The Curse of Lord Stanstead

by Mia Marlowe

  One corner of Garret’s mouth quirked upward. “Fortunately, since I met you, the service I’ve rendered to the Order is entirely in line with my personal wishes.”

  If she were capable of receiving thoughts from him, she had no doubt he’d Send her a naughty one. A little thrill shivered over her, but now was not the time and certainly not the place to indulge those urges.

  “Perhaps your uncle was trying to say he encountered something which caused his illness while he was listening to the music,” she suggested.

  “Perhaps. The ASP is likely hidden in the recital hall someplace.” He looked grimly back toward the doorway that led to Lord Stanstead’s bedchamber where his still form cooled under the sheets. Most men would have been happy to be elevated to an earldom by whatever means, but Garret clearly was not. “This couldn’t have come at a worse time. I’ll have to accompany the body back to the country seat and see my uncle properly interred.”

  “I suspect you’ll be required to meet with your uncle’s solicitor as well.”

  There was a numbing measure of comfort in keeping busy. She was glad Garret was assembling a list of things that would occupy his mind while he came to grips with his loss.

  “You’re right. Since we didn’t get on, my uncle never saw the need to acquaint me with the running of the estate. I have no idea of the extent of Stanstead’s holdings or whether it’s even solvent.” The weight of the earldom seemed to descend on his shoulders because they sagged a bit. “The legal firm my uncle used is based in London, so that means even more traveling. More time away from Brighton. Well, there’s no help for it. We need to ring for the servants to pack if we’re to leave at first light.”

  “We?”

  They weren’t married. Not even betrothed. It had barely passed societal muster for her to accompany him to Brighton on a lark, with a chaperone. But it would strike the Beau Monde as odd in the extreme for her to tag along for something as private and personal as burying the man whose title Garret had just inherited.

  “Of course, you’ll come with me,” he said in the same brusque tone he’d used when he had dismissed the obsequious Dr. Tallywood. “We’ll have to get word to the duke that he must send another team here if he hopes to acquire the ASP before the Prince Regent arrives.”

  “Why do you need me to come?” she asked. “Don’t mistake me. I don’t mean to sound unsympathetic, but we must be practical. While I wish I could be with you during your time of mourning, it would be unseemly for me to accompany you to Surrey. Besides, there is no reason I can’t continue our work here.”

  “Alone?”

  “I won’t be alone. Lady Easton will remain with me. As long as Lady Waldgren is in Brighton we can count on invitations to interminable teas and soirees. That can be used to our advantage. One can learn a great deal from an inveterate gossip, especially when she doesn’t realize one is doing it,” Cassie said. “The lease on this house is yours now, so I assume Lady Easton and I can still make this our pied-à-terre until you return.”

  “You assume wrongly,” he said, arms crossed over his chest. “I don’t want you poking around into things you don’t understand.”

  “Oh, and I suppose you have more knowledge of the ASP than I.”

  “I damned well do. Take a peek under the sheet in the next room if you wish to be enlightened.” He took both her hands and held them tight. “Cassandra, I can’t let you take such risks.”

  She didn’t have to look under the sheet. Her brief glance at Lord Stanstead’s desiccated remains was etched on the backs of her eyelids. She repressed a shudder. “I’d be a fool not to be afraid, but at the same time, the threat to the Prince Regent is too serious for us ignore.”

  Garret paced the sitting room, nervous energy crackling from him. “You’re right. We need to stay. The solicitors from London can come to Brighton to meet with me here. They’re probably compensated well enough by the estate that a trip to the seaside will do them no harm. I’ll send Clive to Surrey to take care of my uncle’s funeral at Stanstead Heath.”

  “You can’t do that. What will people say if you don’t attend your uncle’s funeral?”

  “That his lordship and I were estranged all of my life.” He stopped before the cold fireplace and leaned both hands on the mantel. “And they’d be right. We were at loggerheads to the very end.”

