PRAISE FOR
MADELINE HUNTER’S NOVELS
Dangerous in Diamonds
“This one is a sparkling gem!…With strong undercurrents that are both comic and dark, Dangerous in Diamonds will keep you dazzled with reading pleasure!”
—Fresh Fiction
“Hunter…masterfully weaves a sensual web…Fans will be delighted.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A terrific historical…a delightful series.”
—Midwest Book Review
Sinful in Satin
“Hunter deftly sifts intrigue and exquisite sensuality into the plot of the third book in her exceptionally entertaining quartet.”
—Booklist
Provocative in Pearls
“Hunter gifts readers with a fantastic story that reaches into the heart of relationships and allows her to deliver a deep-sigh read.”
—RT Book Reviews (Top Pick)
Ravishing in Red
“Richly spiced with wicked wit and masterfully threaded with danger and desire, the superbly sexy first book in Hunter’s new Regency historical quartet is irresistible and wonderfully entertaining.”
—Booklist (starred review)
Jove titles by Madeline Hunter
RAVISHING IN RED
PROVOCATIVE IN PEARLS
SINFUL IN SATIN
DANGEROUS IN DIAMONDS
THE SURRENDER OF MISS FAIRBOURNE
THE CONQUEST OF LADY CASSANDRA
Specials
“AN INTERRUPTED TAPESTRY”
FROM TAPESTRY
The Conquest
of Lady Cassandra
MADELINE HUNTER
JOVE BOOKS, NEW YORK
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have control over and does not have any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
THE CONQUEST OF LADY CASSANDRA
A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Jove mass-market edition / March 2013
Copyright © 2013 by Madeline Hunter.
Excerpt from The Surrender of Miss Fairbourne copyright © 2012 by Madeline Hunter.
Cover photography by Claudio Marinesco.
Text design by Laura K. Corless.
All rights reserved.
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375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
ISBN: 978-1-101-61830-1
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ALWAYS LEARNING PEARSON
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Special excerpt from The Surrender of Miss Fairbourne
Chapter 1
AUGUST 1798
“With each passing minute, I am more relieved that it will be a small wedding,” Emma admitted. She gazed into her looking glass while her maid fitted a headpiece onto her golden-brown crown.
“I am wishing with each passing minute that it were larger,” Cassandra said. She gestured for the maid to move aside and took over with the headdress. Covered in white silk and decorated with tiny pearls and a discreet white feather, the confection looked stylish but subdued, and appropriate for a bride who was a mature woman and not some girl fresh from her first Season.
Emma’s age was one reason for the small wedding. The others were the location in the country, the dispersal of good society throughout the realm in August, and perhaps a desire on Emma’s part not to be the center of an assembly.
“At a large wedding, one can avoid people whom one wants to avoid without being obvious,” Cassandra continued while she worked two hairpins into place. “You, as the bride, can’t, of course. But a guest can.”
Emma looked at her in the reflection. “Do you anticipate being cut by some of them? Is that why you did not come down from town until yesterday?”
“Actually, I was thinking there may be some guests that I might want to avoid,” Cassandra said, with a laugh. “I delayed because my brother insisted on visiting. You are a good friend to concern yourself with my reception by society, but you worry for naught. Southwaite’s relatives and friends would never insult him and you that way.”
She wished she could share with Emma the real reason she had delayed leaving London. Emma possessed great sense, and could advise her on how to handle the threats her brother Gerald, the Earl of Barrowmore, had made about Aunt Sophie. A year ago, Emma might have found a way to loan her the money, which had suddenly become so critical if she were to thwart Gerald’s nefarious plans.
But it would be selfish to darken a friend’s wedding day with tales of woe. Emma was about to become the new Countess of Southwaite, and her freedom to help a friend was circumscribed by larger duties. Also by a husband who did not much like that friend.
Emma turned in the chair. Her expression suggested she guessed at Cassandra’s inner turmoil. She pulled Cassandra into an embrace and rested her head against Cassandra’s body.
“Thank you for coming, even if it was later than planned. Had you not, I would have prepared all alone today, with only a maid, and had no one to laugh with me to keep my nerves calm.�
��
Cassandra stroked her hand down Emma’s head and along the curls that fell over her shoulder. At twenty-five, Emma was older by two years, but when it came to worldly things, Cassandra had often thought of Emma as a younger sister. She savored their embrace, especially because if she could find the means to take Aunt Sophie out of Gerald’s reach, there would not be many more.
