The Conquest of Lady Cassandra

by Madeline Hunter

  “Are you feeling nostalgic?”

  “I did not say I had my first kiss behind them.”

  Unless Lakewood had lied, she had, however. For an instant, Yates saw her again at one of those balls, in a gown very different in style from what she wore today. It was as blue as her eyes, and shaped like an hourglass instead of the current narrow columns of fabric. Her hair had been dressed in tight ringlets, not today’s natural curls. Matrons gossiped that she painted those lips even back then.

  “Come with me,” he said. “We will revisit the scene of your first worldly triumphs.”

  “My first Season was hardly triumphant,” she objected. However, she joined him as he left the chamber. “You were the one scoring victories that spring. I daresay poor Amanda Stockton has never recovered from her minute in that corner.”

  “You know about that, do you?”

  “Everyone knew, Ambury. She swooned, for goodness’ sake.”

  “It was only one kiss.”

  “It ruined her for life. Her suitors seemed sadly ordinary after that.” She glanced over at him and laughed. “Stop that preening.”

  “I am not preening. I have been told I kiss better than most, but I am astonished to find myself accused of ruining Miss Stockton’s chance for happiness with another man.”

  “Better than most? Odd that I never heard that rumor, you conceited man.”

  The gallery ran the length of the house, flanking the southern ballroom on its northern side. Like the one at Elmswood Manor, it held some portraits of ancestors and family members, but these were the more recent ones.

  Nothing had changed here since that Season six years ago. Cassandra paced down the polished wooden floor, glancing this way and that, taking it all in. She paused at one of the portraits that caught her eye.

  “My grandfather, on my father’s side,” he offered, standing next to her.

  “He is handsome, but he appears a bit stern.”

  “That is a family trait.”

  “With all but you,” she teased, walking on. She looked over her shoulder and gave the portrait one last glance. “And yet—one wonders, Ambury, if you will not turn stern too in time. Staid as well, as is also the family trait. I think I see it in you already. I doubt you would kiss Miss Stockton behind the palms now.”

  Her observation nettled him. Perhaps she was right and he was turning a bit stern. She poked at an awareness, emphasized of late by duty and obligations, that the best years of youth had passed, along with its freedoms.

  They were near the spot where those palms had stood. It was not a moment to look at her, but he did, just as the light filtering into the gallery from open windows beyond the door found her. So did a breeze that flicked at her hair’s tendrils and at the ribbon ends that dangled down her dress.

  “You are correct on one count. I would not kiss a Miss Stockton now, but only because I am six years older, and have no interest in girls in their first Seasons.”

  “Then you had better hold on to the woman for whom you bought the earrings, Ambury, and be glad she lets you think she is dazzled. The more we women gain in years, the less likely we are to swoon, no matter how well you kiss.”

  The goad threw dry straw on a fire. “You really should not cast down gauntlets like that when you are all alone with a man.”

  That elicited peals of laughter. “Oh, no. Mercy, are you going to try and conquer me now, as you threatened? You despise me, Ambury. We both know that I am safe enough.”

  Her words should have stopped him, alluding to what they did. Instead, they had the effect of obliterating what little resolve he had mustered.

  “Not safe enough. Not really safe at all.” He swung her around and pulled her into his arms.

  She gazed up, startled. Then her thick lashes lowered and her red lips parted and, no doubt, a scold began forming.

  He silenced her with a kiss.

  The kiss could not be called staid. Cassandra vaguely noted that with the part of her mind that did not succumb to astonishment. A bit stern, perhaps, but not in a bad way. She had been kissed often enough to appreciate the nuances, and how his handling of her communicated both sweet seduction and command.

  She tried to grope her way out of the fog of sensation he created, but common sense kept slipping away as soon as she found it. The most delightful pleasures trickled through her body, urging her to let them do their worst. Warmth flushed her skin, then permeated to her core.

  His embrace truly undid her. Strong arms wrapped her, holding her close…a caress too bold, but scandalously welcomed, trailed down her back, firm enough that the heat of his hand made her dress fabric disappear…he lifted her enough that his mouth could reach her neck, then her décolletage…

  She should not. She knew it. This could never be right. Yet it had been too long since she had been enlivened with feminine excitement and she forgot for a while that the man inciting it could be up to no good. The pleasure refreshed her, awed her. She might indeed be behind the palms during her first Season, being kissed for the first time.

  She did not resist soon enough. She knew that even as she delayed. He took it for compliance, of course. Nips on her lips heralded further intimacy. Even the preliminaries to deeper passion caused a thrill to resonate through the center of her body, luring her to recklessness.

  She turned her head to stop the kisses. Her cheek felt the superfine wool of his coat, and her ear heard the low throb of his heart. They stood like that, his embrace still holding her, for ten seconds at most, during which she ignored the truth of the moment and allowed herself to savor the illusion of being cared for.

  She stepped back. His arms fell at the same time. She should turn and walk away. She should pretend it had not happened, or that he had importuned her, which he had in a way, at first at least. She should—

  “Why?” His gaze focused on her so intently that she dared not move. The family sternness could be seen in him clearly now.

