The Accidental Countess (2 page)

“I swear, Pen, if you don’t explain exactly what you mean this minute, I’m going to walk out that door and never speak to you again!” She jabbed her finger in the direction of the exit.

Lucy and Pen exchanged amazed glances.

“Why, Cass, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard you raise your voice before today,” Lucy remarked.

Cass was shaking, her fists still clenched. She glared at Pen. “What I still do not understand is why. Why don’t you want to see the man you’re supposed to marry?”

Pen had the grace to bow her head a bit, then she shrugged. She yanked at the top of her gown with one hand. “I just. I can’t. It was so difficult when I thought he was dying … and now. Oh, I don’t know. I need some time to think about things.”

“What things?” Cass prodded. She crossed her arms over her chest and stared down her nose at her cousin.

“You know. He will want to plan the wedding and choose a date and I’m—I’m simply not prepared.”

Cass pressed her lips together. Oh, yes. Why should she be prepared? She’d only had
seven years
to prepare. And this entire farce was so like Pen. She was always asking Cass to do outlandish favors for her, nothing quite
this
outlandish to date, but it still shouldn’t have surprised her. And Cass, good proper young lady and steadfast cousin and friend, had always agreed, always done whatever her cousin asked. But not today. Not with Julian. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.

Lucy shifted in her seat and took a sip of tea. “So, you’re saying that in order to evade your intended who is just back from the war and whom you haven’t seen in years, you’ve invented a friend whose fictitious house party you’ll supposedly be attending until such a time as you deem fit to return and see him?”

Pen smiled and nodded happily. “Yes. Exactly.”

“And what does your mama think of this?” Lucy wanted to know.

“Oh, Mama doesn’t know. I hid Captain Swift’s letters, and thankfully she and Papa are both out this afternoon.” She turned to face her cousin. “That’s why I need you, Cass. Julian knows you. He likes you. You’ve been writing to him all these years, haven’t you? You are friends, are you not?”

Cass nodded. She couldn’t meet her cousin’s eyes.
Yes. We’re friends, but I’d like to be much, much more
. Oh, she was the worst cousin on earth, the very worst. Pen would order her from the house if she knew how much Cass coveted her would-be bridegroom. At the very least Pen certainly wouldn’t ask her to do this mad favor for her.

Lucy set her teacup aside and dabbed at her lips with her handkerchief. “I have one more question.”

Pen nodded a bit impatiently. “Yes?”

“Have you completely lost your mind?” Lucy asked, a serene look on her face. “Or just a part of it, dear?”

Cass had to sharply turn her face away to keep her cousin from seeing her smile.

Pen blinked at Lucy. “I don’t know what you mean.” Pen stood again and made her way back over to the window with her teacup in her hand. She glanced outside. “I just need—”

The teacup dropped to the rug with a solid thunk, spilling its contents on the expensive Aubusson carpet. “Oh, my goodness. He’s here!” Pen called.

All the anger drained from Cass’s body, replaced with sheer, freezing-cold anxiety. She pressed her hand to her belly. “I think I may cast up my accounts.”

Lucy squeezed Cass’s hand and raised her voice to address Pen. “Who’s here?”

Pen whirled to face them, a look of panic in her blue eyes. “Captain Swift! He’s here! Now!” She rushed to the drawing room door and opened it before turning back to the other two ladies. “Cass. Cass, please,” she begged. “You must do this for me. You must tell Captain Swift I’ve gone to see Patience in the country. You must.”

Cass’s teeth chattered. She shook her head. She couldn’t do this. She could not. “But I haven’t even seen him in seven years, Pen. I was a child when last we met. And besides—”

“Please!” Pen nearly shrieked. “I must go. I’ll sneak up the back staircase so he won’t see me. Cass, please do this for me. Please!” And with that, Pen was gone from the room in a sweep of puce skirts.

Cass sat dumbly staring at the empty teacup lying haphazardly on its side on the carpet. She blinked, replaying the last few moments again and again in her mind. A log snapped in the fireplace. The smell of burnt wood filled the room. “This cannot be happening. It simply cannot,” she murmured.

Lucy took a deep breath and pushed her hands down her legs, smoothing her skirts. “It appears it is happening,” she said just before Pen’s butler arrived at the door to the drawing room.

“Captain Julian Swift,” the butler pronounced.

