by Laura Parker
The marquess nodded at his secretary. “To back up my words I sent for him. He’s coarse and country-mannered, but even a rude barn will give shelter in a storm. Threatened Nicholas with the signing of papers if he did not produce a suitable bride in a month’s time.”
Cassandra gave the secretary a quick glance, but Kendal appeared not to take notice.
The marquess did notice the look and snorted. “You’ll not start on Dermont, girl. Sheep’s eyes ain’t in his line. Dirty muslin is more his dish, upstairs tumbling the likes of Cora is to the country boy’s tastes. He’d as soon tup a ewe as ride a lady. Am I right, Dermont?”
The old man cackled with laughter as Cassandra quickly lowered her head to keep from meeting the young man’s eyes. This was no business of hers, she told herself. All she wanted was to win free of Briarcliffe and the marquess. In a calm voice she said, “You claim you forced your son into marriage. That may be so. But you did not choose his bride. Nicholas chose me. You have no right to hold me against my will.” She stared at the marquess, trying not to hate him but finding little in her heart but anger and fear and a desire to best the man who sought to destroy her. “I will go to Nicholas one day. You’ll not prevent it.” She said the words slowly, in a bold declaration of defiance.
The marquess’s smile grew a little broader. “I’ve no doubt of it. Perhaps I shall send you myself, when you’ve served my needs. You would like London in summer. Tis warm and noisome but a treat for rural eyes. There’s just one matter to be settled first.” His expression grew suddenly grim. “Who fathered the bastard growing in your belly, girl?”
“Wh-what?” Cassandra’s voice began low, then evaporated completely.
The marquess pressed the question. “Is it Simmons’s bastard? Well, girl, do you know?”
Cassandra’s gaze darted from Dermont to the marquess as she unconsciously fingered the sapphire and emerald ring that rode the third finger of her left hand. “There’s no child, there can’t be. I—”
Suddenly, a remembered voice cut into the pattern of her thoughts. If ’tis a boy, name him Merlyn. Those had been the gypsy’s last words to her.
Cassandra paled. It wasn’t possible! He could not have known—how could he? Or were the memories that tormented her with guilt not all that she carried with her as a result of that night? She knew nothing of such matters. She had had no mother to confide in. Was it possible?
“Having trouble remembering your brat’s sire?” the marquess suggested in faintly derisive tones.
Cassandra felt the marquess’s gaze penetrate her. It seared through flesh, seeking to bare her soul, but she resisted the urge to look away. He must never know her guilty secret.
She thrust away the memory of Merlyn Ross, calling to mind the sneering image of the gaoler Dowerty. It was an effective antidote. A shudder of nausea swept through her as she imagined his lips pressed to hers. “If I am with child, I know the sire. He was a prisoner in Newgate.”
Contrary to her expectations, the marquess did not question the story. Instead, he said, “What happened to this lusty fellow?”
Taken aback, Cassandra stammered, “He—he was hanged, my lord.”
The trembling speech made the marquess smile. So, his information had been correct. He gave Dermont an impassive glance. When he and his secretary had set out for London, he was convinced that Cassandra would be found there. It was simple luck that they had found her so quickly. No, perhaps not. He was ever a thorough man. Such attention to detail had made him send Dermont to Newgate in the first place and then again, after she had been recovered, with a coin purse. The results were most enlightening and saved him from indecision now.
The old man’s smile broadened. The scheme that had been working in his head since his interview with the physician who tended his daughter-in-law after her return to Briarcliffe at last seemed possible.
His eyes shining with malicious delight, the marquess motioned Cassandra to him. “I should thank you, my dear, for you will give me the means to best my ungrateful son.”
He leaned forward, grasping the arms of his chair. “’Tis a grandson I need. Aye! An heir. And you’ll give me one, Lady Cassandra.”
“My lord!” both Cassandra and Dermont began simultaneously, to be cut off by an impatient movement of the marquess’s hand.
“I know what you think, and you’re a pair of fools,” the marquess said coldly. “You would remind me that the child will be a bastard.”
