Page 23 of Enticing Odds (The Sedleys #5)

Cressida poured her brother’s tea as aggressively as one could, up to the bounds of propriety.

She’d been fervently throwing herself into all of the mundane preparations required to quit the city. Inspecting the linens with the housekeeper and the larder with cook. Checking off endless lists with Wardle. Clearing out her wardrobe with her lady’s maid, pitching any garment she found displeasing.

Everything was displeasing.

Cressida knew it would be a good long while before anything brought a smile to her face again. And entertaining her ignoble brother, Sir Frederick Catton, would do nothing but increase her foul mood exponentially.

“Will you not return to Norwich?” she said as she shifted the pot to her own cup, which she poured with the care and elegance of a good hostess.

Frederick watched the steaming amber liquid with a blank face, his mind seemingly elsewhere, before returning to the present and taking his cup, which he filled with enough sugar cubes to construct St. Paul’s Cathedral.

“Perhaps,” he said, frowning.

Something was clearly on his mind. There was no love lost between the two of them; rarely did he go out of his way to call upon her unless he’d been explicitly invited, and Cressida sometimes worried that word of her indiscretions might have reached his ears. Just the thought of it brought a chill of dread upon her.

But that was impossible. Cressida would’ve heard of it first.

Frederick took a sip, then set the cup back into its saucer, his wan and weary eyes staring off into the middle distance.

Cressida could bear it no longer.

“Well, come off it, Frederick. Speak plainly,” she said. “Are we to do this till the end of our days?”

“How do you mean?” He met her eyes, brows knit in confusion.

“Sniping at one another, suspicious of one another, always working against each other’s aims,” Cressida said with a sigh, waving her hand about.

“Working against each other’s aims…?”

The look of surprise on Frederick’s face told her she’d perhaps been too honest. Quickly she lifted her tea, affecting a posture of ease and disinterest.

“Well, I’ve moved beyond these past slights, Frederick, and I suggest you do the same.”

He looked down at his hands resting atop his knees, mouth opening and closing several times, as if meaning to speak but losing faith in his words before they could come.

He looked like a fish. A pathetic one, too, like a lamprey, witless and weak-jawed, seeking something larger he could manage to hook his teeth into. Some poor heiress to attach himself to for all eternity, draining her coffers along with her vitality.

And yet…

Cressida thought of the cold look she had received from Arthur at her dinner party. And Matthew—Dr. Collier’s—sad, resigned eyes, accepting her dismissal of him, the punishment she had no choice but to levy. She should have said something different… but Cressida knew she’d made the correct decision, the one that would protect Arthur and Henry. A decision that required strength to make.

But it did not require cruelty.

“Working against each other’s aims, you say?” Frederick repeated, his voice shaking with anger. “Do you mean to say…” He paused and blinked several times before soldiering on. “Do you speak of Mrs. Brenchley?”

Cressida inclined her head, waiting for the fury that would come when he finally worked it out.

“I… I’d meant to offer for her, you know. Years ago, when she was still Miss Doussot…” His eyes glazed over as he reached back into his memory, no doubt to that fateful ball. “We both fancied each other. I know it must have been so; I did not imagine it.”

The ball where she’d first laid eyes on Matthew. So finely built, with those tall, wide shoulders. So handsome with his sandy hair, his sweet, gentle eyes behind his spectacles. Her chest constricted; for a moment her heart seemed to stop beating. How would she carry on?

Cressida squared her shoulders and folded her hands in her lap. Somehow she would.

She always did.

“And you!” Frederick spat the accusation at her, his expression as dark as his voice. “You said we wouldn’t suit! Implied she was barren or some such nonsense! And then she wed that bastard Brenchley.”

“ Tch , Frederick,” Cressida said in mock pity. “If the depth of your mutual feeling was so great, I wonder at how easily a mere suggestion overcame it?”

He flushed, perhaps in anger, perhaps in admission.

“Well, it was a mistake on my part, to be sure. Given what Henry had to endure because of her duplicity, I daresay the two of you would have made an excellent pairing.”

“Hang it all, what do you mean?” Frederick paused. “Henry endured…”

“She fed some filthy lie to her unpleasant little nephew,” Cressida reached for her tea, bringing it to her lips before murmuring, “Viscount Wormleigh, I believe. An apt name, considering.”

“A lie? Her nephew? How do you…” Frederick squinted, trying to follow.

“A lie about Henry’s parentage. Fortunately, he did not allow it to pass unchallenged. Unfortunately, it led to a request for his removal from the school.”

“This… Wormleigh chap’s removal?”

“No, Frederick,” Cressida sighed. “Do keep up. Henry’s removal. Do you not recall?”

“Er… no. I don’t believe I do.”

Anger licked at her chest, and Cressida leveled her coldest glare, ready to deliver the most acidic set-down she could manage. But then she stopped.

She’d never told Frederick, had she?

She hardly ever spoke with her brother. When she had no choice but to, she always approached him cagily, offering only the minimum information necessary. She hadn’t been open with him about Dr. Collier’s favor to her. She’d simply said he’d done her a good turn.

Had she ever exchanged words with her brother in good faith? A quiet voice answered, from deep in the recesses of her mind. No , it whispered. Not since you wed.

“Well,” she said, setting down her cup and smoothing her skirts, attempting a graceful recovery. “It happened. And all of this transpired over a game of cards…” She sighed. Might as well have it all out now. “Cassino, if you can imagine. Which is why, then, I asked Dr. Collier to instruct Henry on such matters. Cards. Gaming.”

