by Mia Vincy
“A nuisance. Yes. Ha ha,” Mr. Newell said, looking dismayed.
“Altogether too much of a nuisance:” That was the phrase Mr. DeWitt had used to describe Cassandra and her family in Mr. Newell’s letter of introduction, nearly two years ago now. Cassandra had not meant to be a nuisance to her husband. It was simply that her father’s unexpected death, less than a month after their equally unexpected marriage, meant that she—and therefore he—owned Sunne Park and she had naively assumed he might want to, well, if not actively manage the estate, perhaps, ah, visit it? Maybe, at least, say, once?
“I have four factories, three estates, one thousand employees, and a growing fleet,” had come her husband’s reply. “I do not have time to attend to one measly cottage in the depths of Warwickshire. Surely Mrs. DeWitt can figure out how to prune the rosebushes and feed the pigs all by herself.”
Never mind that Sunne Park was a fine Tudor mansion on one thousand acres of rich farmland, whose pigs were the most sought-after breeding stock in the middle of England.
Never mind that Mr. DeWitt was based in Birmingham, which was less than a day’s travel away.
“We agreed to a marriage in name only,” he had added. “Mrs. DeWitt has my name; I cannot see what else she can want from me.”
Nevertheless, he had sent Mr. Newell, newly hired as Secretary In Charge Of Matrimonial Affairs, along with a bright-eyed gray kitten, the latter included “so,” Mr. DeWitt wrote, “the wife doesn’t get lonely and do something foolish.”
Charming man, her husband-in-name-only.
Really, Cassandra was perfectly content to have nothing to do with him, as his letters indicated that he was ill-mannered, and the scandal sheets indicated that he was ill-behaved. She knew little more about him now than she had on their wedding day—the only time she had ever seen him. Joshua DeWitt was a wealthy widower and the illegitimate son of an earl, Papa had told her, when he sat her down in his study and asked her to marry Mr. DeWitt, a week after they learned that Cassandra’s betrothed, the cheerful and charming Viscount Bolderwood, had eloped with someone else.
“Joshua is a good man, for all his ways,” Papa had said. “I wouldn’t marry you off to someone I didn’t trust. With your brother Charlie gone, the lawyers insist the only way for a daughter to inherit this estate is if she is married, and I know Joshua will take care of you all when I’m dead.”
Cassandra had laughed at him. “Heavens, Papa! Why do you talk of dying? You are in excellent health.”
But Papa had pleaded, so she married Mr. DeWitt, and a month later, Papa was dead. Though if Mr. DeWitt was a good man, she had seen little evidence of it.
Yet she was grateful for Mr. Newell, whose avuncular manner and infinite patience made him a favorite with Emily and Lucy. As for Mr. Twit…
A soft head butted her knee and a pair of cat’s eyes gleamed at her in the dim light. Mr. Twit, purring vigorously, rubbed against her calves, telling her to go to bed.
“The fact is, Mr. Newell, it is past time to launch Lucy into London society. In the circumstances, I think it best that I seek my grandmother’s assistance. And as the duchess will be in London for the Season, there must I go too.”
Mr. Newell shifted uncomfortably. “You must understand that Mr. DeWitt—he does not mince words. Once he decides something, he expects it to happen. He was very firm in saying no to you before.”
Given how much control a husband could legally wield over his wife, Cassandra counted herself fortunate that Mr. DeWitt ignored her so thoroughly, and that his only requirements were that she ignore him back and stay where she was put.
Which she was willing to do. Most of the time.
“Unfortunately for Mr. DeWitt, Lucy’s need to be in society is greater than his need to pretend I do not exist.”
“Perhaps a letter to your grandmother would suffice.”
“I had considered that but…” Four times a year, Cassandra dutifully wrote to the duchess, and her grandmother dutifully wrote back. The sole purpose of the letters was to acknowledge each other’s continuing existence. “Our relations are strained, so it is best I see her in person. You will not be blamed for my actions,” she added. “You need not fear Mr. DeWitt.”
“I don’t fear him,” Mr. Newell hastened to say. “He is not unkind. He is merely…not restful. He will send you straight home.”
