Seducing an Angel (31 page)

Though that was unfair. She had not
allowed
anything. She had been a full and willing participant.

But not in the announcement he had then felt obliged to make.

Though honesty forced her to admit that he had had very little choice but to do exactly what he had done.

She hoped the lawyer had not exaggerated when he had said
two weeks
.

Lord Compton-Haig, at the prompting of his wife, rose to propose a toast to the newly betrothed couple, and everyone rose and
clinked glasses and drank before heading back to the ballroom and a resumption of the dancing. Stephen led out the Duchess of Moreland, his sister, and Cassandra danced with the duke. Fortunately it was a rather intricate country dance and did not allow for much private conversation. From the sober look on Moreland’s face, Cassandra guessed that he would have had a great deal to say to her if he had had the opportunity.

He had, once upon a time, she remembered, been Stephen’s official guardian.

He said only one thing of a personal nature, and it somehow sent shivers along Cassandra’s spine.

“You must come to dinner one evening soon, Lady Paget,” he said. “I shall have the duchess arrange it. And you may tell us at your leisure how you plan to make Merton happy.”

She smiled back at him.

“You must not concern yourself about that, your grace,” she said, noticing his very blue eyes, the one distinguishing feature between him and the dark-eyed Mr. Huxtable. “My hopes and dreams for the Earl of Merton must be very similar to your own.”

He inclined his head and moved off to dance the next figure with another lady.

After that set, Cassandra really wanted nothing else than to beg Wesley to take her home. It could not be done, however. She could not so publicly abandon the man whose marriage offer she had supposedly accepted just this evening.

But that thought gave her another, better idea. The duke had returned her to Wesley’s side, but her brother was busy conversing with a group of friends and did no more than flash a smile in her direction. She opened her fan and looked about the room. It was easy to spot Stephen—he was striding toward her, a warm smile lighting his face.

Oh, how he must resent her!

And how she resented him. There
must
have been another way to deal with that crisis. Heaven alone knew what it was, though.

“The final set is about to begin,” he said, “and it is mine, I believe.”

“Stephen,” she said, “take me home.”

His eyes searched hers, his smile arrested. He nodded.

“A good idea,” he said. “We will avoid the crush after the set is ended. You came with your brother?”

She nodded.

“I will tell him I am going home with you instead,” she said. “He is just here.”

Wesley turned away from his group even as she spoke.

“Wesley,” she said, “Stephen is going to take me home in his carriage. Do you mind?”

“No,” he said. He held out a hand to Stephen. “I will expect you to treat her kindly, Merton. You will have me to answer to if you do not.”

Oh, men! They were such ridiculous, possessive creatures. Sometimes it seemed they believed women could not breathe without their assistance.

But there was some comfort in knowing that Wesley was now a man.
You will have me to answer to if you do not
. There had been no one to say those words to Nigel before she married him, except her father, who had been too genial and too trusting for his own good.

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

I
T
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?”

It
was
ridiculous and would be something worth defying if they actively disliked each other.

“One small and thoughtless indiscretion,” he said. “Is that what that kiss was, Cass? Did it mean nothing else?”

She raised her eyebrows and was silent for a while.

“We spent two nights in bed together, Stephen,” she said, “but have since reverted to celibacy. You are an extraordinarily attractive man, and I do not believe I am without some charms. We were waltzing together and had become heated in the ballroom. We sought coolness out on the balcony and discovered solitude there as well. What happened was almost inevitable—and indiscreet, of course.
And
thoughtless.”

“It was nothing more than lust, then?” he said.

“No, it was not.” She smiled at him.

“I believe you know,” he said, holding her eyes with his own, “that it was. If anyone is practicing self-deception here, Cass, it is you, not me.”

“You are very sweet,” she said in her velvet voice.

He was annoyed again. And frustrated. He stood with his back to the fireplace, his hands clasped behind him.

“If you fail to honor this engagement,” he said, “there will be a horrible scandal.”

She shrugged.

“People will recover,” she said. “They always do. And we will have
supplied them with what they most enjoy—a salacious topic of gossip.”

He leaned a little toward her.

“Yes,” he agreed. “Under more normal circumstances we could perhaps hope to suffer nothing worse than a few weeks of severe discomfort. But—forgive me, Cass—these are not normal circumstances. Not for you, anyway.”

She pursed her lips and regarded him with an amused smile.

“The beau monde will rejoice over
you
, Stephen,” she said. “The lost sheep returning to the fold. All the ladies will weep tears of joy. Eventually you will choose one of them and live happily ever after with her. I promise you.”

He stared at her until she raised her eyebrows again and looked downward rather jerkily. She drew her slipper back onto her foot by clenching her toes, uncrossed her legs, and smoothed her gown over her knees.

“Sometimes,” she said, “your eyes are uncomfortably intense, Stephen, and speak more eloquently than words. It is very unfair of you. One cannot argue with eyes.”

“You will be ruined,” he said.

She laughed. “And I am not already?”

“You are recovering,” he said. “People are beginning to accept you. You are beginning to receive invitations. My family has accepted you. Your brother has reconciled with you. And now you could be betrothed to me. What is so very bad about that? Do you believe I will beat you after we are married? That I will cause you to miscarry our children? Do you? Will you look me in the eye and tell me you fear I may be capable of such dastardly behavior?”