Читать книгу The Complete Regency Bestsellers And One Winters Collection - Rebecca Winters - Страница 83
ОглавлениеCassie could barely settle to anything for the whole of the next day, a sort of wild excitement that verged on panic underlying everything she did.
Jamie was so much better, leaving his bed and eating large plates of whatever the cook tempted him with. Maureen was astonished at how much improved he seemed, though it was another matter entirely that she quizzed Cassandra about.
‘There is word you had a visitor late last night, Cassie. Lord Nathaniel Lindsay was an unexpected caller?’
Cassandra knew her sister’s ways. Maureen obviously had found out a lot more about the unusual happening and was waiting for Cassandra to unravel it for her.
‘Lord Lindsay looks familiar somehow. I cannot quite put my finger on how I should know him, but...?’
At that precise moment Jamie ran past playing with a small train, and it was if a shutter had suddenly been raised.
‘Oh, my goodness, Lindsay is Jamie’s father? Nathanael is his second name?’
Horror stood where a humorous playfulness had lingered a moment before. ‘He ruined you?’
‘No. We were married, Reena. In France, almost five years ago. Everything is perfectly legal.’
‘Then why...?’ She could not even formulate her next question.
‘One day I will tell you everything, but not at this moment. If you could keep my confidence for a little while longer, I would be most appreciative.’
‘He will not break your heart again?’
‘Again?’ She could not quite understand what her sister alluded to.
‘You came home from Paris like a half person and never looked at another male with any thoughts of interest although there were many good men who were offering. I knew there was someone. I just thought he was dead.’
There are worse ways to be separated than in death, Cassie thought as Jamie came over to her to demand a cuddle. Her sister’s dark eyes watched carefully.
‘Kenyon likes him. I do, too.’
‘Who does he like?’ Jamie’s voice put paid to any further conversation.
* * *
In the late afternoon Cassie fussed about which gown to put on and finally decided on a dark yellow silk, a little outdated but beautifully cut. She fashioned her own hair into a bun at her nape, decorating the sides with two ornate tortoiseshell combs she had procured in the Marais. Cassie reasoned that if the night was to play out as she hoped she needed a style that would be easily unpinned and quickly redone when she left in the early hours of the next day.
Even the thought of it all made her apprehensive. Such a premeditated and deliberate choice. The hands of the clock seemed to race towards eight, and her stomach felt agitated and jittery.
She was twenty-three and she had had just one lover for only a short time. She did not count the Baudoins’ rough handling of her in the first days of Nay, preferring to forget about the violence and hurt of the place. No, all she remembered now were the weeks between Saint Estelle and Perpignan, and the utter need they had felt for each other, the desire and the passion.
Breathing, she held in her hope as an aching desperateness. Could this happen again or had she ruined it with her choice of sacrificing others so that they might live?
She turned to the mirror and looked at herself. She was not a bad person or a deceitful one. She had done her best ever since the betrayal at Perpignan to make amends for the harm that she had caused. Would Nathaniel see that of her? Would he be able to look beyond the past and see a future?
‘Please, God, let it be so,’ she whispered and hurried to find shoes, stockings and a coat to match her gown.
* * *
Cassandra arrived on the dot of eight-fifteen, the ornate clock in the corner of the front entrance still calling out the quarter-hour. She had come. Dismissing his man, Nat went out to the carriage to open the door, the large black cape she wore hiding much, though her eyes shone through in the dark, anxious and fearful.
‘Is Jamie better today?’ A topic other than this want that hung between them was welcomed, and she smiled.
‘He is, my lord.’ She allowed the Lindsay servant to take her cloak.
‘So formal, my lady.’
At that she blushed heavily, and would have tripped on the hem of her yellow gown had he not placed his hand beneath her arm. God, all he wanted to do was to snatch her up and take her to his bed, to assuage a pummelling need that was gaining more traction with every single second.
Friendship.
The word came back, loud with inherent meaning. He needed to slow down and calm down, for Cassandra Northrup deserved so much more than a quick tumble of lust, devoid of chivalry and consideration.
‘Dinner is waiting in the dining room. After that I shall dismiss the servants and...’ He did not finish.
‘A meal sounds lovely.’ She smiled at him then, as though she understood in his unfinished sentence some shared disquiet.
‘The French chef from St Auburn followed me down to London and is very competent. I hope you will enjoy the fare.’ Lord, why was he rambling on like this? He sounded like a green youth in the first throes of pleasing a girl, so he bit down for silence. He hardly recognised himself in his concern for making the right impression.
