by Mary Balogh
“Don’t deny me words,” he said. “I am sorry. It must be the very worst thing any woman can be made to endure—the loss of a child. Even the loss of an unborn child. I am sorry, Cass.”
“I have always been glad of it,” she said harshly.
She had always told herself she was glad. But saying it now aloud to someone else, she knew that she had never been glad at all to have lost those four precious souls who might have become an inextricable part of her own soul.
Oh, how foolish to have said those words aloud.
“You have a voice,” he said, “to match the mask you wear. I am more than relieved that you spoke in it just now or I might have believed you. I could not bear to believe you.”
She frowned and bit her lip.
“Lord Merton,” she said, “when we are together in this room and this bed, we are employer and mistress, or if you prefer to coat reality in sugar, we are lovers. In the strictly physical sense that we share bodies for mutual pleasure. Physical pleasure. Man and woman. We are not persons to each other. We are bodies. You may use my body as you will—you are paying enough for it, God knows. But all the money in the world will not buy you me. I am off limits to you. I belong to myself. I am your paid servant. I am not and never will be your slave. You will ask me no more personal questions. You will intrude no further into my life. If you cannot accept this—that we are man and mistress—then I will give back the ridiculously large sum of money you sent me this morning and show you the door.”
She listened to herself, appalled. What was she saying? She did not have all his money left to give back. And she knew as surely as she was lying here in his arms that she would never find the courage to do this all over again with another man. If he took her at her word, she was destitute—and so were Mary and Belinda and Alice. And Roger.
He withdrew his arm from beneath her head and his body from against hers so that suddenly she found herself lying flat on her back. He swung his legs over the far side of the bed, got to his feet, and walked around to her side. He stooped and picked up his clothes, tossed them over the foot of the bed, and proceeded to get dressed.
Even in the darkness she knew he was angry.
She ought to say something before it was too late. But it was already too late. He was going to go away and never come back. She had lost him merely because he was glad she did not really think herself better off without her dead children.
She would not say anything. She could not. She was all done with seducing him, with playing the siren. It had been a desperate idea from the start. A foolish idea.
Except that there had seemed—there still seemed—to be no alternative.
She waited in silence for him to leave. After she had heard the front door shut behind him, she would put her nightgown and robe back on and go down to lock and bolt the door. And that would be the end of that.
She would make herself a cup of tea in the kitchen and dream up another plan. There had to be something. Perhaps Lady Carling would be willing to give her a letter of recommendation. Perhaps she could find an employer who had never heard of her.
He had finished dressing, except to pick up his cloak and hat from the chair just inside the door as he left. But instead of moving toward them, he was bending over the dressing table, and suddenly the room was lit up with a flare of light from the tinder box and he set the flame to the candle.
Cassandra blinked in the sudden light and wished she had pulled up the bedcovers while there was still darkness. She disdained to do it now. She gazed at him with all the scorn and hostility she could muster as he drew out the chair from the dressing table, turned it slightly, and sat down on it.
He had reversed the situation from earlier this morning, she realized—or yesterday morning, rather. He was seated on the chair, looking at her on the bed.
Well, let him look his fill. It was all that was left to him.
“Get dressed, Cassandra,” he said. “Not in those things on the floor. Real clothes. Put them on. We are going to talk.”
Just as she had said yesterday.
There was no discernible anger in either his face or his voice, only a certain intensity in his eyes.
But it did not occur to her to defy or disobey him.
He had all the gentle power of angels, she realized as she crossed the room, naked, to her dressing room and began pulling on the clothes she had been wearing during the evening. It instilled fear. Not fear of bodily harm, but of …
She still did not know the answer. For some things there were no words.
But she was afraid of him. He was somehow in her life, where she did not want him or anyone else to be. Not even Alice.
He was there.
… you, who are in some sort of relationship with me …
11
HE ought simply to leave as soon as he was dressed, Stephen thought.
But he did not do so. He could not.
He knew nothing about the normal sort of relationship men enjoyed with their mistresses. But then, he could not think of her as his mistress despite that damnable exchange of money that her circumstances had made necessary.
… when we are together in this room and this bed, we are employer and mistress … man and woman. We are not persons to each other. We are bodies. You may use my body as you will … but all the money in the world will not buy you me.
He did not want to buy her. He wanted to … know the woman into whose bed he was buying his way. Was there something so wrong about that?
She did not want to be known.
I am off limits to you. I belong to myself. I am your paid servant. I am not and never will be your slave. You will ask me no more personal questions. You will intrude no further into my life.
Of course, she knew no more than he about the normal relationship between a man and his mistress. He doubted she had slept with any other man except her husband until last night. Despite the siren’s act, which she tried so persistently to play, she was not a courtesan.
