by Mia Vincy
What about these two? Did they do that thing that Mr. DeWitt wanted? And how did they…Did she…Or did he…? Oh heavens, was she to spend all night wondering such things about her fellow guests?
The rout took on rather a different appearance.
“Such a pleasure to meet you, Lady Bolderwood,” she said graciously.
“Everyone is thrilled to see you in town, Mrs. DeWitt,” that lady said. “Rumor was your husband kept you hidden away so you could not curtail his…excesses.”
Maybe Arabella was right, and Lady Bolderwood wasn’t very pretty after all.
“The only excess I observe in my husband is his excessive generosity,” Cassandra said.
Harry snorted. “He can afford to be generous. Just don’t ask where he gets his money from.”
“Do you refer to the Belgian investment, Lord Bolderwood?” Cassandra said. “I do hope you aren’t going to punch him over it again.”
“Baltic investment,” Harry corrected her absently. “And that’s not the half of it.”
His expression was dark and clouded, as she had never seen on him, but before she could ask what he meant, his wife was hugging his arm, pressing her bosom against him, and gazing adoringly into his face.
“Now, now, Harry, my sweet,” she said. “Mrs. DeWitt is right. This is neither the time nor place.”
The couple exchanged an intimate look, shutting out the world. Harry ran his fingers down his wife’s arm and she responded with a pinch of his chin.
Cassandra averted her eyes. Impoliteness took a variety of forms, she thought crossly, and curled her fingers around her fan.
She began to excuse herself, but Harry interrupted her, saying, “I always did admire your fortitude, Cassandra, that is, Mrs. DeWitt. I daresay you need it, with a husband like that.”
“Some ladies will tolerate anything for the sake of luxury,” his wife chimed in, oh-so-sweetly. “But why not, if one hasn’t the fortune to find true love, like us.”
No, Lady Bolderwood definitely was not pretty, Cassandra decided. She had sly eyes and nasty ears, and her teeth were too small.
Harry’s ears turned pink again. “I trust you’ve put that whole matter behind us, Mrs. DeWitt.”
“Oh, do say you’ve forgiven us for running away together.” Lady Bolderwood’s blue eyes were wide as she pressed her bosom more firmly against Harry’s arm. “But love and passion overcame us so, we were powerless to resist.”
Cassandra clenched her teeth and smiled, and somehow found enough air left in her tight chest to respond. “Of course I don’t mind. I couldn’t be more content. Obviously, it has turned out well for all of us.”
“It will work out well,” Lady Bolderwood said. “My darling Harry is seeing to that.”
The couple exchanged another intimate look and secret smile. Cassandra willed herself to get away from them, but her feet didn’t move.
“Whatever do you mean?” she said.
Harry glanced back at her, shrugged one shoulder. “Merely that one has a right to take control of one’s affairs,” he said. “Take justice into one’s own hands, as it were.”
“Heavens,” Cassandra said. “If you are still angry with my husband—”
“Please!” Lady Bolderwood fairly shoved her face in Cassandra’s. “We must not discuss Mr. DeWitt. You know what he’s like.”
“Yes, I do.” Cassandra lifted her chin and refused to step back. “Joshua is brilliant, energetic, amusing, generous, and kind. You did me a favor, Lady Bolderwood. Joshua DeWitt is the best husband I could ever have.”
She held the other woman’s eye, determined not to look away first, but then came the loud sound of a glass smashing, and they both looked around at once.
A hush fell over the crowd. Angry male voices rose through the quiet.
Cassandra and a score of other guests peered over the balcony at the crowded gallery below. A small space had opened up around a spreading pool of orange, fruity punch.
And in that space stood two men, snarling at each other like a pair of fighting dogs. The older man, robust with thick gray hair, was her father-in-law, the Earl of Treyford.
The younger man was her husband.
Lady Bolderwood raised her plucked eyebrows at Cassandra. “You were saying?”
