“Only believed?”
“It wasn’t long after we were married that I discovered he was in love with another woman—a woman he had known when he was a young man but had not been free to marry because she was already someone else’s wife. They had not seen each other for many years, and it was shortly after he married me that they met again and became involved with each other. She was a widow by then and free to enjoy my husband’s attentions. I am quite certain their affair would still be going on today if he were still alive.”
Cassandra paused a moment, watching a blackbird soar high above in the clear blue sky. “It was devastating and humiliating to me, because when I married him, I truly wanted it to be perfect. I wanted a happy, successful marriage, but I understand now that he only ever wanted her. She was the great love of his life.”
Vincent sat up and rested his arm on a knee. “Sometimes I wonder if there are people in the world who are simply meant to be together, people who are connected to each other somehow. Even if they go away and are forgotten for years and years, they are never really gone, and if they reappear, which in all likelihood they will—”
“The connection is still there,” Cassandra finished for him, “as strong as ever, as if not a day has passed.”
She was surprised to hear him speak this way.
He plucked a blade of grass and wrapped it around his finger. “And what does one do if that person is forbidden?” He gazed directly at her. “As this woman was with your husband?”
“Perhaps that is what makes it so intense,” Cassandra answered. “That person becomes the forbidden fruit.” She sat back. “It might also have the allure of unfinished business. Perhaps in some cases all it requires is fulfillment, and then it can become like every other infatuation that eventually burns itself out.”
“Maybe so.” He tossed the blade away. “Or maybe it is more than that. Maybe some connections never burn out.”
Cassandra could feel her guard lowering. She sat up and waved a moth away from June’s face, adjusted the blanket, which covered her legs, then lay back down again.
Vincent’s voice was low. “You are a very principled person, Cassandra,” he said, “refusing to be my mistress when there is ‘unfinished business’ between us.”
She sat up again. “I believe the only thing that was unfinished between us was the sex. You left without saying goodbye, and I, for one, was still amorous. At the time.”
“As was I.” He spoke more pointedly. “Do you think it is possible to separate sexual desire from friendship between a man and a woman?”
She gazed into his dark eyes. “I believe it is worth a try,” she said, more than a little surprised by this calm and honest communication between them, “because I am discovering that I would not wish to give up the friendship that has been growing between us.”
Friendship. It was a difficult concept to fathom where this man was concerned.
She leaned up on an elbow. “I don’t want to spoil it, Vincent. It has been very pleasant these past few weeks.”
“Yes,” he agreed, with a melancholy smile. “It has.”
“Was MaryAnn the great love of your life?” Cassandra asked the following day, as they pushed the pram through the quiet, shady woods, where there was not even the slightest hint of a breeze.
Vincent removed his hat and carried it in his hands, looking down at it as he spoke. “I believed so at the time. I was ready to be her husband, after all, and never imagined I would not love her devotedly until the day I died. But knowing what I know now, I recognize that I was a pathetic, lovesick fool. Not only that, it was completely one-sided. We did not share a true bond because she had never revealed her innermost feelings to me. She kept things secret and revealed them only to Devon. And because she died so suddenly, I didn’t get the chance to ask her why...to try to understand.”
“Did your brother love her?”
Vincent paused. “I honestly don’t know.”
“Have you ever asked him?”
Vincent looked down at the soft ground as he walked. “On the day she died, I asked him whether or not they had been...” He seemed to be searching for the right word. “...if they had been lovers. He confessed that they were on that day. I was too angry to ask for details and I suppose I didn’t really want to hear them. Now, we do not make a habit of discussing it. We don’t discuss much of anything. He knows I still have the letter she wrote to him, which I found in her pocket. I suppose it will always be a reminder of how he betrayed me that day.”
Cassandra looked up at him. “Will you ever forgive him?”
Vincent stopped on the path. “Do you think I should?”
June began to cry in the pram, and they both bent forward to see what was wrong. Cassandra picked her up and bounced her gently up and down until she stopped fussing. “There, there, now.”
Vincent adjusted his daughter’s baby bonnet and touched her tiny nose with the tip of his finger.
“He is still your brother,” Cassandra said, not forgetting their conversation. “And you and I both know that everyone makes mistakes.”
Vincent glanced meaningfully at her. “Spoken with great perspective, I dare say.”
Cassandra placed June back in the pram.
“I have grown rather weary of my bitterness lately,” he admitted. “I suppose I have you and June to thank for that. You have given me something to focus on other than my feud with my brother and my ever-present sense of impending doom around my future marriage.” He made a face.
Cassandra chuckled softly.
Turning toward a bridle path that veered away from the one they were standing on, Vincent pointed. “Just over there is where MaryAnn died.”
Cassandra studied his face in the dappled sunlight shining down on them through the leaves. “Have you ever gone back there?”
“Not since that day.”
