Chapter Fourteen
As their visit to the Wexfords droned on, Cassie kept her responses pleasant, her interested expression fixed, but, all the while, a dirge was echoing in her mind. Lady Pennington—Harbury’s precious Viv—had grown up with her husband on the estate.
Though she refused to face him, what she could see of his profile grew increasingly ashen—an obvious sign of guilt. Clearly, he’d known exactly how she would feel about the revelation.
She ignored him and his imploring, puppy-in-repentance looks—looks which, even out of the corner of her eye, impressively rivaled Mercy’s. But she couldn’t give him her attention. If she did, she was certain she would erupt. And she refused to relinquish what remained of her dignity.
Her husband had damaged her pride quite enough.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” she said to Lord and Lady Wexford as they were leaving, “I do look forward to seeing you again.”
She grasped the older woman’s hand warmly, smiling with a false cheer that would have rivaled her mother’s counterfeit gaiety, and her mother had been the best actress Cassie had ever known when it came to the dutifully polite concealment of internal distress.
The coachman helped her back into the carriage. She angled herself resolutely toward the view, very aware of—but still not acknowledging—her husband.
No sooner had he taken his place by her side than he attempted to speak. “Cassandra—”
“Don’t.” She crossed her arm over her chest and raised her flat hand over her shoulder…a universal signal to stop.
“Please—”
She shook her head. “Not now.” And possibly not ever.
She didn’t want to see him. She didn’t want to hear him. And she most certainly did not want to feel his touch.
“Cassie—”
“Are you as hard of hearing as your father’s friend? Or only equally uncaringly oblivious?”
The only response to her query was the squeak of the carriage’s wheels.
After a few long minutes, she heard Harbury sigh.
She’d no idea what, if anything, he was trying to communicate by his audible exhalation, but, for a time, they jostled along in blessed, blessed silence.
Then, the coach hit a rutted bit of road, and she grasped the strap to keep herself from being jostled backwards and inadvertently landed in her husband’s lap.
She couldn’t bear contact and only wished the strap could also stop her battered, bruised heart from knocking around inside of her chest.
Behind her, something thudded against the bench’s padding. A fist?
“Cassandra, I demand the chance to speak.”
Demand? She shot him a hard, sidelong glance.
But a husband could, couldn’t he?
By law, he could demand of a wife almost anything he wished.
How utterly unfair.
Slowly, she turned to face him. So much heat radiated in her face she felt as if fire were spitting from every pore, a stark contrast to his deathly pale pallor.
“If you insist on speaking,” she schooled her tone to a calm she was far from feeling, “then you may list the reasons why you didn’t tell me your beloved Viv was Anderson’s daughter.”
He opened his mouth, then quickly clamped it shut again. “She’s not my Viv.”
“Forgive me.” She puckered her brow as if confused. “But I don’t think I heard you list a reason.”
He clenched his teeth, dug his thumb beneath his cravat’s knot, then yanked. After the tie loosened, he took a deep breath.
“Very well, then. I’ll give you a reason. Because I feared you would react exactly as you are reacting right now. Badly. I knew you would be upset when you learned the truth.”
“I’m not reacting to the truth, but to the fact you purposefully concealed the truth.”
“At first, I didn’t think her history here was relevant.”
“You. Didn’t. Think. Her. History. Here. Was. Relevant,” she slowly and carefully parroted each of his words.
“No,” he insisted. “I didn’t.”
“You didn’t think Vivianne having been born on the estate—having lived in Harbury Hall—relevant?”
“No.” He paused. “Not at first.”
Which meant at some point, he’d become aware of how this slice of information from the past significantly shaded the present.
“I don’t know what is worse,” she said. “Your initial obliviousness or your continued insistence on withholding the truth even after you realized how much I would be hurt.”
He jerked back as if struck. “You knew about Viv. Our marriage was to be one of convenience.”
“I am well aware of the agreement we made.”
“Then what would you want me to have done? I can’t change the past.”
“I just told you I’m not angry about the past.” Her eyes locked on his.
“I’m angry because you must have known that anyone, at any time, might have revealed the truth.
I was only spared even greater humiliation because the Wexfords, who had no malicious intent, happened to be the ones to enlighten me and seemed to believe Vivianne was someone currently insignificant to you. ”
His breath deepened, but he did not attempt to give her any additional excuses. Because no proper excuse existed for withholding such crucial, painful information.