A cackle of glee shook his bony chest. “Damme! All men are bastards. And all women, bless them, are sluts. You think I care who put the seed in her belly? God’s blood! It serves the jest to know a murderer’s by-blow will bear the title that should be Nicholas’s. Nicholas might have taken Dermont to court, but against a direct descendant of the line he’ll have no recourse. To see my son’s face when I tell him, that alone will keep these old bones aboveground a year longer.”
Cassandra drew back from the icy gleam of the marquess’s eyes, feeling as if she’d strayed into a treacherous bog that had begun to suck her in. The marquess must be mad. “Perhaps the physician is in error,” she flung at him. “What if I carry no child within me?”
The marquess’s features muddied with color. “You’d best be breeding, lady. Nicholas thought he’d bested me with his sham of a marriage. Now I’ve a plan which will see him brought low.”
“It’s mad!” Cassandra whispered through dry lips.
The marquess shook his head as if she were simple. “I’ve set the course. You’re to bear me a grandson. If you’re not breeding, you soon must be. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.” He ignored her gasp of outrage. “It’s of no matter to me whose brat you whelp, so long as the secret’s kept. Afterward, you may go to the devil any way it pleases you. I may even send you to Nicholas myself. See, then, if he wants you to warm his bed.”
“No!” The word was said low, but it brought momentary silence to the room.
The marquess regarded the young woman before him. She had no pretense to beauty, but she’d always displayed a self-possession he was unable to defeat. In cooler moments he’d admired it. Now he saw her willfulness as a bar to his desires and he knew just how to crush her young spirit.
“What will you do if I show you the door this moment? Will you run to my son with the tale of a gypsy’s rape? Oh yes, Lady Cassandra, I know how you came by the ring you wear. The turnkeys of Newgate were no less eager for my gold than for the gypsy’s. You will do as I say because you have no choice.”
All the amusement drained from his voice as he added, “You may remain and bear your child in the luxury my wealth can provide. Or do you hope your father will take you back? Nicholas told me about his fancy for guineas. Is there enough value in the gypsy’s ring to buy yourself a corner of the family hearth?”
Cassandra turned deathly white under the battering ram of his tongue, and the marquess paused. The physician had assured him that she was healthy, but a fit of hysterics might ruin everything. “I need a grandson, healthy and well,” he said in a temporizing tone meant to reassure her. “You’ve nothing to fear in remaining here.”
Not expecting a reply, he signaled to his secretary. “Call those lackeys. Lady Cassandra needs her rest. And you, my dear,” he said, turning his crystal gaze on her once more. “You will send word when you’ve made up your mind to be sensible.”
White moonlight terraced and cratered with shadows the snow mantling the grounds of Briarcliffe. The heavy fleece-lined cloak around her shoulders warmed her, but Cassandra could not stop shivering as a powerful blast of wind flung itself against the house and the windows rattled. The mournful howling had awakened her and now she could not sleep.
No, that was not right. It was a nightmare that had awakened her. She preferred the numbing cold of the stone floor beneath her satin-slippered feet to the terrors that followed her into the warm bed.
“Oh, Nicholas!” she whispered to the night. “Why d
id you never come back for me?”
So long ago it seemed, another world, another life, the day Nicholas Briarcliffe came into her life.
It had been cold that day, too, she remembered. The wind whipping from the southern coast of Devonshire had tugged at the old shapeless gown she had worn.
It was her turn to accompany her father to market day in the village. She did not want to go, but he would not listen. The youngest of three motherless children, she had always been the first to receive the attentions of her father.
The thought thinned Cassandra’s generous mouth. The attentions of Jack Charlton were something a child could well live without. Charlton was an old and once-respected name, but a succession of bad political judgments had robbed them of their wealth and influence by the end of the last century. Now there was little to remind the Charltons of what they had once been.
Her father had been drinking for days; it was his usual habit. Only periodically did he rise from his stupor, and then his household went in fear. And she, for reasons she could only label as headstrong and stubborn, had never learned to curb her tongue and so received more than her share of his wrath. Perhaps, she thought for the hundredth time, that was why her father acted as he did that day.