She turned the pram around and nodded. “Shall we go home?”
“Yes.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Famished.”
“Then I will send for a light lunch. We can enjoy it in the garden.”
Two days later, Cassandra was in the nursery with June and Molly, waiting for Vincent to arrive, noting with some impatience that he was late. So late, in fact, that she had to put June down for her nap in her cradle and give up the idea that they would take her for their usual walk.
As soon as June was asleep, the puppy followed Cassandra downstairs to the drawing room, where she rang for tea, paced around the room restlessly, then finally sat down and picked up a book. She could not concentrate on what she was reading, however, for she was on edge, looking up whenever she heard a noise outside, her heart skipping a beat when she thought a carriage was rolling up the drive.
Was he not coming today? she wondered anxiously. He had said nothing yesterday about canceling his visit.
She slammed the book shut and cupped her forehead in her palm. Oh, Lord. Her stomach was turning somersaults. Was this getting out of hand? She supposed it was and that it was pointless to deny it any longer. She was becoming infatuated with Vincent, despite all her efforts to defend herself against such feelings toward a man who was engaged to another woman. And how ironic that it had not been her lust that knocked the shield from her grip, when that was what she had feared most of all in the beginning. It had been their friendship—the very thing she had pushed for in order to avoid a more dangerous kind of intimacy.
Now it appeared she was coming to care for Vincent on a much deeper level. When she thought of him, she pictured him holding June with affection, being a considerate, loving father, the complete opposite of her own. She remembered their comfortable conversations and how well he understood all her thoughts and opinions.
Those were the moments when her heart felt most happy. Even now she was imagining his warm and wonderful smile—the smile
he gave to her when he first said hello each day.
He had been so good to her, a gentleman through and through over these past few weeks. She had never believed it could be possible.
Just then, from the open window, she heard the familiar sound of his horse trotting up the drive. Her heart began to hammer inside her chest. Molly barked and ran to the door, while Cassandra tipped her head back on the chair and sighed with both happiness and defeat.
A short time later, Vincent walked into the drawing room. He looked handsome and powerful and completely mesmerizing. Molly wagged her tail, and Cassandra’s heart flipped over again, from the mere sight of him.
Feeling greatly distressed, she stood.
“I am so sorry to be late,” he said, out of breath. “Is June asleep now?”
“Yes. I took her to the nursery some time ago.”
His shoulders rose and fell with a sigh of disappointment. “I tried to get here, but Father had an episode.” Vincent bent down and patted little Molly, who was desperate for his attention.
“What kind of episode?” Cassandra asked.
“We finally received word from my youngest brother, Garrett, who remains in the Mediterranean. He refuses to come home.”
The maid entered with a tray of tea. Cassandra went to pour. “What does this mean for you and your brothers? Your Father wants all of you married by Christmas, does he not?” She walked toward him and handed him a cup and saucer.
“Yes, and he is adamant that Garrett be forced to return. He wants Blake to go and fetch him and drag him back by the ear.”
Cassandra poured a cup of tea for herself as well. “Is Blake prepared to do that?”
“We don’t know yet,” he replied. “He didn’t come home last night, which was what sent Father over the edge. The doctor had to physically restrain him.”
“Oh, Vincent, I am so sorry. Is there anything I can do?”
He moved to the sofa and sat down. “You are doing it now, just by being here. It is nice to have a place to escape to at times like this.”
She sat down beside him and set her teacup and saucer on the table. “Sometimes it feels like our friendship is exactly that—a secret, parallel life no one in the world knows about except for us. It is as if this house exists in the clouds or something. Does that sound foolish?”
“It sounds exactly right.”
Before she realized what she was doing, she placed a hand on Vincent’s knee. “You may come here whenever you wish. I know the contract requires that you give me a day’s notice, but in circumstances such as this...”
She worried suddenly that she was making a mistake, relinquishing her control over this arrangement, giving in to her emotions and, worse, revealing them to him. She hastily withdrew her hand from his knee and cleared her throat.
He gazed at her, then spoke in a cool tone. “It would not be wise to start bending the rules.”
All at once she was angry with herself for letting down her guard. She could not forget that he was still the notorious Vincent Sinclair, a man who did not seek true intimacies with women. She could not let herself imagine he was changing overnight, becoming the man she secretly wished he had been a year ago, when she had surrendered to the magic.
Suddenly she feared he could see straight through her and knew every thought and feeling she was having. He could see that she cared for him and perhaps that would frighten him off. He might disappear again, simply leave Pembroke without saying goodbye, dash back to London and return to his life as a rake. She had said it herself—this place was in the clouds. It was not real. Or was it?
He finished his tea, then set it on the table. “I am afraid I cannot stay. I am needed at the palace.”
She wanted to sink through the floor. She should not have reached out to him. She wished she could take it back.