When he had visited Hawk earlier in the afternoon to tell him his worries about Hanley he had also mentioned the proposed dinner with Cassandra Northrup. With all good intentions Stephen had instructed him to smile a lot and be most attentive, but for the life of him Nat couldn’t seem to make his lips curl upwards and empty compliments had never been his style.
Instead, he pulled the chair from the table and invited Cassandra to sit and then he took his own place a good few feet away. Distance made him less edgy and the procession of kitchen staff with tureens of soup and entrées turned his mind for a moment from the reason as to why she was here alone tonight.
‘I don’t think I thanked you properly for your help with Jamie the other night, Nathaniel. I do not normally panic.’
‘I was glad that you called me, and if he is anything like me and has another fit it should be months away.’
‘You only had three episodes, you said.’
‘Indeed. I outgrew them exactly as the St Auburn physician had predicted that I would.’
‘A family trait, then?’
‘My father was prone to the same as a child. He did not have brothers or sisters, however, so I am not certain if it would have been something that ran through the whole line.’
‘Well, it is reassuring to know that you recovered.’ She drew a spoon of soup to her mouth and sighed. ‘Onion soup. This is a taste I remember, though I have not had it since Paris.’
‘You did not think to send word to your father after Perpignan and ask him to help?’
She shook her head, the red-gold catching the light from the chandelier above in a sparkling cascade of colour. ‘Papa would have found the situation trying, and as a family we attempt to shelter him from anything that is difficult. After Mama died he was...brittle and I am not certain if he will ever be truly happy again.’
‘So you managed alone?’
‘I did.’
‘You do that often.’
Her spoon hovered above the plate. ‘I believe in myself more now.’
‘I am glad for it.’
‘I believe that atonement goes a certain way in alleviating past mistakes, and that what was, is not always the same as what will be.’
‘Wise of you.’
‘I have made errors, Nathaniel, big ones that I wish every single day I had not, but in the end one cannot wish life away. One has to confront it with courage and go on.’
‘And you have.’
She nodded. ‘For Jamie’s sake, I had to.’
The strength of her washed across him. She sat there and told him that in adversity she had found a version of herself that she liked. He wanted to reach over and bring her ruined hand to his lips and kiss each finger one by one. She was no empty-headed maiden trying to fit in with others’ perceptions of her and whereas Acacia had been hardened by the problems in her life, Cassandra had been freed by them.
He wished he had skipped the course of soup and gone instead for more simple fare because the hours were running away with the task of eating and there was still dessert. He was glad the removes of soup had been taken away and hoped the offering of lobster, ham and venison might disappear just as quickly. He could not remember a meal taking quite as long as he helped himself perfunctorily to one of the many plates of vegetables.
* * *
Cassandra felt hot and uneasy. The food was beautifully cooked and expensive and yet she could barely eat it. A clock in the house kept striking out the minutes of every hour and time seemed to be racing towards the real reason as to why she was here.
She wanted to sleep with Nathaniel Lindsay, she did. She wanted to feel him inside her moving with the passion only he could engender and she longed for the quiet repose of skin against skin, their bodies speaking in a way words never did.
But the scars of Lebansart were a reminder of all that had gone wrong between them and she dreaded him seeing them and asking about what had happened. She breathed out heavily and knew that he watched her with his beautiful pale-grey eyes, the dimple in his right cheek seen under the bright candelabras.
She would not survive again if he turned her away. For all her bravado and independence she understood that. The lobster felt dry in her mouth as she tried to swallow it, helping herself to a generous sip of white wine with the taste of summer in its bouquet. She seldom drank anything stronger than tea, save for in his company, where fortitude was as necessary as breath.
Cassie wished the meal would end and that the servants might disappear. She wanted him to lead her to his chamber with the minimum of chatter and undress her with the maximum of speed. She wanted to look into his eyes when he saw the scars and see acceptance or indifference, it did not matter which. It was the bewildering bloom of distaste that she hoped so fervently to avoid.
He suddenly stood. ‘Perhaps we might leave the rest for later, Cassandra.’ Those attending to the table stepped back and waited while he helped her from her seat.
As they reached the hall leading to the stairwell he petitioned her to tarry for a moment whilst he returned to give his instructions to the staff. She could hear his voice asking them to clean up and then retire for he would not be requiring their services further this evening. The resulting silence was full of question and speculation, but even that did not worry Cassie.
