Spirited Brides

by Amanda McCabe

Cassie blinked at him. What on earth was the man talking about? “Ex-excuse me, Lord Royce?”

  He smiled at her as one would to a rather slow child. “Your name. Cassandra. ‘Disbelieved by men.’ Are you named after the great prophetess of Troy?”

  Cassie vaguely remembered her mother telling her the story of the Trojan Cassandra, who was doomed to always tell the truth of her prophecies and never be believed. Her mother had loved the old myths. “I suppose I must be,” she answered.

  He gave her another smile, and went to sit beside his mother. Cassie slowly sat back down, her mind screaming one word at her. “Fool, fool, fool!”

  She could feel her face flaming. What a thorough idiot he must think her!

  “Miss Richards was just asking me about the history of the castle,” Lady Royce said, pouring out a cup of tea for her son. “She is very interested in it.”

  Lord Royce raised his dark brow at Cassie. “Indeed, Miss Richards?”

  Cassie seized on the topic. Surely she could converse more easily about a haunted castle than ancient Troy. “Oh, yes! It is truly fascinating. There must be much to learn about it.”

  “It is an interesting place,” he agreed. “I plan to someday write a history of it. It was built in 1320, by the first Earl of Royce . . .”

  “I believe she is more interested in Lady Lettice, the knight, and Louisa, dear,” interrupted Lady Royce.

  That dark brow rose again. “Is that what you are interested in, Miss Richards? The so-called ghosts?”

  Cassie frowned, but before she could reply, Antoinette said, “You are a disbeliever, Lord Royce.”

  “I suppose I am,” answered Lord Royce. “I prefer the logic and rationality of ancient Greece to spooks and haunts.”

  “Hmm,” Antoinette murmured, surveying him through narrowed ebony eyes.

  Lord Royce fidgeted a bit under her steady gaze, and turned away to address a question to Aunt Chat.

  Cassie studied him over the rim of her teacup. Well, he might be handsome as a poet, but he was obviously quite as obnoxiously logical as she had feared he might be.

  Chapter Four

  “I liked Lady Royce, didn’t you, Cassie?” Antoinette asked. The two of them were in Cassie’s room before they retired, to brush each other’s hair and talk over the day. After they had convinced some rather snooty upper servants that Antoinette was Cassie’s friend and not her maid, she had been given the chamber next door to Cassie’s. Just like at the house in Jamaica.

  “Yes, very much,” Cassie answered, reaching for a strand of her freshly brushed hair to braid. “She was all that was charming. And she agreed to give us a tour of the castle tomorrow. That should be most interesting.”

  “Perhaps we can find Lady Lettice!”

  “Perhaps so. And Louisa and the armored knight. I don’t think Lady Royce’s son would very much appreciate us going on a ghost hunt, though,” Cassie murmured. She thought of Lord Royce, of his poet’s hair and his mysterious gray eyes, of the smoky roughness of his voice.

  Of that obnoxious raised brow, proclaiming how silly he thought her.

  She frowned.

  “Oh, yes. Lord Royce,” Antoinette said. “He does not believe. He does not sense all that is around him. It is very sad.”

  Cassie felt a strange urge to defend Lord Royce, even with the memory of his scoffing in her mind. “Not everyone is as sensitive as you, Antoinette. Not everyone can so easily believe in things they cannot touch or see. Or read in dusty books, as Lord Royce does.”

  “You believe.”

  “I am different from most of the English we have met. I lived in Jamaica, where things are very—different.” Cassie turned her head to look out the uncurtained window, where all the autumn stars shimmered.

  Usually she was happy enough here in England. Her aunt had been all that was kind, and life at Chat’s house in Bath was very comfortable. But sometimes, especially in unguarded moments like these, she felt like such an outsider. Like she could never possibly understand the people around her, nor they her. She did not understand the things they took for granted, and they often thought her an oddity.

  Just as Lord Royce had.

  She would feel completely alone all the time, were it not for Antoinette. But she sometimes felt guilty for bringing her here, where, if Cassie felt like an oddity, Antoinette must feel ten times more so. She had faced shocked looks and fierce whispers ever since they reached England.

