When he saw Thomas approach and beg her for a dance, Wyatt’s eyes narrowed jealously, and he started for the door. To his surprise, Cassandra laughed and shook her head and linked her arm with the boy’s and led him to one of the village girls standing wistfully on the edges of the crowd. Wyatt felt so proud of her that he near burst with the pleasure, and his hand halted on the door latch.
He was weary from the reckless pace he’d made to get here as soon as the physician had released him for travel. He was covered with the filth of the road, and he knew he looked more ghost than human. It wouldn’t do to terrify them all by his appearance. Bertie had assured him they didn’t know he had been ill. Cassandra seemed content for the moment. Before he destroyed everyone’s joy, he would prepare himself.
Sending commands for a bath, Wyatt climbed the stairs to his chambers. He had made some decisions in these weeks. For one thing, he knew he wasn’t made for a life of deceit and trickery. Perhaps honesty had its boring moments, but it didn’t end up in duels and death. Cassandra would just have to learn to endure his propriety, and the first step toward that was to make an honest woman of her.
He expected a vociferous argument. She would rail and shout and throw things at him. He wasn’t in any condition to throw her over his shoulder and carry her to the nearest preacher with the special license crackling in his pocket. But he would prevail. He had to.
The invitation and her father’s permission rested in the same pocket with the license. The only document missing was Cassandra’s consent. She had never answered his letters. He hadn’t heard one word in reply to his passionate pleas. He knew he had hurt her. He knew the duel had probably been as fatal to Cass’s capricious emotions as it had been for Rupert, but he still couldn’t believe she would deny the child she carried a name. Now that the world knew her marriage to Rupert was null, it was even more imperative that she be legally bound to him, for the child’s sake.
Mulling over Cassandra’s odd behavior, Wyatt undressed and soaked in the bath. He knew little about women. He could not compare Cass’s behavior to many examples and try to determine why she hadn’t answered his letters. Her father had said she was so blue-deviled that he feared for her health, yet she had seemed right enough a few minutes ago.
Wyatt stepped out of the bath and dried himself off. He would rest for a while, until everyone had gone home. Then he would seek Cass out and demand explanations. He reached for his dressing gown.
Below, a footman whispered to a maid, who reported to the kitchen staff, who carried the tale outside with trays of meat pies and pitchers of lemonade. Within the half-hour the tale had reached Cassandra’s ears. Forgetting her surroundings, she dropped her glass, lifted her skirts, and ran for the nearest door.
Having just heard the word themselves, the newlyweds exchanged glances and grinned.
“I wager she boxes his ears roundly.” Jacob set his mug aside and slipped his arm around his new wife’s enticingly plump waist.
Lotta gave him a scornful look. “And I say they’ll be in their bed before we reach ours.”
Jacob leered. “I can find a way to prevent that.”
As he lifted her squealing into his arms and started for the beribboned carriage waiting for them, their guests laughed and waved and opened a path for them.
Chapter 31
“Wyatt, how could you? Why did you do it?”
The chamber door slammed open, rattling a rather ancient Chinese vase on the mantel. Wyatt jerked awake in the gloom of his chambers. He didn’t need a lamp to see the glowing incandescence of Cassandra as she flew into the room like an angry phantom or fairy. Gingerly he sat up.
“How could you set up such a treacherous scheme? He could have killed you! I’ll never forgive you. Never! You’re an odious, odious man! I thought I could trust you. I thought you would be reasonable and proper and I would never have to worry about such absurdities again. Must I begin worrying about carrying a fatherless child too? I hate you for doing this to me, Wyatt Mannering! How could you?”
She flew up and down the room like a vengeful wraith, her primrose ribbons bouncing and swirling against the darkness. Wyatt stared after her in bemusement, trying to make sense of her complaint. But for the first time in his life he truly listened, and what he heard and what she said seemed strangely at odds.