Joshua had not intended to start any trouble when he found himself face to face with his father and stepmother. Until that point, he had been enjoying the rout immensely and, as far as he could tell, had not offended anyone. Not much, anyway.
In fact, he had not intended even to talk to his father, but it would be rude to turn away now, and Cassandra did not like him being rude.
“Good evening, Father,” Joshua said cheerfully. “And Lady Treyford. Fancy us all meeting like this. A little family reunion.”
“What the hell are you doing here?” Treyford said.
Joshua planted his feet more firmly on the floor. “I was invited. Lord and Lady Morecambe are my wife’s people, don’t you know? Have you met my wife?”
“I don’t give a damn about your wife.”
“That’s not very nice. My wife is lovely.” He gave them both a broad smile. “Did you know that my wife’s father, Lord Charles Lightwell, was the older brother of your first wife, Lady Susan Lightwell? Cozy, isn’t it? All of us tangled up like the plot of a Gothic novel. Do you care for novels, Lady Treyford?”
“You will not address the countess.”
And they called Joshua the rude one! Here he was, making pleasant and polite conversation, while his impulsive, hotheaded father said what he pleased. But as always, his father would get away with it and Joshua would be blamed.
He started peeling off his gloves as they talked. “Married again, are you, my lord? Only one wife this time?”
“Get out. You don’t belong here.”
“Now, now, Papa, that’s no way to talk to your eldest son. I am a guest here too.” He gathered both gloves in his right hand. “It’s remarkable, isn’t it, the way a huge fortune can give back what an invalid marriage license took away.”
Joshua scratched his cheek, thoughtfully. As it happened, it was his left cheek that needed scratching. Which meant he had to use his left hand.
Which just happened to be the hand that bore the signet ring.
Which just happened to catch the earl’s attention.
“That ring does not belong to you,” the earl snapped, leaning toward him.
“Ring? What ring? Oh, this ring.”
Joshua held his hand up high, made a show of admiring the ring. A voice in his head was yelling at him to stop, but he couldn’t. And why in blazes should he? Let everyone watch. They had been content to shrug off his father’s sins. Bigamy was usually considered a serious crime, yet Treyford had said, “But I didn’t mean it,” and all these people had nodded and said, “Well, then, if you didn’t mean it, it’s all right.” As for the consequences of Treyford’s perfidy, his selfishness, his lack of restraint, they all wanted to ignore those too, probably because the fatuous hypocrites wanted their own actions overlooked.
Then he met his father’s eyes and grinned.
It was like waving a handkerchief at the start of a race.
Treyford lunged, fingers outstretched to grab at the ring, coming fast at Joshua, who knocked his father’s hand away. Treyford’s arm windmilled back and cuffed his wife’s hand in turn, causing her to drop her glass of punch with a cry.
The glass smashed on the hard floor. Orange punch splattered nearby hems and stockings, and spread across the floor. The smell of alcohol and fruit rose in the air.
The crowd fell silent, but for the swishing of skirts as bodies turned. After the eerie hush, the tittering began. A space opened up around them, but no one intervened.
Let them watch. Let them stare. Let them see what happened when aristocrats tossed children away like the first draft of a letter.
“I rather like this ring,” Joshua said into the silence.
“That ring belongs to my son
and heir, curse you!”
The earl lunged again, but Joshua was taller. He held his hand out of reach, leaving his father to swipe at him like a thwarted cat.
“Speaking of sons, I hear your latest mistress is expecting,” Joshua said. “What are your plans for her baby? Or is that not your concern? Making a child is much more diverting than dealing with it afterward, isn’t it?”
The tittering swelled to a murmur, and then to a roar, rushing through Joshua’s head along with his blood.
A pair of footmen slid in to clean up the glass and the punch. Orange splashes stained the embroidery on Lady Treyford’s hem. Joshua had to stop this. He wished someone would stop him. Please, someone stop him. But no one ever would, just as no one would stop Treyford from discarding children.
