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Cassia was fast growing impatient for Geoffrey to take his leave.

“You realize, of course, there is nothing I can do about my father’s petition right now.

Even if I choose to remain unwed—which I have every intention of doing—the money cannot, will not, be yours.

So if you have come here to try and find some way?—”

“I am here, dear cousin, because I am in need of funds.”

Geoffrey looked at her, waiting for her to respond.

“Of course, the fifty pounds.” Cassia crossed the room to the desk. “I shall write a letter right now to Mr. Finchley, instructing him to release your allowance to you posthaste?—”

Geoffrey scoffed. “Fifty pounds won’t even begin to pay what I owe my glove maker!”

Cassia glanced to the doorway, realizing that Geoffrey was quickly becoming unmanageable. She was, by all appearances, quite alone with him.

Her attention to the door didn’t go unnoticed. “Looking for your guardian, the mighty Lord Ravenscroft, are you? Tell me, cousin dear, how did you manage to get the Exiled Earl to play at being your linkboy?”

Geoffrey was coming closer toward her, wavering on unsteady feet.

“But what a stupid question when it really is quite obvious. I would wager you did inherit some of your mother’s talent for persuasion.

Her bedchamber persuasion. It’s in the blood.

God knows you give it freely enough to the king, the only one you ever deemed worthy to dive between your chaste legs.

But perhaps it is time you gave your cousin Geoffrey a small sample. ..”

He started to reach for her.

Cassia backed away, reaching the paneled wall.

“One more step, Montefort, and it’s a sample of my rapier blade you’ll be receiving instead.”

Geoffrey froze, instantly sobering as if he’d just been doused with a shower of water.

Behind him, Cassia watched on as Rolfe entered the room.

His sword was drawn from his hip scabbard, and the blade shone in the low light. The curved end of it was trained directly at Geoffrey’s brightly-clad back.

Neither moved as Rolfe came up beside Geoffrey. He sheathed his sword at his hip. “Rest assured, Geoffrey, should you make any sudden moves, I can have that sword out of its scabbard and have you skewered like the pig you are before you have the chance to so much as squeal.”

Geoffrey merely glared at Rolfe, but did not say a word.

“Now, the next time you wish to visit Lady Cassia, I would suggest you request an appointment with her. Should she deign to grant you one, you will remember to speak to her with the respect due a lady.”

Rolfe stared at Geoffrey, the threat of violence glinting in his eyes. He glanced to the doorway “Quigman, you may show Mr. Montefort the door now.”

The hefty groom came forward and reached to take Geoffrey by his satin-clad arm.

Geoffrey he pulled away. He spat. “I am leaving.”

He turned then to Cassia and his mouth curled into a sneer. “Remember what I said, cousin. Another time, perhaps?”

Cassia did not say a word as he turned and walked with purposeful slowness from the room.

In fact, she did not move for several minutes afterward.

She couldn’t. All she could see was the image of Geoffrey’s eyes as he had started to reach for her, how he had compared her to her mother, just like her father so often had.

What would have happened had Lord Ravenscroft not arrived at the precise moment when he had? Would Geoffrey have seen his threat through? Would she have had the strength to fight him off?

Cassia finally managed to relax her hands which had been clenched into fists at her sides. Without making comment to Rolfe who was still standing there beside her, she started for the door.

She was nearly through when she heard Rolfe behind her.

“I am sorry, Cassia”

She stopped, but did not turn. “Pray tell, for what, Lord Ravenscroft? Geoffrey certainly isn’t your responsibility.”

“No, but you are my responsibility and I failed to protect you. I was lured away on a false pretense, something I have always prided myself on recognizing and avoiding. It was obviously a pretense brought about by Geoffrey so he could gain entrance to the house. Nonetheless, I was fooled and that does not sit well with me. You have my word, it will not happen again.”

Cassia took a breath. “Thank you, my lord.”

She started again for the door to leave.

“What happened in here that night?”

Cassia halted but, again, did not turn around. She felt a chill run over her at his question. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“It was this room, wasn’t it? This is where your father was killed?”

She wondered if she should keep walking, leave the room, and pretend that she hadn’t heard him. She wondered if he would persist. Nobody was more surprised than Cassia herself when she turned around and faced him.

“Yes. It was late and we had just returned from a ball...”

“That would be the Duke of Manton’s ball?”

Cassia regarded him, wondering how he knew that much, wondering if he knew it all. “Indeed. I had gone to my bedchamber to retire for the evening. I was tired. My father ... he was killed later that evening.”

“You seem to have forgotten a detail or two, my lady. Were you not in this room with him when his body was found?”

She eyed him. “Yes. My father had brought me here after we’d returned from the ball. He wanted to speak with me.”

“About your refusal to accept the proposal of the duke’s son, Malcolm,” Rolfe finished.

Cassia faltered. “Yes. He was ... displeased. My father had wanted the match very much and he ...”

