By Way Of A Wager

by Solomon, Hayley Ann

  For an instant Cassandra was struck dumb. Then she laughed. “You can’t fool me sir! Play the masquerade if you will, but you’ll not deceive me in so witless a manner!”

  “No?”

  “No! You’re no more the duke than I am the Duke of Cumberland’s duchess!”

  A smile hovered around His Grace’s mouth.

  “You seem very sure, my dear.”

  Miss Beaumaris laughed shyly. “I am. Forgive me for noticing, sir, but you’re hardly what might be called a dandied fop.”

  St. John’s eyes turned to steel. “And the duke is a dandified fop?”

  “Why, yes. Everything I’ve seen and heard of the man indicates he is merely a gilded lily. A shallow social butterfly so steeped in his own self-confidence that he dares defy all convention.”

  “Is that so very terrible? I can think of worse sins than that of defying convention.”

  “Not if overweening pride is at the base of it, my lord!”

  The duke missed a step. “Perhaps you think too much!” His tone held a fleeting note of bitterness unlost on Cassandra.

  “Why sir, do not take me amiss! Perhaps I’m being presumptive.. . .”

  Her voice faltered as she watched him, his eyes shuttered once more. His Grace, the Duke of Wyndham felt suddenly cold. Years of unquestioning adulation had blinded him to the fact that he could be viewed in less than an admirable light. Coming from whom it did, the revelation was no pleasant shock.

  He broke the silence, steering her expertly clear of the couple in front.

  “Not presumptive, no. Misinformed, perhaps?”

  Cassandra tossed her head doubtfully.

  “I doubt it, sir! The man is a warrantable rake! I have it on the best authority that his boots are shone with champagne and his silk stockings are all clocked!”

  The duke relaxed, remembering her innocence. She did, after all, have a penchant for rakes, as he well remembered. “And that makes him a rake?”

  Cassandra smiled. “Not just that, no ... I’ve heard tell that he’s had a dozen or so flirtations over the years and not one of them serious. When one thinks of how mamas have pushed to catch him and to no avail, it fair makes one weep!”

  Her tone had lost its severity, indicating that she was aware that the mamas, too, were ridiculous. Miles laughed.

  “Surely your sense of justice admits that his flirtations have never extended to the young and innocent? Life is dull. Sometimes, my dear, deadly dull.” His voice assumed a fleeting and uncharacteristic inflection of grimness before changing once more to its intonation of amused tolerance.

  Cassandra smiled in delight. “See, sir? You are speaking of him in the third person. I knew you were not he!”

  The duke inclined his head and continued with his theme.

  “Surely you’ll allow us fellows a little light relief? Fun at the expense of those ever-present mothers?” Cassandra’s eyes danced as he continued. “A dandy, maybe, but a fop? That’s a bit too strong!”

  She allowed a small giggle to escape her otherwise very proper countenance.

  “You still don’t fool me, you know, sir! But I grant you have a point. We ladies tend not to think of the gentleman’s point of view. It must be rather tiresome trying to avoid entrapment and other such hazards.” Her partner looked quizzical but bowed in assent. Feeling she had made a significant concession, she once more took up the offensive. “But champagne? Come, sir, how do you explain that?”

  “Why easily, my dear. If he’s the type who delights in the groveling sycophant, what better way to get him to lick his boots?”

  The repartee was taking its course, allowing Cassandra to relax into an easy familiarity that stripped away her reserve. Never before had she felt this at ease with a gentleman. Never before, that is, except with the gentleman of her dreams. Too much to hope and believe, perhaps, that they were one.

  Common sense, certainly, refused to allow her to believe that this comforting, laughing savior was the notorious Duke of Wyndham as he proclaimed. She imagined the duke to be positively in his dotage, fat and languorous from all the years of surfeit and pampering.

  Nevertheless, despite her accusations, she allowed that it was a long time—a very long time—since the duke had been known to have anything to do with females of her class. Whispers abounded of his associations with the demimonde and with women who were safely wedded, but she could not recall a time in the recent past that he had actually distinguished any young eligible with a dance.