“You are my best friend, Emma, and a most exceptional friend you are too.” Among Emma’s remarkable qualities had been the ability to disapprove without scolding, and to accept a friend’s choices without demanding explanations. “Nothing could have kept me away.” She reached for her reticule where it rested on a chair. “Now, a bit of paint on your cheeks and lips.”
“You know I do not paint.”
“Just a touch, Emma. Only this once, so you do not look like a terrified ghost.”
Emma made a face at herself in the looking glass. “I am a bit pale, aren’t I? Do I really appear a little terrified too?”
“More than a little. There is no accounting for it either. It is not as if a great mystery waits for you when you go to your chamber afterward. Has he been a gentleman this last week, and stayed away so that he did not leave your bed the morning of the ceremony?”
Emma blushed. “How did you guess? He behaved most properly.”
“How annoying that must have been.”
Emma’s face turned bright red. They caught each other’s eyes and laughed.
“He probably wants to make you eager for the official first time,” Cassandra teased.
“I think the presence of his aunts and sister restrained him. He became a paragon of virtue the day they arrived.”
“That is because his aunts are ruthless gossips. They probably assume that only your being with child would explain this wedding at all. I would not be shocked to learn they took turns keeping watch at night to see if they could catch him sneaking in your door.”
“Hortense probably brought a spyglass just for that purpose.” Emma giggled. “In truth, though, more likely Darius did not want to scandalize Lydia.”
Cassandra dabbed some paint and rubbed Emma’s cheeks until it faded to a light blush. The Earl of Southwaite, whom Emma would marry within the hour, treated his sister Lydia like a schoolgirl, even though she was twenty-two. In order to preserve her innocence, he had forbidden her to be friends with Cassandra, which was one of several reasons why Cassandra did not overly favor him.
Considering Southwaite’s prejudice against her, she had not expected an invitation to this wedding. Emma had obviously prevailed. Despite his faults, he did love Emma to the point of intoxication.
It remained to be seen if, a few months hence, the husband still indulged his wife should Cassandra remain in England. She did not expect either of those things to come to pass. As a result, these preparations with Emma possessed a poignant quality.
“All done.” She moved so Emma could see the looking glass again.
Although not a great beauty, Emma’s eyes held beguiling sparks, and her attention compelled one with its directness. She now focused deeply on her own reflection.
“It is time, and I am as ready as I will ever be. Will you walk down with me, Cassandra? If I falter when I see the guests, you must pinch me and push me forward.”
“The man you love is waiting for you there, dear friend. He is all you will care about when the doors open.” She fell into step with Emma anyway, so that they would face the waiting world together at least one more time.
A man had only to look at Lady Cassandra Vernham to begin imagining scandalous things. That rumors claimed she at least dabbled in the art of pleasure did nothing to discourage such thoughts when they invaded.
She stood near tall windows upon which rain formed arabesque rivulets. She had just disengaged from one conversation, and now examined the guests, planning her next social sortie.
Her dark curls in their fashionable, reckless abandon appeared almost black in the overcast light. Her large blue eyes implied an innocence that the full redness of her lips contradicted. The creamy, frothy dress flattered her body too well, emphasizing its feminine lushness.
Not for the first time in his life, Yates Elliston, Viscount Ambury and heir to the Earl of Highburton, thought that Cassandra Vernham looked good enough to eat. The room’s colors and sounds blurred as his imagination feasted. His mouth kissed and tasted shapely, snowy legs, and moved up her body while his hands raised the creamy dress to reveal—
“Damn bold of her to come.”
The pleasant fantasy, which had reached the curve of an extremely sensual thigh, vanished. Yates turned to see his friend Viscount Kendale glaring in Cassandra’s direction.
“The bride invited her. They are very close friends,” Yates said. The noise in the drawing room reasserted itself, rising around him like an orchestra tuning its instruments.
“She has to know that Southwaite dislikes her.”
“He permitted her invitation in order to indulge Emma,” Yates said. “If he does not mind her presence, why should you?”
