by Lily Maxton
“How did he react to that?”
A bleakness crept into her voice. “He didn’t take well to the idea.”
“When was this?” Henry asked.
A small sob caught in her throat. “The night of the fire.” Her voice sounded small and broken, but she tilted her chin, met Henry’s cool gaze and continued. “I’m so sorry, my lord. That was all my fault.”
Henry’s eyes were cold, his voice, emotionless. “How?”
“Lord Appleby became angry when I said I wanted to stop meeting. He…he became violent. There was an oil lamp on the table. He pushed me against the table and it spilled, but I was focused on protecting myself. I didn’t notice, even as the drapes caught fire. When Lord Appleby finally realized, he fled. I didn’t know what to do—and the fire spread so fast.”
“So you left me to die,” Henry said flatly.
“No! Never!” she cried, tears coming to her eyes. “I was scared and hurt and…I had encouraged Lord Appleby. It had been my idea to meet in the mistress’s chambers.” She closed her eyes as her voice cracked. “I’m sorry. It was all my fault.”
Cassandra crossed the room and took the weeping maid in her arms. She cursed herself for not seeing Kitty’s guilt in the first place. “No, it wasn’t your fault,” she murmured gently. True, Kitty had made some horrible choices, but she hadn’t been alone in that room. “Lord Appleby must bear the responsibility,” she said firmly. “He took advantage of you, and did nothing when he should have sounded the alarm.”
Henry’s head jerked toward Mr. Taylor. “Did you know about this?”
“Not about the fire. Kitty only told me today. But I should have told you about their dalliance as soon as I knew, my lord.” He drew himself up to his full height, managing to look dignified even as he said, “I cannot hope that you will forgive me, nor should you. Will you accept my resignation?”
Silence stretched, and expanded.
Cassandra glanced up to find that Henry was watching her. Why her? But she held his gaze, which was cold but slowly thawing as it flicked to take in the distraught girl who still cried in Cassandra’s arms, and then to Mr. Taylor, who stood there silently, as regal and stoic as only the best butler could be in light of losing his position. And then back to Cassandra.
She lifted her shoulder delicately. She knew what she wanted Henry to do, but the decision was his. And if he was implacable, how could she blame him for that?
The fire had nearly killed him.
Henry made a small noise. Of resignation? “It’s too difficult to find a good butler,” he said matter-of-factly. “You’ll have to stay.”
“Of course, my lord. I’ll gather my—” Mr. Taylor stopped as Henry’s words finally registered. His eyes rounded. “Pardon, my lord?” he squeaked, no longer stoic.
“You must stay,” Henry repeated sharply.
Cassandra’s heart swelled and she wanted to throw her arms around him, ill-tempered man that he was.
“And you, as well, Kitty,” he said. “And stop crying. Lord Appleby is a bounder and if you shed any more tears because of him I will sack you.”
Cassandra was sure it was an empty threat, but it was what Kitty needed to hear. She straightened with one last sniffle, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand.
Henry turned to Mr. Taylor. “Go see if there’s any laudanum to help her sleep. And then wake two of the footmen and come back here. I want you to take Lord Appleby to the magistrate. I doubt he’ll keep Appleby long…but perhaps the embarrassment will be enough to make Appleby rethink his actions the next time he feels like hurting an innocent woman.”
A sad truth, that a powerful man could abuse his servants with impunity, but one Cassandra acknowledged. Pride dwelled in her chest next to sorrow, though—Henry knew his actions wouldn’t accomplish much, and still, he was willing to try.
That was worth more to her than he’d ever know.
Mr. Taylor bowed and escorted Kitty from the room.
Which left Cassandra and Henry alone in the near-dark and the eerie quiet.
Henry moved behind his mahogany desk and reached for a quill. He didn’t sit down as he penned a brief letter for Mr. Taylor to take to the magistrate, simply leaned over the desk and wrote by the light of a single flickering candle.
The candlelight accented the lines along his face with deep, troubled shadows, and it bothered her that he looked so weary.
“What is that quote about mercy?” she said lightly, struck with the urge to vanquish his weariness. “From Shakespeare?”
He finished writing the letter and used a stick of red wax for the seal. She thought he wasn’t going to answer, but then he said, “The quality of mercy is not strain’d, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blest; it blesseth him that gives and him that takes. ’Tis mightiest in the mightiest.”
She had the sudden, whimsical thought that if by some magic she could trap his voice in a bottle to take out and listen to whenever she pleased, her ear pressed to the cold glass, she would do it. She remembered the way he’d read the Goethe poem and how the words had wrapped around her and held her in thrall. Something in the rich timber of his voice sang to something deep within her.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
He glanced up, finally, lips curling in a half-mocking smile. His scars looked dark and even more twisted in the candlelight. “So it is. So are many things. But what is beauty that you cannot touch?”
“Henry?” she asked uncertainly. “How did you hear Kitty’s scream tonight?”
“I wasn’t sleeping well. I took to stalking the halls. Eventually I found myself at the servant’s stairwell.”
“And?” she whispered, her throat feeling suddenly dry. But she knew. Of course she knew.