She prayed he’d not noticed the hitch in her voice as she spoke Matthew’s name. She hadn’t needed to say it, she realized, but she wanted to. Wanted to feel her lips form the sounds, wanted to feel the slice of pain it brought her. The pain reminded her it had been real.

“Ah…” Frederick said nervously, his fingers fidgeting. “I did wonder why you’d made him such a generous offer. I’d initially thought… well, pay it no mind.” He shook his head, then looked back at her, solemn. “Although, Dr. Collier is, unfortunately, the reason for my calling.”

Panic arrested her. She dared not move. He actually knows?

“And I feel even more monstrous, knowing now that the fellow has done Henry a service, yet… I do not believe I can put his name forth for election. Why, he’d be blackballed from every quarter. His tastes are so common, and his manners as well. Terribly so…” Frederick shook his head sadly. “Cressida, why did you ask such an insurmountable task of me? I’d surely suffer the same fate myself, were I to back him!”

The worry in her gut twisted, ignited into fury.

“Dr. Collier? Not good enough for your little club?” She nearly stood in indignation, but clenched her fists instead.

“Understand how it must be,” Frederick tried.

“I understand perfectly well,” she seethed. “I understand that I must pay a call down in St. James’s, and speak some sense into these arrogant asses in their precious little club.”

Frederick gasped.

Good. A wave of unbridled anger flooded through her. She needed a release, needed to yell, to scream, to upend the tea tray. She had kept this anger locked tightly away for so many years, hinting at it only sparingly through an underhanded comment here, an expertly executed set-down there.

“But the rules, Cresto! The rules explicitly forbid women—”

“Do not call me that,” she breathed, halting after each word.

“What?” Frederick seemed completely at sea, struggling to understand this extraordinary change in his cool, refined viscountess of a sister. “But Caplin always referred to—”

“Caplin?” she said, scoffing. “That brute ? That brute you fain sold me to? Yes, he did often refer to me as Cresto . Adored doing so, even. Especially once I told him how much I loathed it. I believe that made him enjoy it all the more, do you know?”

Frederick went pale.

“I’m certain he relished every moment of my unhappiness, every cry I swallowed, every desire I voiced that he quashed.”

Her breath came quickly now, but she hadn’t said it all yet. Years’ worth of repressed loathing and unvoiced charges remained, but all Cressida could think of was Matthew. His constant deference to her needs and wants. How he’d the foresight to use preventive measures. How he’d allowed her to make the rules, to set the terms of their liaison. How he’d accepted her ending their involvement once she’d felt exposed.

Dr. Collier seemed to be the only good man she’d ever known.

She would rather Arthur and Henry take after his model than any of the men in her own class. The realization made her stomach hurt.

“I… I did not know,” Frederick offered mildly, his discomfort apparent.

“What? That Bartholomew was a spiteful, hateful toad of a man who reveled in my suffering?” Cressida could bear this veneer of civility no longer; she stood and began to pace as she spoke. “You somehow did not know? Or was it that you simply could not bring yourself to care?”

He did not respond.

She laughed spitefully.

“And yet, Bartholomew, the esteemed Viscount Caplin, merited membership in your vaunted club. And countless others like him, enjoying their little sanctuaries where ladies are not welcomed. Idling about with their papers, their smoking, playing the genteel savant, the elevated aristocrat, whose mind is ever on higher things. While their wives raise their heirs and tend to their estates and reputations.”

“Are we still speaking of your late husband?” Frederick asked timidly.

“Goodness!” Cressida cried, throwing her hands up in disgust. “And yet the lot of you would turn your nose up at poor Dr. Collier.”

She stopped and took several deep breaths. Her heart slowed, though still thudded heavily in her chest.

And then it came to her—the way forward had revealed itself. Cressida had everything she needed to solve all of her problems. Suddenly she felt as light as a feather.

She could save their reputations; she could salvage that which had seemed lost.

“He is worth more than all of the Athenaeum’s members combined,” she whispered. “More noble, more intelligent.” She pressed her lips together, wanting to cry. But she would not. “The strongest man I’ve known.”

“Um, pardon, but… are we now speaking of Dr. Collier ?”

“Of course I am,” she snapped.

Frederick stood, belatedly.

“But…” He paused, then shook his head as he laughed, and adjusted the buttons on his waistcoat. “Begging your pardon, dear sister, but you speak of the fellow as if… well. If I didn’t know you to have better sense about these things, I’d say you cared for this fellow.”

The charming furnishings of the drawing room—the pristine white bone china tea service, the tasteful silk velvet covering the walls—suddenly felt tacky and oppressive. The ache in Cressida’s heart mellowed into something pleasant and warm that spread throughout her body, a feeling that recalled only joyful memories. Of Arthur taking his first steps. Of Henry, cuddling with her as she sang him songs. Of Matthew, clutching her against him.

Cressida turned coolly to her brother, her hands folded in front of her. She felt very much herself again, level-headed and sharp. But also like someone new. Someone kind and gentle, even forgiving, after a fashion.

She smiled, but not cruelly this time.

“Of course I do, you dolt.”

Frederick’s eyes widened.

“I love him.”

For several beats her brother gaped at her as she stood calmly. And then his bearing shifted, from someone blindsided to one vindicated.

“I knew it!” he said, snapping his fingers and pointing at her. “I knew something was amiss about the whole bloody thing!”

Cressida looked about the room, her eyes settling upon the handsome secretaire in the corner where she conducted her correspondence each morning. The little gold box sat inconspicuously atop it, looking as if it might hold a pair of small inkwells rather than glimmering dice.

Yes, something was amiss about her situation. And she did not intend to let it lie.