Читать книгу The Complete Regency Bestsellers And One Winters Collection - Rebecca Winters - Страница 78

Chapter Seven

Cassandra Northrup had come to the Forsythe town house on Chesterfield Street with her sister and Riley, just as Nathaniel had hoped she would not.

Tonight she had forsaken the colour of mourning and adorned herself in muted gold, like a flag of defiance, her eyes shining with fight. With her hair dressed and the gown complementing the sleek shades, she was the embodiment of all that Albi de Clare had once predicted.

Unmatched.

Original.

The girl in southern France only just seen through the woman she had become.

She neither fidgeted nor held on to her sister or Kenyon Riley for support, but stood there, chin up.

He doubted he had ever seen her look more beautiful than at this particular moment and when her eyes finally met his, Nathaniel knew without a shadow of doubt that the swirling rumours of a relationship between them had reached her ears.

Her sister appeared less certain, but Riley, positioned in the middle of them both, gave the impression of a cat who had just been offered a bowl of cream. Nat wanted to hit him.

‘Let the games begin.’ Hawk was hardly helping matters, and Reginald Northrup to one edge of the room was watching Cassie intently, as was Hanley.

Undercurrents and anticipation. Nat did not make any move towards the Northrup party whilst he waited to see what would transpire.

The older Forsythes reacted first, moving from Kenyon Riley to Maureen Northrup without a glance at the one beside them. Then Lady Sexton and her husband turned their backs. A cut direct from a woman who was known for her own dalliance was hardly lethal. But it was the next snub that did it.

Lydia Forsythe, the young hostess who had the most to thank Cassandra for given her recent brush with the chandelier, simply stood, right in front of her, the slender wine goblet she held tinkling to the ground, shattering into pieces.

The band ceased playing.

Silence descended, the inheld breath of a hundred guests slicing through movement, ruin taking the physical form of a woman in a glorious gown and sharp blue-green eyes. She stood very stiffly, the horror of all that was transpiring barely hidden upon her face, her mutilated fist tight wrapped in the folds of her golden skirt.

Despite trying not to, Nathaniel moved forward, the only motion in a room of stillness and those all around craned their necks to see just exactly what might happen next.

‘Unfortunately, Miss Lydia Forsythe is a woman prone to histrionics,’ he said as he reached Cassie, then he lowered his tone. ‘However, if you act as if you do not care you might be able to salvage something of the evening yet.’

Cassandra was silent, dumbfounded, he supposed, by the way things had plummeted from bad to worse. Worry had furrowed a deep frown in the space between her eyes.

‘The trick in it is to converse as if you have all the time in the world or at least smile. Your face at the moment suggests you believe in the ruin of your name and this is exactly what others here have come to see.’

To give Cassie her due, she did try, the glimmer of humour showing where before only a frown had etched her brow.

Her sister, however, picking up the undercurrents, began to help, droning on about the seasonal changes and the new buildings in Kew Gardens. Riley stood silent, the grin on his face infuriating.

‘I always love the Palm House, of course, but I think the Water Lily House will be every bit as beautiful. They say when it is finished the giant Amazonian lily will flourish within it and that a child might sit on a leaf like a boat and not get wet at all. Imagine how huge it will be.’

Amazonian must have been a difficult word to say for someone who could not hear properly, Nat determined, though Maureen’s unusual pronunciation did have the effect of making Cassandra’s lips turn upwards.

Around them the silence was beginning to change into chatter, the terrible scene that some might have hoped for fading into something unremarkable. Even Lydia Forsythe had pulled herself together, her mother signalling to the band to begin to play again and the young hostess making an overture of civility towards the Northrups in the form of a genuine smile.

A waltz. Without waiting for another moment, Nat asked Cassie for the dance and they stepped on to the floor.

‘Thank you.’ She held him away as they moved, a large space between them, circumspect and prudent. They did not dance as lovers might, though beneath his palms the warmth of the old Sandrine lingered. He tried to ignore it.

‘Your uncle appears to welcome the demise of your name.’

‘I think his enmity has something to do with his relationship with my mother.’

‘It was his friend Hanley who told the world he saw us together.’

Her direct glance faltered. ‘I have heard.’

‘What would Reginald Northrup have to gain by discrediting you?’

She shook her head. ‘Not the title, for Rodney is the heir apparent.’

