Oh, she’d attempted to hold a salon on her own merit. Her father had humored her and allowed her to host two. They had not been well attended. Her friends Willa and Leonie had been the only guests to show to both of them. Cassandra had tried to convince some scholars to come but they had politely declined. In the end, the program had been several readings by poets more interested in the food that was served than in presenting their work.
The salon was her big dream . . . however, Cassandra had smaller, secret dreams as well. She called them secret because she rarely voiced them. They were too simple for a woman of her intelligence, but truth be known, she did want her own home and a husband she admired.
Soren did not pass that muster.
She would also like children. When she visited her stepsisters, she enjoyed her nieces and nephew. Their growing minds intrigued her. She found them fascinating.
And she would be involved in her children’s lives. Amanda and Laura depended upon nurses and governesses. Cassandra fancied teaching her children herself. She’d talk to them about geography and literature and mathematics and help them understand why such things were important to know—her daughters as well as her sons.
She herself had been most fortunate that the local vicar in Cornwall, Mr. Morwath, had encouraged her to read. He’d loaned her books and had even pushed her father to hire good tutors. Otherwise, her father and Helen would have been happy to keep her ignorant of science and other topics they considered “unsuitable.”
But no one told a duchess what she could and couldn’t do . . . except it appeared Cassandra had lost Camberly’s interest—
No, she’d never had it. His interest had been a ruse to match her with Soren. And now, who knew if she would realize any of her dreams? Especially the secret ones?
Cassandra went to the washbasin. She poured lukewarm water into a bowl, wet a cloth, and pressed it to her neck and heated cheeks. It felt good. She shouldn’t have let Soren goad her.
Nor could she hide forever in the necessary room. She was going to have to return to the dining room and resume her seat, but first she would enjoy a moment’s more respite from—
The door opened . . . and Soren York walked in, destroying her privacy.
Chapter 4
Storming the ladies’ necessary room was not the best idea Soren had ever had; however, it served the purpose. He had her where they could have a moment of straightforward conversation.
Cass obviously did not agree with him. “Leave this room immediately,” she ordered. She actually quivered with outrage.
It was a bit overdramatic.
His response was to walk around the room, listening at the screens set up in one corner for privacy. “Good, we are alone.”
“No, you are alone.” She began walking toward the door. “I am leaving.”
“Not yet.” He hooked his hand in her arm, circling her away from the door.
She yanked her arm away. “You would stop me? Don’t think I won’t scream.”
Soren raised a conciliatory hand. “Cass, you are not a screamer. We need to talk and here is as good a place as any—”
“I have nothing to say to you.”
“Obviously you do or you wouldn’t be so huffy with me.”
“I’m not huffy—”
“Cass, you are huffy—”
“And I am not ‘Cass.’ My name is Cassandra. Miss Holwell to you.”
“Yes, Miss Holwell,” Soren repeated, mocking her with meekness. And why not? She was being unreasonable. “I used to call you Cass. You didn’t correct me then.”
“But I did not like it. I’ve already corrected you more than once this Season. Especially the evening when you referred to me as ‘Cassie.’ ”
She had.
Soren was unapologetic. “If you truly didn’t like my calling you Cass, why didn’t you say something in the beginning? Back when we were children?”
His logic appeared to stump her and then she said, “Because. Now will you leave?”
“ ‘Because’ is not an explanation,” he argued.
“It is all you are going to receive.” She edged away from him as she spoke, moving as if preparing to physically defend herself.
At last, the thought occurred to Soren that something was very wrong between them. He attempted diplomacy. “I’m not trying to intimidate you.”
“You have followed me into the ladies’ necessary room—”
“I wish a moment’s private conversation with you. Something I haven’t been able to have because you have been avoiding me, haven’t you?”
She didn’t deny the accusation. Instead, she announced, “I will not marry you. I have no desire to have anything to do with you.”
Her bluntness annoyed him. “I’ve received that message,” he assured her. “What I don’t understand is what I did to set you off. Put the whole idea of marriage aside—” He’d have to work on that issue later. “We were friends once, Cass.” Almost too late he remembered to use her full name. “—andra,” he added.
“Until you betrayed that friendship.”
Now there was an accusation that surprised him.
“Betrayed our friendship? What are you talking about?” He searched his memory. “You are the one who changed everything. You stopped speaking to me.”
“I gave you the cut direct,” she declared rather proudly. She referred to the social weapon of rudely ignoring an acquaintance. It was a fierce thing to do . . . if one paid attention to ridiculous etiquette. Soren did not.
“The cut direct?” The words didn’t even taste good in his mouth. “You were thirteen. Children don’t do the cut direct.”
“I did.”
“Ah, well, you have me there.” He shook his head. Back in those days she was always claiming the silliest of ideas, usually gleaned from books. “Of course, if I wasn’t aware that I’d received the cut direct, it loses its power, doesn’t it? It can’t truly be a cut direct, if I don’t know I’ve been cut. Or that you are being direct. Which you weren’t, by the way, because I didn’t know I’d received it.”
