Almost Perfect (3 page)

“It seemed as if we never would,” Cassie replied, breathing in Philana’s reassuring presence. “Our axle cracked two days ago and Papa didn’t think the repair would hold.”

“I’m glad it did.” Philana reached up and caught Cassie’s face between her hands. Her palms were papery, her skin warm and her touch infinitely appreciated.

Much to Cassie’s horror the urge to tell her aunt the whole sordid tale of Lord Bucksden’s death filled her. She swallowed it. That was one thing upon which all three of the Conningsbys agreed. Philana could not be told, nor could they borrow so much as a farthing from her to use for purchase of their passage. Doing so might lead to Philana being accused as their accomplice.

“What is it, sweetheart?” Philana asked, releasing Cassie. Her silvery brows lifted in a promise to listen.

Cassie only shook her head. “You know too well what plagues me.” Philana was the only one outside the family who knew just how desperate their straits were. It had been their financial problems that spurred the old woman to offer an open ended invitation to join her at Ettrick House.

Philana’s eyes narrowed. Cassie readied herself to parry the next question, but her aunt never had the chance to ask as Eliza and Roland started up the steps.

“Sir Roland,” Philana said a little coldly to their father. She’d more than once written to Cassie that she could have no respect for a man who squandered his daughters’ dowries and futures.

Bright color flushed into Roland’s cheeks. “Lady Forster.” He offered a brief bow then climbed the final stair and made his way toward the door. Cassie watched him stop beside the opening. Unlike Lord Bucksden, Roland had better manners than to enter without an invitation.

Philana’s attention was fully on Eliza. “Who is this beauty and what happened to the darling babe I met at my nephew’s wedding?” she asked, laughing as she took the girl’s hands in hers.

Eliza bobbed. “How good to see you again, Lady Forster.”

“Pish,” Philana said with a chiding look as she maneuvered Eliza around her until she could wrap an arm around the girl’s waist. “I’ll have none of that. You’ll call me Aunt Philana as your sister does. Now, we’ll hie ourselves inside for a moment or two while my coach is brought around. If you want your coach with you at the house party, Sir Roland, you’ll drive it there yourself. I have only one coachman and he must handle my team,” she called to Cassie’s father.

“Where are we going?” Cassie asked in surprise.

Philana shot her a startled glance. “Where else but to take up residence at Ryecroft Castle?”

“Take up residence? But I thought we were staying here for the duration of the party,” Eliza said, her voice reflecting Cassie’s confusion.

Because Ettrick House lay less than two miles from the earl’s home, the plan had been for them to reside here, then ride to Ryecroft Castle each morning and return to Aunt Philana’s house every evening.

There was something sly in the smile that curved Philana’s lips. “Matters have changed a little and to our benefit, I think. I met Lord Ryecroft a few days ago. He mentioned that several of his guests canceled at the last moment due to illness, and he offered us accommodations in his home for the party. I accepted on your behalf.”

“But I thought the house party didn’t start for another day. Why do we go now?” Cassie asked. She had looked forward to at least one day alone with Philana. It was time she dearly needed to prepare her father for what she meant to do.

Philana’s smile dimmed into confusion. She glanced between Cassie and Eliza. “What do you mean? If we don’t go this very instant we won’t have time to properly prepare for tonight’s ball.”

“What ball?” Eliza asked.

Philana glanced between the girls, still looking confused. “Lord Ryecroft advanced the party’s starting date so he could invite the entire neighborhood to a grand ball. You cannot imagine how excited the whole vale has been over the event. Didn’t you receive the earl’s invitation?”

Cassie froze, her blood turning to ice and her breath to frigid mist. Her mind’s eye conjured the image of Lord Ryecroft’s invitation. The fine rectangle of paper imprinted with the earl’s family crest lay right where she’d dropped it when she snatched up the deadly urn: at the base of the pedestal in her mother’s drawing room, not far from where they’d left Bucksden’s body.

There it remained, that is if some Bow Street Runner hadn’t picked it up and thanked his lucky stars for giving him the very location of the one who had murdered the earl.

