Seducing an Angel

He loved her, Wesley had assured her in that final letter. But it was impossible for him to change his plans – too many other people would be inconvenienced. And Cassie /must not/ – he had underlined the words twice and so heavily that the ink had splattered into tiny blots above and below – come to London. He did not want her to be hurt.

"Your brother," Lord Merton said. "You were a Young, then?"

"Yes," she said.

He turned his team out onto the street, slowing to avoid a crossing sweep, who jumped back out of the way and then reached out to pluck out of the air the coin Stephen threw.

"I am sorry," he said.

That she was a Young? Or that her own brother had just given her the cut direct? Or both?

It was only after the funeral, of course, that things had got really nasty, that the accusations had started to fly, that /murder/ had been spoken of rather /than accident/.

Cassandra wanted to be at home. She wanted to be in her own room, the door firmly shut behind her, the bedcovers over her body and her head.

She wanted to sleep – deeply and dreamlessly.

"You need not apologize for something you did not do," she said, raising her chin and speaking as haughtily as she was able. "I was surprised to see him, that is all. I thought he was in Scotland. I daresay something happened to cause him to change his mind."

Gentlemen did not go touring Scotland during the spring, when the whole of the fashionable world was in London for the Season. And gentlemen who were really not very wealthy at all did not go touring for a whole year.

Gentlemen who were traveling in a group would not find it difficult to excuse one of their number who needed to change his plans because of a pressing family concern.

She surely had not believed him when she read his letter – so much shorter and terser than the letters he had used to write. She had chosen to believe because the alternative was too painful.

Now she could disbelieve no longer.

"Tell me about him," Lord Merton said.

She laughed.

"I daresay, Lord Merton," she said, "you know him far better than I.

Perhaps /you/ ought to tell /me/ about him."

The streets seemed unusually crowded. Their progress was slow. Or perhaps it only seemed that way because she was so desperate to be home and alone.

He did not say anything.

"Our mother died giving birth to him," she said. "I was five years old, and I played mother to him from that day forward. I gave him something he would have lacked otherwise – undivided and total affection and attention. Hugs and kisses and endless monologues. And he gave me something, someone, to love in place of my mother. We adored each other, which is unusual in a brother and sister, I believe. But though I had a governess from a very young age, and though Wesley was sent to school eventually, we clung to each other all through our growing years – or until my marriage when I was eighteen and he was thirteen, anyway. Our father was so often gone."

He had been a compulsive and notorious gambler. Their fortunes had fluctuated from day to day. There was never any fixed home or security, even in the good times. There had always been the knowledge, understood even by young children, that desperate times were just the turn of a card away.

"I am sorry," Lord Merton said again, and Cassandra realized that he was slowing before her house. She had not even noticed turning into Portman Street.

He secured the ribbons, jumped down from his seat, and came around the curricle to lift her down to the pavement.

"You have nothing to be sorry for," she said again. "No love is ever unconditional, Lord Merton. And no love is ever eternal. If you learn nothing else from me, learn that. It may save you from some pain and heartache in the future."

He took her hand in his and raised it to his lips.

"May I expect you tonight?" she asked him.

"Yes," he said. "I have some commitments this evening, but I will come afterward if I may."

"/If you may/." She smiled rather scornfully at him. "I am yours whenever you choose, Lord Merton. You are paying well enough for me."

She saw his lips tighten and understood what she was doing to herself.

She was showing him only darkness. Yet he was all light. And if light was stronger than darkness – though she was not at all convinced that it was – then it would not take him long to draw away from the aura of gloom she was no doubt casting over him.

She smiled a little differently, with facial muscles that were stiff with disuse.

"And if I may throw some of your own words from this morning back at you," she said, "you are mine whenever I choose. I choose tonight. I look forward to it with the greatest pleasure. I look forward to giving /you/ pleasure. And I will. That is a promise. I ca

He stepped up to the door and rattled the knocker against it.

"I shall see you later, then," he said. "Think of those who have been kind to you today. Forget those who have not."

She held on to her smile. She added a sparkle to her eyes.

"I shall be too busy thinking of just one person," she said. "I shall think of no one but you."

The door opened and Mary looked out. Belinda was clinging to her skirt and peeping out from behind it. Roger came padding past them, bobbing down the steps on his three legs. He rubbed against her, his tongue lolling. He looked at the Earl of Merton and let out a token woof, which would not have scared a mouse within two feet of him.

Lord Merton looked from one to another of them, rubbed Roger's head briefly, touched the brim of his hat, and strode around his curricle to climb into the seat again. Cassandra watched him drive along the street.

"Is that /him/, my lady?" Mary asked rather stiffly.

Cassandra looked at her in some surprise. But there was no keeping anything from servants, even when there was a houseful of them.

"The Earl of Merton?" she said. "Yes."

Mary said no more and Cassandra swept past her into the house. It was a relief not to see Alice waiting there for her. She hurried upstairs to her room, Roger bobbing along beside her.

/9/

ALICE arrived home soon after Cassandra.

She had trudged about London for four hours in the heat of the afternoon, going from one employment agency to another without any success. Her age was against her in almost any form of employment that was available. The fact that she had had only one employer and two forms of employment – as governess and lady's companion – in all her working life for the past twenty-two years was against her, despite her effort to explain that the very longevity of her employment proved that she must be both steady and trustworthy. She could not expect to be employed as a housekeeper, one of the few forms of employment for which her age might qualify her, since she had no experience in the tasks involved, and she could not expect to be anyone's chef for the very simple reason that she did not know how to cook anything more complex than a boiled egg.

The best she had been able to do was leave her name and letters of introduction and recommendation at the two agencies that were willing to take them, in the faint hope that something would turn up.

Alice was well aware that it was a very faint hope.

The only really good thing that /had/ happened to her during the afternoon was that she had encountered an old friend while she was sitting on a bench beneath the shade of a tree on the outer edges of a churchyard to rest her aching feet. She was amazed that she had recognized him after so many years. She was even more amazed that /he/ had recognized /her/. But they both had, and he had stopped to talk with her and even sit beside her for a few minutes. Did Cassie remember Mr.