by Mary Balogh
Her companion was in the house, sleeping upstairs. So were Mary and young Belinda. He wished—
“It ought to be the easiest thing in the world,” she said, “instead of the most difficult.”
“What should?” he asked, getting to his feet and closing the short distance between them in order to set his hands on the arms of her chair and lean over her.
“Seducing an angel,” she said.
He kissed her.
It would not be sordid. He was going to marry her. He did not know how it was going to be done, but it would be.
She was going to be his wife.
He drew her to her feet, and they wrapped their arms about each other and kissed more deeply and with growing desire.
“I think,” she said at last, drawing back her head, “this ought to be continued upstairs, Stephen.”
“Because we might be interrupted here?” he asked, grinning at her.
“As we were on the ballroom balcony earlier?” she said. “No, but—”
At which interesting juncture there was a soft knock on the sitting room door.
What on earth?
It must be at least midnight.
Someone must be ill, Cassandra thought, breaking away from Stephen and hurrying across the room to open the door. Alice? Belinda?
Mary was standing just beyond the door, and beside her—
“William!” Cassandra cried, stepping forward to catch up her stepson in her arms—though he was only a little more than a year younger than she. “You have come back. And you have found us.”
“And not before time,” he said when they stepped apart. He set one arm loosely about Mary’s shoulders. “I dashed off without pausing to think, and I discovered a ship about to sail for Canada and was on it and surrounded by nothing but ocean before it struck me that I had done entirely the wrong thing. My first thought, though, was that if I disappeared for a while, everything would simmer down. I just went too far, that was all—literally. It takes an infernally long time to go to Canada and come back. Especially since I took nothing with me and had to work to pay my passage out and then earn enough to pay my passage home. I was fortunate not to have to wait until next year.”
“Come inside the room, where there is more light,” Cassandra said. “And yes, Mary, you must come too. Of course you must.”
Good heavens, William was Belinda’s father.
“You cannot imagine how I felt, Cassie,” William said, stepping inside the room, “when I got to Carmel a week ago to find Mary and Belinda gone, and to hear that you had been—”
He broke off abruptly when he saw there was someone else in the room.
“Stephen,” she said, “this is William Belmont, Nigel’s second son. The Earl of Merton, William.”
The two men bowed to each other.
“I have not had the pleasure before now,” Stephen said.
“That is because I have rarely been in London,” William explained. “I have always hated the place. I spent several years in America, and then a couple in Canada. I have just returned from a second stay there. The wide open spaces have always called to me, though I must confess that for the past year there has been a far more insistent call.”
He looked behind him to where Mary was still lurking in the doorway, and he reached out one arm toward her.
“Have you met my wife, Merton?” he asked. “Did you know Mary was my wife, Cassie? She says not, but I find it hard to believe. That was what the whole infernal row was all about.”
The row? That night?
Cassandra looked from William to Mary in wonder.
“You are William’s wife, Mary?” she said.
“I am sorry, my lady” Mary said, staying where she was in the doorway. “When Billy come home from across the sea and learned about Belinda, he went off and got a special license, and we was married twenty miles away from Carmel the day before … The day before he went off again. He told me he would come back when he could, and he did.”
She gazed at William with wide eyes and desperate tenderness.
“Come closer, love,” he said, beckoning with his fingers until she came near enough that he could take her hand in his. She remained several steps behind him, though. “Mary would make a sturdy frontierswoman, would she not, Cassie? She only looks frail. I will not be putting the matter to the test, though. I am going to settle down here in this country instead, heaven help me, and look after her and Belinda. After I have set everything right for you, that is. Though how Bruce could be such a knucklehead as to believe—”
He stopped again and eyed Stephen, who was standing before the fireplace as before, his hands clasped behind him.
“I had better come back tomorrow and talk to you,” William said. “Not that I am leaving tonight, if you have no objection. I am staying with my wife and daughter.”
Cassandra looked consideringly at Stephen. She was not really betrothed to him. She would never marry him. But he had been extraordinarily kind to her. She owed him something—honesty. Although he had asked her about her life and her marriage, and although he had asked her if she had killed Nigel—to which she had said yes—he had not asked for any details. He must wonder, though. And, of course, she had lied to him.
“Talk now,” she said. “The Earl of Merton is my betrothed, William. He made the announcement just this evening.”
Mary spread one hand over her bosom and then the other when William went striding across the room to shake Stephen by the hand.
“And glad I am to hear it,” he said, “if you are a decent man, Merton. Cassie deserves some happiness. You do not believe all that claptrap about her, then? Axe murderer, indeed! Even on the frontier there are not many women who can heft an axe. Not enough to do serious damage with, anyway.”
“I do not believe it,” Stephen said quietly, and he looked at Cassandra with serious eyes. “And even if it were true, I would guess it to have been self-defense rather than murder.”
“My father could be a brute,” William said. “It was the old demon bottle, not him. Though the contents of the old demon bottle could not have got inside him to make him a brute if he had not lifted a hand to drink it, could they? It was him, then. When he drank, which was not often, though it was too often even at that, he became someone else. It sounds as if Cassie must have given you some details.”
