Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
Lately, getting to Hope House had become more difficult, and the twinge of annoyance Cassie had started to feel for Genie, the Duchess of Fournier, had grown into a fully-fledged cramp.
Considering Cassie’s sister-in-law was one of the kindest, gentlest, and most likable people she had ever known, that cramp of annoyance came in tandem with one of guilt.
Genie was only trying to help Cassie discover her purpose, and by accepting invitations to teas and charity luncheons on their behalf, she believed she was giving Cassie opportunities to do just that.
“If you aren’t going to marry,” Genie had recently told her, “you will need to do something with your time and energy.”
Cassie had bit her tongue. Telling her about Hope House was not an option.
Genie was loyal to Michael and asking her to keep from him something as significant as that would have been a cruel request. Most likely, Genie would have supported the endeavor in theory.
She would see the good it could do. But to be a lady of the peerage, working in the poorest parts of London, and with ruined women, was nothing short of a reputational suicide.
That was, of course, a threat that Cassie had become accustomed to.
It didn’t faze her as much as it might other ladies, like her friends Marianna and Jane, the latter of which had latched onto Michael’s mission to convince her to marry.
At least once a week, Jane would join Cassie and Genie at Violet House for tea with some new invitation to extend to Cassie, where she might meet a suitable man.
The morning after Grant Thornton’s discovery of her at Hope House, Cassie nearly sent her regrets to Genie for their weekly tea.
But then, Jane would only come by Grosvenor Square after.
So, she’d put down her head and vowed to get through the hour-long visit.
She’d slept wretchedly the previous night, beleaguered by thoughts of Lord Thornton.
All night, she’d vacillated between spiraling dread that he would tell someone—probably Hugh—and crackling fury for his anger with her.
The despot had no right to order her about!
His command to stay away from Dorie had only made her more eager to care for the poor woman.
She was ill. She needed help. What made Cassie more important than Mabel or Elyse?
Why should she be shielded from potential sickness but not them?
She must have been wearing her simmering impatience on her expression, for the moment Jane sat across from her at the table in Genie’s morning room, she pleated her brow.
“Why are you scowling at me?”
Cassie snapped to attention. “I’m not scowling.”
Genie spread a napkin in her lap and signaled to the maid for tea. “You most definitely are, dear. Is something on your mind?”
She took her napkin and fiddled with it. “I’m just not feeling well.”
Genie and Jane both arched their brows and peered at each other knowingly. Right away, Cassie knew she’d used that excuse for the last time. Headaches and stomach malaises could only be employed sparingly.
“You’re not feeling social, is what you mean to say,” Jane said.
Cassie kept her lips sealed. To agree would be rude; to deny it would not be believed.
“I do have some things on my mind, as it happens,” she said.
Genie brightened with interest. “Oh?”
“Last week’s lecture at the Lyceum,” she said, “on lepidopterology.”
Jane’s eyes sprang wide. “Leprosy?”
“No, lepidopterology. The study of butterflies.”
Her friend folded her hands in her lap. “Why do butterflies have you concerned?”
Cassie had not attended the lecture as she’d told Genie the week before, when her sister-in-law had caught her preparing to leave for the day.
But it was the only thing she had been able to think of just now while the two women had been staring her down.
Her every thought and concern seemed to revolve around Hope House and the work there, making it difficult to find anything substantive to say during these teas and luncheons.
“Well,” she said, attempting to find an answer to Jane’s question. “Some are becoming extinct.”
Jane narrowed her eyes in skepticism, but the maid returned with the tea service. Cassie silently thanked her for her excellent timing.
“There you are, darling!”
Michael appeared within the morning room’s open door, just behind the maid. An alarmingly pleased grin stretched his mouth. Cassie frowned. She’d never seen him smile like that. Gracious, had his teeth always been that big?
“Will you join us for tea?” Genie asked.
When a gentleman entered the room after Michael, Cassie smothered a groan.
“I’m afraid not, I only wanted to stop in and introduce a friend,” Michael said, his attention swerving toward Cassie. She met it with a flat stare.
Her brother ignored it and introduced Mr. Alaric Forsythe.
Jane and Genie were perfectly amiable as they greeted the son of the Baron Forsythe, who was, Cassie admitted, somewhat handsome and without a single gray hair or wrinkle.
