Spirited Brides

by Amanda McCabe

  Cassie settled down on the rock next to Angelo to listen to her tale. This was even better than a novel!

  “Jean-Pierre was a French nobleman, attached to the retinue of the Duc d’Alencon when he came to England to woo Queen Elizabeth. We sat next to each other often at banquets, and danced, and walked in the gardens.” Lady Lettice’s harsh features softened as she talked, absorbed in her memories. “He was so very handsome. So witty and so accomplished!”

  “So perfidious,” Angelo added softly, his eyes flashing.

  Lady Lettice shot him a harsh glare. “Hush, Angelo! How was I to know that at the time? He said he loved me, and I was a silly young girl. I believed him.”

  “What happened then?” Cassie asked.

  “I received word that my father was very ill, perhaps dying. I left the Court and came back here to Royce Castle to nurse him. A few weeks later, I had a message from Jean-Pierre, saying he had come to Cornwall and could I meet him in the tunnels. They had not been filled in at all then, and were much larger.” Lady Lettice’s voice became rushed then, as if she wanted to speed quickly through the rest of her tale and downplay the end of it. “Of course I met him. But I thought it odd that he would not come to the castle; he would only meet me here. Later, I discovered why.”

  “Why?” Cassie breathed, deeply in suspense.

  Lady Lettice’s hands nervously toyed with the fan at her belt. “He had stupidly become involved in a plot against the Queen. He needed to escape, to return to France, and he needed me to help him. That was all he wanted of me.”

  It was very clear how pained this proud lady was to admit such a thing, even hundreds of years after it happened. She would not look at them, just stared out to sea. Angelo slid off his rock and hurried over to her, slipping his arms around her waist for a comforting hug. She laid her hand gently atop his head.

  “And did you help him?” Antoinette asked quietly.

  “Of course not!” Lady Lettice snapped. “How could I have? I was loyal to the Queen. He somehow found a way and left on his own. I never saw him again, not in the years left of my life and not in the centuries since.” She looked down at Angelo and said, almost to herself, “And the moldwort did not even ask me to go with him.”

  Cassie, suddenly cold again, closed her eyes, and wondered if there was some sort of a curse on this place that made love turn sour.

  Well, if there was such a curse, Cassie was very determined not to fall victim to it!

  Chapter Eighteen

  “Oh, this is a splendid tale!” Cassie enthused, turning over a page in the volume of The Iliad she was reading. The morning sun fell from the library windows across the illustrations, making the ancient mayhem and blood seem to come alive. And the bright light made last night, and Lady Lettice’s sad tale, seem nothing but a strange dream. “I don’t know why I have never read it before.”

  Phillip looked up from his own work and smiled at her. They seemed in a great accord this morning, Cassie thought, each of them engrossed in their books, but always aware of each other’s presence. It felt—comfortable, cozy. Right. It seemed that with the adventure of the runaway carriage things had fallen into place for them.

  She wished the morning could just go on and on forever. She smiled back at him happily.

  “It is a splendid tale,” he agreed. “One of my favorites. Though I would have thought it rather bloodthirsty in parts for a lady’s taste.”

  “Oh, it is the people I find most interesting,” Cassie said. “Though the battle scenes do have their own, er, charm about them. Achilles, Agamemnon, Helen, Athena—they are all so flawed, but so great. As all true heroes are.”

  “And Cassandra? How do you find her?”

  “Poor Cassandra! To be so cursed, and all because of a man’s treachery. Apollo was terribly fickle, was he not?” Just like Lady Lettice’s Jean-Pierre and Louisa’s husband, she reflected.

  Phillip laughed. “I suppose he was, a bit.”

  “More than a bit. It must have been terrible for Cassandra, to always know what was going to happen and yet have no one believe her.” Cassie wondered if she should tell him about her and Antoinette’s midnight encounter with Lady Lettice, but then decided to take a lesson from the Trojan Cassandra and keep silent. He claimed to believe her now, but it was early days yet. Their new accord was still too fresh.