He might have asked of her movements after Perpignan then, just to see what she might tell him, but the colour in her cheeks was returning. Besides, the middle of a crowded dance floor was not a place he wanted to hear an answer in.

‘He is far more wealthy than my father, so money cannot be a factor.’

‘A man with no obvious motive is more dangerous than those who have one, and if your nocturnal wanderings are known to him then it would be wise to be careful. Or cease altogether.’

She tipped her head, her expression puzzled, and his fingers tightened around hers in a will all of their own.

* * *

He was so beautiful and so known.

The corners of Cassie’s heart squeezed into pain as he watched her, grey ringed with just a touch of dark blue. In his arms, here in the middle of a crowded ballroom, she felt completely safeguarded, even given the poor start to the evening. No one could touch her. No one dared. The exhilaration was surprising.

‘Come with me next time, Nathaniel. Come and see just what it is that the Daughters of the Poor do.’

His lazy smile was lethal. ‘I have already discovered some part of it in the bawd house off Whitechapel Road.’

‘No. Not that. It’s the successes you need to see.’ She thought of the toddler Katie, her injuries fading and her smile blooming again. It was these things that she wanted him to know of. A new beginning. Another finer path away from the chaos that had once consumed them.

‘Please.’ She did not wish to beg, but this moment might be her only chance to make him understand that sometimes with endeavour honour could be reinstated.

‘When?’

The anger in the room and all her problems melted away with that one small question. He would allow her a chance? For the first time that night her breath was not tight and the beat of her heart quickened from something other than fear.

‘As soon as I know I shall send you word.’

‘Very well.’

‘Wear black.’

Nothing now was the same between them as it had once been, but inside of her a bright warmth bloomed. The papers that held them together had probably long been lost and she no longer had his ring, but there it was, that same feeling from France that pulsed in every part of her body.

Love me. Love me. Love me.

Just a little. Just a bit. Just enough to allow the possibility of an understanding and forgiveness.

‘How long has your charity been running for?’ His question cut through all her fantasies.

‘Two years now. I found two young girls wandering in Regent Street and on enquiry discovered they had been brought in from the country and then lost.’

‘So you took them home?’

‘Actually, no. I found out the place they had been stolen from and returned them. That was how it all began. Sometimes, though, it is not so easy. Sometimes young women are lost to us or put to work in the seedy houses of London and it is hard to recover them again. The only real chance of saving anyone is finding them before they are sold.’

‘That sounds difficult.’

‘It is. People do not want to know that this is happening. Here in the grand salons of London they turn the other cheek because looking would be too harsh upon their sensibilities, and if Lydia Forsythe almost swoons away on seeing me, imagine what might happen if she were to confront such a truth. It is my belief that the Victorian model of virtue strips females of the things they should be capable of knowing.’

‘A fierce criticism?’

‘But a true one.’

‘I heard that you were in Paris after...us.’

Had he not been holding her she might have tripped, the danger of letting her guard down so very real. It was the seeing him again and gaining his help in a moment when she might have been crucified without him. Everything they had been to each other imperilled all she had become alone, and the decisions she had made after he had been dragged away by Lebansart’s men influenced things again.

It was foolish to imagine they could go back to what they had once had for it was far too late for that.

‘I heard that you and Acacia Bellowes-Browne have an agreement.’

The muscle in his jaw tightened. ‘My grandfather’s hope, no doubt. I have no wish to be married again.’

The words were underlined with a raw harshness, and Cassie had cause to believe him.

Once was enough.

The dance lost some of its appeal and she pulled back. She wished she might have been able to ask him other things, important things, things that might have led to a discussion on how he perceived her ability to look after a child. His child. She took a deep breath, smiling at her sister as she swept past them in the arms of Kenyon Riley.

‘They look pleased with themselves. Riley was buying all the drinks at White’s the other evening and alluding to a happy event that might be occurring in his life soon. Perhaps this is it?’

‘I hope so. My sister deserves each contentment that comes her way. She is sweet and kind and true.’

‘Unlike you?’

Now the gloves were off.

‘If it helps at all I would do things differently if I was able to begin again.’ Her eyes ran across the scar that snaked down from the side of his mouth.

Unexpectedly, he laughed. ‘Do you ever think back to the days before we reached Perpignan?’

All the time. Every day. Many minutes of every day.

She stayed quiet.

‘I returned to Bagnères-de-Bigorre last year when I was across the border in Spain. The high bath was still as beautiful.’

