The Conquest of Lady Cassandra (10 page)

“How generous of him. Perhaps your parents hoped to redeem her.”

“You sound bitter. Your aunt did not seem to mind how society viewed her, so there is no reason for you to do so.”

No, no reason. Yet she did.

“Perhaps it is not your aunt’s reception that makes you frown, but your own,” he said.

She stopped admiring the furnishings and stared at him.
He had not said that with sarcasm or cruelty. He had merely made an observation that shot like an arrow into her heart.

“I think you are correct.” She feigned a lightness of humor. “However, I confess that it is more envy causing the frown. My aunt never married, and lived freely, and somehow it was accepted. Perhaps the world dared not forbid her to do as she wished.”

He strolled to where she stood near a window. He appeared to be giving the matter some honest thought. “It was a different time. Also, everyone knew she did not marry because her fiancé died.”

“Ah, of course. That is the difference. She almost did it right, while I refused to from the start. Yes, that explains everything, I expect.”

He gazed at her too seriously. That made her uncomfortable. And tingly and silly too.

A servant entered then, and held the door wide. A gray-haired man walked in. Everything about him, from his formal bearing to his serious expression, from his conservative coats to his spectacles, bespoke his profession. The solicitor had arrived.

Y
ates introduced Mr. Prebles, who had descended from his labors above punctually, much as he performed every service. Mr. Prebles bowed deeply to Cassandra, then stood there just like the footman did, near the wall, awaiting directions.

“You are the earl’s solicitor, Mr. Prebles?” Cassandra asked.

“I am so honored, yes.”

She turned to Yates with a skeptical expression. “Would it not make more sense to find a third party who puts neither of us at a disadvantage?”

“Mr. Prebles, Lady Cassandra is worried that should this agreement not work out to my liking, you will prove less than objective in its resolution. It is a fair concern, I think.”

“It is indeed, sir. Let me reassure you, Lady Cassandra, that whatever is agreed to today will be how the matter is handled by me. I have been the earl’s solicitor as long as I
have due to my strict honesty, which, as the world knows, the earl practices himself.”

Yates thought Prebles might have been good enough to add “as does his son” to the end of the little speech. The truth was that Prebles did not know the son well. Even their months sequestered with accounts and deeds had not forged anything resembling ease with each other. Of course, Prebles had been the one sent to the son to deliver a father’s scolds in years past, about gambling, about women, about politics, about—many things.

Cassandra dug into her reticule and extracted the little velvet sack again. She spilled its contents on a table set beside a window. Gold glinted. Lights flew from the two diamonds that would rest on a woman’s earlobes, and three sapphires dangled on gold filigree below each one.

“The understanding, Mr. Prebles, is that you will hold these, and the amount that Ambury bid on them, for thirty days at the most, until we are satisfied that the earrings should go to Ambury and the money to me. If you do not so hear, on the thirty-first day, the earrings are to be returned to me.”

Prebles looked at Yates for confirmation, then picked up the earrings and returned them to their little sack.

Yates walked over and handed him the wrapped banknotes.

After Prebles made his retreat, Cassandra began to make hers. “You did not ask why I did not bring the ring,” she said.

“To have asked would have invited an answer that Prebles did not need to hear.” Yates had not even thought about the ring. He had left it after the auction as surety, to be sold if he did not pay up.

She gazed around the chamber once more, not giving the answer, perhaps because he still had not asked the question. “I always admired this drawing room,” she said. “Also the gallery next to the ballroom. I remember during my first
Season how there were palms placed near the north corners of it when your family hosted a ball. More than one girl had her first kiss behind them.”

“Are you feeling nostalgic?”

“I did not say I had my first kiss behind them.”

Unless Lakewood had lied, she had, however. For an instant, Yates saw her again at one of those balls, in a gown very different in style from what she wore today. It was as blue as her eyes, and shaped like an hourglass instead of the current narrow columns of fabric. Her hair had been dressed in tight ringlets, not today’s natural curls. Matrons gossiped that she painted those lips even back then.

