Chapter 22
In the long drawing room, there were four card tables, fourteen guests, two great vases of late tulips on the mantelpiece, and one Joanna Arnolds standing at the center of the carpet with her hands clasped at her waist and the bright dangerous look that came over her face when she had been left in charge of the entertainment for the evening and proposed to do something irresponsible with it.
“Whist,” she announced.
A small, polite sound of agreement rippled through the room.
“With forfeits.”
A slightly less polite sound followed.
“Forfeits to be announced. Pairs to be chosen by me. I shall pair the players following my instinct. Anyone who objects will be paired with my brother, who is, by all reports, the most insufferable player in this room.”
“Joanna,” Cassian warned mildly.
“It is true, Cassian. You are. I have been losing to you for ten years, and I have decided this evening to break the cycle. Lady Alice, you are with Lord Greencliff.”
Alice, who had been seated by the second window with a small glass of negus and an expression of mild interest, looked up. “Lord Greencliff, I am told that you are competitive.”
“My Lady,” said Lord Greencliff, who was seated at the nearest table with his cane laid carefully across his knees, “I am also told that you are competitive.”
“I am told a great many things, My Lord.”
“As am I, My Lady.”
He smiled. She smiled back.
Cassian, who had been watching the small exchange with the careful attention of a man whose entire evening hinged on whether his bride and his mentor were going to get along, felt the tightness in his shoulders ease a quarter of an inch.
The tightness was the only thing in him that had eased this evening. Everything else had been getting worse for the last two hours.
He had walked Alice down from the gallery on his arm.
He had sat through the careful introductions of his sister to the three guests who had arrived only that afternoon.
He had answered questions about the orchard from a dowager whose name he had immediately forgotten.
He had nodded at a remark from Victor, who had been seated at the far end of the room with a glass of port and a small steady look.
Victor had been watching him since dinner.
Cassian had done all of that with Alice on his arm and the careful warmth of her hand on the inside of his elbow. And all the while, he had been able to stop thinking about what she had said to him in the gallery.
“That is your father’s reason, Cassian. It is not yours.”
He had not been able to think of anything else.
He had told her he would not press her this week. He had not pressed. He also had not, in the four hours since the gallery, managed to say a single useful sentence to any other person in his own house.
He sat down opposite Victor.
Victor was seated at the second table, sporting a civil smile. Joanna had paired him with Lady Westbury, who was looking somewhat alarmed about it.
Cassian was paired with Daphne.
“Lady Daphne.”
“Your Grace.”
“You will have to carry me, I am afraid. My sister has correctly identified that I am the worst whist player at this party.”
“Are you really, Your Grace?”
“I am afraid I am.”
“Then we shall be very poor together. I am also a very poor whist player. My governess despaired of me.”
“Then we are well matched.”
Daphne smiled. She smiled, grave and careful. Cassian, who had been spending the past week trying to decide what he thought of his future sister-in-law, found that he liked her very much.
The first hand was dealt and was, on Cassian’s side, extremely badly played.
Daphne, who had been right about her own whist skills, was no better.
They lost the first hand in under five minutes.
They lost the second in under six. By the end of the third, Joanna had begun to laugh openly at them from the next table.
“Cassian, you have lost three hands in a row.”
“I am aware.”
“Lady Daphne will have to forfeit.”
“On the contrary,” Cassian countered, “I will have to forfeit. The cards have been almost entirely mine. Lady Daphne has been heroic in her efforts.”
“A gentleman,” Daphne said, very softly. “Your Grace is a gentleman.”
“What is the forfeit, Joanna?”
Joanna gave the same bright, dangerous smile she had when she had walked into the drawing room. Cassian, who had grown up with that smile and had learned before he was nine that no good ever came of it, leaned back in his chair and waited.
“You must tell us,” she said, “the moment at which you fell in love with Lady Alice.”
The room fell quiet.
It fell quiet in the way a room of fourteen people went quiet when one of them asked a question everyone had been wanting to ask.
There was a small ripple of interest at the third table.
A fan dropped at the fourth. At the second table, Victor, who had been holding three cards and a small steady expression, lifted his eyes.
Cassian set his cards down. He could not refuse to answer.
To do that would be to confirm in front of fourteen people, including his future wife and his oldest friend and a man he was beginning to wish he had not invited, that there had been no moment.
He had not been told that he would be asked. In fact, he had not even asked himself.
He looked across the room at the first table where Alice was seated with Matthew.
She had glanced up and was now looking at him steadily.
She was holding her thirteen cards in her hand, and her face was very composed as it had been on the walk back from the lake.
But at the base of her throat, where the pendant should have been, a pulse beat quick and visible, betraying everything her composed face did not.
He looked back at Joanna.
“At the dinner table,” he said.
“Which dinner table, Brother?”
“Mine. A week ago, on Tuesday. The dinner I hosted on the occasion of our engagement.”
“What about the dinner?”
“She was sitting on my right, wearing a green dress. The soup spoon was shaking slightly in her hand. She was nervous, which surprised me because I had not before that moment believed her capable of being nervous about anything. I pressed my thigh against hers under the table to steady her. She looked up at me briefly, then looked away again, and said something to Matthew about my scowl.”
“Your scowl?” Matthew echoed, watching the exchange with sharp attention.
“She said it,” Cassian continued, “in answer to your question about what she liked best about me. Everyone laughed. Even she laughed. But I did not. I was not able to laugh. I had been sitting at my own dining table at Langton House with a bright young woman of five-and-twenty making polite conversation about my face, and I understood that I had been a fool about her for two years.”
The drawing room held its breath.
“That,” Joanna said quietly, “is a great deal more honest than I was prepared for, Brother.”
“You asked.”
“I did.”
“There is your forfeit.”
“Indeed.”
Cassian did not look at Alice. He did not look at her because if he did, he was going to lose the composure he had spent the last two hours holding onto. And in a room with fourteen guests, he was not at liberty to lose it.
“Lady Alice,” Joanna said, after a pause. She had evidently decided, with the bright courtesy of a hostess, that she had pushed her brother quite enough for one evening. “It is your turn. The moment at which you fell in love with Cassian. In the interest of fairness, we must have both.”
Alice did not answer at once. She set her cards down with the careful slowness she had shown in her father’s orangery.
“It was—” She broke off.
She did not finish because at that moment, a muffled crash sounded somewhere deep in the house, followed by the high-pitched cry of a child.
The drawing room went still in a different way.
Alice was on her feet before Cassian had registered the sound. “That is a child.”
“Lady Alice,” Joanna said, “we have no children—”
“That is a child crying, Joanna. Where is it?”
“It came from—”
“Where?”
“The east wing. The small library.”
Alice was already out of the drawing room.
Cassian, who had never in his life seen her move that fast, was on his feet two seconds later.