Spirited Brides

by Amanda McCabe

  Phillip, who had been quietly listening and holding her hands, said, “Is there something—special about your land?”

  “To me, yes, but surely not to anyone else. It is a small parcel. The only thing I can think of is that it borders Mr. Bates’ own plantation, though surely that would not have brought him so far to see me. He could have just written with an offer.” She shook her head, confused and exhausted, and she could feel the tears starting again. “I just do not know!”

  “Sh,” Phillip answered. He rose up on his knees and put his arms around her, drawing her close.

  Cassie buried her face in the clean, starched scent of his cravat. She had never felt safer or more cherished in all her life.

  He rested his cheek against her hair. “You needn’t be frightened, my dear Cassandra. No matter what he wants, he cannot get close to you ever again, I promise.”

  She wound her arms about his neck and held on as if he were the most precious jewel and she feared someone would snatch him away.

  Suddenly, the drawing room door was flung open, breaking into the perfect stillness of the moment. Cassie pulled away from Phillip and looked over to see Lady Royce and Aunt Chat watching them with wide, interested eyes.

  “Oh! Er . . .” stammered Lady Royce, looking away.

  “Perhaps we should go out and come back in again,” Aunt Chat suggested.

  “Of course not,” said Phillip, standing up slowly. His face was utterly expressionless. “Miss Richards has had an unpleasant experience. I’m sure she is very glad to see you.”

  She would have been glad to see them, if only they had come in just a little later. But she gave them a quavering smile and just said, “Yes, indeed.”

  Aunt Chat hurried across the room to put her arm around Cassie. “Antoinette told us something of it. My poor dear! Are you quite all right now?”

  “That dreadful Mr. Bates,” said Lady Royce. She regained her composure and came to take Cassie’s other hand in hers. “I cannot believe I let him and his foppish cousin eat some of Cook’s best seedcake.”

  “Now that you are both here, I will just go and make certain Mr. Bates and his cousin are leaving,” Phillip said. He bowed to the ladies and went out the door with a resolute set to his shoulders.

  “You needn’t worry about a thing now, my dear,” Lady Royce said, patting Cassie’s hand. “My son will take care of everything. That Mr. Bates shall never bother us again!”

  Phillip did not bother to knock on Mr. Bates’ door. He merely pushed the wood aside and stood in the portal with his arms crossed across his chest.

  He did not trust himself to do anything else, such as speak or walk across the room, not with the memory of Cassie’s tearstained face in his mind. And anger, sharp and white-hot, unlike anything he had ever felt before, coursed through his veins. If he came within ten feet of Mr. Bates, he knew that he would kill him with his bare hands.

  And that would be the height of rudeness, to murder someone beneath his mother’s roof.

  He stood there, watching Mr. Bates and his cousin as they hurried about the room, tossing things into valises. His expression, his entire being, felt as if it had been turned to stone.

  Mr. Bates straightened up from his valise to glare at Phillip, his sun-browned face red.

  “The least you could do is send a servant to do the repacking,” Mr. Bates said, coming closer to Phillip than was strictly prudent on his part.

  Phillip set his jaw. “I fear all the servants are otherwise occupied. Some of the footmen will be here shortly to be certain you depart, though.”

  “We have never been treated in such a fashion in our lives!” Mr. Bates growled, taking another step closer. “If this is English hospitality . . .”

  That did it. Phillip’s fragile hold on his temper snapped, and his hands shot out to grab Mr. Bates by his coat front. “How dare you come to my home, uninvited, and insult a young lady in my drawing room? You’re a lout and a bully, and I ought to thrash you within an inch of your life.” Strength Phillip did not know he possessed flowed into his fists, giving him a viselike grip on the larger man.

  Phillip wasn’t the only one who was surprised. Mr. Bates’ eyes widened, as he struggled to release himself. Behind him, his cousin fluttered about ineffectually, his face pale above his pink coat.

  “It—it was not like that,” Mr. Bates managed to gasp. “That stupid chit . . .”

