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“May I ask you a question?” Cassia asked just as Mara reached the door.

Mara turned. “Of course.”

“You mentioned I would be convalescing here.” She hesitated, choosing her words carefully. “Did something happen ... to me?”

Mara merely smiled. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I have been lying in this bed for what seems like days. I wake to find myself, if you’ll excuse my saying, in a stranger’s house, and I cannot for the life of me remember how I even got here.”

“I think your questions would be better answered by Lord Ravenscroft. I’ll see if I can find him for you.

In the meantime, I’ve had a chaise moved outside to the balcony for you if you would like some fresh air and sunshine.

The weather today is unseasonably warm. I thought you might be growing tired of looking at the same four walls. ”

Cassia nodded. The fact that Mara had effectively skirted answering her question was not at all lost on her. “Thank you, Lady Kulhaven, that sounds delightful.”

“You’re welcome, Cassia, and please, it’s Mara.

I like my friends to call me by my given name.

And I do hope we can be just that—friends.

Most of the time, we reside in Ireland at our estate there.

It is a rather remote location and truthfully there aren’t very many ladies around there for me to visit with.

I have my maid, Cyma, of course, but she tends to be rather rigid in her views and would prefer to bury her nose in her herb garden than exchange gossip over tea.

I find I do miss female companionship. When I was a girl, my mother would sit at tea with me and we would talk for hours about everything, which was nothing actually, just small talk about things like fairy tales and lads. I’m sure you know what I mean.”

Cassia didn’t bother to tell Mara that she would have no clue about the scene she’d just painted so eloquently with her words. Somehow, she could never envision sitting at tea with her own mother, discussing the frivolities of life.

“I so miss my mother,” Mara sighed, a wistful light coming into her eyes as she stared off at the sky outside the windows.

Then, as if she had closed a door on an unpleasant memory, she turned her attention back to Cassia.

“Not too many of Hadrian’s friends are married, and the ones who are have wives that I wouldn’t want to take tea with let alone tell my secrets to.

” Mara narrowed her gaze on Cassia then, touching a finger to her chin.

“But you are different. I know we’ve only just become acquainted, but I feel as if I could tell you anything.

I feel I could go shopping with you on Oxford Street, and I could trust that you wouldn’t tell me that the very unattractive orange color of the bolt of silk the merchant was trying to convince me to purchase looked absolutely lovely with my red hair when I know very well that it doesn’t. ”

She smiled at Cassia, adding, “Well, I’m going on too much now.

Another thing my husband tells me I seem to do whenever I am expecting.

He says my mouth runs faster than the Kilkenny creek back home on a rainy day, or something like that.

I will leave you to your peace now. Ring when you would like to go out onto the balcony and I will come up to help you. ”

Cassia could but watch her go, sensing somehow that the two of them would indeed be friends from then on.

But again she wondered at what it was that had brought her there to this house?

And why did it seem as if no one wanted tell her?

She hadn’t expected Mara to answer her question, not really, and especially not when she’d already asked the maid who had brought her fresh pillows the night before.

When Cassia had asked her, the girl had just looked at her as if she’d spoken to her in a foreign tongue, bobbing her head and quickly quitting the room.

What was it everyone seemed so afraid of telling her?

Just after the door had closed behind Mara, Cassia heard the sound of shattering glass coming from somewhere down the hallway, followed soon after by a high-pitched child’s squeal of laughter.

She then heard Mara calling out, “Robert Charles Ross, you are a scamp, truly. Come back here this instant!”

It was as the sun was setting that evening, its last red rays barely peeking over the rooftops, that Rolfe decided the time had come.

He had delayed in going to see Cassia all day, telling himself he was just leaving her time to recover. But he knew he was avoiding seeing her on purpose. He didn’t want to see the look in her eyes, the betrayal he knew would be there the moment the words left his mouth.

You are my wife.

She would hate him, and regardless if his explanation was a reasonable one, she would never trust him afterward.

And it was Cassia’s trust he wanted more than anything else.

Even though he knew he had done the right thing in marrying her, the honorable thing to protect her, he also knew Cassia would never understand.

But he could not put it off forever. Before long, someone would slip and Cassia would learn the truth.

Mara had told him of how Cassia had begun to ask questions of her and the maids, wanting to know why she’d been brought there, what had happened that had caused her to be bedridden for so long.

She needed to know that someone had made an attempt on her life, that somehow, Rolfe still questioned how, she had been given a dose of something, a poison that Mara and her maid, Cyma, had mercifully managed to diffuse.

Cassia needed to know what he’d done afterward, the only action he could have taken to assure that he would always be there to keep something else from happening to her. She needed to know the truth.

They were married.

And this was one truth that she needed to hear from him.

Mara had told Rolfe earlier that evening that Cassia was feeling much better now, in fact, she’d spent the better part of the afternoon visiting with the children in her chamber.

She’d eaten nearly all of the roast mutton and potatoes on her supper plate, and had even asked if she could have a bath afterward.

So, it seemed, the time had come.

There would be no more putting it off, no more excuses as to why he could wait yet another day. But how in perdition was he going to tell her?

When Rolfe reached the door to Cassia’s bedchamber, he found it was slightly ajar. He could hear the sound of soft humming inside. He knocked softly, but there came no response. A moment later, he pushed the door slightly inward and walked in.

There were no candles to light the room, but the fading sunset cast a welcoming glow from the open double doors that led to the outside balcony. It was this balcony where the humming seemed to come from.

Rolfe crossed the room, making no sound. He stopped just at the edge of the open doorway.

He saw Cassia seated on a cushioned chaise outside, with several pillows piled at her back.

She was gazing out toward the setting sun and the slanted rooftops that stretched outward from the city.

Sitting as she was, she would be unable to see him where he stood concealed in the twilight shadows.

Dana, Mara and Hadrian’s young daughter, was there with her, her soft, curly, gingery head resting on Cassia’s shoulder.

She was asleep, her tiny thumb stuck in her mouth and Cassia was stroking the child’s curls, humming softly to her.

Rolfe felt something, an emotion he couldn’t place, that filled him as he stood there just watching the two of them, while listening to soft tones of the lullaby.

It was then that he noticed the sketch sitting on the table beside where Cassia sat.

It was a drawing of Dana lying as she looked now, with her tiny fingers fisted tightly as she slept.

It wasn’t the drawing itself that had caught Rolfe’s attention, for he’d seen a number of Cassia’s sketches and already knew her talent.

But, in this drawing, of this beautiful child, she had finally drawn in the face, full and clear features with a small nose and even the smattering of freckles on her cheek.

It was not the usual dark silhouette she’d favored before.

Watching Cassia softly humming with Mara’s daughter curled snugly against her breast, Rolfe saw a part of Cassia he’d never known existed.

She’d always been so adamant in her refusal of marriage. He had assumed she would be just as adamant against children.

It pulled at something, seeing her this way. Perhaps it was the lullaby she was humming. Perhaps it was the way she looked so beautiful sitting there with the child in her arms. He wasn’t certain what it was that made him realize it, but suddenly he knew.

He knew that while he’d been trying to deny it, what Dante and Hadrian had told him was true. Despite everything, despite the past, and his conviction against it, somehow he had fallen in love with this woman.

As he continued to stand there, watching her, Rolfe suddenly pictured Cassia holding another child. Their child. It would be a girl and she would have her mother’s expressive eyes and that same stubborn tilt to her chin. And he would protect them both with his life, no matter the cost.

On that thought, Rolfe turned from the balcony, leaving Cassia as she was, still humming the lullaby to Mara’s slumbering child.