To his shock, as she ranted and raved, Wyatt realized that he was hearing what she didn’t say more clearly than what she shouted.
In growing wonderment he listened as she shouted, “You could have been killed!” and he heard, “You terrified me!”
“How could you leave me to do such a thing?” became “I needed you beside me in this.” Wyatt shook his head as the words “I hate you” thundered through the air again. Cass had never hated anyone in her life. His eyes widened.
A man might have said, “Sorry about the dust-up, old boy. We missed you.” He wouldn’t bury the language in a deluge of emotions and histrionics.
That’s where women had led him astray all these years. He wasn’t supposed to listen to the words, but the feelings behind them. Extremely odd, but the discovery delighted him.
Wyatt had to admit that saying “We missed you” or “I was worried” didn’t have quite the same emotional impact as this fiery explosion. With fascination, he listened as Cassandra berated him with growing tears in her voice. He wasn’t quite certain he was awake, after all. This was the stuff of dreams.
“I don’t mind when you go all stiff and proper. And I try not to intrude when you’re thinking and ignoring me. And I really do want to be just as you want. But when you do this...” Cassandra threw her arms up in a bewailing gesture, her voice choking on sobs.
“I thought he’d killed you! And it would have been all my fault, and I could never live with myself, and I don’t know how you could expect me to go on living like that. I’ll not do it, Wyatt! I won’t. Living with Duncan was horrible enough, but I knew I could live without him if he went too far. I’ll go to America with my father. I know you don’t care about my feelings. I’m just tired of feeling guilty. All my life—”
The shock was beginning to wear off. Merrick rose from the bed, and before she could launch another attack, he trapped her in his arms. It was a bit like capturing a whirlwind, particularly since he was still weak from his illness. She wiggled and squirmed and protested and ducked her head out of his reach, but he held firm, pulling her close and running his hands up and down her back until the tension began to flow out of her and she was sobbing against his shoulder.
“Hush, Cass. I’m alive and you’re here and there is no reason to feel guilty about anything. You’ll have to learn that what I do is my choice, not yours. I made a mistake. I may make many mistakes in the years to come, but they’ll be my mistakes, not yours. Your feeling guilty will not make me feel better. You may admit to as many errors as you wish, Cass, and I shall never blame you for them. You may be as beautiful as a goddess, but I certainly don’t expect you to behave as one. All I want from you is to say you will stay with me.”
Cassandra looked up with tears wetting her lashes, but Wyatt didn’t give her time for reply. He had been waiting for weeks to have her back in his arms again. Perhaps she hadn’t exactly come to him with the words he wanted to hear, but he didn’t need the words when he heard the emotions.
She was a chaotic mixture of grace and beauty and the fierceness of an elemental storm, but she needed him. He heard the melody of her desire behind the crashing fugues of her anger. Wyatt bent and silenced her protests with a kiss.
Such a kiss! Cassandra’s mouth clung to Wyatt’s as if parched and offered sweet water. She parted her lips eagerly to give him entrance, and her tongue twined with his in hungry desperation. She buried her fingers in the velvet folds of his robe and stood on her toes to press closer into his enveloping embrace. The masculine scent of his whiskered jaw filled her senses. She closed her eyes and threw her head back and melted in sweet ecstasy as his lips softened and caressed.
He lifted her and held her against him so he could kiss the aroused peaks of her breasts. She struggled to free herself from the confines of the gauzy material of her gown, but Wyatt tugged bodice and chemise down to her waist. She leaned back against the bed to give him full access to what he sought.
In the next instant, she shrieked with horror and yanked Wyatt’s robe from his shoulder to uncover the bandage wrapped across the broad swath of dark hairs on his chest.
“Wyatt! What is this? You’ve been hurt. They said it was naught but a scratch! Wyatt, stop that! You’ll hurt yourself. Oh, my word, I cannot...”
