Totally selfish and wrapped up in her own affairs, Phoebe told herself contemptuously that she didn’t Cassandra’s beauty, she had something better—she was smart.
Cassandra’s impression on Cambridge and its students had been very lighthearted at first, just notes and smiles and waves and sometimes tossed kisses. But at Mistress Endicott’s the girls were growing up. By the time Cassandra was fifteen, Jim Deveney, a university student whose family lived in the town, managed to wangle an introduction to Cassandra through his mother’s long friendship with Mistress Endicott. And Cassandra sometimes on Saturdays found herself having tea with Jim’s mother and sisters while Jim sat in the background beaming at her with his irrepressible grin. Jim was bluff and open-hearted. Cassandra was all too aware of his adoration—indeed the whole school tittered when Jim arrived looking like an eager puppy to carry her off to tea—and she idly considered that one day she might marry Jim ... or someone like him.
There were lots of candidates for that honor, including Jim’s wild and handsome distant cousin Tony Dunn, who had descended on Cambridge—having already been sent down from Oxford and two other schools—when Cassandra was fifteen. Tony fell madly in love with her too.
Phoebe, now fourteen and with the school s smartest hairdo—Phoebe was slim and ultra-fashionable even if she’d never be pretty—had grown tired of living in her beautiful sister’s shadow. She decided to do something about it. With gifts of pomade and perfume and hair ribands, she managed to corrupt Dot into staying up and letting her in and out of the school’s side door by night. Cassandra and Phoebe shared a room, but it was easy enough to wait until Cassandra was asleep and slip away to some tavern and there drink wine with the university students, who were eager enough to buy drinks for any of Mistress Endicott’s closely chaperoned young ladies—and especially the sister of beautiful blonde Cassandra.
Cassandra found out about it when she woke to find Phoebe, fully dressed at four in the morning, staggering tipsily into a chair and falling onto the bed.
“Where have you been?” she asked, still half-asleep.
“At the Rose and Thorn.”
“The Rose and ...” Cassandra sat bolt upright in bed, staring at Phoebe in the moonlight. “Phoebe, that’s a tavernl”
“So it is.” Phoebe’s voice was slurred. She lay back, making no effort to undress.
“And you’re drunk!”
“That’s possible too,” agreed Phoebe cheerfully.
“How did you get out?”
“Why? Want to come along next time?”
“No, I don’t. Anything could have happened to you, wandering the dark streets alone by night. Phoebe, you’re only fourteen years old!”
Phoebe gazed up at her owlishly. “I’m aging fast.”
“Phoebe, have you done this before?” And when Phoebe giggled, “Well, you aren’t going to do it again! Do you hear me?” Cassandra was taller, stronger. She grasped her younger sister by the shoulders and shook her for emphasis. “You aren’t going to do it again!’’
“Go to sleep,” said Phoebe, her voice still more slurred. “Soon it will be time to get up. ” Her dark head lolled and she began to snore.
Really alarmed that something might happen to her little sister, Cassandra sat there studying Phoebe. She had certainly filled out during this last year, even though boys still scarcely noticed her. Perhaps if she offered Phoebe a compromise . . .
“I’ll see that Jim’s mother invites you to tea and has some of his friends over, if you’ll promise not to slip out again,’’ she told Phoebe the next day.
Phoebe, who had last night been introduced to gin and had had to be helped home, was suffering from a hangover, and she groaned. “Don’t say it so loud,” she pleaded.
“Phoebe!”
Phoebe shuddered. “I promise not to visit the taverns. I promise to take tea—go away!”
All the rest of that week Cassandra tried groggily to stay awake to make sure Phoebe kept her promise, but the week after that she found she was getting too sleepy to stay awake. And the first night she dozed—although Cassandra never knew it—Phoebe was out on the town again.
And this time she found the man who was to be the love of her life: Clive Houghton, who had been thrown out of even more schools than Tony Dunn. Clive was a younger son of the dowager Marchioness of Greensea and dazzlingly far above Phoebe on the social ladder. He had gleaming dark hair, a lock of which fell intriguingly over a dissolute face, and a hot stare which made girls giggle nervously. His clothes were impeccable—and so were his manners when he wasn’t drunk, which wasn’t too often. Almost from arrival at Cambridge, he was a leader of the pack.