“Not if he does not know I am there.” Mr. Twit flopped onto her feet and she stooped to scratch the cat’s neck. “You say he travels frequently and you are always advised of his schedule, are you not? We simply have to find a time this Season when he is not in London.”
“Hm. I did receive word he is planning a trip to Liverpool. How long do you propose to stay?”
“I need only to convince my grandmother to take Lucy,” she said. “If we plan it properly, we’ll never see Mr. DeWitt at all.”
Chapter 2
“Mr. DeWitt is everything that a husband ought to be,” Cassandra said to her friend Arabella as they strolled through London’s Hyde Park on a fine afternoon three weeks later. “He is conveniently rich, extremely generous, and always somewhere else.”
Cassandra ignored Arabella’s amused if skeptical glance, and concentrated on the marvels around her. On one side of them lay Rotten Row, with its cacophony of horses and carriages; on the other lay the waters of the Serpentine; and pressing all around them were the thousands of people in London who possessed both colorful finery and the leisure time in which to display it.
“Stroll,” however, was an optimistic description of their progress. Navigating the crowd required something more like a slow, improvised quadrille: a chassé to the right, a glissade to the left, and then perhaps a small sissone.
Unless, of course, one was Arabella, Lady Hardbury, in front of whom space magically opened up.
“Absence is a quality that many women appreciate in their husbands,” Arabella said. “I have not been married to Hardbury long enough to appreciate it in him, but I daresay the time will come when we divide up the country and ensure we are always at opposite ends of it.”
“I cannot imagine that, besotted as you two are.”
“There is that. Besides, what on earth would I do for entertainment if my husband were not nearby to provoke?”
A pair of pastel-clad young ladies approached, hugging each other’s arms as they opened their mouths to address Arabella. Cassandra readied her smile—finally, a conversation!—but Arabella merely lifted her chin and looked them over disdainfully. The ladies discovered an urgent need to be on the other side of the park and hurried away. Arabella smiled with satisfaction and strolled on.
“Why can we not talk to them?” Cassandra asked.
“They are not interesting enough.”
“Arabella, you promised me conversation.” Cassandra stopped in rebellion and narrowly avoided colliding with a trio of elegant gentlemen, who almost fell over in their haste to bow to Arabella and escape. “How am I supposed to forge connections if you do not allow me to talk to anyone?”
“Not any conversation will do.” Arabella scanned the crowd, her uncommon height giving her an enviable view. “Most importantly, so long as you are with me, you will be seen.”
Indeed, everyone wanted a glimpse of Arabella, who, since her marriage to the Marquess of Hardbury, had scaled the slopes of London society and planted her flag firmly at the peak. Those around them watched her while pretending not to, their expressions a mix of longing and fear, and they turned to each other to whisper words that bobbed through the air amid the colorful feathers and parasols, words like “Lady Hardbury” and “Cassandra Lightwell” and “DeWitt” and “Bolderwood.”
“By ‘seen’, of course, you mean ‘gossiped about’,” Cassandra said. “I suppose it cannot be avoided.”
“It must not be avoided. If one is not gossiped about, then one does not exist. What with this promenade and your appearance in my box at the theater tonight, every morning call in every drawing room tomorrow will feat
ure your name.”
“Gosh. What proportion of each call might I merit? A whole minute?”
“Don’t flatter yourself, Cassandra. You are not that interesting.” Arabella slid her an amused sideways look. “Although with your family history…perhaps half a minute? Multiply that by, say, three thousand conversations, at a very modest estimate—that’s fifteen hundred minutes. Most people would kiss a monkey if it would garner them half that much attention.”
“Why, that’s…Twenty-five hours of gossip, on me alone.” Cassandra twirled her parasol and smiled at the world. “How marvelous I am, to make such a generous contribution to society.”
Society! Oh, how exciting to be in a crowd again! The last time she walked in Hyde Park, she had been Miss Cassandra Lightwell, engaged to Harry, Lord Bolderwood, and Charlie and Papa were still alive. And then—Well, that was then, and this was now. And now, she had nearly three weeks before Mr. DeWitt was due to return from his trip to Liverpool, and she meant to put every minute of it to good use.