‘With the witchery of steam?’

Their eyes met, etched with a memory of the place. Together, close, lost in each other’s arms through all the hours of the night and day. The delight of what had been jagged through her stomach and then went lower.

‘What happened to us, Sandrine?’

Loss made her look away and she was happy when the music ground down to a final halt. After shepherding her back into the company of her sister and Kenyon Riley, Nathaniel quickly left. She saw him move across to stand with Stephen Hawkhurst, interest in his friend’s eyes as he glanced over towards her. It was said that Hawk was entwined with the British Service, too, and there was more in his perusal than she wanted to see.

Raising her fan, she glanced away, the balancing act of appearing all that she was not and within the company of her sister, who positively glowed with delight, taking its toll.

Acacia Bellowes-Browne was here, too, standing next to Nathaniel with her hand lightly resting upon his arm. Cassandra heard the tinkle of her laugh as she leaned closer and saw Nathaniel’s answering smile.

A beautiful, clever woman with her past intact. The bright red of her gown contrasted against the dark brown of her hair. The hazel in her eyes had had poems written of them. Maureen told her that once, on returning from a weekend away at a friend’s country home, and Cassie still remembered the astonishment that the eyes of a lady might incite such prose from grown men.

She was certainly using her eyes to the best of their advantage at this moment, flashing them at Nathaniel Lindsay with a coquettish flirtation and using her fan to tap him lightly on the hand as if in reprimand for some comment he had just made. Intimate. Familiar. Congenial.

Turning away from it all, Cassandra recognised with a shock that envy was eating away at her.

What happened to us, Sandrine?

Life had happened with its full quota of repayment and betrayal. Jamie had happened, too; the responsibility of a child and the overriding and untempered love that would protect him from everything and everyone. No matter what.

‘Could I have the pleasure of this next dance?’ Stephen Hawkhurst stood before her, his eyes probing. ‘Though perhaps I should warn you I am no great mover before you give me your reply.’

‘Thank you.’ She liked the quiet way he spoke. ‘I, too, have not had a lot of practice at these things.’

‘Then we shall bumble around together. Nat was always the most proficient dancer out of the three of us at school,’ he said as they took to the floor, another waltz allowing them the ease of speech.

‘The three of you?’

‘Lucas Clairmont was the other, but he has been in the Americas for years now making his fortune in the timber trade. None of us have families that we could count on, you see, so the connection was strong.’

He looked at her directly as he said this. ‘Adversity can either pull people together or it can tear them apart, would you not agree?’

Cassie dropped her glance. Words beneath words. Nathaniel had the knack of using this technique, too.

‘Indeed I would.’

‘Could I give you a bit of advice, then?’ He waited till she nodded.

‘Sometimes in life risks can deliver the greatest of rewards, but do not be too patient about the time allotted to reap them or you may lose out altogether.’

‘I am not well received in society, sir. Tonight is just a small taste of that fact. To reap anything apart from disparagement might be impossible for me.’

He laughed. ‘Look around you. How many men do you see who would not take risk over the mundane, who would not say to themselves if only I hadn’t played it so safe as they look in the mirror in their preparations for yet another night out in society in the company of manners and propriety?’

Cassandra breathed out hard. ‘Do you know anything of what went on between Nathaniel and me at Perpignan?’

‘He once told me that what you did and what you said you did were two different things.’

She shook her head.

‘In that he is wrong. There were others...others who died because of the mistakes that I made.’

The names of those she had consigned to the afterlife came to mind, people planted through loyalty into a land that was not their own and then murdered for their service. Aye, the world ran red with the blood of martyrs and hers had been included in that.

Lebansart.

Silver-tongued Leb.

His knife had been sharp and his words were sharper still.

Bitch. Traitor. Murderer.

Once she had been none of those things and now she was all of them, marked for anyone to see. Her penance.

She smiled through the anger and held Hawkhurst’s returning puzzlement as though it were only of a small importance, a trifling consideration.

‘Do you ever think, my lord, that when the world shifts in its truths sometimes one just cannot go back?’

‘Often,’ he replied, ‘and I believe it is a shame.’ As they turned with the music, Cassandra caught the face of Nathaniel watching them, his eyes devoid of feeling.

* * *

‘Cassandra Northrup is nothing like I expected her to be,’ Stephen said as they stood to one side of the room beside a pillar. ‘In fact, I would go as far to say that after that conversation I am half in love with her myself. But she’s hiding things. Big things. You can see it in her eyes when she looks over at you, Nathaniel, and she does that often.’