  Later, she would tell him. There would be plenty of time later. Right now she just wanted to be happy. In the bright day, her nighttime fancies of cursed love seemed silly in the extreme.

  She looked back down at her book, but had only been reading for a few minutes when Phillip said, “Do you like it here at Royce Castle, Cassandra?”

  He sounded so uncharacteristically uncertain that she looked up at him in surprise. “Like it here?”

  “Yes. Do you feel—comfortable here? As if you could stay for a while?”

  Cassie wondered what it was he was asking. He could not be trying to find out if she would like to be mistress of Royce Castle! Could he?

  And what would she say, if that was what he was asking?

  She felt very confused.

  “I am sure Aunt Chat would be happy to extend our visit here, if your mother was to invite us,” she answered carefully.

  Phillip took off his reading spectacles, and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Cassandra, about yesterday evening . . .” he began.

  But he did not finish. Antoinette burst through the library door, her expression flushed and startled. “Oh, Cassie!” she cried. “You must come now, at once!”

  Cassie looked at her in bewilderment, her mind momentarily unable to make the switch from Phillip’s puzzling words to Antoinette’s frantic and mysterious summons. “What is it?” she asked.

  “A caller has arrived.”

  “Who? Someone for Lady Royce?”

  “Oh, no. Someone for you. You will never guess who it is!”

  Cassie glanced at Phillip, who, self-possessed once again, replaced his spectacles and said calmly, “Go on, Miss Richards. Our conversation can wait.”

  She nodded, marked her place in her book, and left the library with Antoinette.

  “A caller for me?” she said, still confused. It seemed she was nearly always confused since coming to Royce Castle.

  Antoinette just hurried off down the corridor, forcing Cassie to almost run to keep up with her. When they reached the drawing room, Antoinette opened the door and practically pushed Cassie inside.

  Cassie took one look and froze with shock. Sitting there, chatting with Lady Royce and Aunt Chat, was Mr. Paul Bates, her erstwhile suitor from Jamaica. The one who had come to the docks to propose to her one last time before she set sail for England.

  When he saw her, a wide grin spread across his sun-browned face, and he came over to take her suddenly cold hands into his.

  “My dear Miss Richards!” he said fondly, lifting her frozen fingers to his lips. “My very dear Miss Richards! How splendid to see you again.”

  As Cassie looked up at his familiar face, the face she had seen so often across a card table or a dance floor in Jamaica, all of her old life came rushing back to her. For one moment, it was as if no time had passed at all. She had never come to England, to Royce Castle, had never met Phillip. She was just Miss Richards of Fair Winds Plantation again.

  Oh, dear heaven! Phillip. They were just becoming so close. What would this look like to him, an old suitor suddenly appearing from across the ocean? Would it look like she did not care for Phillip at all, that she had been pining for Mr. Bates all this time?

  “Mr. Bates,” she managed to whisper. “Whatever are you doing here?”

  “Cassie!” Aunt Chat said with a strained little laugh. “What a way to greet someone who has come such a long way to see you.”

  “Of course not,” Cassie answered politely. “It is very good to see someone from home, Mr. Bates. Very good indeed.”

  She peered closer at him. He was rather handsome; she had forgotten that in the mont
hs she had been in England. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with very blue eyes and sun-streaked blond hair. She had enjoyed flirting with him and talking to him when they were neighbors in Jamaica. It was nice to see him again, to remember that old life.

  But she also remembered exactly why it was she had turned down his offer of marriage, even when it would have solved many of her troubles and allowed her to stay in Jamaica. She felt nothing when she looked at him, when he took her hand. She felt no warmth, no quick tingle of excitement, as she did when she was with Phillip.

  And why was Mr. Bates here at all? They had never been such good friends as all that, and her refusal at the docks had been decisive. She had not received so much as a letter from him since, though she had corresponded once or twice with his sister, her friend Mrs. Bishop. There was absolutely no reason for him to have undertaken such a long, deeply inconvenient journey.

  Was there?

  “Mr. Bates. Why are you here?” she repeated quietly.