If only he had not lost that fifth hand of cards at the fairgrounds. The loss so early in the day had been unendurable, turning his thoughts to ways of raising funds. The conclusion was to offer for sale his youngest daughter.
A churning began in Cassandra’s middle as the shame of that day moved within her.
He made her stand among the sheep and cattle pens as the red-faced auctioneer called out her name. The crowd gawked. The sale of a wife or daughter was not illegal but a rare sight, nonetheless. Yet their embarrassment quickly gave way to a gleeful relish to see one of the quality made a spectacle of.
She did not cry. She did not believe it was happening, not even when the jeering bids began to rise. Her father was drunk, she told herself, she would not be sold.
She did not notice the carriage that pulled into the town square or the emergence of its occupant. A sudden cry brought her gaze up in time to see her father stagger and fall before the blow from a gentleman’s gloved fist. A moment later she stared down from the block into the leaf-green eyes of the most beautiful man she had ever seen.
Cassandra shook her head at the memory. Until a few short hours ago she had thought only Nicholas knew of her humiliation. Shame surged through her. Nicholas’s thoughtlessness made it so much harder for her to think of facing the marquess again. Why had he told the marquess? Did he not understand what he’d done in giving his father so powerful a weapon? Even if it was in explanation of why he had offered a poor young gentry girl marriage, he must have known his father would find a moment to use it against her.
Cassandra put her hand to her damp forehead. “Go away!” she whispered fiercely as a dizzy swirling weakness curled up about her. It was not the first time she had felt sick in recent weeks, but she had blamed it on her anxiety to be quit of Briarcliffe. Until today.
There would be a child. The physician had been sent for again and her condition reconfirmed that very afternoon.
Sweat formed on her upper lip as she leaned her head against the massive carved post of her bed. It wasn’t right! It shouldn’t be! It was too cruel a joke that she bore the life of Merlyn Ross within her.
Involuntarily, her eyes sought out the ring on her left hand. Shaped for a man’s large hand, the ring was too heavy for her delicate finger. The pale glare reflected from the snow shone in eerie radiance against the gray gritstone of the window casement, dulling the ring’s gold mounting, but the jewels caught fire in the cold light, answering the icy glow with brilliant emerald and sapphire flame.
Cassandra moved her head from side to side, the lush fall of her hair sliding forward to hide the ring from her sight. She had not been able to lay it aside as a wiser person would have done. He had asked her to wear it, as the last request of a condemned man. She could not say no. Yet she must forget. Merlyn Ross was dead.
“Oh, Lord!” she whispered brokenly. Had there been a day, an hour’s sanity in which she might have sorted out her feelings of bemusement and fear, she might have saved herself from him.
“I was bewitched!” she cried in defiance of the image of the gypsy’s long strong body that invaded her mind, enveloping her body in the heat of response. It held her weak and trembling, a tangible reminder of the power he had wielded, wielded still. She had not been strong enough to deny him anything, not even the victory of her pleasure at his hands.
But the memories would not lie still; they beckoned, lured her to remember.
He had not been content with the mere surrender of her body. After the first hard thrusting invasion he had not left her. His hands had gently, tenderly roamed her body, finding again the throbbing secret places that made her ache with a hunger she now knew existed and wordlessly begged him to fill. And the words, the torrent of words that had poured from him. He had called her beautiful, lovely, his love. The astonishment of that was with her still. But the hardest to bear was the memory of the morning.
She had not seen him mount the gallows steps. She had remained behind while the gaoler and the minister went with him. His sad, infinitely tender smile was her last memory of him, that and his fierce last kiss.
“How lonely he must have been,” she murmured to herself as tears pricked her eyes. To have offered love to a stranger in hopes that he would not be forgotten. He would never know that his desire would be met. She bore his babe within her. Merlyn Ross could never be forgotten.
What of me? Cassandra wondered desperately. Love. So simple a word. Yet she had never known its power in her life.
