by Georgie Lee
Cassandra hoped the girl enjoyed the moment for she felt sure she would suffer for her insolence later. Cassandra probably would, too, but she’d enjoyed this small victory over Mr Fitzwilliam. It would be one of many acts of defiance against her husband-to-be. He might be gaining a wife, but she would not be a compliant one. Once she was installed at Butler Plantation, she would do all she could to help Miss Fitzwilliam and herself. She’d use the advantage of being there to better search his private papers. Maybe then she could at last secure evidence against him. It would send him to the gallows and free her and Dinah, assuming she could locate what she needed. She swallowed hard, her spirits flagging. He might not keep incriminating papers at Butler Plantation and she’d have to endure him for years.
Mr Fitzwilliam led her to where the Bakers stood beside a half pillar supporting an elaborate candelabra with tapers dripping wax on the wooden floor. When they stopped, Miss Fitzwilliam drifted off into the crush. Cassandra wished she had the girl’s freedom to leave. Instead, she had to stay and dance for these people like a puppet.
‘Good evening, Mr and Mrs Baker.’ Mr Fitzwilliam bowed, then straightened. ‘Have you heard our wonderful news?’
‘Indeed we have. Congratulations to you both,’ Mrs Baker offered with more respect than she’d shown at the Governor’s Palace. Dressed in an older-style mantua of rich brown brocade stitched with ivory-coloured thread, she appeared as a medieval queen, while Miss Baker stood beside her, just as well dressed, but equally behind the fashion in her attempt to be a milkmaid.
‘Thank you,’ Cassandra flatly replied, and Mr Fitzwilliam stiffened beside her. He spoke with Mr Baker while Cassandra offered curt answers to Mrs Baker’s questions about their wedding plans. She no longer cared what the lady thought of her or her past. Social ostracism paled in comparison to the very real possibility of Mr Fitzwilliam becoming her lord and master.
When they were finished conversing, Mr Fitzwilliam drew her away, his fingers digging into her bare arm.
‘Stop appearing as if you’re at a funeral,’ he hissed, the echoes of Giles’s demands reverberating in every word.
She wrenched her arm free, but didn’t flee. Unlike Richard, she had nowhere else to go. The bars of this new cage pressed in on her until she almost couldn’t stand. She was about to plead illness and retreat to the ladies’ retiring room when two men entering the ballroom caught her notice. One wore a black tricorn, the other a Cavalier hat set rakishly over his jet-coloured hair. Their faces were covered by full Venetian face masks of fine quality. The mysterious men cut dashing figures in their similar suits of black brocade with glinting silver swords hanging from their hips. They were difficult not to notice and more than one young lady turned to take them in, wondering at their identities. The more slender of the two men she didn’t recognise, but the cut of the taller one’s shoulders and the confident way he stood, hands on his hips, surveying the room, reminded her of Richard.
He came back. No, it was impossible. He’d violated the pardon by returning to piracy and would be arrested the moment he entered Williamsburg, especially if he was bold enough to appear at the Governor’s Palace. Mr Fitzwilliam would see to it and there’d be no one to stop him. Richard couldn’t have found anything against Mr Fitzwilliam so soon and, without it, Lord Spotswood would side with the burgess. Even if Richard had found something, once he surrendered his evidence to Lord Spotswood he’d most likely leave again. There was nothing holding him here, especially not Cassandra.
‘What’s wrong?’ Mr Fitzwilliam demanded, following the line of her gaze to the door, but the men had moved on to blend in with the crowd and were no longer visible.
‘Nothing.’ She stepped up to one of the open windows overlooking the garden, unfolded her fan and began to wave it under her chin. Outside, tall torches burned along the gravel paths, illuminating the couples walking between the neatly clipped hedges, topiaries and square planting beds. ‘Except it’s too hot in here.’
‘Bear it. We need to make a good showing tonight,’ he ordered. ‘Come, we must speak with the Governor.’
