Chapter 25
He watched as Cecilia turned to Lady Catherine, “Is everything in place?”
“Yes,” Lady Catherine’s smile was diabolical as she fingered the pearls at her throat. “My maid is steering her to us in a few.”
For once, it was Cassian who was stumped, and he cleared his throat, “Cecilia, would you care to enlighten me as to what is going on?”
Before she could say a word, Lady Horatia, the hostess, strolled to them, a streak of her grey hair a brand in her dark coif. Clad in rich indigo, the hostess stopped to curtsy to Cassian.
“I had hoped you would attend, Your Grace,” the lady smiled before turning to Cecilia. “And you as well, Your Grace. Ladies Emma, Catherine, and Jane, I am delighted to see you all.”
From the corner of his eye, Cassian spotted Whitmore edging closer as if he wanted to hear what was happening. Unable to let the man linger in the background when he wanted to be in the forefront, Cassian bellowed, “Eavesdropping, are we, Whitmore?”
Gabriel jolted, then turned, “Hardly, Fitzroy. I hadn’t even noticed you were here.” He then rubbernecked to the ladies and bowed his head, his eyes tracing down the line of them before he greeted them individually. “I was not aware you all were friends.”
“You’d be surprised how a single common factor can join women,” Lady Catherine smiled conspiratorially when Gabriel began to look smug. “We crossed paths at Temple of the Muses.”
“Ah, yes,” Lady Horatia nodded sagely. “The lovely pleasure of books. I’ve always said, a well-read lady is a well-prepared lady.”
“I could not agree more,” Cecilia smiled too.
“I do also adore how familiar the three of you are with each other,” Lady Horatia prattled on dotingly.
Cassian was not entirely sure why Lady Catherine was grinning like a Cheshire cat, and his confusion only grew tenfold when she replied, “I am so glad you said that, because I have another familiar face present that we wished to introduce to His Grace today.”
At his skyrocketing brows, Cecilia shook her head, “Not you, sweetheart.”
“Him,” Jane offered saccharinely to Gabriel.
“Me?” Head canting to the side, Gabriel’s smile was arrogant, “Why me?”
“Look for yourself. Turn around,” Cecilia said.
Once again, his brows lifted, and Cassian pivoted as Gabriel did. The man suddenly went as white as chalk, and Cassian almost stepped in behind him in case he swooned.
His eyes landed on a young woman with auburn locks, and she was holding a boy with wheat-colored hair, no more than two years old, in her arms. The way the gathering went quiet, the wicked smile on Lady Catherine’s face, and the pure horror on Whitmore’s face made Cassian’s mind jump.
“Don’t you wish to greet Miranda, Your Grace?” Cecilia offered boldly. “Though I suspect she does not, I am sure your son has sorely missed you.”
It took a mere second before a bell struck in his mind, and Cassian’s head snapped to Cecilia as his mouth fell an inch. Gabriel was rocking on his heels, and this time, two more men neared him as his face went bloodless, as if he were about to drop dead.
“Son?” Gabriel snorted derisively, but his tone was weak. “I do not have a son.”
“Yes, you do,” Catherine said as she came closer to the woman. “Frankly, I am ashamed for you, Your Grace. How can you look yourself in the mirror knowing you were so scandalous, acted like such a louse, and dismissed the girl when she could not tickle your fancy any longer?
“Do you think it was easy to get her here, embarrassing her just to show your hypocrisy?” Catherine took the young boy from the mother. “You are not the paragon of the ton, Your Grace. You are like any other rakehell here.”
Cassian whistled faintly. “Such delicate words, my lady. I think it might have been more merciful if you had drawn and quartered him.”
“I have no idea who this woman is,” Gabriel blustered, but his eyes darted around their sockets like a cornered animal.
Coming to Cecilia, Cassian noted how the occupants of the green lingering near them began to whisper between themselves; he saw the raised brows and secret smirks behind the champagne flutes. Lady Ophelia had pulled from Whitmore, horror growing on her face as well.
Her eyes flickered between the child and Gabriel—as did everyone else’s—and there was no doubt, the boy was his blood. Ducking his mouth to Cecilia’s ear, he whispered, “Did you have a hand in this?”
She swallowed and looked up, gazed at his eyes, and then, after a long moment, nodded.
A wild, uninhibited pride struck a fire in Cassian’s chest, and if not for potentially taking away the solid debasing Whitmore was being served, he would have most certainly swept Cecilia into his arms and given her the wildest kiss of her life.
“I—” Gabriel rose to his full height at the whispers floating in. “This is a trap! It’s nonsense. Surely you good people can see that, right?”
Ben came forward and clasped his hand on Whitmore’s shoulder, “I think we should take this inside, old boy.”
“What? There is absolutely no reason to—” Whitmore spun, and as he spotted the disbelieving and frankly disgusted expression on the faces of the people around him, he went even paler. He looked at Ben and swallowed. “M-maybe that is best. Discretion is the better part of valor, after all.”
As Ben headed the disgraced duke, the woman, and the child inside, the green burst with hushed whispers and chatter. Cassian drew Cecilia to the side, his hands hooked under her arm, pulling her closer toward the garden maze.
“Cassian—?”
“Shh,” he whispered as he dragged them through the maze. Once away from peering eyes, he dropped his hands on her waist and pulled her in. “Why didn’t you tell me you had such a brilliant plan in the works? Hell, how did you know something I didn’t?”
She rested her hands on his shoulders. “There are some secrets women have access to that men do not. To be bluntly honest, when I met with Ladies Catherine and Jane—”
“Sisters of consorting misery?”
She rolled her eyes, “—to find some blight on Gabriel’s name, I learned that he was once as scandalous as any rakehell in London, but then he reinvented himself into the incomparable. Lady Catherine was the one who knew about Miranda, but I was not so sure about the plan.”
