Lady Howard appeared even more faint. “Merrick? Merrick has offered for you? But you are to marry Rupert anyway?”
“Of course not. Why would I marry Rupert? He has clammy hands.” Anxiety took a deeper hold, and Cassandra hurriedly asked, “Wyatt has offered, hasn’t he? He said he would. He’s a gentleman. He must.”
“It is your marriage to Rupert that Duncan has just shown me in the papers, Cassie. Surely you knew? Even Duncan would not marry you off without telling you the bridegroom’s name.”
Her mother seemed to be seeking some reassurance Cassandra could not give her. She stared at the dowager marchioness with incomprehension. Duncan would not. He could not. Surely Merrick...?
Without another word, Cassandra rose from the bed and woodenly stalked toward the door. She would take a red-hot poker to Duncan’s head. She would find a butcher knife and run it through his invisible heart.
She caught him on the way out for the evening. The marquess’s valet glanced up in surprise and stepped away from the final straightening of Duncan’s immaculate cravat. The valet discreetly retired from the battleground.
Duncan gathered up his gold-knobbed walking stick and beaver hat. “Threw you out, did they?” He began to button his last glove.
“Did Merrick offer for me? Did he, Duncan? Don’t lie. I know he did. He’s a gentleman, a fact you’ll never understand. I know he offered.”
Duncan lifted one dark eyebrow. “Haven’t you outgrown these childish tantrums yet? Yes, he offered, but he didn’t offer enough. Rupert is agreeable despite the scandal. He was on his way to obtain a special license the last I saw of him. He thought an extensive wedding trip might be called for to let the scandal die down. Very considerate of him, I thought.”
Cassandra picked up the elaborate snuffbox on the table and launched it at her brother’s dispassionately handsome face. “No! A thousand times no! Did you hear me, Duncan? No! I’ll not marry that smug bastard! I’ll run away with Merrick before I’ll let that toad near me. You can’t make me, Duncan!”
A hairbrush and a deck of cards followed the snuffbox. The brush sent Duncan’s hat flying, and the cards slithered and slid about his feet as he stalked her. She heaved a century-old carved night table in his path and grabbed wildly for a weapon, any weapon at all.
She burned her hands on a lighted oil lamp, but she lifted its crystal shade and flung it wildly. It smashed into shards on the floor after bouncing harmlessly off Duncan’s broad chest. The crash had to have been heard by the entire household, but no one entered to intervene. No one ever had.
“You’re wasting your energy and mine, Cass. You know very well I can make you. Now, stop shattering the furniture before you give Mother a spasm.”
Cassandra went deadly still. Her mother was all she had left. She lived in dread of the terrible attacks that left the invalid blue and gasping for air. She had promised time and again to curb her temper, but she was justified in her fury this time.
“Touch one hair on my head, Duncan, and I will scream the house down. Aunt Matilda is still here. You’ll never inherit a cent from her if she knows you beat me.”
“I’m not likely to inherit more than loathing from the stiff-necked old biddy in any case. I haven’t time to beat you, Cass. I’m meeting Rupert so I can begin collecting your settlement. I’ll leave you to him. I daresay he’ll know how to settle your childish tantrums.”
He caught Cassandra’s wrist in his gloved grip as she reached for his box of pistols. “Merrick isn’t man enough to beat you and bed you until you’re biddable. Rupert is. I’d suggest you learn to curb your temper in this next week, Cass. I’ll not come to your rescue if your new husband feels called upon to make you mind. My sympathies are entirely with him.”
Duncan didn’t attempt to hide the threat in his voice. He never had. Her father had beat her on more than one occasion, but he’d never allowed Duncan to touch her. But once the marquess was dead, Duncan had no barrier to his behavior.
“I won’t, Duncan,” she whispered as the pain of his grip twisted her arm backward. “You can’t make me marry him. Let me marry Merrick. Then you will be rid of me.”
“I would have, if he’d offered enough. It would have served you right to marry such a milk-livered man. But he’s too clutch-fisted to waste his coins on the likes of you, Cassie. Go order up your bride clothes, little sister. Saturday is your wedding day.”