  Phillip shook Mr. Bates by his coat until the man’s head wobbled on his thick neck.

  “Phillip!” his mother’s shocked voice cried, breaking into his haze of anger.

  He glanced back over his shoulder to see her standing in the doorway, her eyes wide.

  “Phillip, please,” she said quietly. “Come away, now. These—people are not worth it.”

  Phillip gave Mr. Bates one last shake, and released him. Mr. Bates fell back, trembling. “If you ever come near Miss Richards again, thrash you is exactly what I will do,” he warned. “Now, leave my house.”

  Without another word, he turned, took his mother’s arm, and left the room, not even glancing back.

  Mr. Bates watched him go with fury blazing in his eyes.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Well, you certainly made a mess of that, cousin,” Mr. Morland said, lolling back against the squabs of the carriage as they raced down the road, away from Royce Castle. “Such a wasted journey. We could have been halfway back across the ocean by now!”

  Mr. Bates stared fixedly out the carriage window, his sun-browned face red with the force of his anger. His hands clasped and unclasped into fists. “It was not wasted,” he growled. “I will get what I came here for.”

  “How? You frightened Miss Richards out of her wits, and we were not even there four hours. You should have listened to me when I tried to give you some advice about wooing a lady. And that Lord Royce will never let you past the gates again!” Mr. Morland gingerly reached up to touch his shoulder, where Lord Royce had grasped it to push him into the carriage.

  “I was perhaps too—overeager with Miss Richards,” Mr. Bates acknowledged in a grudging tone. “The stupid girl wanted poetry, I suppose, and pretty words instead of plain honesty. But this is not finished, by any means!”

  Mr. Morland looked at him curiously. “Do you mean to say that you told her what is truly going on? That our grandfather thinks you are an irresponsible lout—which you are—and that your inheritance from him depends on your making a success of your plantation? And that you have gambled away over half your land, and need Miss Richards’ property to begin replacing it?”

  Mr. Bates glared. “I did not tell her any of that! But if she had just sold me that land, my troubles would be over. I could recoup before the old man finds out anything! He would think I was the most responsible man in the West Indies.”

  “But Miss Richards will not sell you so much as a blade of grass, especially since you behaved like such a boor.”

  Mr. Bates’ eyes narrowed. “The land will be mine anyway, once she is my wife. And I will not have to pay a farthing for it.”

  Mr. Morland sat straight up in surprise, forgetting his stylish languor. “Your wife! She is going to marry you?”

  “She will, once I put my new plan into action. Listen to this, cousin . . .” He leaned forward and outlined his ideas to the ever-more incredulous Mr. Morland.

  Neither of them saw the small, pale figure huddled beneath one of the seats. Angelo clasped his velvet cap over his mouth, giggling merrily in his mind.

  Oh, just wait until Lady Lettice hears of this! he thought. He would be set up with sugared almonds for all eternity.

  “Are you feeling better, Cassie?” Antoinette asked, putting a tray holding a glass of milk and some biscuits down on Cassie’s bedside table.

  Cassie leaned back against her pillows and smiled up at Antoinette. She had been trying to find distraction in a new novel, but the events of the evening kept overshadowing the plot of the book, and so she laid it aside.

  “
I am feeling better,” she said, reaching for one of the biscuits. “It is good to know that Mr. Bates is gone and we will not see him here again.”

  Antoinette sat down on the edge of the bed. “I should never have let you go alone to meet with him, no matter what you said. I was not a very good friend.”

  “No, Antoinette!” Cassie cried. “You are the best of friends. I was simply foolish. I thought I could deal alone with whatever Mr. Bates had to say. Clearly I was wrong.”

  “And very fortunate that Lord Royce came along when he did.”

  Cassie smiled at the memory of Phillip appearing in the drawing room, like a knight of old defending his lady fair. “As you say.”

  Antoinette fell silent, and for a long moment the only sound in the room was the crackling of flames in the grate. Then she said, “What really happened with Mr. Bates, Cassie?”

