by Mia Vincy
Stroking his hand. Gaping at his naked body.
Waiting for his kiss, eyes closed, lips parted.
So bloody tempting.
Stupid, stupid, stupid idea to go to her room last night. “Nothing but a bit of harmless entertainment,” he had told himself, and was idiot enough to believe the lie.
Somehow he made it to the evening without losing his mind and settled down in his study with a report on sanitation, while Das scanned the day’s correspondence before returning to his lodgings. Joshua should have been safe—Cassandra was out with her friends—but the words on the page turned to gibberish before they hit his brain.
Because his brain was occupied, by her: the hurt in her eyes, the tenderness in her hands, the softness of her cheek.
This never happened. Never. The one certainty in his life was that he could focus on his work and shut out the world. Yet Cassandra…She had infiltrated his brain by being so welcoming and honorable and courageous and caring and—Bloody self-righteous, is what she was. So smug, thinking she knew him, making him feel like an utter villainous blackguard. Well, he was a villainous blackguard, wasn’t he, because he was human. He did stupid, unkind things. He made mistakes. Whereas she was so bloody perfect, wasn’t she? She never did anything wrong, never lost control of her tongue or took leave of her senses or let emotion get the better of her.
He could have kissed her.
Kissed her, removed that silly nightcap and ugly bed jacket and everything else she seemed to need just to sleep. Kissed her, lain her down on that pink bedcover, under that pink canopy, and explored her pink—
“We need to go to Liverpool,” he said to Das. He leaped out of his chair, paced to the fire, grabbed the poker, jabbed at the coals. “Still have to help Putney sort out the problem with the competitors. We can leave tomorrow.”
Obvious solution, really.
If he’d taken that packet to Liverpool as planned, none of this would have happened. He simply had to put his life back to the way it was before, which was exactly the way he wanted it. Careless of him, to let her disrupt it. He could go on like this for years, traveling and trading and working. Years and years and years.
Years.
And years.
And years.
“Putney fixed it himself,” Das said absently, not looking up from the papers he was studying.
“He what?”
“Letter’s over there.”
Das made no move to get it. Splendid. Even Das was acting oddly.
Joshua dumped the poker, grabbed the letter, scanned it. Curse it. Putney had found a solution. Good one, too.
“Why the blazes did he have to go and fix it?” he muttered.
“He is your Secretary In Charge Of Everything That Happens In Liverpool And Manchester.”
“Huh.”
Das still didn’t look up. Joshua paced back to the fire, tossed on another log, enjoyed the shower of sparks, the leap of flames.
“Birmingham, then. Everything always makes sense in Birmingham. I haven’t enough to do in London.”
“This is not a good time to leave London, I’m afraid.”
“Don’t you tell me that I oughtn’t leave Mrs. DeWitt. She is perfectly capable of looking after herself, and she has no more need of me than I have of her, and quite frankly, we have coexisted perfectly well for the past two years and everything was highly satisfactory until she came along and disrupted everything.”
“A legal action has been brought against you. By Lord Bolderwood.”
Joshua glanced at the papers in Das’s hand. Das rose to his feet, lips pinched, unusually tense.
“This still about that stupid Baltic thing?”
“No, sir. Lord Bolderwood is suing you for criminal conversation.”
Das was an articulate fellow and he expressed himself well and it was not a particularly complicated sentence, but it was one of those sentences where the words made sense individually but the meaning of the whole eluded his brain. Joshua ran it back in his mind to see if he understood.
Criminal conversation. Adultery. Still his brain rebelled. Yes, he was no innocent. Yes, there were four gentlemen in London who could make that charge, if they cared to, but they didn’t, because they had reached that stage of marriage where they allowed their wives to make a choice, and Joshua had made sure of that beforehand, because the forbidden held no lure for him, whereas efficiency and good planning did.
“Congress with Lord Bolderwood’s wife?” he finally said.