  “Garret, that’s precisely why you need to go to Surrey. You need to be reconciled with the man and this is your last chance to do so.” Cassie came up behind him and slipped her arms around his waist. She leaned her head on the middle of his back, listening to the steady thump of his heart. “Not for your uncle’s sake. He’s past caring. This is for you. You must make peace with him for yourself.”

  He turned, took her hand and brought it to his lips, kissing her knuckles at the juncture of her first two fingers. “It would be so much easier if you came with me,” he said softly. Then he tugged off her glove and continued to make love to her hand, pressing a lover’s kiss into her palm.

  Every fiber of her being strained toward him, but she reined herself in. “I can’t. Not while the ASP is in play.”

  He dropped her hand and glared down at her, his dark brows lowering. “Cassandra, I forbid you to stay here.”

  “You are neither my father nor my husband.” Without realizing she did so, she backed away from him. “You cannot forbid me to do anything.”

  “I can fix that.” He advanced on her until her spine met the wall. Then he leaned both palms on the plaster on either side of her, trapping her between his arms. “Marry me.”

  “Ha! So you can order me about like a servant? Not if you were the last unattached earl in the kingdom.” She ducked under his arm and put some distance between them.

  He obviously had no idea how to craft a proposal. Even though she’d been waiting and hoping for a declaration from him, she certainly couldn’t accept this one.

  The imperious glare faded and his brows drew together in confusion. “I thought you loved me.”

  “I do.”

  “Then why are you fighting me?”

  “Would you accept a proposal from me if you knew I’d only offered to marry you so I would have legal standing to make all your decisions for you?”

  “Cassie, it’s not like that. Why are you twisting things around so?” He raked a hand through his hair and only succeeded in making it more unruly. “I want you to be safe.”

  She covered her mouth with both hands lest she say the wrong thing. Whatever came out next might well determine her entire future.

  “Please believe that I love you, Garret. Believe that I wish with all my heart that I could be with you as you lay the earl to rest in Surrey. I’m sorrier than I can say that I can’t give you my presence and support.” She came close and palmed his cheeks. “When I first learned I was a fire mage, you were there for me. Then I joined the Order and it gave me hope that even though my life was not going to go as I planned, it could still mean something.”

  He turned his head to kiss one of her palms. “It will. As my wife.”

  “Maybe, but I cannot accept your proposal. Not now. Not so long as the Prince Regent is walking into a psychic trap next week. With any luck at all, you’ll be back before he arrives.” She stood on tiptoe and brushed her lips against his. “In the meantime, I will be as careful as I can.”

  “How?” Garret pulled away from her. “You don’t even know what to protect yourself from.”

  “Perhaps I don’t need to know. You said yourself that you Send thoughts to me regularly and I never hear a one of them. The duke thinks I’m what he calls a natural shield. If you can’t touch me with your abilities, perhaps the ASP can’t either. I may be immune to its effects.”

  “Wonderful. My happiness hangs on what the duke ‘thinks.’” He sank wearily into the overstuffed chair before the sitting-room fireplace. His uncle’s lap rug was still draped over the back. “‘Perhaps’ is slim comfort.”

  Cassie knelt down before him. “Hi
s Grace does know a great deal about this sort of thing. I trust his instincts.”

  “But his instincts couldn’t give us much information about the ASP, could they?” He gave a disgusted snort. “Hang it all, Cassandra. Don’t do this. Please don’t. Let me send to London. Camden can put Westfall and Miss Anthony on the next coach headed to Brighton.”

  “They’re not ready. Lady Easton tells me Meg still can’t pass for a lady so she wouldn’t be able to get close enough to the Prince Regent to protect him. And poor Lord Westfall’s mind hasn’t recovered completely from his time in Bedlam.”

  Garret drew her up onto his lap. Since she was thwarting his wishes on every other front, she came willingly for this. He kissed her temple and cradled her head on his shoulder. The world around them faded a bit. She wished she could stay with him like that forever.