“Yes,” Stephen said.
“She did not tell you, did she,” William said, his eyes narrowing, “that she shot him during one of those times? You did not tell him that, did you, Cassie?”
She shrugged.
“I think we should all sit down,” she said, and instead of taking her usual chair, she sat on an old, lumpy love seat, and Stephen sat beside her, his sleeve brushing her bare arm.
William motioned to Alice’s usual chair, and Mary sat down on the edge of it, looking decidedly uncomfortable. He perched on the arm and took one of her hands in his.
“The trouble with my father,” he said, looking at Stephen, “was that he never looked drunk, did he, Cassie? Unless you looked at his eyes, that was. And he very rarely drank at home, and almost never alone. When I told him about my marriage during the morning, though, he was probably sober. He must have started drinking after I had left. He did not like what I had told him above half. And once he started drinking, he could not stop. By the evening … Well. I heard him yelling and went to see what was happening.”
“I had been sent with another bottle,” Mary said, her voice almost a whisper as she gazed at William with unhappy eyes. “It was not my job. I never got sent. But Mr. Quigley had just scalded his hand on the kettle, and Mrs. Rice was tending it, and it was late and there was not many servants still in the kitchen, and someone told me to take it. I ought not to have gone. I knew you had told him, Billy, and you said you was coming for me before night, and … And Mrs. Rice said to be careful because his lordship was drinking again.”
“It was not your fault, love,” he said. “None of it was. I ought not to
have gone off to secure a room at the inn for us because he had said we could not sleep together beneath his roof. It was left to Cassie to hear you screaming and go to your aid. But she only got cuffed for her pains. And then Miss Haytor went to try and help. All I heard when I came in was him shouting. I did not hear any screams. But by the time I opened the library door he had his pistol in his hand. It would not have been wise for anyone to scream.”
“I think,” Cassandra said, and she realized suddenly that her hand was clasped firmly in Stephen’s, “it would be best to say no more, William. The death was officially ruled an accident. Your father was cleaning his pistol and it discharged. No one will ever prove otherwise. I do not want—”
“Who knows what he would have done with the gun if I had not come in,” William said. “Maybe he would have shot one of you. But when I went to wrest it out of his grasp, he struggled for only a moment. And then he turned it quite deliberately and shot himself with it. Through the heart.”
There were a few moments of total silence in the room. Cassandra saw that Alice was standing in the doorway.
“It is what I told you at the time, Cassie,” she said. “I saw. You did not. Mr. Belmont was between you and Lord Paget. And Mary had her hands spread over her face. But I saw. Lord Paget shot himself.”
“I suppose,” William said, “there was a great deal of self-loathing in his condition. Perhaps he suddenly realized that he had a gun in his hands. Perhaps he realized he was about to commit murder with it. Perhaps a small window of sobriety opened in his mind. However it was, Cassie, it was neither murder nor an accident that happened. He shot himself.”
Stephen had the back of her hand pressed against his lips. His eyes were closed.
“I fled,” William said, “because when it became known that I had married Mary, it would have been assumed that I had quarreled with my father and shot him. I might have been charged with murder. Mary might have been charged as my accomplice. I fled because I was muddleheaded and thought it would be best to let everything calm down for a while. I thought that without me there and without anyone knowing about my marriage, his death would be ruled an accident—as it was, officially. I told Mary not to tell anyone about our marrying. I told her I would be back for her within a year. I am a bit late on that promise, sorry, love. But I assumed you knew about the marriage, Cassie. I assumed he had told you or that Mary had. I had no idea anyone would blame you for his death and think you did it. With an axe, no less. Has the world gone mad?”
“You thought I was trying to make you feel better, Cassie,” Alice said from the doorway. “You did not want to believe that Mr. Belmont had killed his father, even though you thought he had done it to defend you and to defend Mary. You thought I lied to make you feel better.”
“I did,” Cassandra admitted.
But if it was true, what Alice had told her and what William now confirmed, then Nigel had committed suicide. He would have been denied a proper burial if the truth had been known.
Would she have minded?
Would she mind?
He might have killed someone that night. Instead, he had killed himself.
She was too numb to analyze her thoughts and feelings.
“It was a damn fool thing to run the way I did,” William said. “Pardon my language.”
“It was,” Stephen agreed. “But we all do foolish things, Belmont. I would advise you not to compound the error now, though, by dashing out to tell the world the truth. The truth is ugly and might not be believed anyway. I would suggest that everyone retire for the night and that I go home. Let decisions be made tomorrow or the next day.”
“That is very wise advice,” Alice said, looking at him with approval.
“You were not here, Alice,” Cassandra said, “when I told William that Lord Merton and I are betrothed.”
Alice looked from one to the other of them.
“Yes” was all she said. She nodded her head. “Yes.”
And she withdrew and presumably went back upstairs to her room. William stood and drew Mary to her feet and led her out of the room, his arm about her shoulders.