Das shifted uncomfortably. “That’s what makes the said ‘conversation’ criminal.”
“This is ludicrous. He’s suing me for sleeping with Lady Bolderwood?” Fair hair—Knowing smirk—Sly eyes—Unpleasant—Joyless. “I never touched the woman.”
“He is seeking damages of fifty thousand pounds for the, ah…” Das consulted the wording. “The, and I quote, ‘unauthorized use of his property’.”
“Insolent pup. I wouldn’t, quote, ‘use’ his, quote, ‘property’ even if I were, quote, ‘authorized’. Even if I were paid fifty thousand.”
Bolderwood had been much too prominent in his life recently. Punching him in St. James over some nonsense about his wife. That wife flitting about like a gnat at Featherstone’s party. Isaac’s warning of impending revenge.
Ah.
“They’ve been planning this a while,” he said.
He paced, thinking properly now; Das, as always, the calm in his storm.
“This is…” He snapped his fingers, spun around, clapped his hands. “Yes, that’s what this is. He lost the money, needed more, desperate to get it, blamed me—How bad is his situation, did you find out?”
“Bad. Debts somewhere in the area of thirty thousand, including honor debts and moneylenders.”
“Awards in crim. con. cases have been getting higher. There was that case a couple of weeks ago.”
“That chap Evans was ordered to pay damages of twenty thousand to Lord Oliver over his affair with Lady Oliver.”
“Evans cannot afford that but I can. And I have a reputation. And I’m a wealthy upstart who doesn’t stay where he belongs, and the jury could take offense at that.”
The flowers on his desk eyed him accusingly. Only yesterday, Cassandra had rearranged them with those competent hands, while she spoke of pleasure and joy.
“This is disgusting,” he said. “Disgusting, despicable, and distasteful.”
“The court hearing is in two weeks.”
“That soon.” He paced again, thinking, calculating, disbelieving. “How does this idiot think he’s going to get away with it? A trial means presenting evidence, and there will be no evidence because it never bloody well happened.”
A sour taste filled his mouth. He had plenty of competitors and rivals. Enemies, even. They came with success. There was always something going wrong, someone trying to best him; that was part of what thrilled him and filled his days.
But this was so…personal.
Das did not say a word.
“I never touched the woman, Das.”
Not that he cared what Das thought.
“I didn’t,” he said.
And Das nodded, once.
Joshua glanced at the clock. “Cassandra’s at some ball and won’t be home for hours. I’ll tell her in the morning. You may as well head home. I’ll deal with this tomorrow.”
He followed Das into the entrance hall, watched him pull on his gloves and coat, seeing only Cassandra as she had been the night before, caring that he was upset, caring that he upset her. Waiting, lips parted, for his kiss.
“You don’t think she might hear about it tonight, do you?” he said.
“Depends how discreet Bolderwood means to be.”
“He’s telling lies about his wife, he’d want to be discreet.” Cassandra had been engaged to Bolderwood once. Oh, hell. What a mess. He should have kissed her when he had the chance. “But anyway, she already told me she doesn’t care.”
Das paused, turni
ng his hat in his hands. He started to speak but stopped as a footman opened the front door.
The evening air rolled in, carrying the sound of a carriage approaching. Pulling up. The door opening. Closing. Voices. Footsteps.
“Well,” Das said. “Now is your chance to find out.”
A moment later, Cassandra stepped through the doorway, heartwarming in a blue evening gown and velvet cloak. But his pleasure faded when she stopped short at the sight of him.
Their eyes met, held. Joshua felt as naked as he had the night before. Then her focus shifted so that she looked right through him and she swept into the hall.
“Good evening, Mr. Das.” This with a pleasant nod and smile. “And Mr. DeWitt.” This with a frigid tone and averted gaze.
“So you’ve heard then.”
“I do not care,” she said. Without looking at him, she reached for the clasp of her cloak at her throat. “Do you hear me, Mr. DeWitt? I do not care. Not a whit. Not a jot. Not one iota.”