The words were smothered by Wyatt’s kiss, the fears crushed by his pressuring fingers. “Don’t distract me now, Cass,” he murmured against her cheek as his hands rode down over her hips and buttocks and filled with the fabric of her gown. “I’m going to make love to you first. Then you may weep over my crippled body.”
“Crippled, indeed,” she gasped as he brought her up against his hardness. Then his kiss found her mouth again, and her next words slipped into oblivion.
Wyatt cupped her hips in his palms and groaned as she obligingly rubbed against his maleness. “Let me love you, Cass,” he murmured into her hair, spreading his kisses downward until the fire of their breaths meshed.
He didn’t have to ask. Cassandra lifted her legs to twine around his narrow hips, and in the instant that it took to feel vulnerable, he plunged into her.
The thoroughness of his entry left Cassandra breathless. She had him now, deep inside her, and she would never let him go again. With triumph, she gave herself to the staid Earl of Merrick, and knew the gift to be returned threefold by the hungry man in her arms.
Later, they lay naked, wrapped in each other’s arms, a sheen of moisture glistening over their bodies as they touched and caressed and renewed the sensations that they had been so long denied. Cassandra explored the wide bandage on Wyatt’s chest, and studied his warm gaze in confusion.
“Why did everyone lie to me? I should have been there with you. But when I saw you swing at Jacob, I thought surely... I could not believe you had been seriously hurt.”
He brushed a kiss across her brow. “You had quite enough to deal with in Rupert’s death and Duncan’s cowardice. I’d not add to your burdens. Besides, it was not the wound that caused my trouble, but the incompetence of the physician who did his best to murder me. There was nothing you could have done but fret, and that would have made me feel worse.”
Cassandra kissed the bare expanse of skin above the bandage, exulting in the warmth and strength of him beneath her fingers. “I could have murdered the physician for you. I could have brought you flowers and sung to you. I don’t want you to lie to me, Wyatt. Please, I’ve lived with lies too long. If you have any feelings for me at all, you will always be truthful with me.”
“Any feelings at all?” Wyatt chuckled and lifted himself up on one elbow to run his fingers through her hair. “Do you have any idea of the fantasies a man carries in his mind? The dreams, the wishes, the desires that can make his every waking moment a delight or a torment? Can you even begin to imagine the fantasies I have created ever since you leaned over that stairway and kissed my cheek at Roxbury’s ball? Cassandra, my sweet, you are my dream come true, and I’ll lie, cheat, steal, and commit murder to hold on to you. I fear you have a very exalted notion of my character.”
“Me?” Cassandra stared at him in amazement. “You dream about me? Why ever would you? You could have any woman you want. Just because I have shamelessly pursued you...”
Wyatt’s laughter rolled up from his chest as he rolled her into his arms and snuggled her against his chest. “You are an awful innocent, my love. After what we just did, do you still have doubts about what I see in my fantasies? I used to think there was something wrong with me when I imagined taking a beautiful woman as I just did with you now. When I suggested to my first wife that we make love elsewhere than in the bed, in the dark, with our nightclothes on, she became hysterical and called me a perverted monster. Is it any wonder when you kissed me on the cheek in a public room, lured me into your bedroom and let me do as I willed in daylight, that I began dreaming all sorts of impossible dreams?”
Cassandra tweaked a hair on his chest. “You have led me astray, my lord. I thought what we did was perfectly proper, since you aided in it, and you are never improper. Now I find you only wished to make a lewd woman of me. What shall you do when I grow as big and round as Christa and you cannot come near me? Will you find another innocent maid to lead astray?”
The smile fled Wyatt’s lips as he lifted her chin so their eyes met. “Yes, I have led you astray, and I am not proud of the pain I have caused you, but believe me, Cass, when I tell you that it is not only what we do in these chambers that binds me to you. You are the dash of enchantment I need in my life. I’ll be quite content to do naught but hold you and watch the child grow, if you will let me.”