He didn’t even notice Phoebe.
But Phoebe was not Rowan’s daughter for nothing. She saw him, she wanted him, and she set about getting him.
First she must get rid of Cassandra. Not only because Cassandra fully intended to stem the tide of her little sister’s wild ways but also because Cassandra was too beautiful—she took men’s minds off things—other girls for instance. So reasoned Phoebe.
And it would be remarkably easy to do. All she had to do was consider Cassandra’s independence, her warmhearted generous nature, and what she would do in time of crisis.
And then create that crisis.
That very night she set about it.
“I'm awfully tired of school," she told Cassandra that night after they had both gone to bed. “Tm tired of being a schoolgirl, I'm tired of Cambridge—we should be in London, Cassandra."
‘Well, we will be." Cassandra yawned. “When we have our London season."
“I don't think we ll ever have a London season," scoffed Phoebe. “And anyway, it would be years away!" She laughed mischievously. “I don't mean to wait."
After learning that her fourteen-year-old sister was out by night getting drunk in the taverns, Cassandra found that comment alarming. She lifted her head, rested on one elbow, and peered over at Phoebe. “What is that supposed to mean?"
Phoebe sighed. “I think I'm in love."
“Who is he? Who are you in love with?"
“Oh, you don't know him. He's a university student that I met on one of my nights out. "
“Well, go to sleep," said Cassandra ruthlessly. “He'll still be there in the morning. "
There was just the slightest ripple of laughter in Phoebe's voice. “But maybe I won't be. ..."
“Oh, Phoebe, you promised!" wailed Cassandra.
“Only not to visit the taverns," insisted Phoebe. “I never promised not to become a Fleet Street bride."
“A Fleet Street bridel" Cassandra glared at her sister’s half-seen form in the almost total darkness of the room. “Don't you know those marriages aren’t legal? Do you want to be married by some dirty convict from Fleet Prison? And given some kind of paper that has no meaning to it?"
“Well, it's the wrong season of the year for Gretna," said Phoebe sulkily. “It looks like it may snow anytime."
“Indeed it does! It has a way of snowing in winter! Come now, Phoebe," she coaxed. “The Twelve Days of Christmas aren't far off, and maybe we ll be going down to London then."
“No, Father would have written to us before now. We'll be spending Christmas right here at the school." She sounded bitter.
Charlotte sighed. “Maybe he’s waiting till the last moment.”
“No.” Phoebe was definite about that. “Were stuck here—at least you’re stuck here. But I’ve a mind to take the stage to London and get married. Did you know married women have much more ...” She sought for the word.
“ ‘License’ is the word you’re looking for, I presume,” said Cassandra grimly. “But while you’re contemplating extramarital affairs even before the ceremony, let me remind you that a husband is allowed to beat his wife with a stick no larger than his thumb—and most men have large thumbs.”
“Oh, he would never beat me,” Phoebe declared confidently. “Not in a thousand years.”
“You never can tell
,” Cassandra warned darkly. “Bridegrooms become husbands awfully fast!”
“Will you miss me when I’m gone, Cassandra?” asked Phoebe.
“If you say one more word, I’m going to pile everything we own against the door and it will all fall down and wake me if you try to open it. ”
Phoebe was instantly quiet.
She was already up and gone when Cassandra awakened. But that was not unusual—Phoebe’s French teacher was an early riser and insisted on starting her classes early, the first one before breakfast.
Groggily, for she had not been getting much sleep, Cassandra pulled on her clothes and prepared to face the day. She was really going to have to do something about Phoebe, she decided. All this talk of Fleet Street weddings and running away to London was getting on her nerves.
Their classes were different, so she did not expect to see Phoebe until lunchtime. Just before the girls went in to lunch, Dot the chambermaid, took Cassandra aside.
“I don’t know what to do.” Dot was almost wringing her hands. “Mistress Phoebe made me promise not to tell, she warned me if I told anyone she’d tell Mistress Endicott about all those times I let her out at night and I’d be dismissed.”