Her usually competent fingers were fumbling with the clasp. The cloak slipped back off her shoulders, revealing her smooth upper arms, the swell of her breasts.
“Let me do that,” he said.
She flipped up both palms toward him, as if to ward off evil. He stayed away. She peeled off her gloves, gathered them in one hand. Perhaps she meant to slap him across the face with them. One did that in matters of honor. She would call him out. They would meet the next morning at dawn, walk their twenty paces, and she would shoot him.
Except, of course, that she did not care.
She slapped the gloves onto the table and attacked the clasp again viciously, with the fingers that had caressed his hand the night before.
“I care about my sisters and my mother. My friends, my house, my pigs, my roses, my cat.” The clasp gave way. The cloak slipped from her shoulders and he reached for it, but she whirled it away from him, into the hands of the footman, who grabbed it and ran. “I do not care about you, or your activities.”
“If I might explain.”
She was already gliding toward the stairs and away from him. Her evening gown swirled around her legs, the legs he had never seen and never would. Her hair was in some complicated arrangement and tendrils escaped down the back of her neck. He would never see that hair loose; he had not realized until now how much he wanted to.
With one foot on the bottom step, she paused and looked back at him. The candle on the wall picked up the fire in her hair, at odds with her icy demeanor.
“I do not care if you bed every woman in England, France, and China.”
“Cassandra, I swear I never—”
“Good night, Mr. DeWitt. Mr. Das.”
She swept up the stairs and out of sight.
“You hear that, Das?” Joshua stared at the empty stairs, wondering that they weren’t covered in frost. “She does not care. Not a whit, or a jot, or one iota.”
“Ah…I’m going home now,” Das said.
Joshua was still staring at the stairs and hardly heard him leave.
Alone in her bedchamber, Cassandra turned and turned on the rug, her nightcap a twisted, rumpled mess in her hands. She had prepared for bed and sent away her maid, because she hadn’t known what else to do. But it was too early to sleep, and her hands shook too much to sew, and her brain was too addled to read.
If only she were at Sunne Park now. In these hours after dinner, they’d all be in the drawing room. She and Lucy and Emily might act out one of Emily’s plays, perhaps the one where Romeo and Ophelia eloped to the Forest of Arden. Or they would play games, like Musical Magic or Ribbons, and Lucy would insist upon the most dreadful forfeits. Or perhaps they would sing, try out the harmonies on a new song, and Mama would join in, and Mr. Twit would leap onto the pianoforte and stomp on the keys until he got a cuddle.
She didn’t care. She did not care.
The bed loomed in the corner of her eye. Joshua had lain there, and talked about his childhood. He’d laughed at her sleepwear and teased her mercilessly and cradled her face, and the whole time, he’d known that—
The fiend!
Cassandra flung aside the nightcap. She tore out of her room and down the stairs, and burst into his study.
The fiend sat by the fire, unusually still, so she made sure to slam the door. And what did he do but turn his head, raise his brows insolently, and lounge back in his chair.
A gentleman does not stay seated when a lady is standing, she could tell him, but why bother? A gentleman did not leave his coat and cravat lying around on the furniture. A gentleman did not curse in front of ladies. A gentleman did not bed the woman who had eloped with his wife’s former betrothed.
The rising of her blood threatened to unlock her tongue. No: She was not one for dramatics or theatrics, tantrums or tirades. Her sisters were the lively, passionate ones. Cassandra was calm, sensible, practical.
She would be calm and sensible tonight.
“You will explain,” she said, uttering each syllable with exaggerated clarity.
“You said you don’t care.”
“I would not care if you bedded half the women in the world, while the other half watched.” Her voice rose. She took a shaking breath. Calm. Sensible. “But why her? Why her?”
He stretched out his long legs in front of him and crossed his ankles, the fire reflected in the gloss of his boots. How dare he be so leisurely? How dare he lie with that woman?