‘Let her rest here a moment where it’s cooler, Vincent,’ Miss Fitzwilliam insisted, suddenly appearing at Cassandra’s other side. ‘She looks as if she’s about to faint from the heat.’
‘I am,’ Cassandra insisted, waving her fan faster, sure there was more to Miss Fitzwilliam’s intervention than mere manners, and she wanted to know what it was.
‘I’ll stay with her and we’ll join you in a moment when she’s recovered. After all, you don’t want anyone to accuse you of mistreating your poor bride-to-be, do you? They’ll think you’re just like Father.’ Miss Fitzwilliam raised her voice in defiance of her brother, drawing the attention of a number of people standing around them.
Mr Fitzwilliam frowned at her, but she smiled innocently at him. He studied the people watching the exchange. ‘Of course not. I wouldn’t want my love to be uncomfortable. I’ll be with the Governor. Join me as soon as you can.’
He flung back his short cape and stormed off. Cassandra didn’t watch him leave, but searched the guests for the men in the elaborate masks. It was difficult to see through the crowd, or to distinguish one white mask paired with a tricorn from another. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t Richard. He’d left and he was never coming back. Even if he did, he’d made it clear he didn’t want her.
Miss Fitzwilliam linked her arm in Cassandra’s and drew her nearer to the window. A weak breeze filtered in through the open sash, barely cooler than the air inside the crowded ballroom.
‘We haven’t had much of a chance to speak since your betrothal to my brother,’ Miss Fitzwilliam whispered, glancing around them to make sure no one was listening. The music continued, along with the dance and most people’s attention was there or on their own conversations. ‘You mustn’t marry Vincent. He’s a monster, capable of terrible things.’
‘He’ll ruin me if I don’t,’ Cassandra choked, her chances of overcoming him fading. ‘He’ll see to it I’m jailed and my daughter taken from me.’
‘How can he? What does he have against you? I know you wouldn’t marry him if it wasn’t something awful.’
‘I can’t tell you or it will ruin you along with me.’
Miss Fitzwilliam nodded and didn’t press for more. ‘Then you must ruin him first. You aren’t married yet. There’s still time.’ Miss Fitzwilliam reached into the front of her bodice, withdrew a folded paper and pressed it into Cassandra’s hand. ‘I believe this is what you were looking for when you were in his office the other day.’
Cassandra took the paper and opened it to reveal a letter to Mr Adams with detailed accounts of the merchandise to be traded with pirates from the Casa de Oro and the amount of silver he’d receive in return. A bead of perspiration slid down Cassandra’s back, and her heart beat so fast she was afraid she might faint. This was everything she’d been searching for in the office, exactly what Richard had scoured every ship he’d ever taken to find and, in the end, acquiring it had been as simple as this young woman handing it to her. Cassandra folded the paper back up and clutched it against her chest, afraid someone might see it or suspect the two of them were up to something. Mr Adams was here, but she had no idea where he was or if he’d placed spies around to watch her the way he’d watched the cabin and discovered that Richard had been there. ‘Why are you giving this to me? If I show it to anyone, it’ll ruin not only your brother but also you.’
‘I hope it sees him hanged. I hate him.’ Her eyes became as hard as cut sapphires behind her mask. ‘I was in love with a young man, but Vincent forbade the marriage. He was too afraid of losing control of my small inheritance from my mother to let me go. Peter and I ran away one night, but Mr Adams found us before we could wed and dragged me back here.’
‘And Peter?’ Cassandra was almost afraid to ask.
Miss Fitzwilliam rubbed at a scar on her wrist, her voice thi
ck with unshed tears. ‘Mr Adams turned him over to a press gang. Three months later I received a letter from a ship’s captain telling me Peter was dead.’
Cassandra took Miss Fitzwilliam’s hands and squeezed them tight. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Determination blotted out her sorrow. ‘I won’t let him do to you what my father did to my mother, or have him ruin your life like he’s ruined mine.’
‘What about you?’