  He shrugged and gave one of his hearty laughs. But she thought she detected a flash of irritation in his expression, before he covered it in joviality. “I haven’t been to England in years! Thought I should come and visit my grandfather in London. The old fellow can’t have much longer to go, y’know, and he’s quite flush in the pockets. My sister told me you’re living in Bath now, so I thought I’d just pop over and say hello to an old friend.”

  “I’m not in Bath right now,” Cassie said, pointing out the obvious.

  “The housekeeper at Lady Willowby’s house told us we could find you here,” a languid male voice said from over by the fireplace. “Paul said we couldn’t possibly leave England without seeing you, so here we came.”

  Cassie peered past Mr. Bates to see a young man lolling on the settee there, a veritable tulip of fashion in a pink coat and primrose waistcoat. She recognized Mr. Albert Morland, Mr. Bates’ cousin, who had been generally acknowledged to be the most useless man in Jamaica. All he had ever cared about was rum and wagering and fashion. Now here he was, being equally useless in England.

  She sighed, feeling the idyll of these last few days at Royce Castle slipping further away by the second.

  She dreaded having Phillip meet these men. Seeing these people from her past, one of them an old suitor, might make him think she did not care for him. When she did care, so very much.

  But she could not think of that just yet. She had to be polite.

  Her smile felt brittle on her lips as she turned to Mr. Bates’ cousin. “Mr. Morland. Here you are, too. Why, I would almost think myself home again.”

  “How do you do, dear lady?” he drawled. “You are looking as lovely as ever. This dreadful cold climate obviously agrees with you.” He came over to her and bowed politely over her hand.

  “Thank you,” she replied.

  “And looking as—democratic as ever,” Mr. Bates said, giving a disapproving look toward Antoinette, who still stood beside the door. She looked steadily back at him with narrowed ebony eyes.

  His gaze fell away, but he went on in a discontented mutter, “Not very many would allow their maids to come into the drawing room and mingle with guests.”

  Antoinette whirled about and left the room in a flurry of emerald-green robes.

  Cassie gave him a cold glare. Her discomfort and confusion gave way to sheer dislike and anger. “Miss Duvall is not my maid, Mr. Bates, as you well know.” She walked over and sat down beside her aunt, leaving Mr. Bates standing in the middle of the room.

  Mr. Morland snickered, and Mr. Bates’ blue eyes flashed with anger, though his careful smile stayed in place. He came and sat down in a chair next to Lady Royce, who was watching the entire proceedings with a distinctly uncertain air.

  “How long are you planning to stay in England, Mr. Bates?” Cassie asked.

  “We had planned to return to London immediately after we saw you,” Mr. Bates answered. “But your good hostess, Lady Royce, has invited us to stay for a masked ball. Is that not kind of her? We will have plenty of time to reminisce about our long friendship.”

  Cassie was aghast, but she struggled to cover it with an expression of polite blandness. The masked ball was still five days away! And Mr. Bates and Mr. Morland were going to stay for that whole time?

  She would never find any more time to spend with Phillip.

  “I thought you would enjoy that, my dear Miss Richards,” Lady Royce said uncertainly. “It will give you more time with your friends, and allow them to see your charming shepherdess costume.”

  Cassie smiled at her. Lady Royce was a dear, considerate woman. It was not her fault that Cassie was only just remembering how much she had disliked some of the people she had known in Jamaica.

  She remembered the conversation she and Antoinette had had about “planter sorts” when they first arrived at Royce Castle, and almost laughed aloud.

  Laughed bitterly, for it had been funny when she had thought herself done with planters forever. It was not so funny now that there was one here before her.

  “Of course, Lady Royce,” she said. “It was very kind of you. Now, is there any tea left in that pot? I would dearly love a cup.”

  They went on conversing for another half hour, time Cassie filled with questions about friends and acquaintances, about the family who had bought most of her father’s land, and Mrs. Bishop who lived in Negril. Mr. Bates often sent her “meaningful” glances, and she strongly suspected he had some purpose in coming here to see her. A purpose beyond paying respects to a former neighbor.