Cassandra choked on the words filling her throat as she stared down into Wyatt’s serious face. A lock of rumpled chestnut hair fell across his forehead. She traced a finger across the sharp angle of his cheek down into the hollow beside his lips, caressing the thin and wholly masculine curve of his lip.
“You will grow bored with me,” she whispered unhappily. “I am immensely ignorant. I will shame you before your friends. My impulsiveness will grow to irritate you. We cannot suit in any way but this.”
Wyatt glared up at her. “You did not even read my letters, did you? Why, Cass? I poured out my damned heart to you in those letters. I all but got down on my knees and begged. And you didn’t even read them. You have made my life a misery these last weeks, Cassandra Howard, and you seem determined to go on doing so. Why could you not at least read what I had to say? You can read, can’t you?”
Cassandra bit her bottom lip and slid back to the pillow beside him, where she didn’t have to meet his accusing gaze. She heard the harshness in his voice and knew she deserved it. Now was the time for all truths to be known, but she hated to think of what would happen then. Surely he would not cast her off, but could she live with the knowledge that he despised her?
Defiantly she replied, “Of course I can read.” Staring at the canopy overhead, she added in a less certain voice, “I just can’t read your writing, or almost any other’s.”
Wyatt frowned. “Let me understand you. You can read, but you cannot read writing. I know my penmanship is not of the best, and perhaps in haste I did not make myself clear, but surely you could pick out a word or two, enough to take my meaning.”
Cassandra kicked the sheet away and started to swing from the bed. “I’d rather hear the words,” she announced mutinously. “Why should I sit and decipher scribbles when you have a tongue in your head and have never used it?”
Wyatt jerked her back before she could escape. “Stop talking in circles, Cass. Either you could not read the words or you refused to read them. Which is it?”
When he would not let her go, Cassandra crossed her legs on the bed’s edge, folded her arms across her chest, and glared at him. Red-gold hair fell in wanton abundance across creamy skin, catching the lamplight and sparkling with every breath she took. Wyatt took a deep breath and resisted pulling her back to the bed and making wild love to her again. His gaze traveled downward to the barely detectable curve of her abdomen, strengthening his resolve.
Shaking his head at her mute defiance, he tried again. “If you will bring me the letters, I will read them to you. But first, tell me what you can read so I’ll know how to address myself to you in the future.”
She eyed him warily, caught the sheet, and pulled it up to her neck.
“My tutors said I was quite impossible and too willful to learn.” Defiance still tinged her voice.
“They were undoubtedly correct,” Wyatt agreed. “But you are intelligent, and you can learn. You said you learned to read.”
Cassandra’s lips set in a straight line. “Print. I can read books with pictures and those nice straight letters. One governess taught me how to read them from a slate. But too many words give me a headache.”
Wyatt sat up with the sheet covering his lap. He knew Cassandra had a sharp mind, sharper than most. Few could count cards as well as she, and her perception of other people’s thoughts and actions was precise and accurate. The arrangement she had made with her workers to recover the Eddings estate was nothing short of brilliant for one so young and totally inexperienced in the field. Willful she might be but not stupid.
Remembering a maiden aunt of his, Wyatt had a glimmer of understanding. “You can read large block letters but not spidery written words or the fine print in a book. Can you see the notes on a page of music?”
Cassandra studied him suspiciously. “Of course I can see them. But they’re just like reading cobwebs. I’m just too dumb to make anything of them, which is why I never learned to play. I’ve been trying to tell you, I’m totally unsuitable. I could not even help you keep the household accounts. All the squiggly writing on the invoices makes my head whirl with fatigue. My tutors gave up on me long ago. You cannot help where they have failed.”
Wyatt grinned in relief and reached over to capture a thick lock of her hair. “I will write you love letters in block print and hire a secretary to keep accounts. And if we cannot find magnifying glasses that will let you see the music clearly, I’ll have a printer make them large for you. You’re not dumb, little witch, you are only just half-blind.”
Dash of Enchantment Page 29