‘I’ve made a few arrangements without my brother’s knowledge.’ She glanced at the opposite side of the room near the entrance to the dining room where refreshments were set out on silver trays. Mr Devlin stood there with his father, both of them unencumbered by masks. Young Mr Devlin studied Miss Fitzwilliam with amusement while his father enjoyed a hearty slice of cold ham. ‘Use the letter however you see fit. I don’t care.’
‘Thank you.’ Cassandra tucked the letter into the bodice of her dress.
‘Now, we must part. Mr Devlin isn’t the only one interested in our conversation.’ She nodded towards the pockmarked man leaning against the wall in the corner, arms crossed while he watched them from behind his thin mask. Like Mr Fitzwilliam, Mr Adams had done little to conceal his true identity.
Cassandra left Miss Fitzwilliam and wound her way through the crowd towards where Mr Fitzwilliam stood with Lord and Lady Spotswood. She gripped her fan tight to keep her hands from shaking. Tonight was the perfect opportunity to give Lord Spotswood the damning evidence and secure her freedom, but she wasn’t certain how she would manage it with Mr Fitzwilliam here. She would have to find some way to slip away from him again and speak to Lord Spotswood in private.
She came to a halt, a new fear overtaking her. She pressed her hand against her bodice, slipping her thumb inside to flick the edge of the letter. If Mr Fitzwilliam was convicted and all his property confiscated by the Crown, she’d lose Belle View. She lowered her hand to smooth it over the creased lace of her gown. She’d have to find the deed and destroy it before she could reveal the evidence, or she could hold the letter over his head to end the engagement. Either way, she would make use of what she’d been given and ensure Mr Fitzwilliam could never threaten her or Dinah again.
She slid a glance to where Mr Adams stood watching her like an irritated chaperon. The letter would see the nasty man jailed, too, assuming either he or Mr Fitzwilliam didn’t silence her first and leave Dinah an orphan. Forcing herself forward through the crowd, she attempted to appear calm. She’d find a way to use the letter. She had to.
Cassandra stopped to allow a group of knights and ladies to pass when someone bumped into her from behind and knocked her off balance. Two hands clasped her around the waist to steady her, their firmness making her drop her fan to swing by its ribbon on her wrist. She was about to turn around and chastise whoever it was who’d had the audacity to touch her so intimately when a rich, deep voice made her stop.
‘Meet me at the far end of the garden,’ Richard whispered in her ear, his lips so close to her skin, his breath brushed her neck. ‘At the horse topiary next to the wall.’
Hope fluttered inside her despite every effort she made to squash it. He was here and he’d dared to approach her in a crowded ballroom where anyone, especially Mr Adams and his men, might recognise him and have him arrested. Maybe she’d been wrong about him. Maybe he did care for her. With him so near and his firm hands encircling her waist, she wanted to lean into him, to clutch his thighs and hold on to the solidity of him, to tell him everything that had happened since he’d left and trust in him to help her overcome it.
Before she could move or respond, the pressure about her waist lifted and a faint breeze ruffled the strings of her mask, making them caress her bare shoulders when he swept off as silently as he’d approached. All that remained was the subtle scent of the ocean and his musky sweat, and the shock of his unexpected appearance.
She wavered a bit on her feet before recovering herself enough to take up her fan again.
Perhaps he had found his evidence. He’d insisted he’d return once he did. If so, combined with what she held, he could meet Lord Spotswood’s terms and at last be a free man, his crew pardoned and Vincent arrested. He would be able to come home and be hers once more.
The blunt hand of experience slapped her soaring hope to the ground. Richard hadn’t returned because he loved her, but because he needed something from her, just like on the Devil’s Rose and at the overseer’s cabin. Once he had it, he’d find another excuse to rush back to the life he so cherished. She shouldn’t trouble with him or dare to meet him outside. It risked her being arrested or having someone see her dallying in the shadows with a man who wasn’t Mr Fitzwilliam. She detested her fiancé, but she didn’t need rumours of her being a whore spreading about the countryside. She’d taken a chance for Richard once before and he hadn’t cared enough about her to stay, leaving her to Mr Fitzwilliam’s designs. He could rot in the garden waiting for her. She wouldn’t help him again.
