yourself. I am ready to leave. We do not need to keep the carriage waiting.'
But he stepped inside anyway and closed the door behind him.
'I am still outraged about your jewels,' he said. 'A lady ought not to be seen at a ball without any. I have brought you this to wear.'
She recognized the slightly scuffed brown leather box as soon as she saw it. One of her favorite activities when she was a girl had been to lift it out of her father's trunk and open it carefully to gaze inside and sometimes to touch the contents with a light fingertip. Once or twice she had even clasped it about her neck and admired herself in a glass, feeling horribly wicked all the time.
She took the box from Wesley's hand and opened it. And there was the silver chain as she remembered it, though it had been polished now to a bright sheen, with the pendant heart made of small diamonds. Their father had given it to their mother as a wedding gift, and it was the one possession of any value that had not been sold during any of the lean times, or even pawned.
It was not an ostentatious piece and was probably not of any great value. Indeed, the diamonds might even be paste for all Cassandra knew.
Perhaps that was why it had never been sold or pawned. But its sentimental value was immense.
Wesley took it out of the box and clasped it about her neck.
'Oh, Wes,' she said, fingering it, 'how wonderful you are. I will wear it just for tonight. And then you must put it away and keep it for your bride.'
'She would not appreciate it,' he said. 'No one would except us, Cassie.
I would rather you kept it as a sort of gift from me. Though as far as that goes, I daresay it belongs to you as much as it does to me. Devil take it, you are not /weeping/, are you?'
'I think I am,' she said, dabbing at her eyes with two fingers and laughing at the same time. And she threw her arms about his neck and hugged him tightly.
He patted her back awkwardly.
'Is your maid /Mary/?' he asked.
'Yes.' She stood back from him, still fingering the necklace as she looked down at it. 'Why?'
'No reason,' he said.
A minute or so later he was handing her into the carriage he had hired for the evening, and they were making their ponderous way through the streets to the Compton-Haig mansion.
How different her arrival was this time. This time she was handed down to the red carpet by a liveried footman and made her way inside the house on her brother's arm. This time she felt free to look around and appreciate the marble hallway and the bright chandelier overhead and the liveried servants and the guests all decked out in their evening finery.
This time a few people caught her eye and nodded to her. One or two even smiled. She could happily ignore those who did neither.
Wesley led her along the receiving line, and this time she could meet the eye of everyone in it because she had been invited and because her name could no longer inspire the shock it had created last week.
And this time, as soon as they had stepped inside the ballroom and she was looking about her, admiring the banks of purple and white flowers and green ferns, Sir Graham and Lady Carling came to speak with her and to be introduced to Wesley, with whom they did not have an acquaintance.
And then Lord and Lady Sheringford came to bid them a good evening, and Mr. Huxtable came to ask Cassandra for the second set. A couple of Wesley's friends came to speak with him, and one of them – a Mr.
Bonnard – reserved a set later in the evening with her.
'Damn me, Wes,' he said, lifting a quizzing glass halfway to his eye, his head held firmly in place by the height and stiffness of his starched shirt points, 'I did not know Lady Paget was your sister. She certainly got all the looks in the family. There were precious few left for you, were there?'
He and the other friend, whose name Cassandra had already forgotten, brayed with identical merriment at the witty joke.
And then Stephen was there, bowing and smiling and asking, a twinkle in his eyes, if Lady Paget had been kind enough to remember to reserve a set for him.
She fanned her cheeks.
'The first and second sets are spoken for,' she said, 'and the set after supper.'
'I sincerely hope,' he said, 'none of those dances are the waltz. I shall be severely out of sorts if they are. May I dance the first waltz with you, ma'am, and the supper dance too if they are not one and the same? And one other set if they are?'
He was openly distinguishing her. It was not poor etiquette to dance twice in an evening with the same lady, but it was something everyone present always noticed. It usually meant that the gentleman concerned was seriously courting the lady.
She ought to say yes to only one dance. But his blue eyes were smiling, and the lawyer had said two weeks, even though he had admitted that it might be one month, and after that she would be leaving London forever to find herself a pretty little cottage in an obscure English village, and she would never see him again. Or have to face the /ton/ again.
'Thank you,' she said, her hand falling still as she smiled back at him.
And she remembered how, only a week ago, she had stood alone in just such a ballroom as this, looking consideringly at all the gentlemen before picking him out as her prey.
Now there was a little corner of her heart that might always belong to him.
The more fool she.
'Shall we?' Wesley said, and she could see that couples were beginning to gather on the dance floor for the opening set.
The evening was not, after all, to pass without some unpleasantness.
Mr. Huxtable came to claim the second set very early and led Cassandra onto the floor long before most other couples came to join them. It was clear to her that he wished to talk with her – but that he did not want to do so in anyone else's hearing.
He was an extraordinarily handsome man, she thought as they came to a stop in the middle of the floor and turned to face each other. He was handsome despite, or perhaps because of, his slightly crooked nose. Many women must find him impossibly attractive. She was not one of them. She did not like dark, brooding men who carried an aura of danger about with them. She was very glad indeed she had not chosen /him/ last week. Would she have succeeded? Could she have seduced him – and trapped him into paying her a large salary to be his mistress?
'I do not need to sidle by slow degrees into what I wish to say to you, do I?' he said now.
Oh, he was very dangerous indeed.
She was startled but would not show it. She waved her fan slowly before her face.
'Absolutely not,' she said. 'I would prefer plain speaking. You wish to warn me away from your cousin, I daresay. He needs someone big and dark and strong like you to protect him and frighten away dangerous women like me, does he? Though I have always thought the devil's function was to destroy innocence, not protect it.'
'Plain speaking indeed,' he said – and smiled at her with what looked like genuine amusement. 'Merton is /not/ a weakling, Lady Paget, though many people may think so. Unlike many men, he does not seem to feel the need always to be flexing his muscles in order to demonstrate how tough and manly he is. Did you choose him because you thought he /was/ weak?'
'/I/ chose /him/?' she asked haughtily.
'I saw you collide with him in Margaret's ballroom,' he said.
'An accident,' she said.
'Deliberate.'
She raised her eyebrows and fanned her face.
'It is really none of your business, is it?' she asked him.
'When outdone in an argument,' he said, 'it is always good strategy – or perhaps the /only/ strategy – to fall back upon a clichГ©.'
Would the musicians /never/ be finished tuning their instruments? Would the dancers never be finished with their conversations on the sidelines?
