casually that the Earl of Merton was to call this afternoon – a formal social visit to take tea with them, not official business.
'It is amazing what a little luncheon and a cup of tea and an hour's sit-down can do to restore one's energy,' Alice said brightly. 'I am ready to go again – and this afternoon I will not even get wet.'
'I agreed that I would be here when he came, Alice,' Cassandra said. 'It would be ill-mannered to be from home after all, and you taught me never to be bad-mannered. Besides…'
'Besides /what/?' Alice was cross. She had turned from the window, a frown on her face.
Cassandra had no work on her lap – she could not seem to settle to anything these days. She had no excuse to look anywhere else but back at her old governess.
'I think our… /liaison/ is at an end, Allie,' she said. 'In fact, it is. He found it distasteful – mainly, I believe, because Belinda lives here. He said something about sullying innocence. Though it was not only that. I think he really must be an angel. I led an angel astray. He feels guilty. He wants to make amends. He wants to start again, and he wants us to be /friends/. Have you ever heard anything so absurd in your life? But he wants to keep on paying me too, and I do not know how I am going to make myself say no, though of course I ought. I cannot accept a handsome salary just for being someone's friend, can I?'
'Come for a walk,' Alice said firmly, 'before it is too late. Just get your bonnet, Cassie, and never mind about changing your dress.'
Cassandra shook her head and looked down at her hands in her lap. She examined her fingernails. They needed cutting. She was wearing her sprigged muslin dress for the occasion. Pretty clothes were something she /did/ have left. Nigel had always insisted that she dress well.
'I do not want even to set eyes on him,' Alice said, 'let alone sit and take tea with him. I don't /like/ him, Cassie, and I do not need to meet him to know that. He hurt you.'
'No, he did not.' Cassandra looked up with troubled eyes. 'If any hurting was done, it was the other way around. He has not hurt /me/. He is… lovely, Allie.'
Lovely and terribly troubling.
All morning – and all last night after he had left – she had thought about his lovemaking and the aches and yearnings it had aroused in her. And that pain that was not pain. It was sexual desire she had been feeling.
She had admitted that eventually. She had never before felt sexual desire. She had not even known there was such a thing for women.
And all morning she had been thinking about their conversation afterward. /I suppose there was a reason why you noticed me in Hyde Park a few/ /days ago, and why I noticed you… And there was a reason why we met again just the following day at Meg's ball. I believe in causes. And effects/.
If there was a reason for everything, why had she met Nigel? /Some things happen for a reason. I am sure of it. We met for a reason, Cassandra. We can choose to explore that reason – or not. No effect is fated/.
He had found a way for fate and free will to exist side by side. How clever of him. /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/.
Did he not feel he knew enough about her? She had told him – twice – that she had killed Nigel. What was there more to know about someone who had admitted to doing that? /Perhaps I am worth knowing/.
'Perhaps,' she said to Alice, 'he is worth knowing.'
'After what he has done to you?' Alice came back to her place and sat down with a thump. 'And don't talk to me about your having seduced him, Cassie. You had reason to do it, though heaven knows I opposed it quite vigorously from the start. He had no such excuse for allowing himself to be seduced, except that he is a /man/. If he needs a woman that badly, why does he not marry? That is what wives are for!'
Cassandra looked at her and, for the first time all day, smiled with genuine amusement.
'Well.' Alice's cheeks turned pink. 'It is /one/ thing they are for.
Don't you go misunderstanding me, Cassie. Women are worth a great deal more than /that/, as I have tried to instill in you from childhood on. I /still/ think we ought to go to Green Park. It may be raining again tomorrow. And it is I who ought to be finding some source of income. And I /will/. I bought a paper this morning. It was a dreadful extravagance, but there is notice there of several positions for which I intend to apply. Some of them are unsuitable, it is true, but there are several distinct possibilities. A woman's usefulness cannot possibly be over at the age of forty-two. I refuse to believe it.'
Cassandra smiled at her and noticed that her former governess's eyes were swimming in tears.
'Cassie,' she said again, 'it is /I/ who must look after us. You know it as well as I do.'
'It is you who have always looked after me, Allie,' Cassandra said.
'/Always/.'
Alice dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.
'It is important to you that we receive the Earl of Merton, then, is it?' she asked.
'Yes.' Cassandra nodded. 'And he asked particularly that you be with me, you know – as a chaperone.'
Alice made a rather ugly sound, like a snort.
'I /must/ have told you that story sometime during your growing years,' she said, 'about the stable doors being shut after the horse had bolted.'
It was too late for them to go walking now even if they wanted to. A carriage that was passing along the street outside drew to a halt outside the door. Cassandra could hear it clearly from where she was sitting.
Their visitor had arrived.
/12/
STEPHEN called upon Katherine, Lady Montford, late in the morning after leaving the House of Lords. He went with the intention of asking her to accompany him when he called upon Cassandra. But Meg was with her, having brought Toby and Sally to play with Hal in the nursery, and he was able to ask both of them to go with him.
'I ought to have asked about yesterday afternoon and your ride in the park as soon as I saw you, Stephen,' Meg said. 'You have taken it upon yourself to bring Lady Paget into fashion, then, have you? It is very kind of you. She is not particularly easy to like, is she? There is a habitual look on her face that suggests – well, a certain contempt for everyone she beholds, as though she held herself superior. I know it is probably just her way of protecting herself against what really is a very difficult situation, but even so her manner does not invite intimacy.'
'I told her I would call this afternoon,' Stephen said, 'but it would not be quite the thing to go alone, would it?'
'She certainly does not need even the whisper of more gossip,' Kate agreed. 'You are quite right about her manner, of course, Meg, but I daresay that if I were all alone in London and everyone believed I had murdered my husband – with an axe – I would behave in much the same way. /If/ I had the courage to appear in public at all, that is. One must admire her. I will be pleased to come with you this afternoon, Stephen.
Hal will be ready for a rest after a busy morning, and Jasper is going to the races.'
'So is Duncan,' Meg added. 'They are going together, in fact. I will come too.'
It had been easier than Stephen had feared. There had been no awkward questions. It was obviously not clear to his sisters that he was nursing a guilty conscience.
When he arrived outside Cassandra's door on Portman Street during the afternoon, then, it was in a manner that was above reproach. He arrived openly, for every neighbor on the street to see if they wished, and he handed down two eminently respectable ladies to the pavement while the footman who had accompanied his coachman rapped the knocker against the door.
A few minutes later, they were seated in the sitting room, making polite conversation with Cassandra, who was pouring the tea, and with Miss Haytor, whom Stephen recognized from Hyde Park a few afternoons ago. She was sitting straight-backed in her chair, a prunish look on her face, but she was not an unhandsome woman.
And the prunish look was understandable. He just hoped he would not lose this gamble he had taken. He