  As she whirled around the room, her partner guiding her with an expertness hitherto undreamed of, she could scarcely be blamed for not taking in the poisonous glances cast her way. Were she to notice the attention she was attracting, she might well have set it down to the circumstance of her dancing at all than to the identity of her mysterious consort.

  All too soon, the tumultuous strains of violin and harpsichord died away, leaving Cassandra looking through the mask and into the devastating eyes of her protector. His eyebrows were cocked in such a delicious mixture of tenderness and amusement that Cassandra quite trembled with the newness of her feelings. His arms had dropped to his sides, but the warmth of his touch stayed with her, lingering like the scent of jasmine long after it is picked.

  “My turn, my dear.”

  The earl of Glenby cast an impudent look at Cassandra’s partner before cutting him out and demanding the forthcoming dance with her. It was on the tip of her lips to rebut him, but a warning glance from her comely partner reminded her of her social duties. It would not do to make a dramatic emergence from full mourning, then dance only with an unknown.

  Accepting the unspoken communication with a smile of gratitude, she clasped the earl’s hand with a pretty acquiescence and permitted herself to be led into the newly forming set. The obliging Glenby set her at ease with a great deal of chatter and an idle attempt at flirtation, but her thoughts were not to be engaged.

  Images of high-arched brows, a mocking smile, and snowy sarcenet edged with lace crowded her mind, superseded only by thoughts of piercing dark eyes and the twinkling lights of tenderness. Twice she missed her step and twice the earl set her right, laughing at her discomfiture. She could not, she knew, be making the very best of company. She pulled herself together with an effort. Out of deference to her partner she owed it to him to show a little interest.

  He was talking now, his words seeming to Cassandra to take an interminable time to reach her ears. Not for the first time she sighed at being so small. The earl was looking down at her with such saucy mischief that she was startled.

  All at once, the words “St. John” and “Wyndham” rolled into her ears like echoes of her own consciousness. What could the man be saying? Paying closer attention, Cassandra realized at last, that he was gently teasing her. Teasing her because she had snared the unsnarable St. John!

  With dawning comprehension, Cassandra began to understand the gist of the man’s talk and with it the implication that she had in fact been dancing with Wyndham. The unmasking would surely verify this, but the thought came as a shock. He had not seemed not to mind her remarks, but how could she tell? How had she come to be so addle-brained as to talk of the duke in that spirited vein? What, again, must he think of her?

  So occupied was she with these disturbing thoughts that she failed to notice the gentleman’s departure as the set drew to its inevitable close.

  FIVE

  “Well young lady, you’ve got a lot of explaining to do!”

  Violet Harrington positively hissed as she spat out the words, heaving herself onto the great white cushions of the baronial chaise. Her feathers were limp, having spent half the evening in a state of unseasonable humidity. Without so much as a backward glance at the two outriders who’d so sturdily helped her into the equipage, she tucked at the folds of her voluminous dress and admonished her daughter to do the same.

  Squashed in the corner seat of the chaise, Cassandra closed her eyes. She had no wish to face her irate relative,
nor yet for a further distasteful scene. The strange enchantment she felt hung about her like a mantle and refused to be shaken off so soon.

  It had been a long and emotional evening. There was, too, the problem of Harrington to contemplate. For all her patience, the situation was now untenable. She would have to make some decisions in that regard and soon. Cassandra reflected with resignation that the time had come for her to make arrangements to leave the protection of the manor that had once been her home.

  “Well? I am waiting!”

  Cassandra remembered that she was the granddaughter of an earl and drew herself up in uncustomary haughtiness. “My dear Mrs. Harrington, if you’re referring, as I think you are, to that disgraceful scene Sir Robert felt impelled to enact, I can only say I have nothing to explain. An apology from that quarter might be pleasing, too!”

  Cassandra was in no mood to be toyed with, and the defiance that sprung so readily from her lips was antagonism born of long days of mourning and numerous heartrending attempts to be conciliatory. She felt compelled, all at once, to release the rage that had been welling up inside her like an ugly, festering wound. Since the moment of the Harringtons’ arrival on the scene, she’d imposed a rigid regime of self-control upon her being.