“Show him in, please,” Lucy replied in a commanding voice, as if she were the lady of the house. She turned quickly to face Cass and grasped her shoulders. “Cass, look at me.”

Cass managed to meet her friend’s eyes. Her headache had been replaced with a strange buzzing sensation and a dazed feeling. She grasped at the smooth satin of Lucy’s sleeves.

“You look frightened half to death.” Lucy squeezed her shoulders and gave her an encouraging shake.

“I
am
frightened half to death. Oh, Lucy. What am I going to say? What am I going to do?” She searched Lucy’s face. Lucy was always sensible, always rational, always so good with words. Lucy would know what to do. Wouldn’t she?

Lucy nodded, a determined look in her eye. “Don’t worry, Cass. I’ll handle it. Leave all of the talking to me. I have an idea.”

CHAPTER TWO

Cass had heard of people being overcome by fits of uneven breathing. She’d even seen it a time or two at the odd, overly crowded crush. Once Lady Sarah Markingham had delicately fluttered to the parquet floor in the middle of the Thorntons’ ball, only to be carried away by two footmen and followed by her mother who declared that smelling salts were in order and she just so happened to have a vial of those useful little pebbles in her reticule. But Cass had never expected such a dramatic turn to happen to
her
. Today was certain to be the first. Spots danced before her eyes. The room seemed to be closing in on her. For a strange moment, she thought she smelled oranges. She braced a hand against the arm of the sofa.

Lucy had said to leave all the talking to her. Of course Cass meant to leave all the talking to her. That was Lucy’s strength, after all, talking. And a duty Cass was more than grateful to relinquish to her friend at the moment. She doubted she could utter a word if she was prodded with a hot poker.

Yes, Lucy would talk. As it should be. In fact, Cass, Lucy, and their third close friend, Jane, had all agreed at a ball last June that they would use one another’s strong points to help each attain what they wanted in life. First, Lucy had chased away Cass’s unwanted suitor, the Duke of Claringdon. It turned out in the chasing, however, that he’d actually been the perfect suitor for Lucy all along.

Next, they had promised to help their bluestocking friend Jane convince her parents to stop constantly pestering her to marry. Jane wanted nothing more than to be left in peace to study and write and stop being forced to attend all those hideous balls and routs.

It was Jane’s turn, yes, but here Lucy was, using her skill with words to help Cass in her time of need yet again, and Cass was infinitely grateful to her friend. In the moments it took for the butler to show Julian into the drawing room, Cass pulled her hand away from the arm of the sofa and set it in her lap. She swallowed hard and straightened her shoulders. Then she concentrated on not sliding off the settee in a fit of wrong breathing.

“You look absolutely breathtaking, dear,” Lucy said with a small, encouraging smile. “Captain Swift is certain to be amazed at your beauty.”

“I was quite serious when I said I may cast up my accounts,” Cass answered.

“Don’t do that, dear,” Lucy replied quickly.

Cass took a small gulp of air and nodded shakily just before the door to the drawing room swung open again and Captain Julian Swift strode into the room.

A funny little noise flew from Cass’s throat. A whimper? A sigh? Both, perhaps. She turned her face up to him and just … stared, her eyes, no doubt, wide as saucers.

Julian was there, not the dream of him, not the memory, but the flesh-and-blood man. He was even more dashing and handsome than she’d remembered. She’d been barely sixteen the last time she’d seen him. Julian had been three and twenty. Now she was three and twenty. She gulped. She’d been a child back then, really. She hadn’t matured at a fast pace. She’d had straggly blondish hair, unremarkable blue eyes, and freckles on the bridge of her nose. She’d also been far too thin and all knobby-kneed. She hoped she’d grown into the swan her friends always told her she would. But at this moment, facing Julian, she could only remember herself as an awkward young girl. Weren’t friends always telling one another how beautiful they were even if it was entirely untrue?

Staring at Julian, she was rendered completely speechless. Her gaze swept from the tips of his boots to the top of his head. He wore his army uniform. Oh, my, he wore it well. A deep red coat with epaulets, dark gray trousers, and black Hessians. Julian was two inches over six feet tall, had blond-streaked hair and broad shoulders and the most amazing gray eyes she had ever seen.

