It was a matter of pride.
* * *
Sure enough, later that day, he marched into the drawing room clutching the regulation posy of flowers. They were pink today, rather than red. As though his enthusiasm, like the colour of the flowers he presented, was fading.
‘You don’t care for pink flowers?’ A smile tugged his lips, probably at the expression of disappointment on her face. ‘Did you prefer the red ones? Somehow, I didn’t think it would matter what colour they were. I was so sure you would only tear all the petals off and stamp on what remained of the stems.’
That was so uncannily like what she’d done that she almost gasped. Yet, if he knew she would treat the flowers in such a way...
‘I wonder why you bothered bringing me any more then,’ she retorted, ‘if that is what you suspect me of doing.’
‘It is the done thing,’ he said, presenting them with a flourish.
She took them from him, since to do anything else would have been unthinkable, under Godmama’s watchful eye. Although what she really wanted to do was hurl them across the room. She didn’t want his insipid flowers, especially not since he appeared to regard them as some sort of joke. Nor did she care for his dogged determination to win what he seemed to regard as a battle of wills between them.
‘I wish,’ she said, the moment they sat down next to each other, ‘that you would leave me alone.’
‘No, you don’t.’
‘Excuse me? Now you think you know better than I do what I want?’
‘In this case, yes. Without me to put that dangerous sparkle in your eyes, you would subside into a tepid sort of ennui.’
‘I...’ She hesitated. Was that true?
‘I am the only one of your admirers who makes your cheeks flush so prettily.’
‘That’s because you are generally so annoying. It is a flush of anger.’
‘Nevertheless, the others never inspire anything more than boredom, do they? I’ve watched you stifling yawns behind your fan when I’ve been obliged to retreat for the sake of propriety.’
That was, unfortunately, true. She took a breath to say that if she yawned occasionally, it was not through boredom, but because she was tired. But she had a suspicion that if she mentioned tiredness, he would deduce that she hadn’t been sleeping well and would somehow know that it was because of him.
So she took a different tack.
‘You are not going to persuade me to marry you by annoying me, though, are you?’
He regarded her thoughtfully. ‘What would it take? I should have thought... I mean, being caught in flagrante delicto would be enough, more than enough, to have most women dragging the man in question up the aisle by his...er...’
She shuddered as he floundered about for a polite way to describe what he was thinking. Because it reminded her so forcefully of Godmama’s advice to use his attraction to make him forget himself, so that he would have to marry her. ‘I am not so desperate for a husband that I would resort to such a low-down, sneaky trick as that.’
He gave her a searching look.
‘You know, the more I consider that aspect, the clearer it becomes to me that we were both simply carried away by what we felt, against our principles, against our better judgement. How long are you going to keep on denying us what we both want, Cassy?’
Until he stopped talking about it as though it was an error of judgement. As though it was something to be ashamed of, even though it was. She was thoroughly ashamed of herself. Most especially because whenever he alluded to what they’d done, the sensations she’d felt at the time came flooding back to her so vividly that she went weak with longing.
‘As long as it takes,’ she managed to grate, through a throat that was tight with shame, and longing, and increased shame at feeling such longing. ‘And stop calling me Cassy. I have not given you permission.’
‘You did not object before,’ he pointed out, reminding her of the way he’d moaned her name, over and over, into her ear while they were pressed to each other completely naked.
‘That was different. I was not in my right mind that day...’
‘On the contrary. You were more your true self then because you were not fighting what you feel.’
‘More fool me,’ she hissed.
‘Why don’t you call me Nathaniel? I should not object. In fact—’
‘Because it would imply an intimacy that does not exist.’
‘Oh, but it does. Or it did. And it could again if you would only stop thinking of this as a siege.’
But that was exactly what it was, she saw in a flash of insight. He had every intention of sitting outside her metaphorical walls until she surrendered to him.
The moment he’d gone she bounded up the stairs to the sitting room she shared with Rosalind, her fingers itching to mutilate the posy he’d brought. Only that was exactly what he’d expect her to do. So instead she went to the window, flung up the sash and hurled the posy outside.
‘Cassy,’ cried Rosalind. ‘Whatever are you doing?’
‘I’m... I’m...’ She gripped the windowsill. ‘I’m raising the drawbridge,’ she decided, turning round to face her friend. ‘He’s got some crackbrained notion of laying siege to me as if I’m a citadel he wants to conquer. Well, he’s not going to do it with posies,’ she said, slamming the window shut.
‘I’d have him,’ said Rosalind wistfully, ‘if you really don’t want him, if only he had the title Papa wants for me. He isn’t, actually, as odious as some of the others. Nor as ugly...’
‘Whether he has a title or not should have nothing to do with it,’ she said, stifling the fierce jolt of revulsion she felt imagining him walking down the aisle to Rosalind. But not liking the thought of him marrying another was not the same as wanting to marry him herself.
‘Oh? What would make you marry him then?’
‘I would only marry any man if I thought it would be an improvement on my life as a single woman. No...that’s not quite right. The only point in marrying someone would be if I felt as if I couldn’t live without him. And if I believed he would make it his life’s work to make me happy,’ she declared with conviction.