Then he was back again, taking her hand and escorting her up the wide marble staircase into the second floor of the house. His room lay at the end of a corridor, a set of French doors with an ornate gold handle and a substantial lock. As she walked through she heard him turn the key. Privacy. She was thankful for it.
His chamber was decorated in all shades of pale, a restful luxurious interior that threw her off balance. The heavy brocades of paisley and floral at the Northrup town house looked tacky and overdone in comparison. This room was one of bleached furniture and patinas harking back to the age of a faded beauty. She wondered if he had had a hand in choosing the decor.
A whole line of leatherbound books sat on the table beside the bed. When he saw where she looked he commented, ‘I read a lot.’
She remembered he had told her of that once and she had wondered. No amount of guessing could have placed him as a cultured English lord, however, with the lineage of an old family on his shoulders and a library of books at his disposal.
‘You keep surprising me,’ she managed to say.
At that he laughed, loudly, the first truly free emotion of the evening. A frisson of need made her stiffen. ‘I could say the same, Cassandra. Few people manage to keep me as intrigued as you do and so effortlessly.’
He had come closer now. If she stepped forward she could have rested her head against his heart. With all her willpower she stopped herself doing just that.
Not yet, a voice inside her called. He needs to understand exactly who you are.
Her fingers came up to loosen the ties at her bodice. They were shaking in their pursuit of truth as fire began to build behind the slate of his eyes. The yellow silk had been chosen carefully. With just a few twitches of fabric it fell from her shoulders, the thin bodice of lawn the only thing now that kept his glance from her shame.
Then that was gone, too, three slices of raised red skin at the top of her right breast on show.
‘I did not give the names as easily as you had imagined, Nathaniel. I paid for their lives in my own blood, too. I knew that I was pregnant, you see, and if I did not give him something he might...’
‘God.’ One finger reached out to trace the injuries, horror and anger on his face.
But not at her. It was Lebansart his wrath was directed at.
‘The bastard did this to you?’
She nodded because suddenly she could not speak, the back of her throat closing in an aching heaviness.
‘He could have killed you. Both of you.’
‘I th-think he thought he had.’
‘Ah, sweetheart.’ His voice broke as he simply leant down and kissed the scars, one by one. Healing their ugliness, she was to think later, and dissipating their power over her. Forgiveness was a quiet and gentle emotion, the light and earnest feel of his tongue and the smooth sweep of his lips, but it held all the weight of a new beginning.
Her hand came through his hair, shorter now than it had been in France, the dark sheen of it almost blue.
‘Love me, Nathaniel, and make me forget.’
In response he lifted her to him and brought her to his bed, the wide velvet counterpane beneath her as he peeled the dress and bodice away. Her stockings were next and the small slippers bought only a few days before. Then he loosened her hair from its tie and draped the length of it down beside her.
Caught in the light and in his gaze she stayed very still. ‘You are even more beautiful than I remember.’ His voice held reverence and awe.
He was fully dressed as he stroked one breast, smiling when the nipple puckered at his ministrations. Then his fingers fell lower, across her stomach and down into the place between her thighs, pushing into the wet warmth with a gentle insistence. And all the time his eyes never left her own, the fire within them banking and a look that said she was his. Need made her loins rise from the bed to meet him, her legs opening wider to allow him in, and she looked away because she knew that the roiling waves of release were about to come and she did not want to see his reaction to such a surrender.
Her muscles caught around his fingers, stilling the plunder and keeping him there inside her tight, and when she began to shake he pushed in farther still, eliciting a groan that held a primal relief.
She was no longer cautious or circumspect. All she could think of was the aching craving urgency in her body and the balm and ease of tension.
They belonged together, Nathaniel and she, and it had nothing to do with marriage or legality or expectations.
It was far simpler than that. It was how their skin called to each other and how the shape of his body so perfectly fitted hers. It was in the scent of him and the beauty and the strength. It was in his honesty and morality and bravery and forgiveness.
A single tear traced its way from her left eye down onto the pillow beneath. She had not expected absolution, but how she had wanted it. From him. From the only other person in all of the world who might understand what she had lost and what she had gained.
Her saviour. Now and then.
‘I will love you for ever, Nathaniel.’
* * *
Cassandra’s eyes were clear and her voice was strong as she said it, no half-meant troth given with a lack of honesty or intent.
‘For ever?’