  Before she joined the Duke of Camden’s Order, her life had been a tangled whirl of social obligations. She’d obsessed over trying to carve out a place for herself in the convoluted world of the ton. Now she recognized that world for the empty sham it was—brittle as glass and just as fragile. As one of the duke’s Extraordinaires, she had been entrusted with something important for the first time in her life. She wasn’t about to fail.

  Cassandra tipped up her chin and kissed Garret’s cheek. Then she rose from his lap. “I’ll send Mr. Clive to you. He’ll see that everything needful for your uncle is done decently and in order.”

  “Don’t go.” He caught her by the wrist.

  “I must.” She loved this man more than breathing, but she couldn’t give in. “If I don’t do this, and something terrible happens to His Royal Highness, I’ll never forgive myself.”

  “What if something terrible happens to you and I’m not here to protect you? Have you forgotten that I dreamed—”

  “Hush, love. I’m not afraid.” She held a finger to his lips. “When I was a little girl, I played at being a damsel in distress. The role doesn’t suit me anymore. I love you for wanting to protect me, but I don’t need to be rescued. I can do this, Garret. Trust me. Just come back to Brighton as soon as you are able. I will wait for you here.”

  “Cassie, you’re not invincible. In my dream…” He pulled her close and she felt his fear for her in scalding waves. “You can be burned, you know.”

  “Then I’ll be careful,” she promised.

  “Doubly careful. My body may be going to Surrey, but my heart remains with you.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Yourself—your soul—in pity give me all,

  Withhold no atom’s atom or I die

  Or living on perhaps, your wretched thrall.

  —John Keats, from “I cry your mercy—pity—love!—aye, love!”

  The salt-tinged breeze freshened. Cassandra wrapped her shawl tighter around her shoulders. It had rained most of the day, which accounted for the emptiness of the beach, but now the sun broke through beneath the lowering clouds to slant its dying light over Brighton. Breakers lapped gently at the shingle beach, polishing the stones smooth with each relentless surge.

  That was what Garret’s love was doing to her, too—chipping away her defenses by degrees and leaving her open and vulnerable again. After Roddy, she’d promised herself never to need anyone so.

  That’s a brittle vow if ever there was one.

  A solitary gull wheeled overhead, its mournful cry an echo of the emptiness in Cassie’s heart.

  Why had she insisted on being so independent?

  Garret had left a few days ago, following the dull black carriage bearing the earl’s earthly remains on an equally dull black gelding. His absence carved out a hollow place inside her, made worse by the unsettled way they’d parted. Without Garret at her side, Cassie had to be on constant guard against setting inadvertent fires again. Hence, her frequent solitary walks on the shingle beach where nothing remotely flammable was nearby.

  To make matters worse, she was no closer to discovering the nature and whereabouts of the ASP than when they had first arrived in Brighton. Even though she and Lady Easton were treated to any number of invitations to dinners and card parties from the highest-ranking folk of Brighton society, she learned quickly that it was entirely possible to be solitary in a crowd.

  Loneliness was all it was cracked down to be.

  “You are missing someone, I think,” came a small high voice from behind her.

  She startled and turned to find the pianist Paschal on the deserted beach.

  “Hello,” she said with relief that it was the boy who’d discovered her wandering. “What are you doing here?”

  “The same as you, Miss Darkin. Missing someone.”

  Her heart constricted for the lonely precocious child. At the same time, she was flattered that he’d remembered her name. “Whom do you miss?”

  “My mother, I suppose. But since I never really knew her, that seems to me, absurd. Perhaps it is the idea of her I miss,” said the child with logic beyond his years. “Do you miss the idea of someone, or is it a real person who furrows your brow so?”

  She’d dreamed of her ideal man often as she was growing up. Garret was so much better than her imaginings. “He’s real enough.”

  “Well, either way, he is not here,” Paschal said. “Since you are alone and I am alone, perhaps we should be alone together.”

  She grinned down at him. “Then we won’t be alone, you know.”

  “I know. That is the beauty of my plan.” The boy cast an impish smile. “Would you please to come with me for a picnic supper? My valet is setting it up in a little cove not far from here.”