Compared to a few other gentlemen Michael had gone out of his way to introduce her to, Mr. Forsythe was a gem.
“Oh, Mr. Forsythe, you must tell us all about your time to Egypt,” Genie said as soon as Michael announced he was just back from a stay of six months.
Mr. Forsythe bowed and, with a bashful smile, said he would love to. “However, you might find my account tedious. I spent most of my time in Cairo studying artifacts.”
“Artifacts?” Cassie asked, surprised by her own question. And at her intrigue.
He turned to her. “Yes, at an excavation site near the Nile. A tomb for an ancient pharaoh.”
Michael was watching her for her reaction, and though she did suffer a moment’s interest, Cassie only gave a polite nod. “I see.”
“Did you find any butterfly fossils?” Jane asked. At Mr. Forsythe’s quizzical look, she added, “Lady Cassandra has an interest.”
“Lepidopterology? We have a common interest then. As it happens, there was a lecture on the topic just last week at the Lyceum—”
Abruptly, Cassie stood, and at the startled reaction of everyone around her, cleared her throat loudly.
Anything to stop Mr. Forsythe from speaking more about a lecture she was supposed to have attended.
She forced the husky sound out again, raising a hand to cover her mouth.
“Sorry. Something in my throat. If you’ll excuse me.
” She then fled through the door and into an adjacent room.
Only after hearing Michael and Mr. Forsythe depart through the front door, did Cassie return to her seat. She feigned disappointment. “Oh, did the gentlemen leave already?”
“Your throat sounds much better,” Genie said with a smirk.
Cassie endured the next half hour, sneaking furtive glances toward the tall case clock.
As soon as Jane departed Violet House, Cassie did as well.
Although it had taken quite a bit of convincing to get Michael to agree to her living on her own, rather than under his roof on Curzon Street, it had been worth the struggle—even with the much lower annual income she’d used as a bargaining chip.
If she still lived at Violet House, she would never have been able to disappear for hours on end.
Someone would have always been watching.
“To the house, Tris,” she said as she approached her driver, who was standing at the ready in the half-moon drive. He tipped his hat before helping her up into the carriage.
He turned out of the drive and started east. Whenever Cassie said, “the house”, Tris knew that meant Hope House, while “home” was her residence at number twelve Grosvenor Square.
Other than Tris, no one else knew. Not even her maid, Ruth.
While it would have been more appropriate for Cassie to move about Town with her maid in tow, she didn’t have the patience for such stuffy rules, and thankfully, Michael had given up on requesting she be accompanied.
She also preferred to keep some distance between herself and Ruth.
While her maid knew of the child Cassie had borne in secret, and she trusted Ruth to keep mum, to alert her to any more scandal would just be courting disaster.
The more people who knew, the greater the risk of being found out.
Which is why Grant Thornton knowing had continued to prickle under her skin.
Knowing his secret identity as Dr. Brown only gave her so much solace.
The sorry fact of life was that if he were to be found out, he would suffer some minor unfortunate consequences, while she would be thoroughly ruined.
After twenty or so minutes, Tris pulled behind the Crispin Street block, into the narrow alley where he kept the carriage whenever she was there. While it was unlikely anyone from her set would be in Spitalfields to recognize it, parking along the street was an unnecessary risk.
At the back door, Cassie knocked twice, paused, then knocked three more times. The back entrance was always locked, and though she had a key, there were two chain locks that needed to be undone too. There was usually always someone in the kitchen to hear the coded knocking.
“Dorie is holding steady,” Elyse said as soon as she allowed Cassie inside. Sister Agatha was at the table, chopping carrots.
“Excellent. And has Dr. Brown returned?” Cassie asked as she hung her flannel cape on the stand near the stove to keep it warm.
In the carriage, she’d shed her sumptuous velvet pelisse and fashionable hat, and replaced them with the unadorned cape and bonnet she’d purchased at a thrift shop. The exchanges couldn’t cover up the fine make of her dresses, but so far neither Mabel nor Sister Agatha had said anything about them.
“Not yet,” Elyse answered. Cassie’s stomach dropped. She’d hoped he would have come and gone by now.
After Lord Thornton left the night before, Elyse had come to Cassie’s office. She’d shut the door before saying, “You two know one another.”