She had lied to herself. Though Nicholas’s actions seemed to her those of both a savior and a saint, she knew he did not love her. She was the one who loved. He had acted out of chivalry, giving her the protection of his name and position. Perhaps the marquess was right in believing that she had served a need. But she had hoped that her love would be returned in time when Nicholas had bathed awhile in the glow of her own ardor. But now she would not blame him if he would despise her for her night in Newgate. If so, then her days of dreaming were at an end.
A shiver blew across the surface of her skin. She had no illusions about the marquess. He wanted her child; if it were a boy he would seek to make him his own.
“I won’t let him!” she vowed softly. She was trapped for now. She must bide her time until her child was born.
A tentative smile spread across her delicate features. Her child. The idea, so frightening and impossible a few hours ago, now brimmed with promise. She would bide her time until the child was born and then she would know what to do.
For the first time in two months Cassandra drew a deep sigh of relief. No child of hers would ever know a moment of its life without love. And perhaps this would be the someone in her life who would love her in return.
Chapter Five
August, 1755
A squeal of delight reached into a shriek, piercing the long hallways of Briarcliffe. A moment later the noise of the buzzing crowd erupted into laughter. In the upper reaches of the house the baby in his mother’s arms cringed. A dark nipple slipped from his pursed lips and one tiny fist clutched the tender warm flesh of his mother’s breast as a wail of fright turned his delicate features bright red.
“Hush, hush, little love,” Cassandra soothed, cradling her son and brushing her milky nipple against his petal-soft cheek. Immediately, the child accepted the security of her flesh and his hiccupy sobs again became the suckling sounds of contentment.
“Ye should be below, entertaining the marquess’s guests, instead of baring yer breasts like a common slut.”
Hannah, Cassandra’s maid, stood nearby, arms folded across her skinny chest. “You’re fair to bursting out of your gown like a brood sow. ‘Tisn’t proper for a noblewoman to suckle her babes.”
&n
bsp; Cassandra looked up, her full lips thinned to a stubborn line. Hannah was Briarcliffe’s housekeeper whom the marquess had commanded to be his daughter-in-law’s lady’s maid during her months of pregnancy, but Cassandra knew the woman’s main purpose was to spy upon her. “The marquess’s guests are no concern of mine.”
“Whose, then, I’m asking. If not for the babe in your arms, we’d be left in peace.” Hannah’s pinched features soured in consternation. “All the work getting ready for the ball this night, it’s all on account of the christening on the morrow.”
The reminder stiffened Cassandra’s features. “The ball has nothing to do with me. I’d have no part in any of the festivities and neither would my son, could I but help it.” She cradled her child a little tighter. “He’s my son. Whatever else, that can’t change.”
“Best not let the marquess hear ye.” Hannah unfolded her arms and placed them on her hips, jerking her head toward the door. “To hear His Lordship tell it, he sired the babe himself. Only that ain’t the truth, is it?” A gleam of mischief came into her eyes. “Look at his head of black hair. How’s a body to believe ‘twas sired by a Briarcliffe? Golden heads, that’s all they plant in a woman’s belly. The marquess plowed many a local field in his day and every one of the babes grew a head of hair the color of the king’s gold.” A flush crept slowly into her thin features. “ ‘Twas a time when the marquess could talk a woman out of her petticoats before she— But then, you know of such things. ‘Twas a gypsy, they say.”
Cassandra looked away from the woman’s malicious smirk. Kendal and Hannah were the only two members of the staff who shared the secret of her son’s natural father. That secret was one more reason she did not want to return to the fete below. Someone had asked why Nicholas was not present for his son’s christening, and she had not known what to answer.
She caught her lower lip between her teeth, recalling the knowing looks and snickers among the noble gathering below when the marquess explained to his guests how his daughter-in-law had made a brief journey to London to visit her neglectful husband and only returned when things had been put to rights. They seemed to find her a subject for ridicule. Several bold gentlemen passed her chair after the dinner hour to offer their respective services should she feel “neglected” again. One obese gentleman dressed in pink brocade suggested that since she had produced an heir her duty to her husband was done entirely and pinched her sharply on the shoulder.