That much was true. Phoebe had warned Dot that if she didn’t do exactly as she was told, she, Phoebe, would go to the headmistress and tell all about her nighttime escapades. Blackmail, she had found, worked even better than French perfume and hair ribands. “All that will happen to me is I’ll be sent home—where I want to go,” she warned Dot. “But you’ll be dismissed!” Dot had been terrified.
Alarm coursed through Cassandra. “What’s Phoebe done now?”
“She made me tell her French teacher that she had a bad headache and wouldn’t be down to class. But she didn’t stay in her room—I saw her slipping out in the direction of the coaching inn and she was carrying one of her boxes.” Dot’s voice had risen to a very convincing wail. “Oh, you don’t think that she . . . ?”
The Cambridge-to-London stage! It left early. Cassandra looked at the chased gold watch she carried in her pocket. The stage had left two hours ago, to be exact.
“Yes, Dot, I think she may very well have taken the stagecoach,” she said soberly. “But don’t tell the school just yet. Maybe there’s still a chance to overtake it.”
Dot looked vastly relieved, but not for the reason Cassandra thought. Dot was merely glad that her part in this charade was over. For Phoebe, she knew very well, was hiding in the cold attic at this very moment, bundled up in shawls and blankets and eating an apple.
“If you’re asked, you haven’t seen me this morning,” Cassandra told Dot. “But do you think you could get a message to Jim Deveney for me? I don’t think he has any classes today. He should be at his mother’s house, sleeping late.”
“Yes, I think I could,” said Dot doubtfully. She was wishing she had never seen either of the Keynes sisters.
Hastily Cassandra penned a note. And afterward she counted her money and dressed for travel. If worst came to worst, she had enough money for the coach ride to London. She packed a small bag. After that she stood before the window until she saw Jim striding down the street toward her.
He stopped below the window and she tossed down to him the bag, and her hat and heavy cloak. Then she tripped down the stairs with great unconcern just as the girls were coming up from lunch. One or two of them stared at her curiously, one whispered she’d be punished. Mistress Endicott had noticed her absence at lunch! Just now a schoolgirl’s punishment was the farthest thing from Cassandra’s mind. And the least important.
She ran outside, and together she and Jim raced down the street, Cassandra putting on her cloak as she ran. “We’ve got to stop them,” she said. “Phoebe could ruin her life with a Fleet Street marriage!”
Jim Deveney well knew what a Fleet Street marriage was: it put one in limbo, not quite married, not quite single. And although the certificates of such marriages had been used in the courts, everyone knew they weren’t legal.
“We could hire horses and try to overtake them,” Jim offered.
Cassandra thought of riding wildly down the highway, perhaps in a blast of snow. “They’ll have to stop,” she said. “At lunch, to change horses, and again for the night. If we take the stage—the next one to London—and then when it stops for the night we hire horses and overtake them at their inn where they’re spending the night—”
“Splendid,” interrupted Jim exuberantly. He found the thought of a moonlight ride with Cassandra beside him exhilarating.
But the afternoon stage was late. After all, it was an extra stagecoach, put on this time of year when so many people went down to London for the Christmas festivities. Three hours late. Cassandra and Jim looked at each other in consternation.
“We'll catch up with them tomorrow night,” said Jim uneasily.
But by then they’d have spent the night in each others arms. . . . Still, at the moment it seemed the best solution. It wasn’t safe to try to ride for long distances on this road by night, with so many highwaymen about!
But the next day the stage broke down in the middle of nowhere and the passengers had to wait until a wheel was procured. At this point Cassandra and Jim held a council of war. They decided that in spite of the time lost, Jim would hire a horse and go on ahead. He would stop the stage, loudly bellowing that there was a trepanner on it! And somehow hold it there until Cassandra caught up.
At the moment it seemed a splendid idea.
The night was clear and cold but the roads were heavily iced.
By the time they reached the outskirts of London, Cassandra was girding herself to meet whatever came. If Jim had not been able to stop the stage, she decided she would go at once to the house on Grosvenor Square. Father adored Phoebe; he would know what to do.