Cassandra blanched. Less than a week. She had to find Merrick and make him elope with her.
As if reading her thoughts, Duncan smiled and released her hand. “Don’t even think it, Cass. I need only tell Merrick who your real father is, and he’ll cut you cold. You wouldn’t want our dirty linen aired in public, would you, now? Or should I say, our mother’s dirty linen?”
He donned his hat, leaving Cassandra staring white-faced and cold at the portrait of the late marquess over Duncan’s mantel: the devilish black-haired marquess who had given his name to a changeling red-haired child like Cassandra.
She shivered and slid into a hunched ball at the bottom of the closed door. No one could save her but herself, as usual.
Chapter 7
Merrick lifted the beautiful hand-blown crystal goblet to the fire’s light and admired the flash of gold and diamonds created by the contents. The heady liquor left burning trails along his palate, and he savored the fire.
He had almost possessed just such a fire of his own. He could still taste the passionate liquor of Cassandra’s mouth, still feel the fire of red-gold silk against his palms. One brief moment to last a lifetime.
Sighing, he took another deep draft of the expensive brandy. He was well on his way to being solidly in his cups, but a man had a right to an occasional lapse from sobriety. The wedding night of his intended bride was one of them.
“Never saw a lovelier bride, Wyatt. Never did, old boy. Wasn’t she splendid?” Bertie asked. “All that shimmery gauze, and hair like fire. Rupert don’t deserve her. Not our Cass. She’s a wild one, but young. What happened, Wyatt? How did she get away?”
Wyatt wished Bertie to hell, but then he would be drinking alone, and he’d sworn he would never drink alone. He lifted the glass for another sip, but it was empty. Staring at the goblet for a moment, Wyatt shook his head to clear the fog.
“She wasn’t ours, Bertie. Never was. She’s a Howard. Was a Howard. Not country folk like us. They’re off to Paris on their wedding trip, I hear. Would you have thought to take her to Paris? I never would. They were just fighting battles over there a few months ago. We’re getting old and dull, my friend. We need to settle down and set up nurseries, not chase the wind. She was a vision, you say?”
“Aye, a vision. Floated down the aisle. Funny thing, that,” Bertie mused, as if just discovering it. “She didn’t take Eddings’ arm, just walked at his side, proud as any princess. Rupert caught a rare one there. Scarcely fair, practically stealing her from the nursery. What was that talk about you and her at Hampton Court?”
Merrick ignored these wanderings, chasing after thoughts of his own. “You think you know women, and then you find you don’t know them at all. Take Catherine, f’rinstance. Known her all our lives. Like a sister. Not hard to look at, just a country girl more our style, practically on the shelf, if the truth be told.” Merrick poured another drink as he repeated Cassandra’s outrageous remark. “Think she’d be happy to be wedded, set up a nursery, have an establishment of her own. But more I think of it, Cass was right. She was like a cat ready to pounce. Once she had me in the bag, whoosh, off she’d go, haring into town.”
Bertie gave an inelegant belch and reached for the decanter. “Mixing the old metaphors, old boy. Cat can’t hare.”
“Cat can’t wed,” Merrick answered inanely.
“Yes, she can, too. She’d have you back in a trice if you’d like. Go ask her, see if she won’t.” Bertie sipped contentedly at the expensive French liquor.
“And Cass, there’s another one.” Merrick went on with his train of
thought as if his friend hadn’t spoken. “To see her in that gambling hell, you’d think her up to all the rigs. Then you look at her trailing around the company like a stray cat, and you know she just ain’t been brought up right, damn her unholy father to hell.”
“I don’t know nothing of the sort. You’re the one that said that,” Bertie reminded him callously.
“And then it turns out she’s just looking for a meal ticket, and the richer man won. I just can’t fathom that.” Merrick shook his head again in confusion, but the fog was thicker. He took another drink before continuing. “I thought to myself, now here’s a maiden in distress. Why else would she take to the likes of me? And then I see that announcement and think, old Duncan’s up to his tricks again, but I’ll rescue the lady. But she doesn’t want to be rescued. Can you figure that? She sits there, just as cool and calm as you please, smiling like she’s just discovered the sun, and saying it was all a misunderstanding, thank you very much.”