She was merely a desperate woman trying to make a living for herself and a few hangers-on. Though that was probably an unkind description of the people who lived with her. The former governess who had been walking in the park with her two days ago was probably past the age when she might find further employment with any ease. The maid was an unmarried mother and would be virtually unemployable as long as she chose to keep the child with her.
Stephen got to his feet and went to stand at the window while he waited for Cassandra to finish dressing. He opened the curtains and gazed out at the empty street. It was probably not a good idea to stand thus in the window, though, a candle burning behind him. The neighbors across the street might know that only women lived here.
He pulled the curtains across the window again and turned to lean back against the windowsill, his arms crossed over his chest.
Cassandra came out of the dressing room at the same moment. She looked at him and then took the chair. She arranged the skirts of her pale blue dress unhurriedly about her. A faint, mocking smile lifted the corners of her lips. She had tied back her hair again but not put it up. Finally, when he said nothing, she looked up at him and raised her eyebrows.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, “for prying into your life and causing you pain.”
Her eyebrows stayed arched upward.
“You did not cause me pain, Lord Merton,” she said. “As I remember it, you caused me a great deal of pleasure. I hope I caused you at least an equal amount.”
“Where do your servants sleep?” he asked her. “And the child.”
“On the floor above this,” she said. “You need not fear that our pantings and moanings have been penetrating walls and keeping anyone from sleep. And they are not my servants. They are my friends.”
She was not a likable woman when her mask was in place, as it so often was. The very best thing in the world for him would be to leave. The money he had sent her yesterday morning would keep her and the others for a short while. After that �
�� Well, she was not his responsibility. But the trouble was that the woman who wore the mask did not exist, and he did not know the woman behind it. He did not know if he would like her or not.
She did not want to be known.
She had killed her husband.
Good God, what was he doing here?
But she had brought with her to London an aging governess, a waif of a maid who had lost her job, the maid’s very young child, and the damaged dog. She had determinedly sought him out as a protector so that they would not all starve—them, as well as herself.
“This is their home,” he said. “I sully it when I come here to exercise my rights as your employer. I impinge upon the innocence of that child.”
That fact had bothered him since he saw her yesterday afternoon, rosy-cheeked and tousle-haired and wide-eyed. One of life’s precious innocents. He had even thought at the time that perhaps she was Cassandra’s. It made no real difference that she was not. This whole situation was … distasteful.
She had crossed her legs and was slowly swinging one leg. She gazed at him for a while without saying anything. Her smile still lingered.
“A gentleman with a conscience,” she said eventually. “It seems a contradiction in terms. It must be very inconvenient to you, Lord Merton.”
“Often,” he agreed. “It is what a conscience is intended to be if it has not become jaded. It is the guide by which I try to live my life and make my decisions about the course it will take.”
“Is it conscience that kept you here after you were dressed?” she asked him. “Or a lingering lust for what you would lose if you left then? If it was the latter, you need not worry. You will never lack for bedfellows whenever you want them—and would not even if you were not titled and wealthy. If it is the former, it must be that you pity me and my pathetic little entourage. Do not. We will survive without you, Lord Merton. We are really none of your concern, are we?”
He answered her even though the question had been rhetorical.
“No,” he said. But he did not move.
“What is your purpose, then?” she asked. “Do you wish to set me up in some love nest? It is what other gentlemen do, especially the married ones. It would be very cozy, and you could visit me there whenever you wished without fear of sullying anyone’s innocence. I would be like other women who take employment. I would have my home here and my place of employment there.”
Her foot swung a little faster. Her voice was low and mocking.
“It will not do, Cassandra,” he said.
She sighed audibly.
“Then this is the end, is it?” she said. “I hope you will not mind not having all your money returned, Lord Merton. I have spent some of it, you see. I am very extravagant. But I have serviced you for two successive nights and ought to be paid something.”
She seemed to notice her swiftly swinging foot and stopped it abruptly.
It would be so easy simply to say yes, this was the end. It was what he surely wanted. He could go home to Merton House, sleep for what would be left of the night when he got there, and put this whole sorry episode behind him when he got up in the morning. He would be free of an entanglement he had not really wanted from the start.
He could resume the familiar life that he enjoyed.
He could not say yes.
“Cassandra,” he said, leaning forward slightly, “we must start again. May we start again?”
She laughed at him.
“But certainly, Lord Merton,” she said. “Shall I undress? Or would you prefer to do it for me? Or … would you like me to lie down as I am?”
She had not misunderstood him at all. But for reasons of her own, she had decided to needle him. Perhaps, he thought with a painful flash of insight, she hated herself for what she had chosen to do with him. Perhaps she hated herself for the killing she had somehow got away with—as far as legal proceedings went, anyway.
“Stay where you are,” he said. “There will be no more sex tonight, Cassandra, and none for the foreseeable future. Perhaps never for the two of us.”
Her lip curled.
“And so,” she said, “by suggesting that we start again you are inviting me to seduce you all over again, Lord Merton? It will be my pleasure. Never say never. I am better than that.”
