She kissed his cheek.
'I do not expect, Young,' Stephen said, 'ever to have the need to answer to you. Your sister will be in good hands.'
They found the Compton-Haigs and asked to be excused from participating in the last dance. Lady Compton-Haig appeared charmed more than offended, and she and her husband accompanied them downstairs and waved them on their way after Stephen's carriage had been brought up to the door.
Cassandra set her head back against the soft upholstery of the carriage seat as the vehicle rocked into motion and closed her eyes.
Stephen's hand found hers in the darkness, and his fingers curled about it. She was too weary to withdraw it.
'Cassandra, my dear,' he said, 'I am so very sorry. I ought to have wooed you more privately and far less recklessly. I certainly ought to have made you a marriage proposal before announcing our betrothal to all the world. But disaster loomed for you, and it was all I could think of to do.'
'I know that,' she said. 'I was furious with you for only a very short while. We were incredibly indiscreet – /both/ of us. I do not blame you, and I do assure you that I was not involved in any deliberate seduction.
It was just – indiscreet. Unfortunately, your response will make tomorrow and the days following it uncomfortable for you as people look for the official announcement in the papers and do not find it. But they will recover. People always do. They even started sending out invitations to an axe murderer after a scant week.'
'Cass.' He squeezed her hand. 'There /will be/ an announcement. Not in tomorrow's paper, it is true. It is too late for that. But it will appear in the morning after's. And we will have to decide when the nuptials will be and where – either here at St. George's with half the /ton/ in attendance, or somewhere more private. Warren Hall, perhaps.
People will want to know either way. They will shower us both with questions.'
Ah. She might have guessed that he would take gallantry to the extreme.
'But Stephen,' she said without opening her eyes or turning her head,
'you did not make me an offer, did you? And I did not accept. And /would not/ accept even if you were to make one now. Not tonight, not ever. Not you or anyone else. One thing I will never do again in this life is marry.'
She heard him draw breath to reply, but he said nothing.
They rode the rest of the way to her door in silence.
He vaulted out of the carriage as soon as it had rocked to a halt, set down the steps, and assisted her to alight. Then he put the steps back up, closed the door, and looked up to instruct the coachman to drive home.
'Stephen,' she said sharply, 'you are not coming inside with me. You are not invited.'
The carriage rumbled off down the street.
'I am coming anyway,' he said.
And she realized, as she had done last week after she had chosen him, that there was a thread of steel in Stephen Huxtable, Earl of Merton, and that in certain matters he could be quite inflexible. This was one of those matters. She might remain out here arguing for an hour, but he was coming inside at the end of it. She might as well let him in now. A few spots of rain were falling, and there was not a star in sight overhead. There was probably going to be a downpour in a short while.
'Oh, very well,' she said irritably, and bent to find the house key beneath the flowerpot beside the steps.
He took it from her hand, unlocked the door, allowed her to step inside before him, and closed and locked the door behind him.
Alice, Mary, and Belinda would have gone to bed hours ago. They would be no help whatsoever. Not that they would even if they were present. A glance at Stephen's face in the dim light of the hall candle confirmed her in her suspicion that he was angry and mulish and was going to be very difficult to deal with.
He strode into the sitting room, came back with a long candle, lit it from the hall candle, extinguished the latter, and led the way back into the sitting room.
Just as if he owned the house.
Of course, he /was/ paying the rent on it.
/18/
IT was a devilishly ticklish situation.
She /had/ to marry him. Surely she could see that. Her tenure with the /ton/ was precarious, to say the least. If she withdrew from this betrothal now, she would never recover her position.
'Cass,' he said as he fixed the candle in its holder on the mantel, 'I love you, you know.'
He felt a little weak at the knees, saying the words aloud. He wondered if he meant them. He had told Nessie this afternoon that he /liked/ her as opposed to simply liking her without the emphasis, but did that mean he loved her with a forever-after kind of love?
He thought it might mean that. But everything had happened too quickly.
He had not had sufficient time to /fall/ in love.
None of which mattered now.
Good Lord, he had /never/ before kissed a woman in public – or even /nearly/ in public. It was unpardonable of him to have done so tonight.
Especially with Cassandra.
'No, you do not,' she said, seating herself in her usual chair, crossing her legs, and swinging her foot, her dancing slipper dangling from her toes. She stretched her arms along the arms of the chair and looked perfectly relaxed – and rather contemptuous. The old mask. 'I believe you like me well enough, Stephen, and for reasons of your own you have decided to befriend me and bring me into fashion – and support me financially until I can stand on my own feet. There is doubtless some lust mingled in with the liking because you have been in my bed twice and enjoyed both experiences sufficiently to think you would not mind trying it again. You do not /love/ me.'
'You presume to know me, then,' he asked her, irritated, 'better than I know myself?'
There was truth in what she said, though. He wanted her even now. Her orange-red dress gleamed in the light of the single candle, her hair glowed just as brightly, and her face was beautiful, even with its scornful expression. He was in her house late at night again, and he could not help thinking of what a pleasure it would be to go upstairs with her and make love to her again.
'Yes, I do,' she said, and her expression softened slightly as she looked fully at him. 'I believe you were born compassionate and gallant, Stephen. Acquiring your title and properties and fortune have not made you less so, as they would with ninety-nine men out of one hundred, but more so because you believe you must prove yourself worthy of such good fortune. You gallantly offered me marriage tonight – or announced our betrothal, rather. And now you are gallantly convincing yourself that you really /wish/ to marry me. In your mind, that means that you must /love/ me, and so you believe that you do. You do not.'
Irritation had blossomed into anger. Yet he did wonder if she was right.
How could he be in love so suddenly like this? And with someone so different from his ideal of a prospective wife? How could he be contemplating this marriage he had trapped himself into with anything less than dismay?
And yet…
'You are wrong,' he said, 'as you will see in time. But it does not matter, Cass. Whether you are right or I am, the situation is the same.
We have been seen together enough times in the past week to have aroused interest and speculation, and tonight we were caught alone out on the balcony, in each other's arms, kissing each other. There is only one thing we /can/ do. We must marry.'
'And so,' she said, her fingers drumming slowly on the arms of her chair, 'for one small and thoughtless indiscretion we must both sacrifice the rest of our lives? Of course it is what the /ton/ now expects. It is what it /demands/. Do you not see how ridiculous that is, though, Stephen?'