‘So, if some man came along and vowed he was so deeply in love with you he couldn’t bear the thought of you marrying anyone else, that would be enough? You...you wouldn’t care if he didn’t have a title? Or any money of his own to speak of?’
Cassy’s breath hitched. If Colonel Fairfax had ever said he was so deeply in love with her he couldn’t bear the thought of her belonging to anyone but him, it would have changed everything.
Or would it?
‘The title is certainly irrelevant. But so is what a man says,’ she said bitterly. ‘Men can say anything to get what they want.’
‘Aye,’ said Rosalind moodily. ‘In my case, my money.’
‘No woman,’ Cassy declared, ‘should ever believe a single word a man says when he is trying to get a girl to marry him. My stepfather, for one, was so charming before he got my mother up the aisle and within a week he’d turned into a veritable monster.’
‘How can we choose a husband, then?’
‘Lord knows.’ Cassy sighed. ‘Personally, I’d rather not get married at all. I’d rather be completely free. But...’ she darted a glance at Rosalind, noting that her brow was creased in thought ‘...if I had to get married, then I’d choose a man that I thought was most likely to put me first, rather than his own selfish needs.’
As Rosalind nodded, Cassy went to the bell-pull and yanked on it. ‘And while we’re on the subject of men’s selfish needs, it’s time I added a moat to this citadel.’
‘What?’
‘I am going,’ Cassy explained to Rosalind, ‘to tell Dawes that I will not be at home to Colonel Fairfax, no matter how large a posy he brings, nor for any reason he might employ to attempt to gain entrance.’<
br />
‘You won’t be able to avoid him when we go out to balls and such, though.’
‘No, but at least this will gain me some respite from his persistent attentions. Even citizens of castles under siege didn’t spend all their time dodging the boulders being lobbed over the battlements.’
* * *
His reaction, when he found out what she’d done, was not what she’d expected.
‘It will be a relief not to have to run the gauntlet of all those terrifying matrons every day,’ he said with an infuriatingly cheerful grin as he took her arm to lead her for a stroll round the edge of the ballroom. ‘Particularly as it wasn’t getting me anywhere, not being a dab hand with polite chit-chat.’
For two pins she could have stamped her foot.
‘And think of all the money I can save on flowers that you are only going to toss out of the window anyway.’
She gaped up at him in shock.
‘Ah—you were not throwing them at me, then? I cannot tell you how relieved I am to learn that they only landed upon the pavement just where I was standing by the merest coincidence.’
‘Of course I was not throwing them at you. I had no idea you would still be there...and what were you doing loitering outside all that time as you must have been doing if they narrowly missed you?’
He shrugged. ‘I was in a brown study, I have to confess. Gazing up at the house, hoping I’d be struck by inspiration, rather than floral missiles. However,’ he continued, ‘I can’t say that I am sorry that I shall not be wasting any more afternoons in that manner. I shall be able to get a damn sight more work done now that I can stay in my study, uninterrupted, all day.’
Cassy got the peculiar sensation that she was swelling up to twice her size with the effort of suppressing the scream of vexation she was desperate to utter.
‘You won’t win,’ he informed her with nonchalance, ‘by denying me admittance to your godmother’s house, however.’
‘Neither of us will win,’ she said tartly, ‘if I agree to marry you. Surely you are not so bone-headed you cannot see that?’
‘Well, I must be exceptionally bone-headed,’ he said affably, ‘since I cannot see that at all.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’ She stopped dead and rounded on him. ‘For one thing, your family will be livid.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because, well, because it is obvious. They think I’m the kind of woman who would dupe a young man into leaving me all his fortune. And if,’ she said, holding up her hand to prevent him from objecting, ‘if they didn’t believe it, they were perfectly happy to lie about me and persuade you that I was that sort of woman.’
‘Yes, but only because they could see you were exactly the right person to bring me back to life. I was, as they put it, like a walking dead man until the night I saw you at Lady Bunsford’s ball. If I now declare you are the one woman who will bring all their plans to get me married off to fruition, they will...well, it wouldn’t surprise me if they claimed that was their intention all along. Because they really don’t care who I marry, as long as I marry someone and set up my nursery.’
The brief glimmer of pleasure that had flared up on hearing she’d brought him back to life sputtered out on learning that any woman would do for him and his family.
‘Do you have,’ she said resentfully, ‘a clever answer for every objection?’
‘I don’t know,’ he replied cheerfully. ‘I don’t suppose you have exhausted your list of objections yet.’
‘I don’t suppose,’ she said darkly, ‘I have.’ Because she hadn’t come to London to find a husband in the first place. Her aunts had a perfectly lovely lifestyle without having a man underfoot to spoil things. And she would gladly return to that way of life the moment Godmama released her from playing the role of friend to Rosalind. Which time couldn’t come soon enough.
Anyway, all that aside, there could be only one reason for marrying a man. And that was if she felt she could not live without him. And if he could persuade her that he could not live without her, either.
The reasons Colonel Fairfax had for claiming he wanted to marry her were simply not good enough. She could see that he wanted to atone for all the horrid things he’d believed about her and protect her from possible scandal, if Rosalind should ever reveal what she’d seen. To pay the penalty for having done it at all. Oh, yes, he was a great one for atoning for things, was Colonel Fairfax.