“And I stood there, wondering if I should go up to the servant’s level and knock on your chamber door. Wondering if you would let me in or turn me away. Then I heard Kitty scream.”
The dark, seductive depth to his voice had her lifting her hand to reach for him, but she grabbed it with her other hand, forcing it down. She opened her mouth to speak and closed it again when Mr. Taylor returned.
The butler glanced at her curiously before turning his attention to Henry.
Henry handed over the sealed letter with a nod. When the transaction was done, Mr. Taylor left and Henry moved to follow him without looking back at her.
She gaped at his retreating back. She had hoped…
Lord, she didn’t know exactly what she’d hoped. But he’d shown mercy to his servants when he could have had them tossed out on their ears. He was turning over one of his peers to the magistrate. He’d shown his best possible self.
She stared at the empty doorway, everything in her canting forward to be closer to him. In the end, she returned to her own small bedchamber, thinking she would be sensible and go to sleep, but a few minutes later, she sat up and pulled out a silver locket with a miniature of Robert from the top drawer of her nightstand.
She hadn’t looked at the miniature in a long time. The first few years, it had simply been too painful. Now she cracked it open slowly, peering at it by starlight that filtered softly through the window. And there he was, her husband, the man she’d thought was the one true love of her life. As she gazed down at his handsome face, the dark, tousled hair, his youth, forever frozen, he felt almost like a stranger. There was an echo of affection, of deep love, but only a poignant, distant resonance, called forward from some past, far gone time.
They’d been so young. She’d been a girl then, a loyal, romantic girl who’d still believed in fairy tales. Their love had been true and real, and she didn’t doubt that if Robert had lived, they would have grown and changed together.
But for ten years now, she’d grown and changed without him. She’d learned to live without him. The pain of her husband’s death had been real and raw, too, but now that was also an echo.
Everything Henry had said had been right. She’d bee
n clinging to Robert’s memory, refusing to believe she could ever love like that again, as an excuse to stop living a full life.
It wasn’t a very good way to honor her first love.
First.
Her heart thumped a hard fearful rhythm against her chest. Not current. Not only. Not last.
She’d told Henry that Robert had been her whole world. And years ago that had been the truth. But truths changed and shifted every single day.
She kissed the miniature with tears in her eyes. They weren’t tears of grief, they were tears of a long overdue goodbye, and though they pricked her eyes, they didn’t fall. She tucked the locket into the corner of the drawer.
As she closed the drawer, her thoughts turned to Henry, the man they’d been dwelling with for far too long.
Even if she and Henry succumbed to the desire between them, their relationship would be temporary. He had to realize it as surely as she did. Even if he didn’t propose to any of the women here now, he would eventually marry someone else. And Cassandra wouldn’t be his mistress while he lived with another woman, had children with another woman, maybe loved another woman.
It wasn’t only about right and wrong. It would simply hurt too much.
So what was one night?
It was an opportunity for fulfillment. A pinnacle.
If she allowed herself this one night, she wouldn’t have to look back and wonder, and feel this terrible, unfinished ache in her heart.
She could finish it. Here and now. They might not have a future together, but she could take her life, her desires, her love, into her own hands. And move forward.
When she left Blakewood Hall, which she would, which she must, at least she would never have to wonder.
She had only one more second of indecision before it firmed to resolve.
To inevitability.
She left her bedchamber and moved through the darkened halls to find Henry.
Chapter Forty
Henry was surprised to hear a soft rap on his door a few minutes after he’d entered his bedchamber and, unable to sleep, settled down to peruse a book. He crossed the room and pulled it wide. And tried not to let his astonishment show when Cassandra slipped in beneath his outstretched arm.
Shame had seeped into him when it had been just the two of them left in his study. Shame that a man he’d considered a friend would harm Kitty in such a way. It was partially Henry’s fault—he never should have invited Appleby to his home in the first place. He also felt like an idiot for admitting to Cassandra that he’d stood there like some kind of weak, tentative bastard, near the servant’s hall, trying to decide if he should approach her.
He turned to face her now, ready to ask what she was doing there, and realized the answer was already evident. The candlelight that spilled from the candle in the brass holder he clutched illuminated the tilt of resolve in her chin, the glitter of something deep and wanting in her eyes.
What is beauty that you cannot touch? He had asked.
“Touch me,” she answered.
So, he did. Everything in him wanted to touch her. He stepped forward so they were toe to toe, and then he took her face in his hand, swept his thumb across the elegant, stubborn jaw line that never failed to fascinated him.
But that was where he stopped. “Am I a replacement for Adam Radcliff, then?”
He heard her quick intake of breath. “You know?”
“Kitty told me.”
Cassandra tilted her head to study him, thankfully tilting more fully into his palm instead of away. “I don’t know how you could possibly be a replacement for him,” she said, a touch of amusement in her tone. “You are nothing alike.”
He let his hand fall. He felt like an egg that had been dropped—its shell cracked open, all the insides visible for anyone to see. He felt too vulnerable to laugh with her. Anger seeped in to fill out all his weak spots. How did she manage to twist him into knots so easily? “I am aware. So, I must be a distant second?”