This time he was ready and there was no question in his reply. With care he crossed the room and opened a drawer, pulling out his mother’s ring from a velvet box. The emerald glinted in the light as he walked back and he saw she was now perched on the edge of his bed, watching.
With care he bent on one knee and the smile that he had missed so much came easily to her lips.
‘I never stopped loving you, Cassandra Northrup. Will you marry me?’
‘I already have, Nathaniel Lindsay.’ The words were wobbly and tears pooled in her eyes.
‘Again then. Properly this time. With everyone around us.’
‘Yes.’
Bringing her hand up, he placed the ring upon it. His mother’s ring was still oversized and the ancient gold needed a good polish, but on Cassandra’s finger it looked completely right.
A circle. Of life. Lost and found. He knew his mother would have loved Cassandra, loved her rarity and her honesty. The only thing she wore was a smile and this ring and she looked to him like a goddess sent from above. To heal loneliness and doubt, to bring laughter and adventure and truth.
When her hands came to the buttons on his shirt he stood still, tugging the garment off on completion and then doing the same with his trousers and boots. Life had marked them both. Inside and out. But it had also melded them together into a shape that could not withstand the world alone. He smote the candles above and the one on the stand near the bed and in the light of the fire he turned. They came together as husband and wife, his seed spilled without a care for caution.
Home. Safe. The night outside and the warmth within.
‘I want as many more Jamies as you might give me,’ he whispered finally when sense had returned.
‘Starting tonight, Nathaniel.’ The light in her eyes danced as her fingers closed around his shaft and all that had been wonderful before began again.
* * *
Much later they spoke. She leaned against him, her head upon his chest as he lifted himself to sit against the cushioned bed end.
‘Lebansart left the minute after I gave him the names on the document. Louis Baudoin had already died from having allowed me to see the paper and in the end it killed Celeste, too...’
His finger came across her lips, stopping the flow of words. ‘You don’t have to tell me any more if you do not wish to. It doesn’t matter now.’
‘But I want to. If I had not interfered, my cousin’s soul may have been saved, for she died by her own hand less than a day later.’
‘Guilt has as many lives as you wish to give it, Cassandra. You were young and trying to do your best to save those you loved, but it’s time now to stop the blame.’
‘I hated her sometimes,’ she whispered, the very words so dreadful she could not give them the full power of sound.
‘Celeste?’
‘She made me stay there with her. I could have escaped, but she held me there with her weakness and her need. In the end she understood just how foolish she had been, but for a long while she revelled in it. The wine. Louis Baudoin. The danger. I could never trust that she would not be harmed by her lack of foresight and so I stayed.’
‘To protect her?’
She nodded, the brisk anger in the movement revealing. ‘And finally I could not even do that.’
‘Voltaire once wrote that “no snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible”. Perhaps you should allow your cousin more of the burden of blame.’
Cassandra mulled his words over. Celeste had grown up reprimanding everyone except herself when things went wrong and in every situation had put her own needs first.
‘You think each person is accountable for their actions.’
‘I do. I am the next in line for the St Auburn title and all it entails, yet the duties that came with my job in Europe were never the ones my grandfather wished for me to entertain. It was his way of life or no way of life and he harboured a resentment I could never understand.’
‘Sometimes people disappoint you.’
He laughed. ‘I try to allow them not to.’
Lifting her head on to her hands, she looked at him. ‘Did your work in France teach you the knack of knowing what it is that others wish to hear?’
He frowned. ‘Hawk and Lucas helped me more with that. You have not met Luc Clairmont yet for he is in the Americas, but without them I wouldn’t have survived the loneliness of my childhood.’
She ran her finger across his chest, circling the skin around his nipple and liking the way it tightened. ‘I often worried that someone might come from England and arrest me after Perpignan, and in my dreams the punishment was always death. Perhaps that was a part of the reason I didn’t come home for so long. You worked for the British Service, but you never told anyone about me.’
His hand clamped down across hers. ‘I couldn’t. I never asked another question of that time because if I had found out you were dead....’
‘You kept me safe. Us safe.’
‘Then I am glad. But enough of talk, my beautiful wife, for there are still some hours before we need to rise.’
When he rolled her beneath him she simply relaxed, opening her mouth as his lips came across her own.
* * *
He heard the birdsong at dawn but remained perfectly still. Cassandra lay against him, one leg draped across his thigh and her head tucked into the crook of his arm. Her hair cascaded around them in all the shades of gold and red, wildly tangled and curling. He lifted up one tress and felt its softness.