“Come with me,” he said. “We will revisit the scene of your first worldly triumphs.”

“My first Season was hardly triumphant,” she objected. However, she joined him as he left the chamber. “You were the one scoring victories that spring. I daresay poor Amanda Stockton has never recovered from her minute in that corner.”

“You know about that, do you?”

“Everyone knew, Ambury. She swooned, for goodness’ sake.”

“It was only one kiss.”

“It ruined her for life. Her suitors seemed sadly ordinary after that.” She glanced over at him and laughed. “Stop that preening.”

“I am not preening. I have been told I kiss better than most, but I am astonished to find myself accused of ruining Miss Stockton’s chance for happiness with another man.”

“Better than most? Odd that I never heard that rumor, you conceited man.”

The gallery ran the length of the house, flanking the southern ballroom on its northern side. Like the one at Elmswood Manor, it held some portraits of ancestors and family members, but these were the more recent ones.

Nothing had changed here since that Season six years ago.
Cassandra paced down the polished wooden floor, glancing this way and that, taking it all in. She paused at one of the portraits that caught her eye.

“My grandfather, on my father’s side,” he offered, standing next to her.

“He is handsome, but he appears a bit stern.”

“That is a family trait.”

“With all but you,” she teased, walking on. She looked over her shoulder and gave the portrait one last glance. “And yet—one wonders, Ambury, if you will not turn stern too in time. Staid as well, as is also the family trait. I think I see it in you already. I doubt you would kiss Miss Stockton behind the palms now.”

Her observation nettled him. Perhaps she was right and he was turning a bit stern. She poked at an awareness, emphasized of late by duty and obligations, that the best years of youth had passed, along with its freedoms.

They were near the spot where those palms had stood. It was not a moment to look at her, but he did, just as the light filtering into the gallery from open windows beyond the door found her. So did a breeze that flicked at her hair’s tendrils and at the ribbon ends that dangled down her dress.

“You are correct on one count. I would not kiss a Miss Stockton now, but only because I am six years older, and have no interest in girls in their first Seasons.”

“Then you had better hold on to the woman for whom you bought the earrings, Ambury, and be glad she lets you think she is dazzled. The more we women gain in years, the less likely we are to swoon, no matter how well you kiss.”

The goad threw dry straw on a fire. “You really should not cast down gauntlets like that when you are all alone with a man.”

That elicited peals of laughter. “Oh, no. Mercy, are you going to try and conquer me now, as you threatened? You despise me, Ambury. We both know that I am safe enough.”

Her words should have stopped him, alluding to what
they did. Instead, they had the effect of obliterating what little resolve he had mustered.

“Not safe enough. Not really safe at all.” He swung her around and pulled her into his arms.

She gazed up, startled. Then her thick lashes lowered and her red lips parted and, no doubt, a scold began forming.

He silenced her with a kiss.

T
he kiss could not be called staid. Cassandra vaguely noted that with the part of her mind that did not succumb to astonishment. A bit stern, perhaps, but not in a bad way. She had been kissed often enough to appreciate the nuances, and how his handling of her communicated both sweet seduction and command.

She tried to grope her way out of the fog of sensation he created, but common sense kept slipping away as soon as she found it. The most delightful pleasures trickled through her body, urging her to let them do their worst. Warmth flushed her skin, then permeated to her core.

His embrace truly undid her. Strong arms wrapped her, holding her close…a caress too bold, but scandalously welcomed, trailed down her back, firm enough that the heat of his hand made her dress fabric disappear…he lifted her enough that his mouth could reach her neck, then her décolletage…

She should not. She knew it. This could never be right. Yet it had been too long since she had been enlivened with feminine excitement and she forgot for a while that the man inciting it could be up to no good. The pleasure refreshed her, awed her. She might indeed be behind the palms during her first Season, being kissed for the first time.