  She turned to Antoinette, and asked, as she had a dozen times before, “Do you not miss home?”

  Antoinette paused in braiding her thick mane of wavy hair, and gave the same answer she always gave. “Of course I do. Just as you do, Cassie. It is the only home I have ever known. But I would have missed you far more, if you had left without me.”

  “Truly?”

  “What did I have left in Jamaica? My mother is dead. Since I grew up with you and was educated, I do not fit in with my own people. You are like a sister to me. How could I let you go off into the world alone?”

  Cassie blinked at the sudden prickle of tears at her eyes. She wiped at them with the sleeve of her dressing gown. “Just as you are like my sister! I only hope you will never be sorry for your decision.”

  Antoinette dabbed at her own tears. “I will not. But if I do, I can always go back. It is a long way, but not impossible. Just as you could go back, Cassie, and marry that awful Mr. Bates. He did offer for you before we left.”

  Cassie laughed at the memory of Mr. Bates, pressing his suit on her just as she was about to board the ship to England. “So he did! Though I daresay life at Aunt Chat’s home in Bath is far preferable to life as Mrs. Bates. And we would have missed seeing this lovely castle!”

  “Indeed we would have,” Antoinette said, the lilting humor back in her voice. “Speaking of which, we have much to do tomorrow. Shall we retire?”

  Cassie shook her head. “You go ahead. I am not tired yet.”

  Antoinette frowned in concern. “Do you want me to find you some warm milk?” Cassie had had some trouble sleeping since coming to England, and Antoinette and Aunt Chat tried everything to help her. Nothing really seemed to work.

  “No, I think I’ll go to the library and look for a book,” Cassie answered. “Lady Royce said I could borrow any of them I like, though I must say her son looked rather doubtful about it. He probably thinks I will put all his precious volumes out of order!”

  Antoinette laughed. “Very well,” she said, walking toward the door. “Just be certain you don’t choose one of those horrid novels you are so fond of. They always give you bad dreams.”

  “I won’t. Good night, Antoinette.”

  “Good night, Cassie.”

  Once her friend was gone, Cassie slid her feet into her bedroom slippers and lit a candle to carry down to the library.

  Royce Castle seemed different in the lonely night darkness, eerie and echoing. The main staircase, a winding, wide expanse of stone, had been covered with a long Aubusson carpet runner and decorated with tall candelabra and statuary, but it was still cold and dark. Her candle flickered in a sudden draft, sending shadows dancing on the walls. The wind whistled around the edges of the narrow windows, and made the tapestries flutter.

  It sounded like high-pitched laughter. And did that portrait just wink at her?

  Cassie cautiously lifted her candle higher to peer at the painted image. Obviously the wink had just been a trick of the light, thank goodness. She did want to see a ghost, but maybe not when she was all alone.

  She hurried her steps along. Once she reached the library, she was so relieved to be there that she slammed the door behind her and leaned back against it. She closed her eyes, listening to the swift patter of her heart.

  “May I help you?” a deep voice said.

  Cassie’s eyes flew open, and she stood up perfectly straight. Lord Royce sat behind a massive, carved desk set half in the shadows, books and papers piled around him in untidy heaps. Light from the blazing fire in the hearth f
ell across him in a red-gold glow, burnishing his rich fall of hair and glinting off the spectacles he wore.

  Cassie felt oddly breathless, and she had the sneaking suspicion that it had nothing to do with ghosts or shadows.

  “L—Lord Royce,” she managed to gasp. “I had no idea anyone would be here. The lateness of the hour . . .”

  “It is rather late. I would have thought you would be quite tired, Miss Richards, after your journey.” He rose from behind the desk, and Cassie saw that he was in his shirtsleeves, his waistcoat unbuttoned and his cravat untied and carelessly dangling. She even had a glimpse of his strong throat, and the hollow at its base where his pulse beat, as he walked toward her.