Wyatt ran a hand through his hair, still not grasping the scene. “Misunderstanding, by Jove! She locks herself in the room with me, causes the scandal of the decade, and it’s all a misunderstanding! Now, I ask you, Bertie, is that anything your sister would have done at ten-and-eight? It don’t make good sense.”
“Better off without her, old boy. She’d run you in circles. Rupert’s the right one for the likes of that. Shame, though. Sure was a fetching little thing.”
“Mother was right about one thing,” Merrick said gloomily, stretching his long legs out toward the fire. “Never marry a pretty woman. They have no heart or soul and think only of themselves.”
“Cat ain’t pretty and she’s got the heart of a shrew. What say we round up a few others and make a night of it? Wine, women, and song, that’s what we need.”
Wine, women, and song. Merrick stared at the fire while the words danced in his head. For one instant he had possessed all three in one lovely package.
With a sudden twist of his wrist, he flung the lovely shimmering goblet and its fiery contents into the flames.
~*~
In a far different corner of the city, a cadaverously tall man glanced gloomily around the rag-patched walls of a room housing a frail woman of nearly half his size and a small boy who hid behind his mother’s skirts. The boy stared at the newcomer with fear and curiosity. Into this tiny space between four walls was squeezed a pallet for sleeping, a broken-legged table, and a single chair of dubious integrity. The man remained standing rather than take a seat as urged.
“You can’t let him do it!” Despite her frail stature, the woman’s plea was vehement. “It’s unholy, that’s what it is! You have to stop him.”
The man shrugged with an even more gloomy expression. “Not likely. Too late for that. She’s bound to be just another of them what deserves a comeuppance. It’s not her we’re to worry about. It’s a nasty cough you have, Lucinda. It’s you we’ve got to take care of. Use those coins I brought to get you and the boy out of here, somewhere in the country where it’s healthy. I’ll take care of the dastard when the time comes. We’ll just have to be patient, that’s all.”
“You didn’t used to be like this,” the woman cried. “You’ve grown hard, Jake. What if it were me he wedded today? Would you do nothing?”
Despair briefly filled the tall man’s eyes as he gazed upon his once lovely sister in rags. But condemnation replaced despair. “I’d kill him, but it’s not worth my neck to do the same for his noble bride. I’ll take care of you, Lucy. Just be patient.”
~*~
“I heard a story today I didn’t like at all.” Drunkenly, the Marquess of Eddings pinned his new brother-in-law between wall and mantel as the noisy wedding reception swirled around them. Being the larger of the two, Duncan had no difficulty in keeping his audience captive.
Casually straightening his rumpled lace and examining his cuff as if Duncan’s proximity were a mere nuisance, Rupert inquired, “Oh? Then I trust you won’t repeat it.”
“No, but before you go up to my sister, you’d damned well better deny it.”
Duncan’s tone was menacing as he repeated the sordid tale he’d heard. Rupert kept an anxious gaze to their surroundings to be certain no one else listened. Who had repeated this story to the marquess, and why? There wasn’t a soul in this room who knew the truth. Somewhere, there was a traitor.
When the sodden marquess hiccuped to an end, Rupert summoned a chilling smile and signaled to a servant for another glass of champagne. “Don’t be ridiculous, Eddings. Would I have settled that kind of sum on you if that were the truth? Have a drink and wish me happy. Your sister will not regret your choice of husbands, you’ll see.”
When the marquess wandered off with his drink, Rupert clenched his fist until the stem of his goblet cracked. Flinging the shattered crystal at the wall in much the same manner as another man in another house not so far away, he signaled a servant waiting near at hand.
In furious whispers he sent the man scampering into the night.
Caught up in her own problems, Cassandra listened to the drunken revelry in the rooms below her new bedchamber. She recognized the last, dying chatter from experience. The male laughter from her father’s all-night card parties and, later, Duncan’s, had always ended just so: riotous roars, breaking glass, a few loud arguments, and then the drunken farewells. Rupert would be upstairs soon. Her husband.