Her answer to his logic was a haughty glare, one he easily ignored.
Soren was glad for this conversation. Jesting aside, he wanted the air cleared between them. “Very well, you delivered the ‘cut direct,’ ” he conceded. “And you did this because I ‘betrayed’ you?” Now, there was another overburdened word. “You will pardon my ignorance. What exactly did my fifteen-year-old self do?”
“You mocked me. Just as you did at the dining table this evening.”
Soren already regretted his blunt comment when he’d told her Camberly would never marry her. It was the truth; still, he could have been gentler, less confrontational . . . although he would hardly consider his honesty a “betrayal.”
In truth, he’d always pushed her a bit. Some would say that it was the natural inclination of a York wanting to best a Holwell, but he knew differently. He’d wanted Cass to notice him. He did not like being dismissed. Her opinion had always been surprisingly important to him. He’d valued her approval. He still wanted to have it, and more. He would like to have her in his bed.
Marrying Cass Holwell would be no chore at all. She had everything that attracted him to a woman. She was fiercely independent and unafraid, two qualities he hadn’t seen in any other woman in London. He teased her about books but he admired her intelligence. He’d learned long ago a woman without wit could make for deadly dull nights. And she was very easy on his eyes. How could he not be interested in her?
“I didn’t mean to tease you,” he said. He didn’t like the word “mock.” “I don’t know what came over me at the table.” He wasn’t about to admit to jealousy. “Why shouldn’t you be a duchess? You could.” There, he’d apologized.
She was not mollified. “I don’t demand an apology for our dialogue at the dinner table, although you were rude. What you said to me in there is nothing less than what I would expect of you.” She sounded like the stuffiest of governesses.
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“Oh. Well, then I’m sorry I apologized. I can’t seem to keep from offending you.” Yes, he was mocking her, and rightly so. She was throwing his apology back in his face—and she was the one who had wanted it.
Her hands clenched into fists at her side. “You think you are so clever. Or that I am so desperate for marriage I’d lower my standards to your level—”
“Wait a minute, Cass. Now you are the one growing very personal here,” he warned.
“Cassandra,” she barked.
“Cass-andra,” he fired back. Her picking on the nickname didn’t make sense to Soren. Who wanted to go around being Cassandrrrraaa? The name was a mouthful. But a bit of honesty between them was refreshing. He pushed for more. “And, because I can’t read your mind and you obviously have been nursing a grudge against me for, what? Say, ten years and more—?”
“You called me a dog.”
The words flew out of her, and once spoken, she pulled away, covering her mouth, as if to deny them.
“A dog?” Soren frowned. “I’ve never said anything of the sort about you.”
That brought her back. “Oh yes, you did. It was at the Burfords’ house party.”
“Which one? They had one every year.”
“It was the last one you attended.” Her voice was accusing, as if he was being deliberately provocative.
“Right before I left for Canada?”
“Yes.”
Soren searched his mind. Why would he call her a dog, especially since she was anything but ugly or four-legged? “I don’t remember saying anything so offensive.”
“You don’t recall trying to be clever for the other boys?”
“I recollect the other lads. I also remember that suddenly, you refused to have anything to do with me.” He’d forgotten that day in general until this moment. “You went off in a huff. That was your cut direct?”
“Because you called me a dog,” she insisted.
He was genuinely puzzled. “Cassandra, I’m sorry. I have no memory of saying such a thing.”
She walked right up to him then. “We were up in the schoolroom, the lot of us. You picked up a slate and drew something. The other boys snickered over it. Do you not remember now?”
“No.”
She looked as if she could not, would not believe him.
He held up his hands as if to show her he was hiding nothing, and then the details of that day came into focus.
That morning, on the way to the Burford party, his father had informed Soren he would not be returning to school. He was behind on Soren’s board and the headmaster was becoming threatening.
Instead, his father had decided to send Soren to his uncle in Canada. You can finish your schooling there, he’d said. We’ll purchase a commission for you when you are of age. You’ll do well.
Soren’s stunned surprise had quickly escalated to fury that everything he’d known was going to be stripped away because of his father’s recklessness with money. In a fit of rebellious anger, he had nipped a bottle of port when no one was looking. He and the lads had escaped to the schoolroom to drink their bottle in private. That day, he had felt he was being thrown away. His friends would continue their schooling and go on to Oxford and he would be in Canada, wherever that was.
And then Cass and some of the girls had come into the room, disturbing the masculine bond a stolen bottle had given them . . .
He looked to her. “Tell me again what I did?”
“You drew a picture of a dog on one of the slates in the schoolroom. You wrote my name on it.” Her chin lifted in justified anger. She sounded grievously offended.
This was apparently what she wanted an apology for, and Soren should give it to her.
But he couldn’t.
From deep within came that selfsame desire to revolt that he’d experienced the day he’d stolen the port. He did not remember drawing a picture of a dog or even holding a slate. Could he have done it? Yes. It would have been a foolish, rude thing to do, but that day, he’d been in a mood.