  She sought the Cassandra the world knew, and tried to dredge up a clever response. Because I am wild, of course. Because I have been kissed so often that one more is a small thing.

  “Why did you refuse?” he pressed. “He had compromised you. It was unintentional, and quite innocent, but it still happened. Why did you refuse him when he sought to do the right thing?”

  The real meaning of his Why? startled her. No one had ever asked before. Not outright. Assumptions and conclusions were drawn instead, about both her and Lakewood. Even as the world expressed horror that she would not agree to marriage, it had also whispered and wondered about what happened to cause her to refuse. A man must have shown his true colors in ways most appalling for a young woman to risk ruin rather than accept social salvation as his wife.

  A little cloud of dishonor had darkened Lakewood’s path after that. His friends, Southwaite and Kendale, and even Ambury, blamed her. To them, her behavior must have seemed childish, spoiled, and cruel. It probably still did.

  “I did not want him.” It was the truth but not the whole truth. “It was indeed innocent enough, and did not warrant such an extreme measure as marriage.”

  “He was in love with you. His intentions were always to—”

  “I. Did. Not. Want. Him,” she enunciated slowly, angry now. No one seemed to care about this part of it. No one ever had. “As for his love and his intentions, there is much you do not know. Now that he is gone, no one knows except me.”

  He cocked his head, suddenly curious. Too curious. She cursed herself for allowing him to draw her into this.

  “I must take my leave.” She tried to sound brisk, but the effects of the kiss still lingered, and her voice came out with a tremor.

  She walked away from him and his questions and his damnable ability to turn her into a silly girl. “I will press my aunt to the extent that I can, to learn more about the earrings. I need your solicitor to release the money to me as soon as possible.”

  Chapter 7

  Yates’s thoughts would not remai
n on the documents spread in front of him, no matter how hard he tried to force the proper concentration. He found his mind dwelling instead on a stolen kiss in a shadowed gallery. Inevitably that led to consideration of the conversation that followed.

  That kiss had been an impulse, but one a long time coming. The question about Lakewood had been too.

  There is much you do not know. Undoubtedly. He had always assumed that what he did not know was due to Lakewood’s discretion. Now it seemed there may have been more to it than that.

  In the years that followed, he had stared down men who slurred speculations, when in their cups, about what had really happened when the Baron Lakewood had found himself alone with Lady Cassandra Vernham. He closed ranks with Southwaite and Kendale and, yes, even Penthurst, and had done what friends do when one of their own is the object of damning suppositions.

  The rumors had blown like an ill wind at first, and even now the breeze could be felt. He had forced her, it was said. He had succumbed to a rage when she refused his hand and lost control. It had been her own fault for being a flirt, but still…

  Had it happened that way?

  He stood up, disgusted even to be considering the possibility that Lakewood might have been dishonorable, when he was not there to defend himself. It was a hell of a thing if a few kisses could lure him to be disloyal so easily.

  All the same, his thoughts wandered again, back to the shadowed gallery, as if pulled there by a capricious spirit. He felt Cassandra pressed against him, as warm and soft and sensual as she appeared.

  The door opened and Prebles entered. He paused and peered at Yates from behind his spectacles. Then he walked over and looked at the documents spread on the desk.

  “Ah,” Prebles said with a nod. “I understand now why you appear annoyed, sir. The situation with that property is vexing, I agree.”

  This was news to Yates. What situation with which property? What had he missed?

  Prebles helped him out by lifting one of the deeds, then pointing to a map. “Did you visit it? Is it the dearth of evidence of rents that upsets you?”

  Yates recognized the deed as one for a swath of property amid the swamps of the southern coast. “I went north, not south. Are there a dearth of rents because the land is not worked?”

  “In part. It is not the best land, what with the sea so close and parts of it too wet for farming.”

  “But there is more?”

  “It seems that there is the chance, even the likelihood, that there may be another claim on it. See, look here at this earlier map. The land is clearly marked as Highburton’s. But on this newer one there is the notation that it may be contested.”

  Yates noted the maps, then inspected the deed. The date on the vellum, written in a flourish even more dramatic than Prebles’s own hand, marked its transfer to the Earl of Highburton in the year 1693.

  “If there is another deed, it would be peculiar if it predated this,” he said.

  “That is what I thought. I have never found evidence it was sold, so the note on the newer map is unexplained. Yet there it is.”

  Yates folded the deed and set it aside. “When next I speak with my father, I will mention it. Any rents collected would be minor, of course, and probably not worth spending the cost of time and money to go to court.”

  “No doubt, sir. No doubt.”

  “Do you want all of them? Every one?” Merriweather asked. Her chin held a stack of boxes steady as she carried them from the dressing room.

  “All of them.” Cassandra eased the stack out of her arms and placed them on her bed.

  After Merriweather made another trip, Cassandra sent her away, then sat down on the bed to examine the part of the legacy that Aunt Sophie had given her in advance of actually dying.

