Page 14

CHAPTER SEVEN

C assia immediately excused herself when the hackney coach arrived back at Seagrave House. She told herself she needed to begin doing something to prove her innocence. In truth, she just needed some time to be alone.

She kept trying to convince herself this disquietude she felt had come about due to her confrontation with Lady Castlemaine at the palace.

But no matter how she tried to convince herself, she knew it wasn’t true.

She had faced Barbara Palmer’s malice on many occasions before.

No, it was the arrival of Lord Ravenscroft and his new presence in her life that had set her ill at ease.

Early on in life, at the age of fourteen specifically, Cassia had learned to fend for herself when it came to the male species.

An acquaintance of her mother’s, a man named André le Singe, had been the first, trying to shove his beefy hand down the front of her bodice in one dark corner.

With Monsieur le Singe, Cassia had responded not with shock or fear, but instead a swift kick to the shin followed by another to his groin that had left him buckled over and gasping.

Since then, Cassia had honed her tactics markedly, refining her defenses to where she now could prostrate a rude or uncivilized fellow with the cut of mere words.

Why, then, did just being in the same carriage with Ravenscroft seem to render her witless?

She told herself she just needed to get away from him for a while. She needed time to collect herself, to gather her senses, and then she’d be ready to face him.

And thus she headed for her bedchamber.

No sooner had her foot touched the first riser on the stairs than did Cassia hear Lord Ravenscroft following behind her.

She stopped abruptly and turned to face him, causing him to nearly collide with her.

He remained on the step just below where she stood, face to face, bare inches between them.

The nearness was immediately disconcerting.

Cassia took a step back onto the next step, pleased that she now stood even taller than him.

“Lord Ravenscroft, I am going to my bedchamber, to be alone. I would like some privacy. I can assure you I have no plans of slipping out a window or climbing down the rose trellis to make a break for the coast, so I do not think it necessary for you to follow me abovestairs. If you would prefer, I shall sign an affidavit vowing to report to you should I feel the sudden need to leave.”

Rolfe didn’t move, not an inch, damn him.

Instead he looked at her quizzically.

“My lady, have I done something to offend you?”

“You mean besides forcing your way into my life without my consent? Why on earth should I be offended by that?”

Rolfe wondered what it was that made this woman so damned cynical, for it surely hadn’t just come about since his arrival in her life earlier that day.

No, this habit of hers of using well-placed words to display her utter dissatisfaction with the world and her contempt for every person in it had surely come about from years of practice.

She was far too skilled at it. He decided to try a different tactic.

“Lady Cassia, a word, if I may?”

He stepped down, motioning toward the parlor door.

The way he stood there, Cassia was suddenly reminded of her father, and the way he would order her into his study when he was displeased with her.

It was an impression she didn’t like. Still, she was curious as to what he had to say so she stepped down and proceeded past, seating herself on a small settee at the center of the room.

“Would you care for some refreshment?” Rolfe asked, acting the host—in her home.

“No, I would not, but since this is my house, Lord Ravenscroft, were I to desire something, I would simply just get it. I do not think it your responsibility, nor your right, to ask me if I would like to have something that is already mine. You are the guest here, sir, not I, a thing you obviously need to be reminded of. I should be the one asking you if you would like any refreshment.”

She stared at him. Rolfe noticed that the offer of the drink never passed her lips.

Rolfe sat down across from her. He fished inside his coat, removing a white handkerchief. He waved it slowly in front of her face. “I surrender, all right? You win.”

When she didn’t respond to this mild attempt at humor, he set the handkerchief aside, parted his legs, and leaned his elbows on his knees.

He steepled his fingers in front of his chin as if trying to decipher a riddle.

“Lady Cassia, I understand your hostility at having me in your home against your wishes. I am certain it cannot be pleasant for you. But please allow me to remind you it is not that I requested this assignment. I was ordered, as you put it, to force myself into your life without your consent. Neither one of us has much of a choice in the matter, so can we perhaps try to set aside our differences and attempt to make the best of it?”