At almost that moment they heard a crash, and the stage had come to a long skidding halt that almost overturned it and caused the passengers opposite Cassandra to scream in unison. Cassandra tore open the leathern flap and peered out.
Up ahead, a heavy dray had come skidding around an icy curve and overturned. The horses were down and kicking and neighing in a tangle of reins; the choleric drayman was cursing his luck and shaking his fist at heaven.
The dray had rounded a turn too fast on the ice. The body of the dray had swayed and swiveled and tilted over and crashed to the roadbed directly on top of a rider who must have found himself trapped between the dray and the thick trunk of an oak tree. He lay quite still beneath the corner of the fallen dray.
It was Jim, and he was very obviously dead. Crushed beneath the dray.
Cassandra heard her own wild scream as she leapt out of the coach and stumbled over the stile to reach him.
It had all been sorted out later. Jim had caught up with the stage as it arrived at the coaching inn in London—and Phoebe had not been aboard. He had been riding back to tell Cassandra that.
To Cassandra’s astonishment, her father and Yates had met her when she alighted from the stage, and promptly taken her home, there to receive the shock of her life.
“We must find Phoebe,” she protested. “She could ruin her life. She—”
“Enough!” roared Rowan. “Let us have no more lies.” He was thinking how like Charlotte to the life Cassandra was—and she had lied to him too. “You were trying to cloak your elopement by having this lad from Cambridge ride alongside the stage. Tis clear that—”
“It is not clear. Phoebe was running away and Jim and I were following, trying to stop her.”
Rowan waved a parchment in Cassandra’s face. “I have here a letter from your sister, telling me that you had run away from school on the afternoon stage. She thought you were meeting some lad—she couldn’t be sure whether he’d be with you. It was posted with the driver of the morning stage from Colchester.”
Cassandra felt the blood drain from her face. Phoebe had tricked her. She knew that whatever she said now, she would not be believed. She lifted her chin.
As unrepentant as her mother had been! Rowan took a deep breath. “I have already decided what to do with you,” he said pleasantly. “I have found another school for you—the strictest this isle affords!”
Cassandra was not even allowed to stay in London for Christmas. Instead she was promptly bundled up and the very next day sent in a closed coach to Colchester.
Mistress Effingham’s school was very different from Mistress Endicott’s easygoing establishment in Cambridge. The building was a picturesque wattle-and-daub affair with great blackened timbers and leaded bay windows. It had steep roofs and tall fancy brick chimneys and its second story protruded, medieval-style, perilously over the street. No one had ever been known to enjoy a single day in Mistress Effingham’s rigidly austere establishment. Cassandra’s room looked out at the towering Norman keep that dominated this ancient Roman city, and she sometimes thought life must be more enjoyable in that grim fortress than it was in the school, where the girls were required to keep their eyes downcast and pray a great deal.
Unabashed by her own treachery—after all, it had all worked out to her advantage!—Phoebe wrote to her: Jim’s family won’t believe you weren’t running away with Jim; they hold you responsible for his death. I tried to see them and explain, but they wouldn’t receive me. And the serving wench brought out word that his mother had burned your letter unread. I haven’t told anybody where you are because one of them—Tony Dunn perhaps—might be mad enough to follow you there, and what Father would do with you then, I can’t imagine!
He would probably lock her in a dungeon at that point, thought Cassandra with a sigh.
The letter went on to say:
The next time we meet, you must call me Lady Houghton. For Clive’s title is Lord Houghton. His mother is the dowager Marchioness of Greensea. She hasn’t received me yet—but she will! We were married in Fleet Street. Father doesn’t know yet—just as well he doesn’t, he’d be furious!
Lady Houghton. Cassandra put the letter aside in amazement. Didn’t Phoebe realize that a Fleet Street marriage certificate didn’t entitle one to a title? Lady Houghton indeed! And then she reread the part about Jim’s mother burning her letter, and the guilt she had felt when she saw Jim’s inert body lying there crushed beneath the big dray returned again to haunt her.
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