The worst of it was that the earl wasn’t even cruel, merely selfish and careless. He took what he wanted and never cared who might be hurt and what others might lose or what mess might be left behind.
No, the worst of it was that nobody condemned him for it, whatever Joshua said. It was like one of those nightmares, where he tried to yell but had no voice.
And then: A touch on his shoulder.
A moment later, two warm, feminine hands closed around his raised arm, gently lowering it, trapping his forearm against a pleasantly soft female body, holding it still. One of those hands slid up his forearm, and pressed into the crook of his elbow.
Cassandra, her shoulder pressing against his arm as she joined herself to him. Claimed him. Acknowledged him as her own.
He was so surprised that he let her do it. He breathed in her fragrance. His heart began to calm.
“Lady Treyford,” his wife said. One would think from her tone that she had waited all year to meet this one woman. “How lovely to see you again. I believe we were introduced the last time I was in London.”
The countess’s expression suggested she had no recollection of meeting Cassandra, but she returned a greeting, as she had to do, given the audience. For all Joshua’s complaints, he had to concede that Cassandra could wield politeness like a scimitar.
Then Cassandra looked up at him, her smile warm as if she was happy to see him too, her eyes soft with something that might have been concern. Mostly likely concern for her precious sisters and her precious reputation and her extremely precious politeness. She stretched up, her body bumping against his, to speak in his ear.
“Joshua, please stop,” she whispered. “I’ll do it.”
“Do what?”
She widened her eyes. The blush rose in her cheeks. “What you said. Your…inducement.”
Oh. His inducement. Right. Ah. Well. Her fingers pressed into his arm, her eyes pleaded with him to behave. No surprise that she too was willing to ignore his father’s perfidy for the sake of good manners, but strangely enough, he did not feel any annoyance at her.
So he patted her hand and enjoyed the way the blush deepened in her cheeks.
“Cassandra, my darling,” he said loudly. “Allow me to introduce you to my father, the Earl of Treyford, and my dear stepmother, Lady Treyford.”
The pair of them looked uncertain, his father’s nostrils still flared, but Cassandra’s calming, civilizing influence worked on them too, and they all rose above the seething pit of human emotion to remember they were genteel. They issued tense greetings. Politeness won again.
Then Cassandra addressed herself to Lady Treyford, blathering some nonsense about “the exquisite beadwork on your gown,” and Lord Morecambe appeared and clapped Treyford on the shoulder and led him away under the pretense of discussing horses. The servants had cleaned everything up, and the guests resumed their chatter, and everything returned to normal. Like he had thrown a rock into a pond, and now the rock was gone and the ripples had passed.
Someone else came to claim Lady Treyford’s attention, and Cassandra led him away. He breathed in her fragrance, enjoyed her warmth pressed to him in warning.
“Shall we go home, then?” he said.
She didn’t look at him. “Not yet.”
“We have a bargain.”
She took a deep breath and smiled at someone behind him, still not meeting his eyes. “I will keep to my end of the bargain, but first you must keep to yours. We will stay another half-hour. We will circulate. We will make polite conversation—polite!—and you will make yourself agreeable to as many people as you can.”
“How marvelous you are, my darling, how principled. What you are willing to do in the name of politeness! How delightful, that you will be so polite in public, yet in private—”
“Not here.” Her tone was uncommonly sharp.
“These people—”
“They don’t need to see that you’re upset.”
“I’m not upset.”
She met his eyes then and her free hand covered his. “It’s all right to be angry with him. But you cannot undo it now and you don’t want these people to see that you’re hurting.”
Her eyes were big and concerned, their color neither green nor brown but something utterly new and irrelevant.
“I’m not hurting,” he snapped. “I could not care less about the man. I simply dislike him.”
“Then dislike him more quietly. You’re making people uncomfortable.”
“Heaven forbid anyone might feel uncomfortable.”
“Joshua. Please.”