He crossed the room to her in a few quick strides, went down on his knees in front of her chair, and possessed himself of both her hands. She gazed at him, startled, and the mask slipped.
“Stop it,” he said. “Just stop it, Cassandra. That game is over. And game is all it ever was. That was not you. Or me. I am sorry for what I have done to you. Truly sorry.”
She opened her mouth to speak and closed it again, the words unspoken. She tried to look scornful and failed. He tightened his grip on her hands.
“Cassandra,” he said, “if we are to go on, we must do it as friends. And I do not use that word as a euphemism for nothing at all. We must become friends. I need to continue helping you, and you need help. It is, perhaps, not quite an ideal basis for friendship, but it will have to do. I will support you for as long as you need support, and you will give me your confidence and trust and company in return. Not your body. I cannot pay for your body. I cannot.”
“Goodness me, Lord Merton,” she said, “you must be desperate if you are prepared to pay for friendship. Is being an angel such a lonely business, then? Does no one want to be your friend?”
“Cass,” he said, “call me Stephen.”
Why was he bothering? Why was he?
Her smile was back—and then was not.
“Stephen,” she said. It was almost a whisper.
“Let us be friends,” he said. “Let me visit you openly here, with your former governess as your chaperone. Let me bring my sisters to visit you. Let me escort you about London as I did yesterday afternoon. Let us get to know each other.”
“Are you so desperate, then,” she said, “to have access to my secrets, Lord Merton? Are you itching to know all the titillating details of the way I killed Nigel?”
He let go of her hands and got to his feet again. He turned away from her and ran the fingers of one hand through his hair. He looked at the rumpled bed, where they had made love just a short while ago.
“Did you kill him?” he asked.
Why had he not fully believed her the first time he asked? Why had he not recoiled in horror and put as much distance between himself and her as he could?
“Yes, I did,” she said without hesitation. “You will not get me to deny it, Lord Merton—Stephen. You will not get me to invent a convenient stranger, a vagrant, who for no reason whatsoever but an inherent villainy climbed through the library window, shot my husband through the heart, and then took himself off again without even stealing anything of value. I did it because I hated him and wanted him dead and wanted to be free of him. Do you really want to be my friend?”
Why did he still not quite believe her? Because such a thing was unimaginable? But Lord Paget had died because a bullet had been shot into his heart. He tried to picture her with a pistol in her hand and closed his eyes briefly, appalled.
Was he mad? Was he besotted with her? Surely he was not. Of course he was not. He must simply be mad.
“Yes,” he said with a sigh. “I do.”
“The whole ton would believe you were courting me,” she said. “Your wings would soon be tinged black, Lord Merton. You would soon find yourself being shunned. Or becoming the laughingstock. Everyone would think you were my dupe. They would think you remarkably foolish. They would think you could not see beyond my beauty. I am beautiful. I say that without vanity. I know how other people look at me—women with envy, men with admiration and desire. Women would turn from you in disappointment and disdain. Men would look at you with envy and scorn.”
“I cannot live my life,” he said, “according to what my peers expect of me. I must live it as I see fit. I suppose there was a reason why you noticed me in Hyde Park a few days ago, and why I noticed you. A
nd it was not simply that you were looking for a protector and that I had an eye for beauty—especially as you were heavily veiled. You might have noticed a dozen others. So might I. But it was each other we saw. And there was a reason why we met again just the following day at Meg’s ball. The reason was not just that we would tumble into bed together and then part bitterly a short while later. I believe in causes. And effects.”
“We were fated to meet, then?” she said. “And to fall in love, perhaps, and marry and live happily ever after?”
“We make our own fate,” he said. “But some things happen for a reason. I am convinced of it. We met for a reason, Cassandra. We can choose to explore that reason—or not. No effect is fated.”
“Only the cause,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “I think. I am no philosopher. Let us start again, Cassandra. Let us give ourselves a chance at least to be friends. Let me get to know you. Get to know me. Perhaps I am worth knowing.”
“And perhaps not,” she said.
“And perhaps not.”
She sighed, and when he looked back at her he could see that she had dropped all pretenses. She looked simply vulnerable—and lovely beyond belief.
A murderer? Surely not. But what did a murderer look like?
“I ought to have known,” she said, “as soon as I saw you that you would be trouble. Instead, it was your friend I dismissed as potentially dangerous. It was he I thought I would not be able to control. The one who looks like the devil. Mr. Huxtable.”
“Con?” he said. “He is my cousin. He is not evil.”
“I thought angels were safe,” she said, “and so I chose you.”
“I am not an angel, Cassandra,” he said.
“Oh, believe me, you are,” she said. “That is the whole trouble.”
He smiled at her suddenly, and for a moment there was a gleam in her eye, and he thought she was going to smile back at him. She did not do so.