He flashed a smile as soon as he saw the two women sitting on the sofa. Cass sighed again. His teeth hadn’t suffered any ill effects from his service to the Crown, still straight and white and perfect. And while he had a few small crinkles at the corners of his eyes and he looked a bit older and more distinguished, for certain, he was still as handsome—more so—than Cass remembered from her vivid dreams.

And he was standing directly in front of her.

The look on his face was a bit of astonishment mixed with confusion. His gaze remained fixed on Cass. He’d barely glanced at Lucy. Lucy looked back and forth between the two of them, and Cass forced herself to pull her gaze away from Julian and turn her attention to her friend. There was a gleam in Lucy’s eye, the type of gleam Lucy always got when she was up to one of her schemes. But Cass had no time to consider it. Instead, she stood to greet Julian. Did he recognize her? The look on his face told her he must. Didn’t he?

“Ju … Julian?” she barely whispered.

Lucy’s hand on her arm stopped her and Cass promptly snapped shut her mouth. Oh, yes, Lucy had told her to leave the speaking to her.

Lucy stood, too, and executed a perfect curtsy. “Captain Swift.”

“My lady?” Julian said in a tone that clearly indicated he had no idea who she was.

“I am Lady Worthing,” Lucy offered.

Cass let out a small gasp. Why had Lucy given him a false name?

“Lady Worthing,” Julian repeated, bowing over her hand. “A pleasure.”

Cass waited with bated breath to be introduced. Julian had to know who she was. She couldn’t look at him. What if disappointment lurked in his eyes? She couldn’t bear it.

“And this is…?” Lucy paused deliberately, sweeping her hand in Cass’s direction.

Cass held her breath again.

The silence seemed to last an interminable amount of time but it was probably only seconds. Cass glanced up at Julian. Her name would fall from his lips any moment now. Should she curtsy? What was appropriate under such circumstances? This was the man she’d written to nearly every day for the last seven years. She knew more about him than Pen did. She thought about him, dreamed about him, had cried endless tears when she’d believed he would die. And now, here he was, seeing her again. All grown-up.

His brow was furrowed and he stared at her as if seeing a ghost. “Penelope?” he asked in a voice that was half awe, half disbelief.

Cass’s mouth fell open. He didn’t recognize her. And he apparently didn’t remember Pen, either. Pen had been eighteen that last time they’d seen each other. She hadn’t changed much, other than the addition of a bit more girth.

“No,” Cass breathed, shaking her head.

Lucy swiveled on her heel and gave Cass a deadly glare. “Allow me,” she said with a clenched jaw in a voice that clearly told Cass to stop speaking.

Oh, good heavens. Whatever Lucy was up to, it was going to be both messy and complicated. It always was.

Lucy turned back to Julian, a wide smile on her face. “Oh, heavens no, though we are here for the same purpose you are. To see Penelope.”

Cass remained silent and motionless at Lucy’s side, but her mind was shrieking,
What is Lucy doing
? Why wasn’t she introducing her? It was beyond awkward.

“Please have a seat, Captain Swift.” Lucy gestured to the chair across from them.

Julian reluctantly sat, though his gaze remained on Cass, clearly still wondering about the identity of the other occupant of the room.

“Would you care for some tea, Captain?” Lucy asked next in the most nonchalant voice in the world, as if she wasn’t entertaining a man in someone else’s drawing room with an unnamed lady at her side. Cass wanted to expire from embarrassment, but Lucy kept a perfect hostesslike smile pinned to her face.

“No, thank you. I don’t drink tea,” Julian replied.

Cass glanced at her lap and tugged at the ends of her gloves. Oh, good heavens. He was going to see the teacup on the rug and wonder why it was there. Then, he’d piece the entire idiotic scheme together. Very well, perhaps
that
was unlikely.

Julian leveled his furrowed brow on Lucy. “Is Miss Monroe—Penelope—here?”

Lucy sighed. “I’m afraid not, Captain Swift. Though my friend and I were just looking for her, too. Seems we stopped by at an inopportune time.”

Cass kept her gaze trained on her lap. Her
friend
? That’s all Lucy was going to say?

“I don’t understand,” Julian replied. “The butler said—”

Lucy leaned forward and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Just between you and me, Captain Swift, the Monroes’ butler is a few pence shy of a pound these days.” Cass glanced up to see Lucy frown and shake her head as if it was a sad bit of news, to be certain.

“Oh, I see.” Julian nodded as if he completely understood.