She bumped against him again and brushed her lips over his cheek. The kiss was light and brief, yet the feel of it lingered long after her mouth was gone. Through the mess in his head, he was vaguely aware that she was soothing him like a skittish horse, but he could not summon up enough outrage to mind. She had a kind of courage and honor that put him to shame. He was curious to see how far she was willing to go with her “end of the bargain.”
“You owe me,” he said.
“I know.”
“Half an hour.”
“Yes.” She led him a few more steps and then she glanced at him sideways, with a suddenly playful smile. “You got my name right,” she said.
He’d forgotten that game. Never mind. He was running out of names anyway.
Besides, he had a new game now. Annoying his father was getting tedious. Teasing his wife would be much more diverting.
“You see?” he said. “You can achieve all manner of things with the right inducement.”
Chapter 8
Later that night, after her maid had helped her dress for bed, Cassandra sat in her bedchamber and ignored the connecting door to Joshua’s room. She ignored it so hard that it was a relief when his knock finally came.
She put aside the handkerchief she was pretending to embroider and moved forward to greet him. Really, this was like receiving a regular morning call in her drawing room.
Yet no morning call in her drawing room had left her so warm and nervous.
“Come in,” she called, her voice too high.
In he blew, his red silk banyan flapping about his bare ankles as he charged toward her. He was halfway across the room when he pulled up, staring as if he had never seen such a creature as her in his life. She felt curiously exposed, even though nearly every inch of her skin was covered. Mercifully, his robe was tied shut, revealing only a triangle of skin below his throat.
“What are you wearing?” He prowled closer. “Are you dressed for bed or for a three-day hike in Scotland?”
Cassandra realized that she was cuddling herself. She straightened her shoulders and clasped her hands at her waist.
“This is warm and comfortable,” she said.
“It would want to be, since there’s so bloody much of it.”
“Whatever do you mean? ’Tis only my nightshift, my bed jacket, and stockings.”
He flicked the ruffled brim of her nightcap. “What the blazes is this thing?”
“It’s a nightcap. It’s warm and keeps my hair from getting tangled during the night. Which saves me time the next day. It is efficient.”
“Oh well then, if it’s efficient.”
> “If you wanted me dressed for—for—for seduction, you should have provided clearer instructions.” A smile began to spread over his face. She folded her arms over her middle, remembered herself, and stood straight again. “For example, am I meant to be in the bed? Does this…activity take place there or…”
“This activity can take place wherever we please.” His eyes flicked over her again. “I feel underdressed,” he said cheerfully, and leaned forward confidentially to add, “As I am completely naked under this robe.”
Good heavens.
He waggled his eyebrows and pivoted away. He ran at the bed, leaped, and, in a blur of wine-red silk, he wound up lounging on the far side like an emperor in a painting she had once seen. The robe stayed closed around his middle, although the lapels fell open to reveal that wretched chest again and the hem gathered around his knees.
He patted the mattress beside him meaningfully, and somehow she was standing by the bed, willing herself to climb on.
She had made a promise, and she was his wife, and as they were leaving the rout Arabella had winked and said, “The answer to your question is ‘yes’,” so it could not be that bad, but it would not make babies, and what was the point if it did not make babies?
But her husband did not like babies, so perhaps that was the point.
She hated him, then, wished him far, far away.
“You’re looking fierce,” he said, disarmingly gentle now. “Do you want me to go?”
Yes. Yes. Yes.
And yet…What if this led to other things? What if he did eventually bed her properly? What if she got with child? That would make this unpleasantness worth it. She had gone about this all wrong. She should have prepared for seduction. She surreptitiously wiped her palms on her bed jacket and tried to think of something seductive to say.
“Shall I…extinguish the candle?”
“Sweet mercy, no,” Joshua said. “In fact, you should light a few more. You’ll need them to see what you’re doing.”
“Oh.”
“And I’ll need the light to watch you too.”