by Laura Parker
For a moment, at the song’s end, she closed her eyes. When she opened them and looked toward Lord Mulberry’s table her spirits plummeted. Merlyn’s chair was vacant. Only just did she catch sight of his broad back as he strode through the exit. In the next moment she was surrounded by a throng of vocal admirers. Confused by Merlyn’s actions, she mechanically acknowledged the many words of praise. At last they melted away and Caroline Lambert’s face swam before her. One angry suspicious look from the woman made Cassandra’s heart soar. Merlyn had left without the actress, and whatever explanation he had given had failed to soothe the woman’s pride.
“Well, my dear, you’ve quite outdone yourself.” Caroline smirked. “You’ve won the house and managed to scare off my leading man in the same breath. Really, Miss Lane, you should practice your theatrics on lesser game. Merlyn Ross need hardly wait for favors thrown out by amateurs.”
“Caroline,” Hugh Mulberry said dampeningly, “you’ve said quite enough. Merlyn had a noon engagement for a private game of faro.” He turned to Cassandra, a smile of tender regret on his mouth. “Forgive me for being so frank, Miss Lane, but Merlyn confided in me that he did not fare as well on the Continent as he had hoped. He earns his living by gaming these days. While it’s not as noble a profession as his first, it serves to pay bills.”
“Lud! I told him he’d never make a go of it in Paris,” Caroline exclaimed in glee. “He doesn’t know a thing about the language and his accent is abominable.”
Cassandra said nothing to this. If Caroline did not know that Merlyn in the guise of the Comte de Valure spoke French like a native, this was certainly not the moment to enlighten her.
She gently pressed her fingers around Hugh’s slim hand. “I’m pleased you enjoyed my small effort, my lord. If you will excuse me, I am to meet Mrs. Holmes and Mrs. Pickwick at the lending library. I hope to see you again, Miss Lambert,” she added as an after-thought.
“But you will, my dear,” the actress cooed. “Hugh has invited me to stay at St. James’s Square, and Merlyn was anxious to second the invite.”
Touché! Cassandra smiled, nodded, and turned on her heel. Merlyn had seconded that cat’s invitation, had he? Well, that was all the more reason for her to speak with him at once.
But that was not to be. When the interminable afternoon dragged slowly toward dusk, Cassandra returned to St. James’s Square to find that Lord Mulberry had planned an impromptu party to honor Caroline’s surprise appearance in Bath.
The final surprise was in entering the salon at dinner-time to find that ten of the eleven guests were male. Cassandra had to begrudgingly admire Caroline’s gown. It was of the sheerest turquoise silk with an underskirt of pink. Turquoise ribbons decorated the elbows and formed a row down the front of the low-cut bodice. Once, when she leaned over the dinner table to catch at Hugh’s sleeve, her breasts nearly popped free of their confinement.
At that moment Cassandra looked up at Merlyn, who sat across the table, and discovered his sapphire eye hard upon her. Tonight, he mouthed and then looked away so quickly she wasn’t sure he’d formed the word.
For the rest of the meal Cassandra tried in vain to catch his eye, but it was as if he knew it and deliberately never looked across at her again. After the meal, he took Caroline by the elbow and steered her into the music salon. For the next hour, Merlyn stood and turned pages, smiling down every now and then into the actress’s face, while she subjected the company to a recital of her own.
When at last Cassandra felt able to make her regrets and escape upstairs without offending either her host or the center of everyone’s attention, she was so angry she slammed the door and threw down her fan in disgust.
“What does he want?” she fumed. “Did he say ‘tonight,’ or did I imagine it? And what does it mean? Am I to waylay him in the hall or …”
Cassandra paused. Had he invited her to seek him out?