Lucien Hollier, the only man living who yet retained the ancestral name of the lords who’d ruled Graceton Castle, needed an heir, and this time he’d know for certain that his son wasn’t one of Bucksden’s bastards. Once he had that boy-child, the son on whom to settle his title, Lucien intended to call out Bucksden. One of them would die.

Dressed in black formal attire, Lucien scanned Ryecroft Castle’s crowded ballroom. The room glittered from its marble floor to the candles and crystals that sparkled on the chandelier. The walls were dressed in rich red and gold leaf, the fireplace trimmed with ornate friezes. People laughed and talked. The music swelled. The dancers, some London elegant, others Border rustic, jigged without prejudice.

Lucien ignored the men in the room, all except for Jonathan Percy, who was making his way toward the card room accompanied by three burly squires. There was no ignoring Percy, Lucien’s distant cousin and the earl of Westmorland’s acknowledged by-blow. Tonight, the boy wore a bright pink and green waistcoat beneath a coat cut to the highest of fashion.

Instead, it was the young women, the potential wives, who held Lucien’s interest. Maidens all, they shimmered and glowed in their finery, silk flowers tucked into their head bands, curling wisps of hair brushing at shoulders, their high-waisted, low-cut bodices revealing almost as much as any man liked to see. Lucien dismissed the prettiest of them; he didn’t need another wife capable of attracting other men. It was the plainer women in the room he watched, assessing them one by one as if he could discern by look alone which might prove the most fertile.

“You’re late, Hollier,” said Adam Devanney, Earl Ryecroft, from behind Lucien. “The evening’s half done.”

Lucien glanced over his shoulder at his first cousin. They were as close as brothers. Adam and his siblings had been raised at Graceton Castle after the death of their mother, before Devanney’s father had inherited Ryecroft’s title.

At twenty-nine, four years Lucien’s junior, Devanney was his father’s dark and classically handsome image. His only Hollier trait, inherited from Lucien’s paternal aunt, was his gray eyes. It was Lucien’s fate to resemble his ancestors with his gray eyes, waving golden-brown hair, chiseled cheekbones, and long, straight nose. As different as Devanney and Lucien were in look, they were similar in build, both tall, broad shouldered men.

Lucien smiled. “Hastings insisted that I couldn’t make my return to society out of mourning in any state of dress less than flawless,” he replied.

“Now that’s a valet worth his salt,” Devanney laughed. “So tell me. How hard did Hastings have to scrub to remove the stench of fish?” Lucien had spent this summer and the last in isolation at his nearby fishing lodge.

“I’ve no skin left,” Lucien retorted with a forced smile, wishing Devanney would leave off but knowing he wouldn’t. His cousin was determined to distract Lucien from the revenge he so craved. Devanney was wrong. Bucksden deserved to die for no other reason than Lucien’s certainty that Bucksden had seduced Dorothea because Lucien had intimated the earl cheated at cards.

“What do you do with what you catch, anyway? Don’t tell me you eat it.” Devanney’s pretense of languid dismay rivaled anything Keane had ever produced for the stage.

Amused despite himself, the corner of Lucien’s mouth lifted. “Why should I eat it when your chef pays handsomely for what I catch? Enough to keep my lodge in beef,” he finished, taunting.

Devanney huffed in disgust. “Does he? As if you needed another shilling to your name. You’ve more blunt than I do,” he grumbled. “Ah well, I shall have to overcome my pique and pretend that I’m glad to see you out and about. A warning, cuz. If you persist in your present manner, people will think you’ve rusticated these last two years.”

“How so?” Lucien asked, a little startled.

At that moment the dance ended and the jiggers came to a halt. Rather than begin a new piece the white-wigged, black-clothed musicians set aside their instruments to take a brief respite. The dancers wove their way back to their parties, more than a few pausing to bow to Devanney and Lucien, and receiving their show of respect in return. A moment later and the sound of conversation rose to a new thundering thrum in the big room.