“I would tell you to give your mother my best,” she said, trying to keep her tone light, “but I don’t suppose that would be proper.”
He stood, but hesitated before heading for the door. “If you don’t mind,” he continued, “since I missed my visit with June this afternoon, may I return this evening? I realize I have not given you the proper advance notice...”
“That would be fine.” In fact, she was relieved.
She rose to see him out, hoping the duke would be feeling better by then. She also hoped she would not lose whatever was left of her prudence and her ability to protect her heart—because clearly, her heart was not listening to her head.
“Do you mind if I stay a little longer?” Vincent asked that evening, after setting June into her cradle for the night. “I am not quite ready to go back yet.”
They had been sitting in the nursery with Molly and June for a full hour after dark, while Cassandra worked on an embroidery cushion she intended to give to Miss Callahan as a birthday present.
“You can stay as long as you wish.”
It was not lost on Vincent that Cassandra had been quiet all evening. She had seemed melancholy. Remote. Now she was yawning. She rose from her chair to go to bed.
She turned to leave, but paused at the nursery door for a moment, her troubled gaze fixed upon Vincent as he moved to the rocking chair and sat down. He looked at her across the room and admired not just her physical beauty—which always arrested him on the spot, no matter how well he managed to conceal it—but the gentle quality of her spirit, even now, when she seemed so very unsure of what was happening between them. He felt a great need to reassure her.
“This is working out quite fine, Cassandra,” he said. “We are going to muscle through.”
Her sad smile reached him across the dimly lit room, and he felt almost drugged by the effect of it.
“Yes, I believe we will manage.” Yet there had been something so very distant in her nature tonight. It worried him. “Good night, Vincent.”
“Good night.”
She closed the door with a quiet click and left him sitting alone by candlelight in the cozy little nursery.
For at least twenty minutes after June fell asleep, he rocked in the creaky chair, his head tipped back so he could look out at the stars through the high oval window. The sky was clear. He even heard the faint noise of crickets and frogs outside.
He should go back to the palace, he supposed, do his duty and ask after his fiancée. She would be playing cards with her mother in the drawing room, no doubt. It would be fitting for him to put in an appearance, even if he simply poured himself a brandy and read the paper by the fire.
Rising to his feet, he stretched his arms over his head, then went to look at June one last time, peaceful in her cradle. He reached in and gently rubbed the top of her tiny head. Her hair was soft as silk.
“Sleep well,” he whispered, with a strange aching sensation in his chest.
A short time later he was trotting up to the palace on his horse. He stopped to look up at the brightly lit drawing room window above. Letitia passed in front of it, unaware of his presence below. She stood for a moment with her back to him, chattering on about something to someone, then walked away.
Devon came to look out the window next and looked down at Vincent with a cool stare, as if he knew where he had been all night and greatly disapproved.
Contempt shuddered through Vincent as he imagined going up there and sitting down with the rest of them. They would ask where he had been. Devon might even call him into the study to have a reproachful word with him about his activities and remind him of his duty to the family. His brother would warn him not to become distracted and he would tell him to spend more time at the palace.
Devon had already fulfilled his duty by marrying Rebecca, entering into that marriage when he had not loved her in the beginning. He would therefore offer no sympathy to anyone not willing to do the same, for they were all depending on each other in order to safeguard their inheritances.
Vincent watched Devon raise a brandy glass to his lips and turn from the window when his wife slipped her arm through his and drew him away.
Outside, alone in the dark, Vincent remained seated on a restless horse that could not, for some reason, keep still.
He felt restless himself. He did not want to be there. He wanted to be at the dower house, in those small, cozy rooms, sitting by a fire.
He turned and gazed back in that direction. It would be wrong to return. Cassandra would most certainly be angry with him. It could spoil everything. He should not do it.
But he wanted so badly just to kick in his heels and urge his horse to a gallop—to speed across the moonlit hills and feel the wind in his hair, to leap over this particular hurdle in his life.
He looked up at the full moon and watched the wispy clouds float in front of it, thin and transparent, incapable of dimming its illumination.
He breathed deeply, seeking the calmness and dispassion he required to get through his betrothal to Letitia—his usual detachment—but all he felt was an ache of longing deep inside his chest. It was so relentless and severe, it almost made him double over in pain.
In the end he did what he knew he should not do. He kicked in his heels and galloped off.
Cassandra lay in bed exhausted, yet unable to sleep because of all the thoughts darting around inside her brain. She looked out the window at the full moon overhead and thought wistfully about the many hours she had spent with Vincent over the past few weeks, strolling leisurely to the river, spoiling June with their immeasurable affections, and speaking openly about so many things.
She had not expected it to be so pleasant. Not with him—the man whose heart she had believed was made of stone. This strange arrangement of theirs had been going on for quite some time now without a single hitch.
The Mistress Diaries (Love at Pembroke Palace Book 2) Page 15