“Well, I won’t,” she muttered, reaching for the lacing at the back of her figured muslin gown. “I would be a fool to be found roaming the halls when all are supposed asleep. What if I should encounter Lord Mulberry?” She drew the gown over her head and laid it on a chair. “If he thinks to play games with me after he’s cuddled that overblown trollop before my eyes—”
Cassandra stopped in midsentence, appalled at herself. She sounded every inch the jealous wife. She swallowed, choked, and burst into giggles. Well, that was how she felt. She had watched for the past two hours while the man she loved fawned over that actress, smiling down tender smiles that should have been hers, giving intimate little pats to Miss Lambert’s arm or waist that once he had given her. She was jealous. She wanted to rage at the other woman, to tell her to keep her coquettish ways for other men, that Merlyn Ross belonged to her. He was hers by right of a bond they shared, the dangers, and their child.
Cassandra’s mouth drooped. Adam! Oh, how she missed him, his glossy black curls and pink mouth and wiggly damp fingers that caught in her hair and grabbed at her breast.
“I must see him. Tomorrow!” she vowed in a whisper.
It took her no longer than the time it took to change into her night sacque of fine gauzy linen and slippers to determine what she would do. Grabbing up her cloak, she pulled the hood over her hair and slipped out into the dark hallway.
Heart in her mouth, she made her way to the servants’ stairway and climbed to Merlyn’s floor. Which door was his? In panic she put her hand on the first door handle. It gave without a sound. A moment later she gazed upon stacks and stacks of luggage. Trunks and bags lay open everywhere, spilling petticoats and gowns and slippers onto the carpets. Caroline Lambert’s room. She shut it at once, grateful that the actress was still belowstairs. Perverseness of nature made her choose the door just beyond on the same side. This latch, too, gave instantly under the pressure of her hand and the faint scent of vetiver greeted her. Cassandra pursed her lips in annoyance. Merlyn’s room was adjacent to Caroline’s. Who had arranged that?
A noise farther down the hall made her scoot inside a scant second before she heard voices. Caroline’s throaty laughter was unmistakable. The room was not dark, for a fire blazed below the marble mantel. On tiptoe, Cassandra made her way to the huge four-poster bed and stepped into the shadow of its hangings just as the door opened partway.
“What do you mean, I’d better not come in?” Caroline’s petulant voice inquired. “I don’t care a fig what Hugh thinks. He knows I’d sooner warm your bed than his. Besides, he’s had his eye on your little squab the evening long. I doubt he’ll know we’re here.”
Cassandra caught her breath in outrage, but then Merlyn’s deep smooth voice said, “You try me hard, Caroline. I think you like to see me suffer. If Hugh were to find us flagrante delicto, I’d find myself without a home. For all his urbane manners, he’s as jealous as the next man, and you are here as his guest. Besides, I need Hugh’s good graces just now. I’m out of work. Two years away from London has taken its toll. I need a part, a good one, the kind Hugh could write for me if he’s of the frame of mind. I’ll not spoil it, not even for an hour between your luscious thighs. In London, chérie. ’Tis a promise.”
Cassandra silently ground her teeth as she heard the pleasurable moans of a long kiss. Her hands balled into fists as she flayed Merlyn in her thoughts. How dare he promise to bed that strumpet in London sometime hence. Reprobate! Scoundrel! Libertine!
Several short smacking kisses followed the first torrid exchange before Cassandra heard Caroline say, “You will at least escort me to my room. You may be tempted to change your mind.”
“I’m certain to be tempted,” Merlyn replied with a chuckle just before the door shut behind them.
Cassandra let out her breath in a ragged sob. “How could I have been so foolish!” she whispered angrily. “To think that this time it would be different. Are there no true men in all this great world?” The pain of this fresh betrayal made her head pound and she slumped down on the bed, holding on
to a post for support.
The tears were quickly spent and a calmer temper replaced them. Cassandra shrugged out of her cloak and wiped her face with her hands. The reasons for her coming were not abated by her discovery. She still needed Merlyn’s help to return to Ebba and Adam. And her warning against Caroline was more necessary than ever.
That she had been tricked by love once again was a private matter, a matter that no one but herself knew. It did not make the pain any less, but the shame was less. She would not run and hide her face in her own pillow. She would stay and make Merlyn hear her out—whenever he chose to return.