  Fighting the urge to have the insinuating people bodily removed from her home, she had turned a blind eye to the desecration of her grandfather’s dream. Most of all, she had kept the silent pain of Frances’s death or imprisonment locked in her soul, unable to share the misery or even express her doubts. The Countess Jersey had noted how passionately Cassandra defended the belief that he still lived. What she did not adequately perceive was the agony of uncertainty that daily racked her being.

  “Don’t be impertinent, girl!” Violet Harrington’s voice grew shrill with anger. The night had not been a success for her. First, her son had made the most dismal mull over winning Cassandra to his side, a circumstance that was imperative if they were to maintain their newfound standard of living. Second, London’s most eligible party had been witness to the whole affair. Third—most calamitous of all—he had looked, to all the world, like a man in love. Nothing could more have overset her plans for Cassandra.

  “Sir Robert is your guardian, my dear. Like it or not, you had best come around to that notion and fast. If you act like a fast woman and allow yourself to be whisked around the ballroom in a shameless waltz, you cannot expect him to be pleased. Elise, don’t slouch against the cushions. It does not become a lady!”

  Cassandra ignored the ugly pout of protest from the young Miss Harrington’s painted lips. She was finally outraged beyond belief. “Sir Robert’s pleasure has little to do with me! I hesitate to tell you this, dear aunt—no you’re not that, are you?—but I will not and cannot tolerate his treatment of me. To say the least, his behavior more befits a cad than a gentleman! Had I anywhere to stay tonight short of causing a scandal, believe me I would not be sitting here right now. Tomorrow, just as soon as I have made arrangements, I shall leave.”

  Her chin tilted in a way that spelled danger to those of her intimate acquaintance. Normally her nature was even-keeled, but the auburn lights of her hair were an apt reminder that beneath the sunny countenance lay a streak of untamed demon. She would not and could not be abused. She had reached her stormy limits and her soul cried out for a fight. Tonight, she’d see to it that her room was kept locked and an abigail slept on a pallet beside her bed. There had been something not quite sane in the way Sir Robert had stared at her earlier that evening. Something she did not like at all. She shivered.

  “Get out!” Violet’s face was suffused with puce as she spat out the words. “Stop the coach, you fool!” She rapped on the windowpane with the stem of her fan, but to no avail. The torrents of rain were remorseless, making it impossible for the groom or outriders to hear anything of what was said inside the barouche. Turning angrily, she put her head out the window, only to see the last of her hat whisked away in the raging skies.

  “I said halt! Can’t you stop, you goddamn idiot?” She was bellowing now, in a manner most unbecoming to a lady.

  Cassandra’s irrepressible sense of humor began getting the better of her. “Stop it, Aunt! If you expect me to dismount here, you’ve got another think coming! You’ll just have to bear my company for the next twelve hours, I’m afraid. After that I can only hasten to assure you the less we see of one another, the better happy I will be!”

  This strident appeal was lost on the Harringtons. Mother and daughter alike had taken up shrieking, much to the acute embarrassment of the groom and outriders stationed but a few feet down the path.

  For the first time, Cassandra realized just what sort of a predicament she was in. Clearly, both Violet and Elise were serious in their intention of throwing her out of the barouche. Struck dumb by the enormity of what was happening, she scarcely knew how to respond. One thing she was certain of, though. An abject apology would not be wrested from her lips whatever the provocation. Rightly or wrongly, she’d rather die than yield to their vulgar and insidious pressure.

  “Try for a little decorum, Mrs. Harrington! I have said I will leave tomorrow and that I will. There is simply no need for this undignified display.”

  “Undignified!” Violet Harrington fairly blustered with annoyance. “Who do you think you are, Miss High and Mighty, to treat me thus? Oh yes, I’ve seen the stare of your friends and the way they turn their noses up at dear Elise and me! Why, I daresay if Robert didn’t hold the vowels of any number of the young men about this town, he too, would be treated thus! Your father may have been a viscount and your grandfather an earl, but just remember one thing, my girl, they are long gone and Robert is the earl now!”