“Why?” Cassian laughed. “If I had known, I would have gone to get her myself.”
Lacing her arms around his neck, she murmured, “Because it would hurt her in the process. Alas, it was she who was up to it more than we all. So, I wanted to do this. For me.
“Fortunately, this scandal will be big enough that it will suffocate the rumors he was spinning on my name.”
Pride cloaked Cassian’s chest as he held her. “Devil, you’ve no idea how aroused you make me.”
Before he knew what he was doing, he cupped her jaw in his hands, drew her face to his, and kissed her. Her body froze, but her lips parted when his breath brushed against them.
It felt like the most natural reaction in the world. He hoped to hell she had not been getting kissing lessons from other men. Her tongue met his with the same fervor he was giving her.
His hand wound around the back of her neck, and he laced his fingers through her loosely piled hair. When he deepened the kiss, she moaned.
Cassian kissed her with an intensity he knew Cecilia could not have ever expected from him, especially with his cold nature over the past few days. The kiss was raw, passionate, with a touch of desperation like a man deprived of water for days on end who then, finally, found a flowing river.
She kissed him back with a rivaling intensity, a feverish need that echoed inside him. Reluctantly, he pulled away and tempered his smile when she chased after his lips; his lips did curl when he saw how swollen hers were.
Raking a hand through his hair, he sighed, “’Tis a pity that you gave me a reason to stay and see Whitmore implode. Otherwise, I’d haul you back home.”
She nibbled on her lip, eyes darting to the garden party in full swing behind the hedges, before she turned back to him. “Let’s leave. My job here is already done.”
His brows lifted. “Are you sure?”
“Yes!” she nodded feverishly. “I would much rather spend time with you anyway. I am sure Ben will regale you with all the details on what happened to Gabriel. There is no need to put salt in the wound.”
“Maybe for you,” he grinned wickedly. “I am not that noble.”
She rolled her eyes with a soft laugh. “Let’s get back home, good sir.”
As he guided her to the carriage, he said, “Remind me to get in contact with Lady Catherine. If she could find that about Whitmore, I need her network for my own dastardly ends.”
“Scoundrel,” she muttered as he helped her into the carriage.
“And proud of it,” Cassian grinned as he closed the door. He shuttered the window and then took his seat. “One more thing, sweetheart—”
“Hm?”
He hauled her into his lap and caged her head, “I apologize for being an angry, jealous cad when you told me you’d gone to see Whitmore. I’d… I’d imagined the worst, and you did not deserve me shutting you out, and I was wrong for it.”
“Thank you for acknowledging it because I did not enjoy the angry, jealous cad,” she said lightly. “I much prefer the teasing, sarcastic, protective cad he was before he turned into the angry, jealous cad.”
His hand slid up her back. “Does this man have any reason to return to the angry, jealous cad?”
“No,” Cecilia assured him, a breath from his lips. “Not at all.”
Drawing her closer, he flirted his fingers over her bodice and canted his head to the left. “Do you regret this?”
It took Cecilia a hair longer than usual to cotton on to what he meant—as he could easily mean dragging Gabriel’s skeleton into the light.
“No,” she admitted eventually. “Being married to you was not what I had expected, but now I realize it was the best thing. Otherwise, I’d have been yoked to a devil in disguise.”
She stroked his face and tempered a smile at the feel of his stubble coming out. “While the devil I thought I was avoiding turned into an honorable man. ’Tis a tale of ironies, isn’t it?”
“How do you know that the devil you thought won’t turn into a real devil?” Cassian asked quietly.
She tilted her head in thought for a moment. “Because I have seen the true soul of this devil,” she finally answered. “He is not double-faced as the other sod, who would have played this same despicable game on me. I would have found out about the child while being married to him.”
“Cecilia…” he pressed. “Do you truly not want to end this marriage? You do know that I will be leaving England, and it is not temporary. I will be gone.”
She slumped into him and twisted so she sat sideways on his lap, then pillowed her head on his chest. “I… I do, and I don’t think I will regret it.”
“Don’t you wish to marry again someday?” he asked. “Don’t you want to find the love you’ve hoped for? The one depicted in the pages of those tawdry novels you read all the time?”
“They’re not tawdry,” she grumbled. “And they seem to fall short of depicting the real thing.”
Cassian was calm when he asked, “What do you mean?”
Please don’t tell me she is saying what I fear she might say.
“Love is not the constant euphoria some books say it is,” Cecilia replied softly. “It is laughter, it is confusion, it is aggravation, and in between it all—there is some feeling of connection and a very scintillating pleasure.”
He tipped her chin up. “Cecilia… are you saying you love me?”
She shook her head. “I am saying I might be in love with you… Against all odds, I know.”
The carriage was cantering down the lane to the country house, and Cassian found himself in a place he was not so familiar with. Oddly, he felt… at ease. The emotions he had once felt so fiercely were no longer sending jagged shards through his soul.
But… the Continent.
It was not a desire to go; it was a need. He had to put England behind him and find the peace he’d ached for so many years.
“Cecilia,” he murmured lowly as the carriage slowed. “I leave in four days. What do you want?”
“I don’t want the annulment. I don’t care what my mother says.” Cecilia paused, then met his eyes with a hesitant gaze. “And I want you to make love to me.”
He held her gaze for a breath.
“Are you sure? There is no coming back from this.”
“I know,” she replied. “And I won’t regret it. Please don’t ask me again.”
Tempering a smile, he gathered her in a bridal carry and stepped out of the vehicle. She held fast to him and, as he stepped across the doors, studiously ignored Andrew’s approving smile and took the steps.
Her head was pressed against his chest, and while he felt her tremble, he associated that was virginal nerves rather than regret. He pushed the door to his room open and strode in.