Nat did not want to hear this, for the cords that had held them together had been cut so irrevocably.

‘Why did she go to Paris after Perpignan, Nat? She did not arrive back in England until eighteen months after you did. Why didn’t she just come home?’

Lebansart. Sandrine’s face turned up to his as she had left, his hands curled into hers. He wished he did not care any more, but the days beneath the Pyrenees had defined their relationship, and he found he could not let her go.

He hadn’t slept with another woman since. Not one. Just that single thought made him furious. Was he destined to be for ever trapped in his feelings from the past, unable to move on with all that was being offered now? A man for whom the holy words of matrimony meant a loyalty that remained unquestioned and unbroken.

‘Well, I think it is safe to say that the youngest Northrup daughter has weathered her rocky start this evening, Nat, and I can well see why. Dressed in gold she looks like something out of a fairy tale.’

A line of young swains milled about Cassandra, though she did not seem enamoured with the fact, for her frown was noticeable even at this distance.

But Nathaniel had had enough of conjecture and, excusing himself summarily, he wound his way through the substantial crowd and out of the wide front door.

Hailing his coachman, he settled into the cushioned seats and closed his eyes. For the first time ever in his life he was at a loss as to what he should do next and he didn’t like the feeling one little bit.

Cassandra Northrup threw him completely, that was the trouble. And when he had held her in the dance all he had wanted was to bring her closer. Her scent, her eyes, the feel of her skin against his.

She was a lethal concoction of beauty, brains and betrayal, but something else lingered there, too. Vulnerability, sadness and fright. What was it she was hiding? What had happened after Perpignan?

Stephen had liked her and so did Acacia. In fact, even given the collective anger of society against her earlier in the evening, he had never met a soul who did not admire her personally, apart from her uncle.

An enigma.

And she was still his wife despite all that she thought to the contrary.

He shouldn’t see her again, but he knew that he would, her invitation to accompany her at night through the back streets on her charity business too tempting to turn down. What if she was hurt? She was not strong enough to rebuff a grown man who meant business, a fact he had found out in the house in Whitechapel when he had easily subdued her.

Another thought surfaced.

She had changed in four years. He could see it in her stance and in her eyes and in the way she had held the knife in the room on Brown Street in the darkness.

He had tried to teach her a few of his best tricks of attack in the final days before they had come down into Perpignan. The blade she had taken from Baudoin was a good weapon, light and comfortable in her fist.

‘Grip hard and keep it upwards for this one.’ He had turned her slightly, one foot away from each other. ‘Position your body behind the knife, for if you lose concentration even for a moment you will be dead.’

‘Like this?’ She had taken to the lesson with a surprising accuracy, her footwork balanced and the line of her arm strong. Perhaps it was the legacy of months of being a captive, never again stamped into every movement.

‘Being left-handed will give you an advantage because your attacker will not expect it so use this quickly before he has time to define it and go in under the arc of his forearm. Close contact negates skill to some extent so aim for the artery here on the outside of the leg. He will be protecting everything else.’

So far he had explained the rudiments in the slow motion of tutelage, but now he grabbed a stick that looked solid and stood before her. ‘Try it on me.’

She shook her head. ‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘I might hurt you.’

He began to laugh, the sound echoing around the small clearing, and Nat thought right then and there that this is what it felt like to be happy, here, with a beautiful girl dressed as a boy in the mountain passes of the Pyrenees.

‘You are a woman,’ he managed to say when he finally found his breath, ‘and I have been at it a while.’

‘Why did you start?’ She had lowered the blade and faced him, small curls of gold-red that had escaped her plait dancing in the wind.

‘Belonging, I think.’ He could not believe he had been so honest and that an answer to a question he had often asked himself should have been as self-evident. ‘My parents died when I was young and after that...’

‘You had trouble finding yourself.’ Sheathing the knife, she came forward and wrapped her arms about him. Tight and warm. ‘I was the same. After Mama it seemed as though I had no compass.’

‘No true north,’ he answered softly.

Her eyes fell to his lips and the smile she gave him held invitation as he brought his mouth across her own. They knew nothing of each other and everything, the truth of their bodies speaking in a way words never could, telling secrets, finding the honesty. They had been hurt and they had survived. Right now it was enough.

All he could do was to keep her safe.