  “I am not exactly sure. He seemed all right at first—friendly, and full of reminiscences about Jamaica. Then I heard what he had really come here for.”

  “Your land.”

  “Yes. My land. It would have been the sensible thing to sell it to him, of course. I will not need it. Yet the thought of him owning something that had once been my father’s . . .” Cassie shuddered. “It did not seem right. I tried to be diplomatic in my answer, but he became extremely angry very quickly. There was a look in his eyes that frightened me, and when he tore my sleeve I—I screamed. That was when Phillip, I mean Lord Royce, came in.”

  Antoinette nodded. “It is a very good thing he came when he did.”

  “Indeed. I would not have thought that Mr. Bates would attack me in the very midst of a crowded house, but I knew from that look in his eyes that he was capable of anything. I do not know why I welcomed him for even a moment!”

  Antoinette reached over and squeezed her hand. “Mr. Bates is obviously accustomed to getting what he wants, and he is ruthless.” She looked down, a dull red flush spreading across her coffee-colored cheekbones. “Do you remember Henriette, who was a house slave at his plantation?”

  “The one who drowned a couple of years ago?”

  “There were whispers that it was not an accident.”

  Cassie frowned. “I do not remember hearing that!”

  “Of course you would not have. I heard it among my mother’s people. They do not approve of my living with you, but they will still gossip with me. But the point is that I knew of the rumor, and that is why I am at fault for letting you meet with him. I should never have let my distaste for the man keep me from protecting you.”

  Cassie felt very shaken and fragile. She clung to Antoinette’s hand. “I still say it is not your fault at all. Not one whit! He would not have attempted anything here. And besides, he is gone now. Is he not?”

  “Yes. He is gone.” Antoinette kissed her cheek and stood up. “Drink your milk, now, Cassie, and try to sleep. We are to go have the final fittings on our costumes tomorrow afternoon, and you do not want to look tired and pale for that!” She gave a light laugh that was obviously meant to be reassuring, but was just as obviously false.

  Cassie responded with a weak smile and pulled the bedclothes up to her chin. “I promise I will sleep, if you will, too. Good night, Antoinette.”

  After her friend left, Cassie lay awake, staring out at her firelit chamber. She was not afraid of Mr. Bates, not here in Royce Castle, with Phillip and all her friends, both human and spirit, around her. But she did feel very angry that he had come here and disturbed this happy time. He had no right to frighten her and Antoinette, or to come into her life at all.

  For this had been a very happy time indeed, she realized, the happiest she had known since coming to England. Maybe the happiest she had known ever. She loved Royce Castle and the wild landscape of Cornwall. She liked having her aunt and her friends all around her, and walking on the shore, and having books to read and horses to ride.

  Most of all, she loved being with Phillip. Walking with him, talking to him, and even just sitting in the library being quiet with him filled her with a warm, secure sense of well-being and joy.

  When she had first met him, she never would have imagined she could feel this way! She had thought him a stuffy, cynical scholar, nothing like the hearty outdoorsmen she was used to in Jamaica. But now she saw the truth so clearly, both about Phillip and about Mr. Bates and the men like him. They had to make the people around them, especially the women, be weak so that they could feel strong. Yet Phillip was strong, innately so, and in such a quiet way that he never had to prove with bluster or violence. His kindness—to his mother, his servants, to Antoinette, and to Cassie—was the largest part of that strength.

  She did not know why she had not been able to see that from the very beginning.

  But she could acknowledge now that she loved him, that there could be no other man like him in all the world. If he could return even a portion of her affection, she could never ask for anything more.

  Cassie smiled and closed her eyes, finally feeling that she was at peace and could sleep. She was warm and secure here.

  As she was just about to drift into slumber, though, she heard a rattle in the corridor outside her room. Then there was a short silence and another rattle.

  She felt no fear; Mr. Bates could not possibly have gotten into the castle. But she did feel quite curious. She slipped out of bed, put on her dressing gown and slippers, and went out into the corridor.