Harry, my sweet…Your husband’s excesses…We must not speak of Mr. DeWitt…
“Why so bothered, madam?” he said. “Because of your precious reputation? Or because you’re still in love with Bolderwood?”
“Because she stole my life! I was going to have a real husband. Children. But she got that, and I got you!”
In a single movement, he stood. Loomed. Good: That would make it easier for her to kick him in the—the—the bollocks, and then he’d think twice before getting them out again.
“Has it occurred to you,” he started, but she could not listen.
She advanced on strangely trembling limbs, her tormented mind filled with images of him kissing Phyllis, pressing his beautiful lips to Phyllis’s poisonous mouth, and the rushing in her veins surged into her head and took control of her tongue.
“I had to stand there last night, and smile politely, while she made snide comments about how I only married you for your money—”
“She what?”
“And how she had true love with Harry—”
“So it’s Harry, is it?”
“—And I’m saying that I’m perfectly content and the whole time she was laughing at me, because not only had she married my betrothed, she’d also gone to bed with my husband!”
“They’re lying. I never touched her.”
He stepped toward her but she circled around, out of his reach, behind the shield of his armchair. She gripped its ornate cresting rail in both hands. The words kept pouring out of her, and all she could do was hold on.
“Thought it was funny, did you? Poor little jilted bride, little charity case. Let’s do her a favor and marry her because God knows no one else will. But why not have a joke at her expense? You do love to tease.”
“I did not do this.”
“Or maybe you thought to leave a little cuckoo in their nest? What a jolly good laugh for the future: Let’s see my wife’s former betrothed raise my son!”
“Curse you!”
He sprang for her but she leaped backward, her fingers still hooked over the chair. It tumbled backward after her as she stumbled into the wall, and narrowly avoided crushing her stockinged feet as it thudded onto the rug.
“Get away from me! Don’t touch me! I hate you!”
He froze, almost comical with arms still outstretched, and she thought she saw pain slice through his eyes. Then he pivoted away, strode across the room, and down one length and back again, like a caged animal. Cassandra pressed her shoulder blades into the wall, struggling for air, shivering at a trace of cold sw
eat down her back.
I hate you, she’d said. She never said things like that. Not her. She was always calm and sensible; her family needed her to be like that.
“I’m turning into Lucy,” she muttered. “That’s what you’ve done to me. You turned me into Lucy.”
Across the room, he was watching her warily. Her skin prickled with unfamiliar shame.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“Don’t apologize.” He moved to the brandy decanter, poured out a measure with a loud clinking of glass. “You were upset, you let it out, and no one but the chair got hurt.”
Poor chair. It did look pathetic on its solid back, its legs sticking helplessly in the air.
“Take a seat. I’ll get it.” He tossed back his brandy with a single swallow and started pouring some more.
Numbly, she perched on the small settee across from the upturned chair, the crackling fire heating her legs. She watched him carry two full snifters over to the small table. Then, with a single easy movement, he set the heavy chair back on its feet, threw himself into it, and jerked his chin at the brandy between them.
“Drink,” he said.
“I thought you don’t drink.”
“I don’t, usually. It interferes with my thinking.”
“Other men don’t seem to mind.”
“Other men don’t think that well to begin with. Drink it. It’s meant to be good for shock or insanity or whatever the blazes is going on with you.”
She lifted one glass, weighed it in her hand. “Do you think I have no right to be angry?”
“Be as angry as you bloody well like. But I’ve done nothing wrong this time.”
She sniffed the brandy. The fumes tickled her nose. She remembered Lucy, how lively she was after drinking, how she had cut her foot on the glass but felt no pain.
“Better an aching head than an aching heart,” she muttered.
“Cheers.”
The first sip made her recoil, but she tried again. It was different from wine, the way it warmed her insides. Maybe it would warm her hands too. His hand when she held it had been so much warmer than hers. She wondered why that was. She sipped again.