  First she opened the two largest wooden boxes. Inside lay little velvet sacks and a variety of trinket boxes. These were the boxes that had held the jewels that she sold at Fairbourne’s last spring. The sacks and boxes were empty now.

  That was not true with the other two containers. A rainbow of stones and a small fortune in settings greeted her inspections there. Not only jewelry rested in the trinket boxes, however. Little pieces of paper did as well.

  She plucked one of the tiny notes and unfolded it. “Not to be worn when the Count of Emilia is in England,” it said, in Aunt Sophie’s hand. She placed it back with the garnet ring it accompanied, then lifted an organza sack and tipped it into her palm.

  A fine golden filigree necklace, more valuable in its workmanship than its metal, poured down. So did another little note. “Best to wear this only when Sir Charles and Lady Lightbown are abroad.” Several others also named specific individuals. A number simply instructed, “Not to be sold unless the jewels are reset.”

  The notes implied the jewels had been gifts from lovers whose wives and family might object. They had tempered her excitement about receiving Sophie’s gifts. She had not cared for the notion of checking who was and was not in London, or likely to attend a party, before donning a piece of jewelry.

  What if she made a mistake? Would some man be horrified to see her walk in wearing his love gift? Would the man’s wife guess the jewels had been bestowed on a lover by her husband?

  It was good of Aunt Sophie to take such care with others’ happiness, but Cassandra’s reaction had been to never wear any of these baubles herself.

  She reached for the first box again. One by one, she opened all the empty boxes. A few of them had notes too. She read each one. No names were mentioned, and all of them appeared to warn against wearing in various Continental capitals rather than in England. Three, however, merely said “Can be pawned or sold if necessary, but not to be worn.” At the time she first read them, Cassandra had assumed that was Aunt Sophie’s way of giving a lesson in taste and fashion.

  She tried to remember which box or sack had held the diamond-and-sapphire earrings. Had it been one with a note? Perhaps one of the three that could be sold but not worn?

  Her memory failed her. Nor could she recall the details of that day when she had spread all the jewels on the carpet and Sophie had pointed to this one and that and allowed their sale. Cassandra had requested the exercise because of the history of this jewelry, or much of it. She had not wanted to make a mistake.

  Now she wondered if she had, and if Aunt Sophie had as well. Maybe the jewels had lured Aunt Sophie into her memories, and her attention had been distracted from the task at hand.

  She put all the jewels away and closed all the boxes. She wished she could just burn those notes and not wonder what they meant. Worse, she worried that perhaps they did not refer to lovers and gifts after all.

  She suspected that if Ambury knew about them, he would think they did not too.

  Looking at those boxes made her miserable, because her thoughts were turning in directions that were disloyal to the only family member who had remained a friend.

  Merriweather returned to the chamber, carrying a card. “You’ve a visitor.”

  She took the card. Lydia had called.

  She went below and greeted her. “Emma said you had come up to town. It is good to see you. Are you here to shop?”

  “That and other things. I have decided to become accomplished at more than riding and sketching, Cassandra. And you get to help!”

  Yates opened the door to his father’s apartment slowly. He stepped inside silently. That was how he always approached his father now, in careful movements and soft footfalls. There was no reason for it, yet everyone acted the same way.

  The earl sat in a chair by a closed window in the sitting room. The physicians feared summer fevers claiming his ailing body, and wanted him in the country. The earl had always preferred town, however, and now, with the news out of Ireland, he had found the perfect excuse to return.

  The prime minister had visited yesterday to discuss the matter. It had been a symbolic act to acknowledge the role of the Earls of Highburton down through the years. The current earl could no more ef
fect politics now than he could rise from that chair alone, but Pitt had pretended matters could not be resolved without his sage advice.

  His father’s eyes opened. “What have you there?” He nodded to the papers in Yates’s hand.

  Yates sat in the chair. “More of the same. Questions that Prebles could not answer.”

  Yates waited for him to ask for the questions, or to sleep.

  “What do you think of this Irish mess?” the earl queried instead.

  They had not spoken of politics since winter. It had been an unspoken pact. They would take care of the estate together but avoid the topics that had caused so much rancor between them.

  “I have not thought about it much at all.”

  Something like a laugh choked out. “The hell you haven’t. You have an opinion on most everything, so this would be no different.”

  He should tell the earl what the earl wanted to hear and claim to agree with his father’s own opinion. It would be a kindness, perhaps. A gift.

  “Don’t be feeding me mush like the physicians do. My stomach is bad, but my head is still fine.”

  “I think the mess is the result of one very foolish man thinking he will be a hero. It would be an error to punish an entire people for his crime.”

  The earl shook his head. “What I expected you to say.”

  “I am who I am.”

  “That’s the truth, although soon you will be Highburton, and then you are not only who you are. So you counsel restraint, do you? Pitt told me there are others saying that. Even Penthurst, who can be a hard man when it is warranted. You must be influencing him, and not to the good.”

  Yates did not influence the Duke of Penthurst at all these days, not that he thought he ever had. His father did not know about the rift that had formed between him and that friend. Other than a few formal conversations on strictly official matters, he had not spoken to Penthurst since last March.