She started for Lord Spotswood and Mr Fitzwilliam, but she couldn’t put aside her curiosity about Richard or why he was here. She stopped and tilted her head to adjust one earring and caught sight of Richard slipping out the door and into the garden. There, masked couples promenaded along the stone paths beneath the flicker of torchlights. He was quickly lost in the parade of people and the shadows beyond the torches.
What if he has evidence against Mr Fitzwilliam? It could save me and Belle View. Perhaps Richard needed her to facilitate a meeting between him and Lord Spotswood. If she didn’t help him, and he was arrested before he could speak to Lord Spotswood, his evidence might disappear, leaving only hers to convict Mr Fitzwilliam. She wasn’t certain hers was strong enough, but if they both presented something, Lord Spotswood would be forced to bring charges against Mr Fitzwilliam, ridding them of the evil man. It galled her to jeopardise her future and safety to help Richard again, but in doing so she might help herself.
She peered leisurely about the room to spy Mr Fitzwilliam and Lord Spotswood deep in conversation. Mr Adams continued to watch her with a suspicion to make her nervous. Had he noticed Richard? She doubted it for his features were well concealed behind his Venetian mask, but she had to remain wary. If he saw her slip outside he might follow her, catch her with Richard and see to it Richard was arrested.
Cassandra strolled to the door. Near it stood a young lady she didn’t recognise dressed like a regal Egyptian queen. Cassandra complimented her on the fineness of her costume and enquired after the seamstress who’d created it. The vapid woman chatted about her attire and sang the praises of her Williamsburg modiste long enough to bore both Cassandra and Mr Adams, who at last turned his attention to his employer. Seeing the man lose interest in her, Cassandra bid the Egyptian queen a hasty goodbye and bolted through the open door and into the darkened garden.
* * *
From the shadow of the large horse topiary, Richard watched Cassandra make her way out of the palace and down the gravel path towards the garden wall at the far end. It’d taken her so long to come, he’d feared she wouldn’t. He’d left her at Belle View, and it would serve him right if she turned her back on him tonight, but she hadn’t, at least not yet.
The moon illuminated the walkway and the neatly trimmed shrubs while catching in the lighter grey lace decorating her black-silk gown. She was careful to smile and exchange pleasantries with the other couples strolling about the garden before she left the light of the torches to reach the darkness draping the back wall. Even with the stress of their coming meeting making her steps halting and unsure, she was radiant in a way the other ladies could never match.
When she came close enough, he reached out and took her arm and pulled her into the darkness behind the topiary. With her slim waist between his hands, her fingers tight on his forearms, he found her mouth. Her soft lips pressed to his were forbidden and familiar all at once. Anyone might stumble upon them here, but he did
n’t care. They were together.
She fell into his embrace and sighed beneath his gentle touch, her hands light on his chest, surrendering to her desire and his before she jerked out of his arms. ‘How dare you leave me, then come back and take liberties!’
‘Half the garden is alive with people taking liberties.’ He smirked, her anger unable to dull his excitement. Even if nothing went as planned tonight, her caring enough to meet him offered more possibility of happiness and redemption than he deserved. He’d discarded his mask and hat off to one side, determined to face her without fear of discovery or recognition. Let someone notice him, he would no longer live in the shadows.
‘If you’re discovered, you’ll be arrested,’ she warned, ‘and I will be ruined.’
‘I’ll gladly ruin you tonight if you’d like.’ He slipped his hand behind her neck and bent down to place a soft kiss on her throat and brought his lips close to her delicate ear. ‘I couldn’t stay away from you.’
She stood stiffly, arms crossed, unwilling to show him mercy. ‘Which surprises me since you’re always so quick to leave.’
‘Not this time, Cas. Captain Dehesa is with me.’
She lowered her arms to her sides. ‘The man in the Cavalier hat.’
‘He’s going to accept the King’s Grace, then give a sworn testament to his dealings with Vincent.’
‘You trust a man like him to help you?’