His wife. They had slept for much longer than she could have wanted to and for that he was pleased.
No covert sneaking back home. He did not wish for only night-time trysts. He wanted to see the sunshine play across her skin and know the ecstasy of every hour of the day in bed. Not quite the slow-building friendship she had had in mind, but then nothing about their relationship had ever been ordinary. He wondered how she might explain this night away to her family.
Her breathing changed and her eyes opened, sleep filled and disorientated, but widening as they recognised daylight at the window. Yet still she made no attempt to leave.
‘You kept me up too late, sir,’ she whispered, and there was a smile in her rebuke.
‘Can I do so again tonight, Lady Lindsay? Or today if you should so will it?’
‘I cannot think your servants would be pleased at such a prospect.’ Lifting her head, she listened for a moment. ‘They are at work already, yet they have not come in?’
‘And rest assured that they will not, my love.’
Her left hand pushed back the heavy length of her hair and the ring of his mother glinted in the light.
‘However, the grapevines of those in servitude will be ringing and my name, undoubtedly, shall be bandied around the salons in shock.’
‘I’ll announce our wish to marry in The Times tomorrow and everyone in the ton will recognise you as my intended. No one then would dare to criticise.’
‘And your grandfather?’
‘Who knows? Such a pronouncement may even bring him from St Auburn as he has hoped for such an occasion for ever. Jamie’s existence will make him delirious.’
‘You almost make me believe that it could be this easy for us.’
‘Well, we have waited for years to be together again and that must be some kind of a miracle.’
She curled into him, holding tight. ‘I have missed you. Missed this. Missed talking and loving. Missed closeness.’
He felt her breath at his throat, gentle and honest. Like his life was now with her in it. He wanted to protect her for ever and love her until they were old and grey with a million memories shared between them. The harsh and raw realities of the past faded into this new serenity, Cassandra and Jamie in the very centre of a world reformed.
Her finger traced the tattoo on his forearm. ‘What does this mean?’
He smiled. ‘It’s one of the symbols from the healing temples of Asclepius. At the time, in the backstreets of Marseilles, I was looking for resurrection and renewal. Later on it always reminded me of the thin line between life and death.’
‘Being a spy must have been dangerous work. Your body is covered in scars.’
‘It’s the price one pays for not carrying arms and being out of uniform. Blending into a community is not always as easy as it might sound.’
‘But you have stopped?’
‘Almost.’
‘I am glad for it.’
‘And for the first time I think I could settle at St Auburn and run the place, farm the land, sit as a judge at the country courts, grow vegetables. All the things I once would not have seen sense in.’
She laughed.
‘With you and Jamie there it all feels possible.’
Cassie turned then to look at him, the light in her eyes bright and clear. He could never decide whether they were more green than blue. Today they seemed an exact mixture of both. ‘I think I loved you the first moment I saw you in Nay, with your dimple...here.’ She touched his cheek.
‘Show me,’ he returned and brought her against him, the sunlight from the new day creating a river of warmth on their bed.
* * *
They renewed their vows two days later in the chapel to one side of the Lindsay town house and it was a small and private occasion. Stephen Hawkhurst was the best man and Maureen the bridesmaid. William Lindsay, the old Earl of St Auburn, had sent a note declining his attendance. Cassandra’s sister Anne had not been able to make the journey down from her home in Scotland because she was expecting her fourth child.
‘You look beautiful, Cassandra,’ Nathaniel said as she came down the stairs, her gown of cream silk shimmering in the new day.
‘The seamstress you organised was wonderfully fast and this time around I even have shoes.’
He laughed and took her hand, but poignancy lingered beneath the humour as both thought of the small house by the river.
‘Now and for ever,’ he whispered, brushing his lips across her cheek despite the onlookers, and Jamie standing between them wriggled in delight.
When the clergyman called them to an altar fashioned with flowers, the three of them linked hands and walked forward, her father, brother and Kenyon Riley just behind them.
‘Dearly beloved, we have come together in the presence of God to witness and bless the joining together of this man and this woman in holy matrimony...’
They looked at each other. This time they would be married under their own names, properly formed and completely legal.
* * *
A few hours later Stephen asked if he might speak to them both in the library where they would not be disturbed. After shutting the door he brought forth a leather satchel and took out a wad of documents from within.
‘I have a wedding present for you both.’