Her words trailed off and she looked at the floor, remembering how she had awoken from the beating her father had given her. She had lain right there, on the carpet, with the broken clock behind her.

Rolfe came to stand before her. He reached out. He tilted her chin upward so that she had to look at him. His voice was low, gentle when he spoke.

“You can say it out loud, Cassia. He beat you. Your father abused you. And it was not the first time he had done so.”

She tried to look away, but he didn’t allow it. “Do not hide your face. There is no reason for you to be ashamed.”

Cassia was finding it difficult to breathe. She instinctively licked the corner of her mouth where there had been the cut her father had given her, now healed. She couldn’t bring herself to admit the truth, to say the words aloud, even though somehow Rolfe already knew it.

So, instead, she said, “As best as I can tell, I was unconscious for perhaps a half hour. When I came to, he was dead. What I cannot figure out is how someone else could have gotten into the room for he had locked the door after he’d brought me here.” Her voice dropped. “He always locked the door.”

Rolfe gazed at her. “Is that why you keep your window open at night? So you will always have a means of escape?”

Cassia didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. Tears were filling her eyes, tears she was fighting hard to suppress, tears that should have been shed long ago. They started unwittingly to trail down her cheek. She took a slow and measured breath.

Rolfe brushed them away with the tip of his finger. “I am so sorry for the hell you must have endured.”

It was as if a dark cloud suddenly came over the room, so quickly did her expression change.

“Hell? What hell would that be, Lord Ravenscroft? I am one of the privileged, remember? One of the fortunate who need not worry about having a roof over her head or food on her table. Every physical need is seen to, even more so now that I have inherited my father’s eighty thousand pounds. ”

“There are other things beyond the physical needs that eighty thousand pounds can do nothing for.”

She began to shut down. “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Oh, I think you do. I think you know very well of what I am speaking. While you may have had most everything you could ever need or want materially, your emotional well-being has been far from ideal. You spent the better part of your youth with a mother who hated your father and who made a career out of climbing the social ladder through the bedchambers of any number of men.”

Cassia frowned. “That is quite enough, Lord Ravenscroft.”

“Then, when you returned to England to finally meet the man the world called your father, you were faced with a drunken beast who preferred to exercise brutality rather than rationality, a man whose life’s goal was to sell his daughter off to the highest and most influential bidder.

It is no wonder you cannot tolerate being in the presence of any man for longer than a few minutes. ”

“I said that is enough!”

“How long do you think you can continue to ignore the emotional flotsam you keep locked away inside of you?”

Cassia narrowed her eyes at him, suddenly very angry. “We all have our cross to bear, Lord Ravenscroft. For some of us it is just made up of heavier wood.”

Rolfe shook his head. “That cynicism you wear like armor is truly unbecoming on you.”

“So is mourning black, but like my so-called cynicism, it is something I am forced by society’s strictures to wear, regardless of whether I grieve or celebrate the passing of my father.”

Rolfe took her by the shoulders. “To perdition with society’s strictures. You of all people should not care a wit what society thinks of you. Throw away the mourning, my lady, and the bloody cynicism with it.”

Cassia looked at him. Her face took on the coldest expression he’d ever before seen. “As I already told you, I don’t know what you are talking about.”

Damn her! Why did she have to be so bloody evasive?

Perhaps it was the closeness that was suddenly between them.

Perhaps he wanted to force her to feel something, anything other than the anger and hurt and shame.

Perhaps he wanted to face her with something she could not avoid, something real, something alive.

Without knowing his reasons why, Rolfe pulled Cassia against him and covered her mouth with his.

He felt her stiffen immediately. He tightened his hold on her, refusing to let her turn away.

Surely she had been kissed before for she hadn’t even attempted to deny Geoffrey’s accusations not minutes before that she had bedded with the king.

Then why did he sense inexperience mingled with her resistance now?

Rolfe brought one hand up and pressed his fingers slightly against Cassia’s tightly closed jaw.

As soon as he felt the slightest yielding, he deepened the kiss.

The action seemed to surprise her, as if this was a new and completely foreign experience for her, further puzzling Rolfe.

After a few seconds, she started to slacken, her body leaning against his, and Rolfe knew, for that brief moment, she had truly felt.

But the moment Rolfe pulled his mouth away from hers, he felt the stiffness return, the dark emptiness filling her eyes once again.

Cassia stood there, staring up at him.

She didn’t say a word.

“Tell me now that you don’t know what I’m talking about,” Rolfe said.

Before Cassia could respond, if she could have at all, there was the sound of someone clearing their throat at the door.

“Excuse me, my lord, my lady. Lord Ravenscroft, there is a visitor here to see you.”

It was Clydesworthe, and from the look on his face, Rolfe would have bet that he’d come to the door several minutes before he’d announced his presence.

Cassia seemed to have collected her senses, that stiff, unyielding set back to her shoulders. She said as she turned to go, “I’ll leave you to your guest.”

She was out the door before Clydesworthe had returned with Rolfe’s visitor, his friend, Dante Tremaine.