Damn Adam Radcliff. He was a gardener. He was Irish.
Jealousy burned in Henry’s gut, acrid and choking. How did that man manage to make such desirable women fall in love with him?
But Cassandra’s next words brought him up short. “You are second to no one,” she whispered.
“You don’t love him?” It was meant to come out as a statement, a confident, matter-of-fact statement. Instead, it sounded like a lilting question, full of hope, full of need, thick with unspoken longings.
A quick jerk of her head. No.
What did it matter whom she loved? He didn’t care. She didn’t need to love him to be his wife. It might happen naturally in time. Or not. It didn’t signify.
But his mind wasn’t doing a very good job of convincing his heart, which leaped violently, or his body, which advanced and grasped her around the waist with his arm and crushed her against him.
“Good,” he said, then took her mouth in a savage, punishing kiss. What exactly he wanted to punish her for, he couldn’t say. And perhaps he wasn’t punishing her for anything. Perhaps he just kissed her so hard because he wanted her so badly.
She didn’t seem to mind.
She stood on her tiptoes, her arms wrapping around his neck, and kissed him back with the same rough urgency. Her fingers slid through the hair at the nape of his neck, sending shivers down his back, little shocks of heat. He loved the taste of her mouth. It was sweet with a trace of mint. Did she flavor her tea with mint and sugar? He would be happy simply tasting her mouth for hours.
But right now, there were other things to be done.
He trailed his fingertips down the side of her throat, and further, pushing her dressing robe off her shoulders. He curled his fingers into the neckline of her chemise and brushed his knuckles along the warm skin under it.
Her hands reached up to push back his dressing robe, so it hung only by the crook of his arms. She looked at his nude torso in the candlelight. His heart jerked and anxiety fluttered low in his stomach when he recalled what she was seeing. His damaged body. The scars on his shoulder were similar to his facial scars—discolored and splotchy but not deep. His arm, on the other hand, which had taken the brunt of the damage, was a deep mass of gnarled scar tissue. He could barely bend the arm without causing himself pain. He only forced himself to because the surgeon had advised it.
“Well?” he asked hoarsely.
“It is not pretty,” she said honestly, after a beat of silence.
His pulse was fast and trembling. “If you’ve changed your mind—”
She cut him off with a snort. “A few scars should change my mind? Who do you think I am?”
“Desire cannot simply be summoned,” he persisted. And if she faked it— Oh God, it would kill him. He’d never cared before. He’d never given much thought to a woman’s desires. He’d only ever been with the mistresses he’d selected himself. They had been generously compensated for pleasing him, not the other way around. If they faked their lust, he didn’t care, as long as it was convincing. He knew it was selfish, but that was the way things had always been.
No longer.
He wanted Cassandra’s desire. He wanted her lust. He wanted to feel her shudder against him, around him, and know she was swept away in a passion as strong as his.
“I don’t need to summon desire,” she said. “Can’t you feel it?”
He groaned when she took his hand and pressed her lips to his palm, her tongue tracing the line that curved from above his thumb to his wrist. And then, with a devilish smile that he very much wanted to lick, she pushed his dressing robe all the way off. Her cool hands soothed his hot skin when she slid her palms along his chest. She bent, hair tumbling forward, to press her lips against him.
She kissed a trail up to his collarbone, following the chill where her hands had been with the warmth of her mouth. He shivered.
She didn’t give any regard to the damaged skin on his chest, the areas that were rough or discolored. She kissed them all equally, with n
o sign of distaste, and for that alone he could have fallen to his knees before her.
Watching her, feeling the brush of her lips, the stroke of her tongue, seeing her obvious delight in his body, impossibly, his stiff cock seemed to grow harder.
It was with a vast effort that he grasped her head in his hands and pulled her up for another long, drugging, open-mouthed kiss. But he was determined to do his own exploration. He broke the kiss to walk her backward to the bed. The edge of the mattress hit her knees and he followed her down, down into the strewn bedclothes of his restless night where he had so recently been thinking of her instead of sleeping.
He propped his weight on his elbows beside her and traced the outline of her breasts through the fabric of her night rail. He could see the dusky points of her nipples, and he watched, cock throbbing, as they peaked in response to the light flick of this thumb.
So he flicked over them again, and again, but his gaze was drawn to her face as he did so, to the subtle play of lust there—a parting of her lips, a brief flutter of closing lashes, and the way she’d tilt her head back just a little more, pressing into the mattress. He was endlessly fascinated by the reactions he evoked.
Giving her pleasure made him feel as if he held some unknown, untapped power in his hands.
She wanted him.
And the knowledge made him feel as if he could conquer the world.
For the first time, making love wasn’t about mere physical release. It was about her, and him, and the miraculous things their bodies could do together.
He tugged the neck of her night rail down, stretching it, but not really caring it was about to rip, when her breast spilled over the top of the fabric. He kissed the heavy flesh and settled his lips over her nipple and sucked.
Her hips jerked. He felt it because his hand was there, smoothing circles across her stomach and thighs.
“Sweet Cassandra,” he whispered, blowing on the moist skin until it puckered. “How do you taste so sweet?”