Seducing an Angel

"Oh, Cass," he said.

"/Don't/ say you are sorry," she said. "You had nothing to do with it, did you? And I miscarried twice before that."

And probably once after, though the third time there was only very heavy bleeding almost a month after she had missed her courses and she could never be sure there had been a child. Oh, but she knew there had been.

Her woman's body had known it. So had her mother's heart.

"Don't deny me words," he said. "I /am/ sorry. It must be the very worst thing any woman can be made to endure – the loss of a child. Even the loss of an unborn child. I am sorry, Cass."

"I have always been glad of it," she said harshly.

She had always told herself she was glad. But saying it now aloud to someone else, she knew that she had never been glad at all to have lost those four precious souls who might have become an inextricable part of her own soul.

Oh, how foolish to have said those words aloud.

"You have a voice," he said, "to match the mask you wear. I am more than relieved that you spoke in it just now or I might have believed you. I could not bear to believe you."

She frowned and bit her lip.

"Lord Merton," she said, "when we are together in this room and this bed, we are employer and mistress, or if you prefer to coat reality in sugar, we are /lovers/. In the strictly physical sense that we share bodies for /mutual/ pleasure. /Physical/ pleasure. Man and woman. We are not /persons/ to each other. We are bodies. You may use my body as you will – you are paying enough for it, God knows. But all the money in the world will not buy you /me/. I am off limits to you. I belong to myself.

I am your paid servant. I am /not/ and never will be your slave. You will ask me /no more/ personal questions. You will intrude no further into my life. If you ca

She listened to herself, appalled. What was she /saying/? She did not have all his money left to give back. And she knew as surely as she was lying here in his arms that she would never find the courage to do this all over again with another man. If he took her at her word, she was destitute – and so were Mary and Belinda and Alice. And Roger.

He withdrew his arm from beneath her head and his body from against hers so that suddenly she found herself lying flat on her back. He swung his legs over the far side of the bed, got to his feet, and walked around to her side. He stooped and picked up his clothes, tossed them over the foot of the bed, and proceeded to get dressed.

Even in the darkness she knew he was angry.

She ought to say something before it was too late. But it was already too late. He was going to go away and never come back. She had lost him merely because he was glad she did not really think herself better off without her dead children.

She would not say anything. She /could/ not. She was all done with seducing him, with playing the siren. It had been a desperate idea from the start. A foolish idea.

Except that there had seemed – there /still/ seemed – to be no alternative.

She waited in silence for him to leave. After she had heard the front door shut behind him, she would put her nightgown and robe back on and go down to lock and bolt the door. And that would be the end of that.

She would make herself a cup of tea in the kitchen and dream up another plan. There had to be /something/. Perhaps Lady Carling would be willing to give her a letter of recommendation. Perhaps she could find an employer who had never heard of her.

He had finished dressing, except to pick up his cloak and hat from the chair just inside the door as he left. But instead of moving toward them, he was bending over the dressing table, and suddenly the room was lit up with a flare of light from the tinder box and he set the flame to the candle.

Cassandra blinked in the sudden light and wished she had pulled up the bedcovers while there was still darkness. She disdained to do it now.

She gazed at him with all the scorn and hostility she could muster as he drew out the chair from the dressing table, turned it slightly, and sat down on it.

He had reversed the situation from earlier this morning, she realized – or yesterday morning, rather. He was seated on the chair, looking at her on the bed.

Well, let him look his fill. It was all that was left to him.

"Get dressed, Cassandra," he said. "Not in those things on the floor.

Real clothes. Put them on. We are going to talk."

Just as she had said yesterday.

There was no discernible anger in either his face or his voice, only a certain intensity in his eyes.

But it did not occur to her to defy or disobey him.

He had all the gentle power of angels, she realized as she crossed the room, naked, to her dressing room and began pulling on the clothes she had been wearing during the evening. It instilled fear. Not fear of bodily harm, but of…

She still did not know the answer. For some things there were no words.

But she /was/ afraid of him. He was somehow in her life, where she did not want him or anyone else to be. Not even Alice.

He was there. … /you, who are in some sort of relationship with me/…

/11/

HE ought simply to leave as soon as he was dressed, Stephen thought.

But he did not do so. He could not.

He knew nothing about the normal sort of relationship men enjoyed with their mistresses. But then, he could not think of her as his mistress despite that damnable exchange of money that her circumstances had made necessary. … /when we are together in this room and this bed, we are employer and mistress… man and woman. We are not persons to each other. We are bodies. You may use my body as you will… but all the money in the world will not buy you me/.

He did not /want/ to buy her. He wanted to… /know/ the woman into whose bed he was buying his way. Was there something so wrong about that?

She did not want to be known. /I am off limits to you. I belong to myself. I am your paid servant. I am not and never will be your slave. You will ask me no more personal questions. You will intrude no further into my life/.

Of course, she knew no more than he about the normal relationship between a man and his mistress. He doubted she had slept with any other man except her husband until last night. Despite the siren's act, which she tried so persistently to play, she was not a courtesan.

She was merely a desperate woman trying to make a living for herself and a few hangers-on. Though that was probably an unkind description of the people who lived with her. The former governess who had been walking in the park with her two days ago was probably past the age when she might find further employment with any ease. The maid was an unmarried mother and would be virtually unemployable as long as she chose to keep the child with her.

Stephen got to his feet and went to stand at the window while he waited for Cassandra to finish dressing. He opened the curtains and gazed out at the empty street. It was probably not a good idea to stand thus in the window, though, a candle burning behind him. The neighbors across the street might know that only women lived here.

He pulled the curtains across the window again and turned to lean back against the windowsill, his arms crossed over his chest.

Cassandra came out of the dressing room at the same moment. She looked at him and then took the chair. She arranged the skirts of her pale blue dress unhurriedly about her. A faint, mocking smile lifted the corners of her lips. She had tied back her hair again but not put it up.

Finally, when he said nothing, she looked up at him and raised her eyebrows.