Which was what she thought was the purpose of this walk: to smooth her way back into society, for Lucy to follow. Yet she felt less like a participant than a visitor at a menagerie, with Arabella as her guide.
“That fellow over there”—Arabella indicated a fashionable gentleman whose cravat was tied with such complexity it must have required a good three hours—“was last week found guilty of criminal conversation with Lord Oliver’s wife. The jury set the damages at nearly twenty thousand pounds, which of course he cannot afford. The red-haired woman there is Lady Yardley”—a plump, vivacious lady in her thirties with a circle of admirers—“who almost outdid me at the Ladies’ Debating Society the other day. And that handsome gentleman riding the fine bay mare would suit you nicely as a lover.”
Cassandra stumbled and turned the misstep into a jeté to avoid tumbling over. “I beg your pardon?”
“So you are paying attention.” Arabella laughed softly. Which was lovely. Arabella had rarely laughed before her marriage. “Anyway, ’tis not as though your marriage vows mean anything, since you married only to secure your inheritance, and he—Why did he marry you again?”
“Because Papa asked him to. But I would not take a lover simply because I can, or because Mr. DeWitt is rumored to do so. Why on earth would a woman go to bed with a man if it were not required?”
“Because it’s…Oh, never mind. I have seen your Mr. DeWitt,” she went on, “although he has not yet been introduced to me. No one knows what to make of him. They recoil because he is an industrialist, but receive him because his investments make them rich. They say he is no gentleman, but cannot forget that his father is an earl and that he would have been earl one day too, had his father’s bigamy not rendered him illegitimate. Meanwhile, he goes where he pleases, says what he pleases, and no one dares get in his way. And,” Arabella added, slyness creeping into her tone, “he is very good-looking.”
Was he? At their only meeting, on their wedding day two years ago, Cassandra had hardly looked at him. She had still been heartbroken after Harry jilted her and grieving for the future she had lost.
“I remember him only as being dark and abrupt,” she said. “I assumed he was as uncomfortable as I at marrying a stranger.”
It was the waiting that Cassandra remembered, mostly. First, in the drawing room of Mr. DeWitt’s Birmingham townhouse, waiting for the groom to show up to his own wedding. Papa chatted with the vicar, all the while flapping the special license that he had cajoled from the archbishop. The drawing room had the stale air of disuse, and an out-of-time clock persistently ticked away the last minutes of her spinsterhood. Finally, her groom blew in like a gale, and Papa had barely performed the introductions when Mr. DeWitt turned to the vicar, clapped his hands once, and said, “Let’s get on with it, then. I don’t have all day.”
And later, oh good heavens, later. She had waited then too, huddled under blankets in the dark, for him to do what had to be done to complete the marriage. “Let’s make this as quick and painless as possible,” he said when he came to her bedroom—not exactly what a virgin wanted to hear from her groom on their wedding night. She squeezed her eyes tight shut throughout. His hands were gentle and warm and not unpleasant, and several times he told her to relax and she almost did, but then the act itself…
It wasn’t painless, but it was mercifully quick, and she breathed through it while he stilled and cursed. When he got out of bed, she lay motionless and didn’t look at him, not even when he spoke: “I doubt you enjoyed that very much,” he said. “If it’s any consolation, I didn’t enjoy it either. It’s best this way.” She didn’t ask what he meant; she wanted him only to leave, which he did, and he had already gone out when she rose the next morning, and she and Papa went straight back to Sunne Park and she never saw him again.
They had not gone much further when Arabella clutched Cassandra’s elbow and steered them in another direction, saying, “Let us veer away now.”
“Who are we running from?” Cassandra asked.
“I am running from nobody. You are choosing to avoid an encounter with Lady Bolderwood. No, don’t look now.”
Somehow, Cassandra kept moving, on limbs so light they might have floated away.
“I am right in assuming you don’t wish to meet Lady Bolderwood?” Arabella asked.
“I suppose I cannot avoid it, but thank you, I should rather not do so today.”
