Seducing an Angel

Stephen swept off his hat and bowed to her.

"Ma'am?" he said. "Young? A lovely afternoon, is it not?"

Young, seeing him, looked suddenly embarrassed.

"Indeed it is," Cassandra said. "How do you do, your grace, my lord?"

"I am extremely well," Vanessa said. "Sir Wesley Young, is it not? I believe we have met before."

"We have, your grace," he said, inclining his head to her. "Lady Paget is my sister."

"Oh, how wonderful," Vanessa said, smiling warmly. "I did not realize you had relatives in town, Lady Paget. I am so glad you do. Are you pla

"I believe I will," Cassandra said. "I have had an invitation."

She had accepted it, then. Stephen had not known if he hoped she had or if he would have preferred it if she had not. Now he knew. He was glad she was to be there.

Was the happy glow on her face a result of her brother's being with her?

If it was, then Stephen no longer regretted having interfered.

"Perhaps, Lady Paget," he said, "you would be so good as to reserve the opening set for me?"

She opened her mouth to reply.

"I am afraid, Merton," Young said stiffly, "that is /my/ set."

"Then another later in the evening," Stephen said.

A smile played about her lips. Perhaps she was thinking that she had come a long way in a week.

"Thank you, my lord," she said in her velvet voice. "It would be a pleasure."

Sir Wesley Young clearly had no wish to prolong the encounter. With another half-bow he bade them both a good afternoon and continued on his way along the street with Cassandra on his arm.

"I do believe," Vanessa said as they resumed their own course in the opposite direction, "that Lady Paget could wear a sack and still look more beautiful than anyone else in London. It is most provoking, Stephen."

"You are quite lovely enough to turn heads, Nessie," he said, gri

She had always been the plainest of his sisters – and the most vivacious.

She had always seemed beautiful to him.

"Oh, dear," she said. "It /did/ seem as though I was fishing for a compliment, did it not? And I got it. How very gallant of you. It is time I went home, Stephen, if you do not mind terribly. What if Elliott has come home and I am not there?"

"Would he have a fit of the vapors?" he asked.

She laughed and twirled her parasol.

"Probably not," she said. "But /I/ might if I discovered I had missed ten minutes or more of his company."

He maneuvered her about a noisy group of people coming in the opposite direction without looking where they were going.

"/How/ long have you been married?" he asked her.

She merely laughed.

"Stephen," she said a little later, "do you like her?"

"Lady Paget?" he said. "Yes, I do."

"No, but I mean," she said, "do you /like/ her?"

"Yes," he said again. "I do, Nessie."

"Oh," she said.

There was no interpreting that single syllable and he did not ask for an explanation. Neither did he ponder the answer he had given to her questions. All he had admitted to, after all, was liking Cassandra. Or /liking/ her, rather. Was there a difference in the meaning of the word, depending upon whether one spoke it with emphasis or not?

He shook his head with exasperation.

Enough of this. /Enough/!

Sir Wesley Young had been inclined to scold his sister when he learned that she had put up no fight whatsoever to retain her valuables or to claim what was rightfully hers when the present Paget turned her out of his home. With a little effort she could have been a wealthy woman now instead of being destitute.

He did /not/ scold, however. He had been almost twenty-two years old when Paget died, and he had gone down to Carmel for the funeral. He had felt the rumblings of unpleasantness brewing while he was still there, but he had left before any open accusations had started to fly, assuring Cassie before he went that he loved her and always would, that she could come to him at any time for support and protection.

And then, as rumors of just how nasty the situation had become reached him in London, he had developed very cold feet. He had feared being caught up in his sister's ruin. He had stopped writing to her.

He could not make the excuse that he had been only a boy, for the love of God. He had been a /man/.

And then, the final act of cruelty and cowardice, which would give him sleepless nights and troubled days for a long time to come, he believed, he had tried to prevent her from coming to London. He had lied about that walking tour of the Scottish Highlands. And when she had come anyway, and when he had come face-to-face with her in the park, he had /turned his head away and ordered the hired coachman to drive on/.

Oh, yes, there would be well-deserved nightmares over that one.

All he could do now, though, since the past could not be changed, was make amends as best he could and hope that at some time within the next fifty years or so he would be able to forgive himself. So he had asked around yesterday and this morning to discover the very best lawyer for Cassie's type of case, and he had made an appointment and taken her there this afternoon.

It all seemed very promising. Indeed, the lawyer was astonished that Lady Paget had even thought it might be difficult to recover her jewels, which were her own personal property, and to be granted what was her due according to her marriage contract and her husband's will. He was quite happy to take a modest retainer – which Wesley insisted upon paying – in the firm conviction that the matter would be settled within a couple of weeks or a month at the longest.

They had been walking home along Oxford Street when they had come face-to-face with Merton. Wesley was not pleased about it. Merton had been his conscience yesterday, or at least the prompter of his conscience, and Wesley did not feel particularly kindly disposed toward him. His conscience ought not to have needed prompting from any outside source.

However, the meeting did not last long, and Wesley returned his sister to the house on Portman Street, where Miss Haytor was eager to talk to her about the visit to some museum she had made with an old friend of hers – Mr. Golding, actually, who had been the only private tutor Wesley had ever had, though he had not stayed long and Wesley scarcely remembered him.

He went home to relax for a while before dining and getting ready for the evening's ball. But his man informed him that yet again there was someone downstairs in the visitors' parlor, wanting a word with him.

Wesley did not recognize the visitor, though the man got to his feet when he entered the room and came toward him, one hand extended. He was a strong, athletic-looking man with light brown hair and a deeply bronzed face.

"Young?" he said. "William Belmont."

Ah, yes, of course. He was the present Paget's brother, one of Cassie's stepsons. Wesley had met him at Cassie's wedding and again during one of his visits to Carmel a number of years ago. He had gone to America after that, had he not?

"I am pleased to see you again," Wesley said, shaking his hand.

"My ship from Canada docked a couple of weeks ago," Belmont told him,

"and I went immediately to Carmel to find everything much changed. Where is your sister, Young? She is here in London somewhere, is she not?"

Wesley was instantly wary.

"It would be best to leave her alone," he said. "She did /not/ kill your father. No conclusive evidence could ever be found against her and she was never charged with anything because there was nothing to charge her /with/. She is trying to make a new life, and I am here to see to it that she has a chance to do just that and that no one bothers her."

It ought to have been true too, from the moment of her arrival in town.