  She lurched forward as the chaise at last came to its grinding halt. “Now get out! If you’re going to leave tomorrow, I’d as lief as have the pleasure of evicting you!” She spat in fury. “Hussy! I wonder what the great almighty duke would think of you now? You and your missish, prim gowns and your silly cameo necklaces! Who do you think you are kidding? I just wish he could see it!” She laughed a mirthless laugh and literally thrust Cassandra from the barouche. “Walk home, if you can, my fair lady. I daresay, after all, that the new earl might be delighted to let you in.”

  Cassandra would stand the treatment no more. This last sally revolted her to the core, and she found she was rather more reconciled to the idea of dismounting. A few more minutes in their company may well have sullied her very being.

  Without a further word—what, after all, could she say?—she opened the carriage and began to dismount. The thunderbolts, she found, had progressed to a deluge from the heavens, rain pouring unstintingly in sheets. Steadfastly ignoring the craven desire to climb precipitously back into the chaise and shut the door, she jumped neatly out. By dint of great care, she avoided an enormous mud puddle to the right of her foot.

  It was to her credit, indeed, that she summoned sufficient strength of will to neither cry nor beg sympathy from the two ladies seated with so much ceremony and so very little dignity inside the waterlogged conveyance. Rain was trickling down the misted windowpanes, leaving a faint impression of two darkly shadowed figures within. The Gothic image was marred somewhat by the flapping of gilded ribbons against the carriage side. Elise was forced to open the door to retrieve the offending lace and so spoiled the otherwise high drama of the event.

  Despite her predicament, Cassandra could not help but see the funny side of this scenario, likening herself to the proverbial damsel in distress. Only, she chided herself, it was not so funny and there was no handsome prince hovering somewhere appropriately nearby. When her mind started playing games, featuring a certain enigmatic gentleman with hair black with curls and steely eyes that softened in turns to liquid gold, she drew herself up sharply.

  With a defiant lift to the shoulders, she stood back to let the carriage continue along its distant way. In this kind of darkness and inclement weather it was an arduous ride from Curzon Street to the more ponderous
address at Kensington. Perhaps better, she thought with a wry attempt at humor, to be spared the trial of such a journey.

  Her brief reverie was interrupted by the sound of a gruff farewell and a murmured apology. The groom, it seemed, was loath to leave her out there in the bitterly cold, wet dark. It was strange how fast the humidity of earlier had changed to a whipping cold. It was more than his job was worth, though, to disobey his madame. Not when she was in one of her moods. Nevertheless, he was bound to recognize quality when he saw it, and this lady was undoubtedly that.

  Responding to his mute appeal, Cassandra found herself shouting reassurance out into the night air. It was all she could do to make herself heard over the blistering wind and pelting rain. “Never fear, Adams,” she yelled. “I’ll make do. Be off!”

  Doffing his cap in silent obeisance, he picked up the reins and coaxed the horses forward. Thus it was that some time before the crier called the hours of morn, Miss Cassandra Beaumaris, erstwhile granddaughter to the fifth earl of Surrey, found herself alone, homeless, and soaking wet.

  Covering her thin muslin gown with the velvet folds of her cloak, she dubiously tested the ground with the tips of her toes. As she suspected, the soil was rapidly turning into liquid mud. Not an auspicious start to a tramp that might lead anywhere. Where was she to go, after all? If she tarried on this road much longer, she might be taken for a serving wench and whipped for her trouble.

  Anyone looking at her now could be forgiven the mistake. It would be hard to believe that she was not some brazen hussy out on a lover’s tryst. Without benefit of maid and presenting the type of bedraggled appearance she did, she looked quite wanton. While it was true that some ladies of fashion had taken to dampening their undergarments to affect a “clinging” appearance, this was going too far.

  The weather was offering no respite. Indeed, by the sound of the thunder, it was worsening. Cassandra shivered, casting aside the protection of the cloak. It was no longer any use to her, waterlogged as it was. Laden with frosty icicles, it had been sitting heavy, wet, and cold on her shoulders. Just a burden. She needed to be light on her feet if she were to run in this rain for shelter. A tree, perhaps? A cottage? She judged by the distance they had traversed that she must be but a few steps from Grosvenor Square.