She did not resist soon enough. She knew that even as she delayed. He took it for compliance, of course. Nips on her lips heralded further intimacy. Even the preliminaries to
deeper passion caused a thrill to resonate through the center of her body, luring her to recklessness.

She turned her head to stop the kisses. Her cheek felt the superfine wool of his coat, and her ear heard the low throb of his heart. They stood like that, his embrace still holding her, for ten seconds at most, during which she ignored the truth of the moment and allowed herself to savor the illusion of being cared for.

She stepped back. His arms fell at the same time. She should turn and walk away. She should pretend it had not happened, or that he had importuned her, which he had in a way, at first at least. She should—

“Why?” His gaze focused on her so intently that she dared not move. The family sternness could be seen in him clearly now.

She sought the Cassandra the world knew, and tried to dredge up a clever response.
Because I am wild, of course. Because I have been kissed so often that one more is a small thing.

“Why did you refuse?” he pressed. “He had compromised you. It was unintentional, and quite innocent, but it still happened. Why did you refuse him when he sought to do the right thing?”

The real meaning of his
Why?
startled her. No one had ever asked before. Not outright. Assumptions and conclusions were drawn instead, about both her and Lakewood. Even as the world expressed horror that she would not agree to marriage, it had also whispered and wondered about what happened to cause her to refuse. A man must have shown his true colors in ways most appalling for a young woman to risk ruin rather than accept social salvation as his wife.

A little cloud of dishonor had darkened Lakewood’s path after that. His friends, Southwaite and Kendale, and even Ambury, blamed her. To them, her behavior must have seemed childish, spoiled, and cruel. It probably still did.

“I did not want him.” It was the truth but not the whole truth. “It was indeed innocent enough, and did not warrant such an extreme measure as marriage.”

“He was in love with you. His intentions were always to—”

“I. Did. Not. Want. Him,” she enunciated slowly, angry now. No one seemed to care about this part of it. No one ever had. “As for his love and his intentions, there is much you do not know. Now that he is gone, no one knows except me.”

He cocked his head, suddenly curious. Too curious. She cursed herself for allowing him to draw her into this.

“I must take my leave.” She tried to sound brisk, but the effects of the kiss still lingered, and her voice came out with a tremor.

She walked away from him and his questions and his damnable ability to turn her into a silly girl. “I will press my aunt to the extent that I can, to learn more about the earrings. I need your solicitor to release the money to me as soon as possible.”

Y
ates’s thoughts would not remain on the documents spread in front of him, no matter how hard he tried to force the proper concentration. He found his mind dwelling instead on a stolen kiss in a shadowed gallery. Inevitably that led to consideration of the conversation that followed.

That kiss had been an impulse, but one a long time coming. The question about Lakewood had been too.

There is much you do not know
. Undoubtedly. He had always assumed that what he did not know was due to Lakewood’s discretion. Now it seemed there may have been more to it than that.

In the years that followed, he had stared down men who slurred speculations, when in their cups, about what had really happened when the Baron Lakewood had found himself alone with Lady Cassandra Vernham. He closed ranks with Southwaite and Kendale and, yes, even Penthurst, and had done what friends do when one of their own is the object of damning suppositions.

The rumors had blown like an ill wind at first, and even now the breeze could be felt. He had forced her, it was said. He had succumbed to a rage when she refused his hand and lost control. It had been her own fault for being a flirt, but still…

Had it happened that way?

He stood up, disgusted even to be considering the possibility that Lakewood might have been dishonorable, when he was not there to defend himself. It was a hell of a thing if a few kisses could lure him to be disloyal so easily.

All the same, his thoughts wandered again, back to the shadowed gallery, as if pulled there by a capricious spirit. He felt Cassandra pressed against him, as warm and soft and sensual as she appeared.

The door opened and Prebles entered. He paused and peered at Yates from behind his spectacles. Then he walked over and looked at the documents spread on the desk.