They were husband and wife, Cassandra thought. They had been for longer than a year. Since the day before Nigel died.
By his own hand.
Alice had not been lying all this time.
“Why did you tell me,” Stephen asked, standing and waiting for her to get to her feet too, “that you had killed your husband?”
She felt almost too weary to stand.
“Everyone believed it anyway,” she said. “And part of me wished it had been me.”
“And you wanted to protect that miserable apology for a man?” he asked her.
“Don’t judge William too harshly,” she said. “He is not a bad man. Mary loves him, and he is Belinda’s father. Besides, he married her, a mere maid in his father’s house, because she had borne his child. And he came back for her even though he must have still feared that he might be accused of murdering Nigel. I believe he must be fond of her. I did not want him charged with murder, Stephen. He is Belinda’s father.”
He framed her face with his hands and smiled at her. And what a ghastly moment, she thought, in which to realize that she was bone deep in love with him.
“If there is an angel in this room,” he said, “it is certainly not me.”
He bent his head and kissed her softly on the lips.
“Will you stay the night?” she asked him.
He shook his head.
“No,” he said. “I will make love to you again, Cass. But it will be on our wedding night and in our marriage bed. And it will be a loving to end all lovings.”
“Boaster,” she said.
It would be never, then, she thought with some regret. She would never make love with him again.
“I will ask you on the morning after our wedding night,” he said, “if it was a boast.”
And his smile caused his eyes to twinkle.
He set one arm about her waist and led her toward the front door.
“Good night, Cass,” he said, kissing her again before opening the door. “You are going to have to marry me, you know. You are going to be horribly lonely otherwise. You are about to lose all your family to matrimony.”
“Except Wesley,” she said.
He nodded.
“And except Roger,” she said.
“And except Roger,” he agreed, grinning as he stepped outside and pulled the door closed behind him.
Cassandra set her forehead against the door and closed her eyes. She tried to remember why she could not marry him.
19
“I AM going out for a walk,” Cassandra said, though she made no move to put words into action. She was standing at the sitting room window, looking out on a day that had not quite made up its mind whether to rain or to shine, though it seemed more inclined to decide upon the former.
She had not slept well—hardly surprisingly.
Now this morning everyone had become insubordinate.
Mary had refused to stop working in the kitchen or to stop addressing Cassandra as my lady.
“You are my stepdaughter-in-law, Mary,” Cassandra had tried to explain, but to no avail.
“Someone has to cook our breakfast and make our tea and wash the dishes and all the rest of it, my lady,” Mary had said, “and it had better be me since I daresay neither you nor Miss Haytor nor Billy knows one end of a frying pan from the other. And I am no different today than what I was yesterday and last week and last month, am I?”
William had been working on the sitting room door when Cassandra came downstairs, and now the door shut tight without having to be given an extra yank. Since then he had mended the clothesline outside so that it was no longer in danger of falling to the ground, taking a load of clean washing with it. And he was in the process of cleaning every window in the house, inside and out.
William always had been energetic and restless, of course, and far happier being busy with some ma
nual labor than idling away his time at more gentlemanly pursuits. Nigel had intended him for the church, but William had openly rebelled after finishing his studies at Cambridge.
Alice was the worst of all this morning. She was attacking the sheets with her needle, and she was downright prunish. She had an annoying I-told-you-so look on her face, an expression to which she was entitled as she had indeed told Cassandra that William had not shot his father but that Nigel had shot himself.
And Alice had given Cassandra an ultimatum, or what amounted to one.
Either Cassandra agreed to honor the betrothal that had been announced verbally last night at Lady Compton-Haig’s ball and would be announced in writing in tomorrow’s papers, or Alice would have nothing more to do with Mr. Golding.
It was ridiculous and it was a non sequitur. But Alice was adamant.
“I daresay,” she had said a few minutes ago, “Mr. Golding means no more than friendship by inviting me to accompany him to his family’s home to celebrate his father’s birthday. I daresay that after we return I will not see him again except by chance. But I will not even think of seeing him again, Cassie, if you are going to insist on continuing with this silly and wholly unrealistic plan of settling in a small country cottage somewhere in the country.”
“It is my idea of heaven,” Cassandra had protested.
“Nonsense,” Alice had told her. “You would be bored and miserable within a fortnight, Cassie. You would be far better off marrying the Earl of Merton, since despite everything the two of you seem fond of each other and I believe that after all he is a harmless, even decent, young man. Besides which, there will be a new scandal if you break off the engagement now, and you really do not need another. You ought to have thought of all this before allowing him to kiss you in the middle of a ball. If you insist upon going to live in the country, I am going with you. And there is no point whatsoever in giving me that look. Looks do not kill. Mary will not be going with you, after all, will she? And though you will doubtless soon be able to hire half a dozen servants to take her place, you will not know any of them. Or any of your neighbors. And what will they think if a strange widow comes to take up residence in their village without even as much as a companion to lend her respectability? No, Cassie, if you go, I go too.”