Chapter Fourteen
Merlyn slammed the door to his room with no thought for the other sleepers in the house and gave his neckcloth a savage wrench. “Damnation! Where could she have gone?”
He swore under his breath as he jerked the crisp linen from his neck with one hand and began working open his waistcoat with the other. For the better part of an hour he’d cooled his heels in Cassie’s room, but she wasn’t to be found.
He shrugged out of coat and waistcoat together and flung them carelessly onto a chair before stomping over to the mantel, which he grasped tightly in both hands until his knuckles whitened. There was only one explanation: Cassie had gone to Lord Mulberry’s rooms. And yet his heart would not quite let him credit it.
“She wouldn’t! My shy little dove fears to singe her wings. She couldn’t expect Hugh to treat her more kindly than I. By God! If she’s giving comfort to her host when she offered invitation to me …” The tirade veered off into profanity spoken low and methodically.
The slammed door had awakened Cassandra, who now sat up in bed with a great yawn. It took her only a second to realize where she was, and the realization made her stomach flip-flop as she heard the string of curses being dealt out by the room’s owner. Immediately, she leaped from the bed into the shadow of the bed hangings, her satin slippers making only a whisper of sound on the carpet. It was enough.
Merlyn’s head swiveled around at the sound and another curse whispered past his clenched teeth. “Well,” he demanded harshly after a moment. “Don’t coquette, Caroline. Present yourself.”
O God, she begged silently, don’t let him turn me out. She moved, a shadow separating itself from the others, hesitated, and then stepped fully into the fire’s light.
“Cassie!”
“Good evening, Merlyn,” she voiced in false calm, but she could not smile at the angry man. She cast a glance about the room, measuring the distance to the door. “It’s uncommonly cold,” she said inconsequentially.
Merlyn’s gaze lowered from her face to the thin night rail she wore. “You wore nothing more?”
Cassandra heard the astonishment in his voice and realized that she was not the only one uncertain of herself. She moved forward two steps. “I wanted to talk,” she began, “but if you’re—”
Merlyn’s look stopped her. She did not know how transparent her gown appeared in the firelight. The full ripe thrust of her chilled breasts stood out in sharp relief beneath, every curve of her revealed for his warm regard.
“Perhaps another time,” she added as the silence played havoc with her nerves. Why, oh, why had she not waited? He was obviously in search of Caroline. Why, he had just addressed her by the woman’s name. The thought sent anger gushing through her veins, loosening her tongue. “I didn’t know that you expected other company this night.”
When he did not reply she reached for her cloak and started toward the door. Nothing, she told herself, would make her stay after the insult she had just suffered. But Merlyn moved from the mantel when he saw what she was about. Two long strides brought him before her and he halted her with a heavy hand on each shoulder.
“Don’t be an idiot,” he said in the cold, flat tone Cassandra had learned to fear.
Dread crept over her and she trembled beneath the hard grasp of his lean fingers. “You’re hurting me,” she said.
“Am I?” Merlyn seemed to consider this a moment, his fingers still on her flesh. Finally they loosened and his hands slid down from her shoulders to her wrists, which he clasped gently. “Forgive me, I’m out of sorts. But that’s passing.” She thought he nearly smiled, but the twitch straightened into a hard line. “Where have you been this last hour?”
She swallowed. There was no sense in lying. “Here.”
“All the time?” he insisted with a gentle shake of her wrists.
“Entirely,” Cassandra answered.
Something in her inflection alerted Merlyn. “An hour. Then you heard—”
“Heard Miss Lambert’s warm invitation to share her bed,” she finished for him, allowing her anger to show. “Did you find it—enjoyable?” she asked defiantly.
For the first time he smiled, and it was Cassandra’s heart that did a nervous flip-flop this time. “Well, well,” he said with a hint of mockery and good humor. “This would seem to be my cardinal day. The Fates present me with two tempting offers, and I nearly missed out on both.”
Cassandra tried to shrug off his touch, but he would not release her hands. “I’m no fool, Merlyn. I heard you leave with that—that wretched woman. Don’t pretend you’ve stood in the hallway this hour trying to gather your courage.”