Devanney again turned his attention onto Lucien. His expression shifted until he looked every bit as supercilious as any society maven. “You’re staring at my female guests as if you mean to chew them up and spit out their bones,” he chided, shaking a finger.

“I was hardly staring,” Lucien retorted, trying his best not to let his cousin charm him.

Devanney’s pomposity dissolved, leaving Lucien looking upon the most worrisome of Devanney’s many faces, one of wicked enjoyment. The two of them shared a history of pranks between them and this event offered Devanney the perfect occasion for just such a trick.

“You were indeed staring, just not at all in the right direction,” his cousin replied, then took Lucien by the shoulders and turned him to look toward the back of the room. “Try that way.”

The crowd there was thinner. Lucien spied Lady Forster, a viscount’s daughter who for love’s sake had married down. He’d first met the old woman at the beginning of his mourning period two years ago when he purchased his fishing lodge, his private Eden, near her home. The old woman wore lavender, the color a mark of respect for her beloved, departed squire. A diamond clip held a single black ostrich feather in her steel-colored curls.

“What’s notable about Lady Forster?” Lucien asked, adding to himself
other than to remember to stay out of her way
. Although Philana Forster was a good soul she found far too much joy in meddling in the affairs of others for his peace of mind.

“Not her, the woman beside her. Look beyond Egremont’s shoulder,” Devanney said, his words directing Lucien to the back of the blue-coated colonel who stood between Lady Forster and his host.

Lucien had to shift to see the girl Devanney meant then he wondered how he could have missed her. She was stunning, glowing as brightly as the room’s candles with her golden hair and a white on white gown. She wore no jewelry, but her sort of beauty didn’t require cold stones and gold to enhance it.

“Now she’s a prime article,” Lucien acknowledged, dismissing her from his list of potential wives even more swiftly than he’d marked off the other beauties. Her vibrancy was just the sort of thing that attracted dastards like Bucksden.

As Lucien started to look away the girl cocked her head to one side and laughed at something Egremont said. The gesture and the movement of her mouth were poignant in its familiarity, an almost painful reminder of someone else.

Colonel Egremont bowed. Lucien caught his breath and looked upon that very someone, the woman to whom he’d almost given his heart.

Cassie. Six years and a simple gown of shimmering pale gray silk couldn’t dim her beauty. Her hair, gathered into a beguiling tangle of curls at her nape, was still the color of sun-ripened wheat. Her fair skin was flawless, her brown eyes ringed by thick dark lashes under gentle golden brows. Her lips were just as lush and seductive as they’d been the year of her debut.

Bittersweet memories washed over Lucien. He’d been twenty-seven then, an age that now seemed impossibly young to him, and Cassie hadn’t been the usual insipid debutante. For one brief crazed month of his life he’d been under the spell of her merry, impertinent personality, bewitched into believing he could tolerate a father-in-law ready to squander another man’s inheritance the way Sir Roland Conningsby had already wasted his own. Lucien’s delusion had ended when a giggling, drunken Sir Roland tried to trade on Lucien’s interest in his daughter by begging for a little loan, one Lucien didn’t doubt would never have been repaid. It was too potent an omen for the future. Lucien had reluctantly allowed good sense to triumph over a wayward heart and withdrawn from Cassie’s circle of admirers.

Now he studied Cassie, wanting some sign that she was still the insouciant girl he’d known, only to be disappointed. Sadness clung to the curve of her mouth while worry touched her brow. Lucien was hardly surprised. Her promising season had ended with but a single offer of marriage from Charles Marston. Lady Forster’s nephew-by-marriage had seemed to the world a perfect vicar and crusader against moral decay. It was all talk. Lucien had known Charles in school. Once the boy had a few drinks in him he slid off the high ground to wallow in the mire with the rest of the world’s sinners, especially when the temptation being offered him was gaming.

Devanney leaned closer to Lucien. Lucien started. He’d so completely lost himself in contemplation of Cassie that he’d forgotten his cousin and that he stood in a crowded ballroom.

“Although Miss Elizabeth Conningsby is a beauty, of the two I think her older sister is the prime article,” Devanney said, his warm tone hinting that his prank somehow included Cassie.