So, he said what he truly felt. “You’ve been nursing a grudge against me all these years because of some childhood piece of nonsense?”
“You were fifteen.”
“I was an idiot at fifteen. All boys are idiots at that age.”
“Except you have apparently not improved,” she countered crisply, and would have marched around him for the door, save for his arm going up to block her way.
“What does that mean?” he demanded.
“Exactly what I said,” she returned.
He could have put his fist through a wall in frustration. “You are carrying on this way because of some silly drawing I did on a slate when we were children, and you believe I am immature? Do I understand you correctly?”
“I was hurt,” she replied primly.
“I see. And in your ‘hurt,’ do you feel you have the license to behave like the lowest class of person toward me? There are draymen who have better manners than you have, Miss Holwell.”
She did not like that at all. Her brows knit together sharply. “I believe you are overreacting.”
“I believe you don’t know what friendship is.”
“A friend doesn’t call another one a dog.”
She was right. Still . . .
“I was fifteen. I was a stupid, rowdy boy. We do things like that. It means nothing—”
She cut off his dismissive words by raising her arms in the air as if to block them. “You didn’t do it to the boys around you or to the other girls. You did it to me. You said you were my friend—and I didn’t have many. I trusted you.”
That sobered him.
“You made the others laugh at me. And now?” She lowered her arms. “Now, you are supposedly courting me for my fortune and act confused that I’m not overwhelmed by your attention.” Her voice took on a simpering tone. “Oh, my dear Lord Dewsberry.” She batted her eyes and fanned her cheeks as if they were overheated.
Now, who was mocking whom?
“All I’ve done is ask you to dance a time or two and escort you in to dinner,” he countered tensely.
“But what you really want is money. My money; anyone’s money. You don’t see me, Soren. The dog incident brought home to me that my friendship didn’t mean anything to you. I was a novelty, nothing more. We’d both been warned to stay away from each other and, of course, how could we? We were both too curious for our own good. And the idea of a friendship between us? It was all a sham, just as a marriage between us would be nothing more than a charade.”
She wasn’t right about the friendship, but she was dead correct about the money.
He’d marry Beelzebub if the devil had the blunt he needed. Pentreath Castle was at stake. Soren had returned to England to learn that his late father had mortgaged the estate to the hilt. The man’s body had barely been cold before creditors had come knocking on the door.
Soren was determined not to lose his birthright. What he had once been willing to walk away from had taken on more meaning with the birth of his son. He would not fail Logan or future generations the way his father and grandfather had. Therefore, since any money he had was tied up in his Canadian businesses, he’d made a pact with one Jeremiah Huggett, the most ruthless of the moneylenders—but what choice had Soren had? None.
Now a payment was due and Huggett was looking for his money or Pentreath.
Soren’s motive for marrying was a time-honored solution. However, it would come across as shallow to an overly moral woman.
There was a long beat of silence between them.
Soren broke it first. “So, where are we? Friends? Enemies? Passersby? I never intended to hurt you.”
The heat left her.
Her hand reached out to touch the wooden top of the washbasin. She rubbed a finger along the grain as if in deep thought. Her whole being softened with sadness, and he realized she wasn’t as set against him as she pretended.
“Cass—” he started. Yes, he sensed an opportunity in his
favor, and he was desperate enough to mine it.
She cut him off. “Our friendship was a long time ago,” she admitted. “I was quite naïve then. The picture you drew on the slate, it didn’t really matter, Soren. I’ve been called worse names, especially back then. But what hurt was your callousness. I thought you understood what your friendship meant to me. You see, everyone liked you. They thought I was odd. I didn’t fit in. And all of the parish believed my family had unfairly taken your grandfather’s lands. Even now, they don’t like the Holwells overmuch. I try never to go back Lantern Fields.” She referred to the house Toland had built on York lands.
“Nonsense. How many elections has your father won?”
“Three, and that is only because no one runs against him. They don’t have the money, even though they distrust him.”
She was more perceptive than he had imagined. “I’m certain you are admired,” he offered.
“And I’m certain you are mouthing meaningless flattery. How is that for plain speaking? There are few in Cornwall who have use for an outspoken, headstrong woman. And I return their feelings. When my father was first elected, I was happy to escape to London. It was freedom to finally be myself. I have a good life in the city. I shall not return to Cornwall. Ever.”
Well, that was that.
What was left to be said between them?
Honesty.
“I’m sorry for my rude drawing. You are right, it wasn’t kind of me. I can only say in my defense that I’d just learned Father was sending me away to Canada. He hadn’t paid my school fees. My education wasn’t as important to him as a good hour in a gaming den. Then, again, I wasn’t, either. It didn’t bother him that I’d been asked not to return, that his gambling had once again humiliated me.” Now he was the one to take a step away. “That day, I was angry at everyone and unfortunately acted out in an unsuitable manner.”
She frowned at the top of the washbasin as if digesting what he’d said. He wished he could read her thoughts. She seemed so distant—and so much like the lonely girl who had first caught his interest.
And then she looked up. “Thank you for your apology.”
A Match Made in Bed Page 4