“If,” she continued, “you and I had maintained a polite distance as we originally intended, I might have understood.” She paused, struggling to keep her voice from cracking. “But you know we didn’t.”
He’d made love to her. Sweetly. Passionately. He’d laughed with her. Held her. Made her feel as if her feelings mattered.
When had he realized she would be harmed when she eventually discovered the truth?
Good heavens. She remembered the odd exchange that led to the revelation Anderson had a daughter in the first place.
She placed her hand on her forehead. “Until Mrs. Townsend mentioned Vivianne on the day you came to escort me home, you didn’t fully understand how the truth would affect me, did you?
She was surprised I didn’t know Anderson had a daughter.
At the time, I couldn’t grasp why you looked so stricken. ”
Cassie knew she’d guessed correctly by the way he sucked in his lips.
She recalled the inexplicable look the tenant and her husband had exchanged just before Mrs. Townsend quickly changed the subject. Mrs. Townsend, who had also been falsely informed she and Harbury did not have a real marriage.
Cassie snorted in disbelief. “She must have thought me such a goose! My heavens, Harbury, you’ve made me a laughingstock.”
“No!”
He reached out, but she wedged herself into the carriage’s corner to avoid his touch.
“Mrs. Townsend hadn’t thought anything of bringing up Vivianne, not until I professed ignorance of her existence.” She inhaled through her teeth. “She said Anderson’s daughter had a spaniel. Harbury—could Mercy be Vivianne’s dog?”
“I don’t know.” He winced. “Possibly.”
She turned her face away.
“Before she was Lady Pennington, she did have a spaniel…I think.”
“You think.”
“Honestly, I had forgotten all about V—Lady Pennington’s damn dog,” he said harshly. He softened his tone. “Besides, Mercy is a puppy.”
“Damn dog,” she repeated. He’d not only raised his voice to her, but he’d also just cursed in her presence, yet another diminishing blow.
Harbury, meanwhile, seemed to be increasing in size. He filled the carriage until all she could see was him as he loomed over her in a threatening manner.
“Sit back!” she commanded, her narrowing eyes as menacing as her tone. “And don’t you ever use such foul language in my presence again.”
Her father had also delivered each of his many disappointments in a booming voice with precise, hard-consonated, brutal words.
Only in private, of course.
Just as she and Harbury were now.
And she was reacting in just the same way. She couldn’t breathe. Her blood was roaring in her ears, her heart beating jaggedly in her chest. She hadn’t felt this disturbing melding of fiery anger and primal fear since…
Since before her father had died.
After her father died, she’d vowed she’d never allow any man to insult her in the same fashion. She certainly wasn’t going to make an exception for her husband, the person who was supposed to hold her in the highest regard.
“No foul language,” she repeated, louder this time.
“I beg your—”
“Stop!” The last thing she needed was another empty apology. She squeezed the bridge of her nose and willed away the sting. On her wedding night, her anger had turned to tears. She’d wouldn’t let Harbury humiliate her again. “Just stop!”
“But you’re not letting me get in a word!”
“And yet your mouth keeps moving.” She looked out the window.
A gentle breeze rippled across a field of barley, giving her a moment of much-needed calm.
“Earlier today, you intimated you were weary of apologizing to me. So, I release you from your obligation. Apologies can never excuse you…excuse this.”
“Cassie, please! I was such a young man then,” he said imploringly. “Younger, in fact, than my years.”
“You weren’t so very young last month when we visited the Royal Academy and nearly collided with Lord and Lady Pennington.” She shook her head slowly, remembering. “You were so shaken, I was alarmed enough to take you aside so that you might collect yourself. Do you remember what you said?”
“I know what I said.”
“You told me then your heart would always belong to her.”
His gaze bored into hers. “I was wrong.”
Cassie’s heart tripped. But a more vulnerable part of her refused to be moved.
“She lived here. She lived here. She was Sarah’s governess, her companion.
The pony cart. Oh, my sweet heavens. You must have taken her to the Priory, too!
Ugh.” The gutturally expelled grunt wasn’t strong enough to embody even half her disgust. “Did you kiss me with my back toward you because you wanted to pretend I was Vivianne?”
A look of pure horror crossed his features.
Perhaps, she thought warily, she’d crossed a line.
For a long moment, they stared at each other in silence. Small capillaries became increasingly visible at the edges of his eyes. She didn’t know if he was about to scream or cry.
“I would never pretend you were Vivianne,” he said with dangerous precision.