Nervously she turned and contemplated the expensive full-length mirror between the dresser and the wardrobe. The gilded frame glittered garishly in the light of the crystal chandelier. She had never seen a mirror so large, nor a chandelier in a bedroom. She didn’t know if she ought to call a footman to douse the candles or leave it as it was. She preferred the light.
The rest of her life depended on her performance tonight. She must think of herself as invincible.
She tugged the spun gold of her wedding dress upward, but the bodice wasn’t cut to completely cover her breasts. Damn Duncan and his disreputable modistes.
Cassandra opened the wardrobe and found her shawl upon a shelf. The servants had already unpacked her meager belongings, but that didn’t make this strange room any more hers than before. The chamber was as cold and unpleasant as her husband. She would cast them both off shortly. She just wished the servants hadn’t unpacked her things and taken away her trunk.
It didn’t matter. She had done her duty. Duncan could no longer threaten to expose her mother’s shame now that Cass wore a husband’s name. A married woman had freedom.
No longer would she rely on anyone but herself. If her own brother could sell her into a life of bondage, then there wasn’t a man alive who could be trusted. For the first time she was beginning to understand what men saw when they looked at her, and she didn’t like it a bit. Even Merrick had treated her as if all she were was a body to ease his desires on.
Cassandra ground her teeth and tried not to think about her mother’s warnings of the physical side of marriage. She still didn’t know where kisses led, but her mother had made it clear it wasn’t necessarily pleasant and had to be endured, that a husband would expect it.
That was what Merrick had been trying to tell her. She would have to give him credit for being honest, but if she did so, then she would have to acknowledge that Rupert had done the same, only in a less polite manner. Rupert’s bruising kisses held none of the gentleness of Merrick’s. Perhaps that was all the difference she could expect by a choice of husband. One would be cruel, the other tender. But both would want the same thing, some unspeakable violation of her body.
She didn’t intend to linger long enough to learn more. Once she was free, she would buy a burlap gown that swathed her to the ears.
Her thoughts had distracted her sufficiently so she didn’t hear her husband’s footsteps until they were almost to the door. Cassandra swung around, her heart pounding wildly as the door opened.
Rupert was not a tall man, but he possessed the wiry grace of an athletic physique. Garbed in starched crava
t, black tailed coat, and silk knee breeches, he was the epitome of a fashionable gentleman. Had he the character to match his wealth and looks, he could have had any woman he wished.
Cassandra forced herself not to retreat. He did not appear to be pleased to see her still fully clothed, in a circle of chandelier light. As he loosened his cravat, his gaze flickered to the covers Lotta had turned down earlier.
“I did not take you for the missish type, my lady. My apologies for lingering overlong with our guests. Shall I send for a maid to help you undress, or will you allow me that pleasure?”
Unctuous. That was the only word she could think of to describe his voice. Trying to hide her shudder, she eased toward the dresser and away from her husband.
“There is something you must know, Rupert,” she said, keeping her chin high and allowing defiance to creep into her voice.
Amused, Rupert cast his cravat aside and began unfastening his coat. “Pray, inform me, wife.”
“I do not intend to be your wife,” she said curtly.
He shrugged out of his coat. “You should have thought of that before you said the vows in church. It’s too late to change your mind.”
Cassandra shivered despite herself. “I didn’t change my mind. I never wanted to marry you, but Duncan forced me to. I daresay he lied to you about my willingness. He never let me near enough to you to explain my feelings.”
He continued undressing as she spoke. The sight of his bare, lightly furred chest struck her with nausea, and she steadied herself against the dresser. “I never meant to cause anyone any trouble, but you really should have asked me first, Rupert. Then we wouldn’t have to have this discussion.”
Rupert eyed her dispassionately. “What discussion? We are married. You are nervous. I didn’t expect it of you, admittedly. I thought you a trifle more experienced, but I find I prefer it this way. Before the night is over, you will be my wife. In the morning, we shall be on our way to the pleasures of Paris. I will see you gowned in the latest fashions. We will frequent the halls of the highest society. With your name and rank and my wealth, we should even be welcome in the Bourbon palaces. What is there to discuss?”
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