“I am not blinded by love the way he is, that is why. I saw the way you were looking at her just now, for example. With all the women available to you, and damned eager to accommodate you from what I can tell, there is no need to set your sights on that one.”
Kendale alluded to the fact that six years ago Cassandra had refused to marry Baron Lakewood, one of their friends, after he had compromised her. Both of their reputations had paid a high price for her capriciousness. Worse, the prior spring, Lakewood had died fighting a duel over a woman. Presumably that woman had been Cassandra, since he had never stopped loving her.
“I was merely considering some business that I need to conclude with her, and planning how to do so.” The delay in settling that business had been inexcusable, even if family duties made it explainable.
“The hell you were. I know that look. Unless—you are not contemplating seduction as an act of revenge, are you?”
Not at the moment, but the unworthy idea had entered his mind more than once over the years. It had been the ignoble attempt of a randy mind to find excuses to do what should not be done. Cassandra Vernham had never married. A gentleman should not seduce her innocence, even if the latest on dit said she no longer had any.
From the looks of him, Kendale could not decide whether to disapprove of the idea, which meant he appreciated the conundrum. Normally Kendale adhered to rigid notions of honor, but Cassandra’s suspicious independence put her outside any strict way of viewing those ideals.
“It is a different sort of business that I must conclude with her. Much less pleasurable.”
Across the drawing room, Cassandra strolled away from the windows. With the grace and self-possession befitting the daughter of an earl, she attached herself to a small knot of guests. Within two minutes, she was at its center. After her addition to the group, both the conversation and guests’ expressions changed from careful and wary to free and lively.
“Hell of a way for Southwaite to start his marriage. Now it will be almost impossible to force the break between his wife and that woman,” Kendale said.
Yates almost explained the obvious—that Southwaite was too much in love to refuse his new wife anything. He had married Miss Fairbourne, hadn’t he? Despite her common birth? Most of the guests did not approve of that any more than they did Cassandra Vernham.
“I suppose we must do our duty as charged.” Kendale raked his dark hair back with his fingers. “Hell of a thing.”
“She is holding her own without our help.”
“We promised the bride.”
“So be it. Fortunately, you will be at your post only until breakfast. I must take over then. We should line up in a quarter hour, I think.”
“What am I supposed to talk about? Should I ask her about the most recent gossip attached to her name?”
“Are you even aware of it? I had no idea you followed the scandal sheets, Kendale.”
“I read
nothing and heard nothing. Yet I still know what the gossip would say. As do you.”
Indeed, Yates did. “The rumors remain vague. The men remain nameless,” he said, thinking aloud, once more calculating his obligations as a gentleman.
He would not mind knowing how true those rumors had been. While not complete, her fall had been far enough to make her fair game for his imagination, and thus unacceptable as a friend for the new Lady Southwaite. Presumably Southwaite would deal with that problem in the following weeks.
Cassandra smiled and sparkled as she extricated herself from her current group and walked away, greeting all whom she passed.
Kendale forced his scowl to fade. “Here I go. Fifteen minutes, you said. You must take over if it is one second more.”
Cassandra prayed that the servants would call the party to breakfast. Now.
Until ten minutes ago, she had managed the forty guests in the drawing room very well. Then her situation had turned hellish. For reasons she could not fathom, Viscount Kendale, one of Southwaite’s best friends, had not only addressed her but had decided to stick to her side.
She walked this way and that, and he followed like a shadow. She tried to engage other guests in conversation, and his face hovered above her shoulder. Anyone generous enough to throw a question his way received a minimal response. To say that polite conversation was not one of Lord Kendale’s skills would be a kind way to describe his lack of social grace.
He had served in the army, so one expected better of him. Most officers were very amiable. Presumably, those who were not avoided society. Kendale’s unexpected inheritance of the title meant he could hide no longer. Someone must have advised that at parties he attach himself to a woman who could cover his artlessness.
It appeared that today he had chosen her.
She stopped trying to converse with others, in order to spare everyone. She and Kendale stood near the windows while a long silence stretched.
“Regrettable weather.” It was the third time he had commented on the rain. His handsome face remained a stoic blank, and his green eyes looked over the gathering.
The Conquest of Lady Cassandra Page 1