  She did not want to know what that purpose was, did not want to deal with it. Not just now, anyway, while her emotions were in such disarray.

  Her suspicions were confirmed when, as they all left the drawing room to change for luncheon, Mr. Bates caught her arm and drew her into a quiet corner of the foyer.

  “I must speak with you, Miss Richards,” he whispered.

  “We have been speaking,” Cassie said, feigning confusion. She tried to pull her arm from his grasp.

  He gave her his condescending “dear little woman” smile, the one she remembered him giving his sister all the time. “We must speak alone. There is something I want to ask you.”

  Cassie repressed an irritated sigh. She had known this was coming, a renewal of his “suit.” Perhaps a few months ago, when she was racked with homesickness, she might have accepted, out of sheer desperation. But not now.

  This was her home now, she realized in one flash of consciousness. England was her home. And even if nothing ever happened between Phillip and herself, as she so hoped it would, she would never leave it.

  But Mr. Bates had come a long way to see her. The least she could do was hear him out.

  “Very well,” she said. “Meet me in the drawing room this evening. Before supper. We should have a few moments before the others come down.”

  “Thank you, Miss Richards! You will not be sorry.” Mr. Bates lifted her hand to his lips.

  They felt dry and cold against her skin. Cassie shivered and pulled away, turning to go up the stairs. As she did so, she saw Phillip, standing silently in the library doorway.

  His handsome face was utterly expressionless as he looked at her. Cassie took one step toward him, her mouth open to call his name. But he turned away from her, going back into the library and closing the door quietly.

  Dejected, and more confused than ever, Cassie went on up the stairs to the silent haven of her chamber.

  “I do not like that Mr. Bates at all,” Louisa said, watching out the window of the East Tower as Mr. Bates and his colorful cousin walked about the castle gardens. “Why has he suddenly come here, making calf’s eyes at Cassie and throwing all our good work into disarray?”

  Lady Lettice, who sat by the empty fireplace grate with a book in her hands, nodded in agreement. She seemed oddly content this morning, not at all her usual acerbic self. Instead, she went about with a serene smile, as if a great weight had been lifted from her. Even Angelo was quieter. He had c
eased complaining about food all the time, and now sat on the carpet at Lady Lettice’s feet, playing a quiet game of Patience.

  “I do not like him, either,” Lady Lettice answered. “He seems—desperate. Slippery. He is here for something, needs something. And I fear it is not Miss Richards’ heart he is after.”

  “What could it be?”

  Lady Lettice shrugged. “Money, mayhaps? He seems just the sort to be a terrible gamester. Is Miss Richards wealthy?”

  “I do not know,” said Louisa. “She has some lovely clothes and some nice jewelry. I am not sure I would say she is hugely wealthy, though. Otherwise why would she live with her aunt and not in her own establishment?”

  There was a great knocking and banging on the stairs, and Sir Belvedere emerged through the door. He pushed his visor back and said, “Have you seen those dreadful new visitors, my dear ladies? They are not gentlemen at all, I would say. They are assuredly up to something dastardly.”

  “How do you know?” Louisa asked him. “Did you discover something about them?”

  “Not yet. I have not had the time.”

  “We do not like them, either,” said Lady Lettice. She tapped one jewel-bedecked hand thoughtfully on the arm of her chair. “We shall just have to go spy on them! Discover what they are about.”

  Louisa’s eyes sparkled. She truly loved nothing better than a spot of intrigue! “Yes! Let us go right now and search their rooms, while they are out in the garden. Or perhaps we should eavesdrop on them while they are unaware.”

  So the four of them joined hands and vanished in a flash from the East Tower, only to emerge a moment later behind the tall hedges of the garden maze.

  Mr. Bates and Mr. Morland, completely unaware that they were being watched, sat on the marble benches at the center of the maze, placidly smoking and chatting, feeling quite pleased with themselves indeed.

  “She is as good as mine, and her land with her,” Mr. Bates said, flicking some of his cheroot ashes into the gardener’s carefully tended chrysanthemums. “All I have to do is reach out and scoop her up.”