  She had lived a rather casual life in Jamaica, had seen her father and other planters come in from the fields dressed in very similar fashion. But she had never been so disconcerted by it before. She was not quite certain where to look as he moved closer and closer.

  He stopped what seemed like mere inches from her, so close that she could feel his warmth, could smell the faint scent of some spicy soap on his skin. She forgot to breathe entirely when he reached his arm behind her, the fine cambric of his sleeve brushing against her hair.

  He took his coat from the hook that was on the door she had just been leaning against, and slid his arms into the sleeves. He stepped away from her, pulling his hair from under the collar in one smooth motion.

  “Are you not, Miss Richards?” he said.

  The sound of his voice seemed to shake her from some sort of dream state. Then she realized that the entire process of him moving across the library, which had seemed to take hours, had only taken a moment.

  “Am I not what?” she murmured, confused.

  And there went that blasted eyebrow. “Tired after your journey.”

  “Not at all.” She moved away from him, crossing the wide expanse of the room to be closer to the fireplace. She was suddenly all-too-aware that she was clad in her nightclothes. She pulled the edges of her velvet dressing gown closer together and wished she was still in her dinner gown. “I wanted to find something to read.”

  “Well, we certainly have plenty of that,” he said, gesturing to the massive bookcases. “What do you care for, Miss Richards? History? Biography? Sermons?”

  “Do you have any novels? Recent novels,” she said without thinking, then immediately regretted it. She felt like a fool asking a classical scholar for novels.

  But his brow did not arch at all. “Of course. I believe you will find most of them here. Many of them are my mother’s, which she orders from London every month.” He showed her a smaller case, placed against the wall near the desk.

  As Cassie came closer to inspect them, her attention was caught by the clutter on the desk. A large sheaf of paper, closely written in a small, neat hand, balanced beside a stack of leather-bound volumes. His handwriting, his work, she realized.

  She was suddenly intensely curious as to what it was that so preoccupied this strange, beautiful man. She veered off her course and went over to gently touch one of the books.

  “What is it you are working on, Lord Royce?” she asked. “My aunt and her Philosophical Society in Bath are great admirers of your writing.”

  “I am flattered,” he said, moving closer. “I am working on a series about the wars of ancient Greece, which will follow my series on society and economy. This one concerns the Peloponnesian War, between Athens and Sparta.”

  Cassie nodded and turned some of the books over in her hands, reading the titles by Aristotle, Pausanias, Xenophon.

  They made her feel terribly ignorant.

  Then she saw something a bit more familiar, a slim volume titled The Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Greece. She picked it up and flicked through the illustrated pages.

  “My mother adored the myths and tales of Greece and Rome,” she said. “She died when I was eleven, but I remember her telling me some of these stories.”

  She looked up to find Lord Royce watching her intently with his gray eyes, uncovered now by the spectacles. She gave a nervous little laugh and placed the book carefully back on its stack. “I am sorry,” she said. “I did not mean to mess about with your books.”

  He shrugged. “It is of no matter. You can read any of them you choose, Miss Richards. So your mother was a scholar of the classics?”

  Cassie laughed to think of her sociable, party-loving mother as any kind of scholar. “Oh, no! Not a bit. She was far too busy with routs and fetes to study. She just enjoyed the stories. Perhaps because the ancient gods so enjoyed a good party themselves!”

  He laughed at her little quip, and she found herself grinning like an idiot that she could make him laugh.

  “Then I am surprised she did not name you after someone more lighthearted than Cassandra,” he said. “Aphrodite, perhaps, or Psyche.”

  He leaned forward to straighten the pile of books, and a long lock of dark hair fell forward over his face. Cassandra had the strangest urge to brush it back, to see if it was as silky as it looked.

  “There must have been something about Cassandra that appealed to her darker side,” she answered distractedly. “What did you say it meant? Disbelieved by men?”

  He smiled at her wryly. “Much to the men’s peril.”

  She smiled at him in return, feeling a faint warm glow. Perhaps he was not such a stuffy prig after all, she mused. “I should like to hear more of Cassandra’s story.”

  “Then I shall tell it to you one day soon. It is a very good tale.”