Cassia frowned even as she knew Ravenscroft was right.

She shouldn’t be angry with him. He hadn’t been the one to place himself in her life; he was just doing what he’d been ordered to do by the king.

She couldn’t in all honesty say that she wouldn’t do the same, had she been placed in a similar situation.

And in truth, she realized he could be much worse than he was being.

Another man would delight in having this sort of authority over a woman, and would take full advantage of it.

Thus far, Ravenscroft hadn’t done that. It had just been convenient to level the brunt of her displeasure at him as he was always there at her side.

He must think her an ill-bred, ill-tempered virago.

Her behavior since their meeting that morning had been truly uncivilized.

Winifred would be aghast; she had taught her better.

Cassia was about to apologize to Rolfe for her behavior, but before she could, the butler, Clydesworthe, presented himself at the door.

“Milady’s cousin, Geoffrey Montefort, and a Mr. Finchley are here requesting an audience.”

Cassia nodded. “Thank you, Clydeswo?—”

“You may show them in.”

Cassia turned her head, ready to inform Rolfe that although he might be in her home to protect her, she still held the authority over the household.

It seemed, despite their truce, he would need constant reminding of that fact.

Unfortunately, she had to temper her tongue for her guests were already coming into the room.

Mr. Silas Finchley was her father’s solicitor and had been since Cassia and her mother had returned from France nearly four years earlier, and longer before that, no doubt.

He was nearing fifty years of age, a short man with a squat build whose curled periwig was slightly crooked, his suit of brown woolen outdated.

His pinpoint eyes were made to appear even smaller by round gold-rimmed spectacles he wore perched on the end of a nose that was round and red as a new spring cherry and that seemed constantly congested.

Even now, he was pulling a crumpled handkerchief from his pocket and blowing his nose with the blast of a trumpet, muttering his apologies as he stuffed the cloth back into his coat.

Still, Mr. Finchley had always been kind to Cassia, standing beside her at her father’s burial and patting her hand comfortingly.

Following Mr. Finchley and arriving with all the grandeur of a king, came Cassia’s second guest into the room.

Geoffrey Montefort was her cousin, although the connection was a dubious one.

Her father’s younger brother, Harold, had apparently gotten a pretty laundry maid with child.

Much to the horror of his father, the previous Marquess of Seagrave, Harold claimed to have off and wed the girl though the documentation of the event never came to light.

The child was born the following spring, a boy.

Since the previous marquess had had seven sons, the oldest of which was Cassia’s father, and since all of the brothers who preceded the capricious Harold had sons of their own—excepting Cassia’s father, of course—no one had ever bothered to refute the relation.

The fear that the son of the laundry maid presumed wife would ever lay claim to the title was nearly nonexistent.

Except for that unexpected and unavoidable peril called war.

Besides being accomplished at begetting sons—excepting Cassia’s father, of course—the Montefort men were also proficient at one other thing.

They were notoriously horrible marksmen.

All of her father’s brothers, and her father’s brother’s sons had been killed during the decades of the English Civil Wars—all, that is, except for the laundry maid presumed wife’s son, Geoffrey, who now came into the room.

In contrast to Mr. Finchley’s rather drab attire, Geoffrey wore what Cassia could only term a suit of utter grandiosity.

It was made up of rich red velvet, adorned on every seam with golden braid and shining buttons, with epaulets topping both shoulders in an attempt to make them appear broader than they had been bestowed by nature.

He wore a very full wig made up of a black profusion of curls, mimicking the king, for Geoffrey’s natural hair was both short and a rather sandy shade of blonde.

It was the one attribute he’d inherited from his mother, the laundry maid.

His silk hose, the same red as his suit, encased his lower legs like a second skin, and slid into matching red shoes decorated with shining gold buckles.

The cost of the entire ensemble would most probably keep the bread baker’s family in cakes and ale for months, which was surprising to Cassia since she didn’t know how Geoffrey could afford such luxury.