  He stuck out his bony elbow in perfect imitation of a much older gentleman.

  “I’d be delighted.” Cassie took his arm and they walked companionably down the beach as twilight deepened.

  On the other side of a bank of bathing machines, Paschal’s valet was still fussing over the arrangement of a red-checked blanket, positioning it far enough up the beach to avoid the largest of the water-smoothed pebbles. A wicker basket held his young master’s repast.

  Once Cassie and Paschal settled on the blanket, the valet served them a finger-food dish called salmagundi. It was a delightfully arranged selection of chopped turkey, hard-boiled eggs, anchovies, pickled beets and red cabbage, narrow strips of ham, thinly sliced cucumbers, and an assortment of pickles. Butter balls garnished the platter. Paschal’s valet provided plenty of surprisingly hot tea for Cassie to wash her meal down with and the boy drank a large glass of buttermilk.

  Throughout the meal, Paschal never removed his trademark red gloves.

  While they ate, they spoke of music, of course, and Paschal regaled her with tales of the courts of Europe where he had performed. Some of them made the Prince Regent’s dissolute court seem positively Puritanical.

  More than once Cassandra felt she was speaking with someone much older than ten, but Paschal’s beardless chin and guileless eyes put the lie to that notion. Growing up without parents had forced him to grow up quickly. After they finished eating and his valet packed up all the picnic things, Paschal dismissed his servant, saying, “Now that the clouds, they have gone away. Miss Darkin and I, we will watch the stars come out, perhaps?”

  Cassie nodded and stretched out her legs, leaning back on her elbows, the better to view the darkening sky.

  “Do you believe that people’s names tell you about them?” Paschal asked.

  “I rather think a person’s name tells more about their parents and their hopes for their child. After all, no one chooses their own name. It’s picked for them.”

  “This is true. The Cassandra of myth has the gift of prophecy, but her great tragedy is that she is never believed,” he said. “You have a gift, I collect, but you do not think I will believe it if you tell me.”

  “Do you know what I believe?” She met his direct gaze, sensing a vortex of psychic energy emanating from him. She was convinced he was unaware of the surge of power, but it made the urge to answer him honestly quite profound. H
owever, Cassie couldn’t tell him about her affinity for fire. She hadn’t even confided in her family, for pity’s sake. “I believe the Duke of Camden would dearly love to meet you.”

  “I have played for the crowned heads of Europe,” Paschal said loftily. “I am not one to be impressed by a mere duke.”

  She’d have been insulted on His Grace’s behalf if not for the fact that the duke was always solicitous of the idiosyncrasies of the gifted. The way he ignored Garret’s habitual impertinence, for example, was an impressive display of ducal forbearance. If she could convince Paschal to come with her to Camden House, the duke would be delighted with her for bringing another Extraordinaire into the Order’s fold.

  “The Duke of Camden is a treasured friend of mine,” she said, “and I assure you, he’s most impressive.”

  “I hope I am also your friend,” Paschal said, sounding more like a lonely child than a jaded world traveler.

  “I’d be honored to count you as my friend.” She almost reached out and squeezed his forearm, but then she remembered his aversion to being touched and the old earl’s faux pas in forcing a handshake on him.

  “Well, then since we are friends, I wonder, could I prevail upon you for a favor?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  “It is about your hair. It is so lovely. The color is the same soft brown as the bunny I had when I was very young,” he said in perfect seriousness.

  Cassie stifled a laugh. He was still very young. “Thank you, Paschal. But for your future edification, if you wish to ask a favor of a lady, you’d do well not to compare her to a rabbit.”

  “I meant no insult,” he said quickly. “I only meant…this is to say, to ask, may I stroke it? Your hair, I mean. To see if it is as soft as my bun—I mean my beloved pet.”

  It was a harmless enough request and the breeze soughing off the sea had already teased a good bit of her coiffure into shambles. She removed her bonnet, picked at the remaining pins, and let her hair fall to her shoulders.