  “I would like that.”

  “And perhaps in return you could answer a few questions about Jamaica, Miss Richards? One in particular, though I fear it is rather prying.”

  Cassie positively burned with curiosity to know what it might be. “Yes, Lord Royce?”

  “Your friend Miss Duvall. Is she your slave?”

  She stared at him, more deeply offended than she could ever remember being before. All the warm camaraderie of only moments before blew away like so many cold ashes. “Of course she is not my slave! She is a free woman, as was her mother. Her mother came to work as my mother’s lady’s maid soon after we arrived in Jamaica, and she became a dear friend. When she died, Antoinette stayed with us, as my companion. We grew up together, and she is like my sister.” She glared at him, daring him to contradict her.

  He held up his hands, as if in surrender. “Miss Richards! My deepest apologies. I never meant to offend.”

  Cassie looked at him rather suspiciously, but he seemed sincere. She nodded and said, “My father owned no slaves. All his workers were freed men whom he paid wages. It meant that his endeavors were not as profitable as those of some of his neighbors, but he did the right thing, and I was very proud of him.”

  “As well you should be, Miss Richards,” he said in a soft, respectful tone she had not heard him use before. “He sounds quite admirable, and I am truly sorry for being so flippant.”

  “Apology accepted, then, Lord Royce.”

  “How can I make amends for being such a dolt?”

  “Well . . .” Cassie said, pondering this question carefully. “You can tell me about the castle’s ghosts, as well as about Cassandra.”

  He shook his head. “I fear my mother is the expert on ghosts. I know little about the stories.”

  “But you live right here in the castle!” Cassie said, unable to fathom that someone could be so completely uninterested in the spirits around them. “Aren’t you the least bit curious about them?”

  “I have more important work to do, Miss Richards, than chase ‘ghosts’ about.” He picked up a book from a nearby shelf, Letter to a Member of the National Assembly by Edmund Burke. “Burke says, ‘Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.’ ”

  Cassie wrinkled her nose. “He sounds a most dull fellow.”

  “He was one of the greatest thinkers of the last century.”

  “Was he indeed?” she murmured, unconvinced. “Perhaps I should read him, then, after I have toured the
castle and met every spirit in residence.”

  “Perhaps you should, Miss Richards. Perhaps you should.”

  Cassie felt faintly disappointed. Their conversation had been going so well, until he asked her about Antoinette and then dismissed the ghost stories out of hand. Now he only seemed the stuffy scholar again, watching her with that doubtful look on his face. As if he had some reservations about her sanity.

  She pulled a couple of novels off the shelf in order to fulfill her original errand, and, clutching them against her, turned toward the door. “It is getting very late, Lord Royce. I will say good night.”

  “Good night, Miss Richards,” he replied, giving her a small bow. “It was a most interesting conversation.”

  “Indeed it was,” she said quietly. Then she hurried out of the dimly lit haven of the library and back up the cold stone stairs.

  She was so distracted that she did not even notice the drafts and the portraits this time. Indeed, she thought of nothing but the strange Lord Royce until her head fell onto her pillow and she dropped into a dream-filled sleep.

  Chapter Five

  Phillip sat alone in the library long after Cassandra left, long after the embers faded in the fireplace and a late-night chill crept in from the tall windows.

  What a very odd young woman Miss Cassandra Richards was. She did not behave as any other young lady of his acquaintance did. She did not shriek and scurry away when she found him there in the library, even though it was quite an improper situation. She did not back away from his questions about life in Jamaica. Instead, she faced him directly and unflinchingly, not at all awed by his title or position.

  Very unusual.

  Phillip gave a little, self-mocking laugh. His experience with well-bred young ladies was admittedly not wide. He escorted his mother to Town when the occasion warranted. He squired her about to stultifying Society balls, and met with his publisher and other scholars. He enjoyed the discussions and debates, but could distinctly do without the balls.

  All the young ladies there would cluster about him like so many pastel-clad butterflies, giggling and chattering on about fashions and parties. It gave him a headache just thinking about the superficial chaos of it all.