‘You know,’ pointed out Aunt Eunice, gruffly, just as Cassy had begun to get a real pang of longing to feel a warm little bundle in her arms, while another pair of youthful arms hugged her knees, ‘it wouldn’t do you any harm to go up to Town just to see the latest fashions being worn.’
‘And visit some of the silk warehouses and see what’s on offer,’ said Aunt Cordelia.
‘There, you see? These dear ladies are in agreement. Even if you cannot find a husband, there are plenty of other useful things you can do in town. And we shall have such fun,’ said the Duchess, clapping her dainty little hands in delight. ‘Oh, I knew this was going to answer.’
‘Well,’ said Cassandra, wondering why she was bothering to argue when everyone in the room, including her, thought that a trip to London was just what she needed. ‘It is very good of you, Your Grace…’
‘Oh, don’t start off calling me that. I am your godmother and it will be of the utmost importance to remind everyone of that fact. So you had better get into the habit of calling me Godmama right away. And as for being good,’ she added with a rather mischievous grin, ‘that is not altogether true. Since you have been honest with me, my dear, it is only fair that I return the favour by being completely honest with you.’ She cleared her throat. ‘You see, although it is true that, for a while, at one point in our lives, your mother and I were great friends, that is not the only reason I have offered to bring you out.’ She tilted her head to one side, setting her golden ringlets dancing, and smiled in what Cassandra thought of as a positively coaxing manner.
‘It is my stepson,’ she said, her smile fading. ‘He has practically ordered me to leave Town and go to live in the Dower House. Which I shall never do! I have such horrid memories of my years at Theakstone Court that I vowed never to set foot anywhere on the estate ever again. But when I told him so, he said I would have no choice if he were to turn off all the London servants. Well…’ she leaned back as both aunts gasped in outrage ‘…that was all he knew! For the moment I warned the staff of his threats, they all swore they would stay on without wages, if necessary. Isn’t that loyal of them? The dears. Which meant that of course I could not abandon them, either. And so I started cudgelling my brains for a solution which would mean that we could all stay on in Grosvenor Square. Which,’ she said, holding out her hand to Cassandra in a way that looked like an appeal for help, ‘is where you come in…’
Colonel Nathaniel Fairfax stood for a moment just inside the doorway of the ballroom, scouting the terrain. Dance floor directly ahead, full of couples performing complicated manoeuvres at the trot. To his right, a dowagers’ bench, fully occupied by well-fed matrons. Beyond them, a trio of fiddlers sawing away industriously. There were two exits, he noted, apart from the doorway in which he was standing. One led to a refreshment room, to judge from the tables he could spy through the crowds gathered there, and the other led to the outside. A terrace, probably. Most houses of this size had them.
There was a sort of corridor between the terrace door and the dance floor, formed by a set of pillars, and several strategically placed urns stuffed with foliage behind which sharpshooters could crouch, should they wish to prevent uninvited guests getting in through any set of doors.
Not that he was expecting to encounter sharpshooters in a ballroom. Though he was scouting the terrain for something potentially far more dangerous.
A woman.
She wasn’t one of the ladies cavorting about the dance floor. Only a couple of them had dark hair, but neither of them were anywhere near as pretty as he recalled her being.
She was not on the dowagers’ bench. Not unless she’d aged a couple of decades and put on several stone in weight during the six years since he’d last clapped eyes on her.
Was she among the crowd loitering in the corridor by the terrace doors? That was where a lot of young females were standing, watching the dancers, and fluttering their fans. He ran his eyes along the rank of them. A tall thin blonde, a short squat ginger piece, a medium-sized brunette with…
Good God. His sister, Issy, had not lied. She was here. Cassandra Furnival. Brazenly pushing her way back into society when by rights she ought never dare show her face. But then he should already have known she was brazen. Why hadn’t he learned his lesson when it came to her behaviour? She was the kind of girl who could entice a man to follow her out into a moonlit stable yard and almost make him forget the moral code by which he lived. The kind of girl who could, not one month later, entice an entirely different man to elope with her.
And that when she’d been scarce out of the schoolroom.
Back then she’d been pretty enough to cause two officers within the same regiment to lose their heads over her. Since then she’d only grown lovelier. To look at, that was. According to Issy, all that loveliness concealed the heart of an avaricious, designing baggage.
‘Nate,’ Issy had wailed, with tears trickling down her face, ‘if you don’t do something about her I don’t know who can.’
‘Do?’ He’d flung down his pen in exasperation, since not only had she burst into his study unannounced, but had also taken a chair even though she could see he was busy. And the tears meant she was not going to leave until she’d said her piece. ‘What do you expect me to do?’
‘Stop her! Before she gets some other unsuspecting male in her clutches and wheedles his fortune out of him, the way she did to poor Lady Agatha’s brother.’
Typical of Issy to use such emotionally charged words, in such a biased manner when, from what he’d observed of Lieutenant Gilbey and Miss Furnival, they’d both been equally culpable.
‘And just how,’ he’d said rather irritably, ‘do you think I could do such a thing? Even if you could convince me it was any of my business, which I don’t believe it is.’
Besides which, he had no wish to browbeat any female. It was not behaviour befitting an officer of His Majesty’s Army.
‘Of course it is your business! Lady Agatha’s brother was one of your junior officers. You can’t have forgotten poor Lieutenant Gilbey, can you?’
No, he hadn’t forgotten the lovelorn young man. He hadn’t forgotten any of the men who’d died while serving under his command. His life would now be far less uncomfortable if he only could.
‘Surely,’ Issy had persisted, ‘you can see that you owe it to his memory, to…to his family, too, who are all devastated to learn that Furnival girl is trying to worm her way back into society.’
He did owe the fallen a great deal. And their families. But surely not to the extent of coming the heavy with Miss Furnival? Not the Miss Furnival he recalled, anyway. She’d seemed a rather timid little thing, not this brazen harpy his sister was describing.
‘If she is as bad as you claim—’ and he wasn’t totally convinced of it ‘—I hardly think anyone is likely to receive her. You are probably making a fuss over nothing, Issy.’
‘It’s not nothing! Not to Lady Agatha. She was so cut up when she heard that girl had been taken up by that pea goose the Duchess of Theakstone that she left Town for fear she might accidentally come face to face with the designing baggage who cast her spell over her poor deluded brother.’
There had been a good deal more of the same. About how she’d brought some friend with her, too, who was from a background of trade and had no place in society ballrooms at all. Until, seeing that the only way he would be able to get his sister to leave him in peace to get on with