But she didn’t want to become his penance. She felt humiliated enough as it was. Why, all he’d had to do was admit that, in spite of believing she was the worst kind of woman, he wanted her, and she’d ripped his clothes off and dragged him to bed.
She still couldn’t forgive herself for that. She lay awake long into that night, weltering in a stew of recrimination and self-loathing. Part of the problem was that it was this bed she’d dragged him to. This coverlet she’d writhed round on. This canopy she’d gazed up at over his shoulder as he’d thrust into her, over and over again...
* * *
She rolled out of bed the moment she heard servants begin to stir about the house, washed her overheated body and went in search of breakfast.
The dining room was deserted, which wasn’t surprising at that hour.
What did surprise her, however, was the shriek which emanated from the region of Godmama’s room not long after Cassy had sat down to her first cup of tea of the day. She’d slopped about half of it over the tablecloth when Godmama uttered a second, equally piercing shriek, which rose in volume until it could only be described as a wail. It made Cassy leap to her feet and go running to find out what on earth could have happened.
But Godmama came bursting into the dining room before Cassy could even reach the door, still wearing her night attire and with a lace nightcap tied under her chin.
‘That girl,’ she cried. ‘That ungrateful, treacherous harpy!’ She staggered to her place at the table and sank on to her chair. ‘Brandy,’ she said to the nearest footman, who happened to be Gordon.
Gordon cast his mistress an anxious look, but then, clearly as concerned as Cassy by her wan features, and the fact that tears were streaming down her face, went trotting off to fetch a bottle, in spite of it being so early in the morning.
‘Do you mean Rosalind?’ Cassy went to sit next to Godmama, passing her a napkin to blot at the tears. ‘What has she done?’
‘She’s run off with Bertram,’ sobbed Godmama. ‘Eloped!’
‘What?’ Captain Bucknell? How could any woman want to run off with a loathsome specimen like that? ‘But I thought she was determined to marry a man with a title,’ said Cassy, in shock herself.
‘That was just her father’s wish, according to this,’ said Godmama bitterly, waving a crumpled note she was clutching in one hand. ‘Apparently she wanted romance,’ she said with loathing.
Cassy recalled how interested Rosalind had been when she’d told her the little she’d been prepared to admit about her own elopement with Guy. How she’d thought it romantic and sighed, and looked impressed.
And then she recalled the amount of time Captain Bucknell had spent lately, taking Rosalind to places like Astley’s and Gunter’s, while Godmama was busy laying false trails of gossip all over Town. How happy Rosalind had looked every time he’d asked her to dance, which was at least once every time they went anywhere there was dancing.
And then she went cold inside as she recalled the conversation they’d had the day before, which she’d thought had been about her determination not to marry Colonel Fairfax, during the course of which she’d said it wasn’t important if a man didn’t have a title or any money, as long as he would devote himself to making his wife happy.
No wonder parts of that conversation had seemed a little odd. For Rosalind had been weighing up the pros and cons of a proposal she must have received herself from Captain Bucknell.
And, oh, no! Cassy had practically exhorted Rosalind to run off with him, in spite of her father’s ambitions.
But then she saw something else. This was going to bring Godmama’s whole charade to an end. Now that Rosalind had taken her fate into her own hands, there was no longer any need for Cassy to stay in Town. Which meant she would be free from Colonel Fairfax, too, because she could not see him pursuing her to the remote town of Market Gooding. He might claim that nothing would make him relent in his determination to get her to marry him, but the truth was that he wouldn’t want to be away from the centre of government for any length of time. His first priority was, and always would be, the army. And serving his country.
‘And as for him,’ Godmama continued, ‘oh, it is too humiliating. After all I’ve sacrificed on his account. The stand I took!’ She reached out and grabbed Cassy’s hand. ‘I am going to have to admit my stepson was right about him. He told me I ought to break with Bertram, that he was no good. And I thought he was saying it out of spite. To spoil my fun. And when he reminded me who held the purse strings, and how difficult he could make things for me if he chose, I took it as a threat and invited that girl into my home so that I could defy him, when—’ She broke off as Dawes himself came in, bearing a silver tray with a full decanter and a crystal tumbler on it.
‘Allow me, Your Grace,’ he said, pouring her a stiff measure. Godmama let go of Cassy’s hand to reach out for the glass and took it with trembling hands.
‘Thank you, Dawes,’ breathed Godmama. ‘At least I can rely upon someone. You will never betray me, will you? You will always stay by my side, no matter—’ She broke off, her lower lip trembling.
‘Of course not, Your Grace,’ said Dawes staunchly. ‘The very idea!’
‘Oh, how glad I am to have such good friends,’ she said, taking a most unladylike gulp of brandy. ‘And you, Cassy, too,’ she said, raising the glass in her direction. ‘Thank goodness I still have you at my side. You won’t run away once tongues start wagging, will you? I know it will be unpleasant, but you don’t want for pluck. You can stand it, can’t you?’
The Scandal of the Season Page 21