“Only if you don’t mind their kin,” Lucien replied. “I tell you there’s no worse gambler than a sot and no worse sot than one who giggles. As for her husband,” Lucien started, but across the room Cassie smiled and whatever else Lucien had meant to say dissolved.

The tiny lift of Cassie’s lips wasn’t the pretty grin he remembered, but hints of the clever flirt came to life in her face. Something stirred in Lucien, stretching, unwinding within him. It’d been so long since he’d felt anything but disappointment and anger that he almost didn’t recognize the sensation as the hunger, hunger for a woman’s admiration and her touch.

Devanney shot him a startled look. “Husband? We are both looking at Mrs. Cassandra Marston, aren’t we? She’s been widowed these past three years.”

Lucien’s reawakened awareness of Cassie exploded into a full and starved life. Cassie was a widow? He tore his gaze off Marston’s wife to look at Devanney. “Are you certain?”

“Of course I am,” his cousin replied, his brows lifting again and his mouth twisting slyly. “Rumor has it that the beauteous Mrs. Marston remained faithful throughout her marriage despite her husband’s somewhat wild behavior toward the end of his life. Very proper. Very well behaved.”

Lucien turned his gaze back on Cassie and awareness of all else except her fell away. He watched her lean toward Egremont, candlelight spilling onto the smooth white skin of her décolletage. A tantalizing shadow appeared between her breasts. One hunger became another.

There’d been a time when pursuing and being pursued in return had been the greatest joy in his life. The thought of playing that game with a woman he had once wanted enough to consider marrying was even more alluring. What would Cassie look like stripped of her clothing, her golden hair streaming over his counterpane?

His cousin leaned a little closer. “She and her sister occupy the bedchamber directly across from yours, Hollier,” he whispered. “What do you think? As you’ve so often told me widows enjoy a certain freedom in society, and house parties offer so many interesting opportunities for trysts. Can you seduce the prim widow or have you forgotten how to play the rake?

“Come with me to meet her,” Devanney urged, his voice still low and suggestive. “I’m to partner her sister for the first dance of the next set. I haven’t seen Mrs. Marston on the floor for an hour or two now. I’m wagering that she’ll be available. By the by, the next set begins with a waltz.”

Across the room Cassie’s smile widened. Lucien threw off the ice of his past three years. It was potent bait that Devanney dangled in front of Lucien the way Lucien offered flies to the fish in his stream. And, just like the scaly creatures he’d spent the last months pulling out of the water, Lucien took it. His newly reawakened interest in Cassie demanded the chance to hold her close to him, guiding her through the waltz’s sensual movements.

Why shouldn’t he pursue her? The search for a wife didn’t preclude the seduction of a widow at the same time. Why shouldn’t he and Cassie fulfill the promise of pleasure that had once existed between them now that they were both free of the bonds and betrayals of matrimony?

Not waiting for Devanney, Lucien started across the ballroom wanting that waltz more than anything he’d anticipated in the last six years.

A pleased Colonel Egremont added his name to Eliza’s almost full dance card, then bowed and retreated. Cassie watched the colonel, dressed in his fine blue jacket with its scarlet trim, golden epaulettes and golden belt, torn between satisfaction and fear. The satisfaction came from the thought that although Eliza might never have her London season she’d at least have the opportunity to break a few hearts at this house party. The fear arose from the colonel’s commission. Although there was nothing intimidating about the young man, Cassie had to consider him a potential enemy. If news of Bucksden’s untimely death reached Scotland the soldier might well consider it his duty to take the murderess into his custody.

Laughing in excitement, Eliza leaned close to Cassie. “This night is just too superior to be borne. Why, everything about Ryecroft Castle is exquisite! I shall enjoy every moment of the next two weeks.”

Cassie did her best to smile. She hadn’t told Eliza or her father about the forgotten invitation, nor would she. What good would her confession do except to make them worry that the Runners were already on their way? Cassie was doing enough of that for all of them. Far better that Eliza enjoy herself.