“Softly, my lover,” he cautioned in amusement, “or that wretched woman may hear you.” His laughter was gentle, taking away the sting of his taunt. “Would you believe, Cassie, that I’ve spent the last hour sitting before your fire, waiting and gnashing my teeth? I, too, had hopes for this evening. You wanted to talk?”
Cassandra’s gaze fell before his and fastened on his shirtfront. Slowly she became aware that his shirt was open nearly to the waist. His skin appeared very tan against the starched white linen. The impulsive desire to reach through the opening and touch the crisp black curls was so strong that she raised a hand.
“Don’t.”
The softly uttered word made her start and her eyes rose to his face once more. He was not smiling now. The hard ridges of his high cheekbones showed prominently in his harsh-featured face. “There’ll be no turning back if your small hand touches my flesh.”
All at once Cassandra understood with certainty that he had not been with Caroline but had gone to seek her own bed. The knowledge sang through her like the flush of strong spirits, and she smiled the smile of triumph. “I came to tell you something,” she said softly.
Merlyn’s belly quivered at the sound of her voice. “What was it you wanted to say, Cassie?”
Cassandra took a breath. He was so close his wide shoulders blocked her view of the room beyond him. It was as if the world had ceased to exist beyond the length and breadth of him. And she wanted it so. It made possible the words she spoke to him now.
“I love you.”
She saw the pulse quicken beneath the brown skin at the base of his throat, but he said nothing. The moment stretched out until she began to wonder if she had spoken at all. “Perhaps I’d better go,” she began, but his hands moved; one caught her chin and the other threaded its fingers through the heavy weight of her hair at the back of her head.
He tilted her face up to meet his. “You’ve been a long time learning what I’ve known in my heart always,” he said. “No, I’ll not spoil the perfection of your wondrous vow with glib words. ‘My love’s more richer than my tongue,’” he quoted softly as his mouth came down on hers.
His lips were hard with desire, their touch ungentle, but Cassandra did not care. There was only the wonder of their magic, the fire of their branding, their fiery mystery that made this man the one, above all else, she loved.
She heard the whispered rustle of her gown as it slipped from her shoulders to the floor, and then the cool night air stirred on her bare skin. Oh, but she was warm, and warmer still, wherever his hands touched her. She melted into his touch, opening her mouth for his skillful tongue and offering the weight of her body against his.
He might have possess
ed all the skill of witchcraft and magic of his wizard’s name, for now she knew this moment had been inevitable. From the moment she had rushed headlong into his arms in Newgate and touched this dark, inscrutable man, she should have known that her safety and her doom were bound up in the violent tenderness that was Merlyn Ross.
They spoke no words, the time too long since last touching, the moment too full of anticipated fruition. Hands and mouths, bodies urgently eager to possess and be possessed, pressed and touched and kissed. Then there was only the powerful demand of his strong, hard body on hers and her astonishment at the sweet, fierce invasion of her body that made one union of their beings.
When the moment was not so full and Merlyn’s dark head lay quietly against the lush softness of her breast, Cassandra knew, without the needed reassurance of his voice, that she loved and was loved equally in return.
The peace did not last long. After only minutes his silky black head moved against her, raised a little so that he could tease a nipple with his lips, and she felt him harden against her thigh. “No, wait, love,” she whispered raggedly when he raised up on his elbows. “There’s something I must tell you before I forget it.”
Merlyn took her hand from his shoulder and teasingly bit into the fleshy part of her palm before he said, “I thought all had been said.”
Cassandra moaned in pleasure as his tongue licked the sensitive tips of her fingers. “Oh, Merlyn—stop!”
He raised his head and looked into her flushed face. “What is it, Cassie?”
Cassandra smiled and touched his cheek, wanting to touch all of him, to roam freely and confidently over his warm, hard body as he did hers, but she held the passion in check, her trembling fingers still on his cheek. “I don’t want to say these things. I would forget all—but for Adam.”
“What is wrong?” Merlyn sat up higher, his black brows drawn low. “Has Ebba sent a message? Is he ill?”