Nat stepped forward, the frown on his brow giving Cassie the inkling that he might know what was held within the papers. They looked important. Her own heart began to beat fast.
‘It is the official report from the British Service about the events that transpired in Perpignan after you were hurt in Languedoc, Nat.’
‘God.’ Her husband’s curse was soft.
‘It is not what you might think,’ Hawk said quickly and handed him over the account. ‘I have underlined the most crucial parts. Perhaps your wife might like to hear them.’
‘No.’ Her own voice, stiff with shock. How could Stephen Hawkhurst do this to her? She knew what would be within the letter, knew it to the bottom of her breaking heart. But Nathaniel was smiling and there was the suspicion of tears in his eyes as he began to read.
So it is concluded that on the fifth of November 1846 at about nine p.m. two masked men broke into the house of Mr Didier Desrosiers and Mr Gilbert Desrosiers in Toulouse, France, and killed each of them with two shots to the head.
Our agent in Languedoc, Nathaniel Lindsay, was also found on the right bank of the Basse River in Perpignan in the afternoon of the sixth of November 1846 with injuries to his head, stomach and right arm received by unknown enemies of England.
Despite extensive searching the perpetrators have never been brought to justice.
The fifth of November? The day before they had reached Perpignan. The day before she had told Lebansart the names. The day before she had branded herself a traitor. The day before shame had been scorched into memory.
‘It was not me, after all.’ The words slipped from her, tentative and unbelieving. ‘They were already dead?’
‘How did you know to find this?’ Nat spoke now directly to Stephen, the relief in his tone evident.
‘When you said you had married Cassandra Northrup in France I knew that you would not have done such a thing lightly. When you then went on to say that she had betrayed you, I realised there must be more to the affair than you had told me. At the Forsythe ball your wife made it known that there were others who died in Perpignan because of her actions and so I decided to find out exactly what it was she meant. After much searching I located this in a box that had been lost amongst others in the record room.’
‘Lost?’
‘Discarded, I think. Unsolved deaths. Cases closed to further enquiry.’
‘But their deaths were not my fault?’ The room felt farther away than it had been and a spinning lightness consumed Cassie as she groped for the chair at her side and sat down upon it. Hard. Nathaniel perched before her, taking her hands in his own.
‘This is the best wedding present anyone could give us, Hawk,’ he said, fingers warming her coldness. ‘Cassandra was already pregnant when Guy Lebansart caught us at Perpignan. By reciting the names she had seen on the letters in the place she had been captured, she was trying to save both me and our baby.’
‘But her confession and your injury took place the day after the Desrosiers died and at least a hundred miles to the south, so any information she gave was useless.’
‘I didn’t kill them.’ Tears of deliverance fell down her cheeks. ‘I didn’t,’ she repeated, the beauty of what the words implied washing across her like a balm.
‘You have both been to hell and back on a lie. But you married her again, Nat, even knowing this?’
‘When you love someone, you love them, Hawk, and there would be no argument in the world that would keep me from Cassandra. But this...this allows us peace.’
Standing up, he faced Stephen Hawkhurst. ‘I should have tried to find out all that transpired after that day, but I could not. I never wanted to sift through the files and know the betrayal.’
‘Yet you kept her name out of everything. I am not certain, had it been me, that I could have done that. King, country, oaths and all.’
Nathaniel laughed. ‘They are all nothing against love, my friend. Wait until you find it.’
Gathering the documents, Stephen replaced them in the book. ‘If Shavvon knew I had removed these...’ He left the rest unsaid. ‘But if I have them back tonight he will never need to know anything of it. He sends you his best, by the way.’
Cassie looked up at her husband and wondered just exactly who this Shavvon was that they were speaking of.
‘Our boss,’ Nathaniel explained quietly. ‘At the Service.’
‘But now this case is closed. For good.’ Stephen faced them both as he promised this and then he was gone, the documents in hand as the door closed behind him.
‘A marriage and a reprieve,’ Nat said as he drew Cassandra up against him. ‘A binding and a freedom. It has been quite a day, Lady Lindsay.’ She could feel his breath against her cheek, soft and known.
‘Lady Lindsay. I like the sound of that.’
‘My wife. An even better resonance.’
‘And what of the marriage night?’ she whispered, watching the flare of complicity and question in his pale eyes. ‘I think we should celebrate Hawk’s gift.’
‘I am completely at your disposal, my beautiful Sandrine,’ he returned, lifting her into his arms and taking her to bed.