  Sir Belvedere was there, marching smartly up and down past her door in his armor. When he saw her, he stopped and gave her a salute.

  “Sir Belvedere!” Cassie said quietly, trying not to wake anyone else, though how they could have slept through the rattling was a mystery. “What are you doing?”

  “I am guarding your door, fair lady,” he answered.

  “Guarding my door?”

  “In case those Jamaican ruffians return.” Sir Belvedere shook his head. “Those two are most untrustworthy, my lady.”

  “I certainly agree! It is very kind of you to keep a watch for me.”

  “I am most happy to do it.”

  “Where are Louisa and Lady Lettice tonight?”

  “They are in the East Tower, talking about shoes and jewels. They have been chattering on about them for hours.” He pulled a very masculine mystified face. “How can ladies talk about such things as shoes for so long?”

  Cassie shrugged. There was just no way to explain to a man, even one who had been dead for five hundred years, the deep fascination a pair of new shoes could hold. “Well, good night, Sir Belvedere. And thank you again.”

  “You may rest easily, dear lady. I am ever vigilant!” Then he set off on his march again.

  Cassie went back into her chamber and crossed the room to close the draperies at the window. A glimpse of a figure in the garden below stopped her, and she paused with her hand on the cool satin.

  It was Phillip, standing in the garden within sight of her window, his tall figure limned in silvery moonlight. He waved up at her, and she blew him a kiss, laughing.

  She opened up the casement and leaned out to call, “How very secure I will feel tonight, Phillip, with both my window and my door guarded!”

  He came closer, until he stood just under her window. “Your door?”

  “I just found Sir Belvedere marching up and down in the corridor.”

  “The ghost?” Phillip’s tone was rather doubtful.

  “He does have a sword.”

  “A real one? Or a phantom one?”

  “I have no idea. It looks rather substantial.” Cassie feared she was grinning like a simpleton at this silly conversation.

  “Well, I just wanted to make sure you were quite all right and that you were able to sleep.”

  “I was a bit anxious at first,” she admitted. “But I feel fine now. Better than fine, in fact. I am sure that I will sleep very well.”

  “Mr. Bates cannot come back,” Phillip said. “There are guards all around the castle.”

  “I am not afraid
,” Cassie answered truthfully.

  “Good. I would never want you to be afraid.”

  They watched each other in sweet silence for a moment, a moment that seemed to stretch into eternity yet was over in an instant. Then Phillip smiled and waved at her once more. “Shall we go riding tomorrow after breakfast?”

  “Oh, yes. I would like that.”

  “I would, too. There are some—things I would like to discuss with you. Good night, Cassandra.”

  “Good night.” My love, she added silently.

  “And you are certain that is what Mr. Bates said?” Lady Lettice asked Angelo, leaning over him intently.

  “He is coming back during the masked ball to kidnap Cassie?” Louisa said, appalled.

  Angelo nodded firmly, the bells on his cap tinkling. “That is what he told that overdressed cousin of his. His grandfather will take away Mr. Bates’ inheritance, which is a very large one, unless Mr. Bates can prove he is a reformed, responsible character by making a success of his plantation. And gambling away a portion of that plantation is decidedly not responsible.”

  “No, indeed,” Lady Lettice murmured. “So he wants Cassie’s land to begin to replace what he lost.”

  “He will kidnap her and force her to marry him in order to get it. And to have his revenge on her for refusing him, as well,” Angelo said. Then he burst into tears, wiping at his streaming eyes with the velvet sleeve of his doublet. “Angelo doesn’t want the evil man to kidnap Cassie!”

  “Oh, do cease crying, Angelo,” Lady Lettice said. “He will not kidnap her. We will see to that. It was very clever of you to get into the carriage with them.”

  Angelo sniffled, his tears dissolving into a rather pleased expression. “It was?”

  “Indeed it was,” Louisa agreed. “Now, it is five days until the masked ball. Plenty of time to come up with a plan of our own.” She gave a merry little peal of laughter. “It is certain that Mr. Bates will never darken our door again after that night!”