Nevertheless, Cassandra could not resist glancing at the Viscountess Bolderwood, the woman who had stolen her life. She saw a pale lady in an elaborate yellow outfit that showed off her small, well-shaped figure to great advantage.
“She is pretty,” she ventured.
“She has the kind of face that seems pretty, until you look closely and realize she is nothing of the sort.”
“And very fashionable.”
“Lord and Lady Bolderwood do run with the fashionable crowd,” Arabella said. “Whether they can afford to is another matter. I hear they are living off the gaming tables now and their debts mount daily.”
Malicious glee danced through her. She tried to quell it but, well, the woman had eloped with Cassandra’s betrothed while Cassandra was still in mourning for her brother.
“I shall not gossip about her,” she said resolutely.
Arabella was unchastened. “We must be allowed to discuss other people’s failings. How else are we to reconcile ourselves to our own? And come now, Cassandra, we both know you are not nearly as good as you pretend. Are you not a little glad that the woman who made off with your former betrothed is suffering some hardship?”
“Even better that Harry is suffering. Lord Bolderwood, I mean,” Cassandra confessed. “I blame him for being stolen more than I blame her for stealing him.”
“When you do end up meeting them, be sure to mention your husband’s great wealth.”
“How vulgar!”
“But how entertaining.” Arabella threw her a wicked look and then smiled at someone over her shoulder. “Oh look, there is the Duke of Dammerton, with the lovely Miss Seaton. I hear he is courting her, and her family is reluctant because of his divorce. There, my dear, is precisely the conversation you need.”
It was a good ten years since Cassandra had last seen Leopold Halton, now the sixth Duke of Dammerton, who used to be a regular visitor to her neighbors, the Bells. In those years, he had inherited a dukedom, grown bigger, and chalked up a scandalous marriage and divorce, but he still wore the same air of distraction covering a sharp mind.
“How do you do, Lady Hardbury,” His Grace said to Arabella, with a gracious nod that she deigned to return. “And Miss Cassandra—I mean, Mrs. DeWitt.” He offered a sleepy half-smile. “Delighted to see you again. DeWitt never mentioned you were coming to London.”
How confounding to hear her husband spoken of thus; it was as if he were a real person after all.
“Mr. DeWitt is a very busy man,” she said. “I’m sure he has much more interesting things to talk about.”
“I cannot imagine any topic of conversation more interesting than our womenfolk. Heaven knows Hardbury never shuts up about his wife.” He indicated his companion with a gallant sweep of his arm. “Are you acquainted with Miss Seaton?”
Introductions were made and agreeable small talk began. They had not long exchanged pleasantries when Cassandra became aware of a disturbance nearby, an extra buzzing above the hubbub of the crowd. She turned to see a tall, dark-haired gentleman charging through the throng toward them, brandishing a roll of papers in one hand.
“Damn you, Dammerton!” the man said when he was still several yards away, apparently not one whit bothered that he interrupted, that he addressed a duke so rudely, that he used such language in the presence of ladies. “Why can you not stay in one blasted place so I don’t have to waste my time looking for you?”
“Perhaps you should get a little bell,” the duke suggested, unfazed. “You could ring it and summon me back from wherever I have drifted off to.”
“Excellent idea!” The man pivoted and barked a syllable at the dapper, dark-skinned gentleman who sauntered after him with an expression of wry amusement. “Make a note. Bells to summon people from a distance.”
It was rude to stare, but Cassandra could not look away. Even after the man came to a stop, the air around him continued to move like a whirlwind, and the thrill of all that energy slid under her skin. His clothes were of excellent quality, from his boots, to his fitted buckskins, to the dark coat tailored perfectly for his uncommonly broad shoulders. Yet those boots were dusty, and his cravat was knotted too simply to be fashionable, and—most shocking—the lower part of his chiseled face was covered with dark stubble, as one might expect of a workman or someone so dissolute that he was better acquainted with the bottle than with his razor. A fine beaver hat covered his dark hair, and a gold hoop glittered in his left earlobe, and she did not know what to make of him at all.