minute married to you. Print that in the papers, darling, and don’t forget to mention that I am giving you up for my very wicked but extraordinarily beautiful mistress.”
He let go of her and backed away, leaving her panting with fury.
“You are a nobody,” she ground out. “The insignificant, irrelevant second son of a lunatic. Even when your father was sane he didn’t know who you were, and the only reason he has taken any interest in you now is because of me. He adores me and you know it.”
“You might discover,” Vincent said, “that is no longer the case. I suspect the next time he sees you, he might run screaming out the palace doors.”
Her lips fell open in dismay. “You’re lying.”
“I want you out of this house today,” he said, “and if you ever return, thinking you might sink your claws into one of my two younger brothers, I will take you by the hair and throw you out myself.”
She sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. “I hope your father denounces you forever.”
“What train is she taking?” he asked.
Letitia’s shoulders heaved. “All I know is that your second-rate mistress left here in your father’s coach in a mad dash for freedom, as if the devil himself were on her heels. That’s how badly she wanted to get away from you.”
He turned to leave.
“You’re a fool,” she shouted, following him, “if you give up your inheritance for that whore—who only slept with you for the money—when all you had to do was marry me and keep your father happy.”
He was already out the door and halfway down the hall when he said over his shoulder, “I don’t care about my inheritance, Letitia. That only ever mattered to you.”
He heard the door slam shut behind him, followed by a shrill scream of fury and the violent smashing of glass and china.
Breathing hard after the fast ride across the estate, hoping to stay ahead of the foul weather coming his way, Vincent leaped off his horse to the ground, quickly tethered the animal, and strode into the train station. He perused the room, his gaze frantic at the sight of the empty seats and the horrible, oppressive silence. He was too late.
“Sir,” he said to a guard sweeping the floor with a broom. “I take it the train has left. Was there a woman here with an infant? Was she on it?”
“There were a few ladies with babes, my lord, but I believe the one you are referring to was a very fine lady? With fair coloring?”
He strove to suppress his panic. “Yes. Did she get on the train?”
“She did, my lord. About a half hour ago.”
“Do you know where she was going?”
“The train was headed for London, my lord. She purchased a second ticket to go on from there, but I don’t recall the destination.”
Vincent felt the piercing stab of his frustration and anger. “When does the next train depart for London?”
The young guard seemed reluctant to answer. “Not until five, my lord.”
“Five, you say.” He tried to keep his voice and disposition calm, so as not to frighten the man any more than he had already. “I shall need a ticket, then.”
He hoped he would find her in London, waiting for her next departure.
God willing, if he did find her, it would take every ounce of self-control he possessed not to hate her forever for doing the thing he’d feared most. She had left him and taken June with her, without even saying goodbye.
And she had done it for money.
Chapter 22
He once suggested that there are people in the world who are connected to each other in their hearts and souls. I now believe that is true, and that we are inexplicably drawn to those people. Our souls recognize them the first moment we lay eyes on them, and the connection is both everlasting and indestructible, whether you are together or not.
—from the journal of Cassandra Montrose,
Lady Colchester,
July 9, 1874
By the time Vincent found Cassandra in a small Newbury inn, it was past midnight. He had spent the past hours traveling across the rain battered English countryside with a brief stop in London, brooding over the fact that she had left him, and in doing so, not only betrayed his trust, but was in breach of their contract as well, for she had taken their daughter away.
Exhausted, he climbed the stairs at the inn, knowing which room was hers thanks to an intoxicated innkeeper who was more interested in accepting a bribe than in protecting his guests’ privacy.
Pausing outside her door, Vincent struggled to make sense of the chaos in his mind and wrestled with both his anger and a crippling sense of relief that he’d found her. She had not disappeared from his life completely without a trace.
He remembered his dream about finding MaryAnn in the woods, then turning her body
over and seeing Cassandra’s lifeless face instead. The sense of loss he felt had been devastating. At least Cassandra was here. Alive. He could speak with her, ask her questions, try to understand…
After knocking, he heard the movement from inside. At last the door opened and he found himself staring into Cassandra’s surprised eyes. She was holding the collar of her nightdress tight around her neck with a fist. Her golden hair was gleaming, tousled and long about her shoulders. Her rosy lips were parted in dismay. “Vincent, what are you doing here?”
He focused on her face, his body tense with an alarming degree of desire. Evidently, no matter what occurred between them, he would always find her beautiful, especially when she was sleepy and waiflike, fresh out of bed.
“Vincent…” Her voice was a quiet whisper.
He strove to keep his head on straight. “Surprised to see me?”
She glanced uneasily over her shoulder into the dark room beyond. “Yes, but June is sleeping. She was tired and fussy from the journey, and I do not wish to wake her. And Miss Callahan is here,” she added, letting him know she felt there must be some concern for propriety. As if it mattered at this point.
It certainly did not matter to him. All he felt was a biting need to push past her and see June for himself—if only just to look at her sleeping, to make sure she was there in the flesh, safe and sound.
“Get dressed,” he said, “and meet me in the taproom.” Without giving her a chance to argue, he turned and went downstairs.
It was a quiet inn. Only a few patrons were seated at the bar. Vincent selected a low table in the corner with two upholstered wing chairs and ordered a tankard of ale. While he waited for Cassandra, he sipped it slowly and contemplated his displeasure.
A few minutes later he sensed her arrival in the taproom. He looked up from his frothy ale and rose to his feet, then waited for her to sit before he sat down again as well.
She looked pale. The bandage on her head was gone but the whites of her eyes were stained with red, as if she had not slept. He suddenly felt a pang of concern for her, but then recalled how he’d been forced to chase after her, not knowing whether he would ever find her. What would he have done then?
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