‘We were so silly. The pair of us. If I hadn’t been so desperate to escape my stepfather, and of course in those days I thought marriage was the only way a girl could escape…’ She shook her head. ‘Well, it’s all water under the bridge now. I was desperate and I did trust in a foolish boy, and ended up ruined.’
‘Ooh.’ Rosalind sidled a bit closer and leaned in. ‘What was it like? Being ruined?’
‘Cold and uncomfortable.’
Rosalind frowned. ‘Cold? Didn’t he…you know…snuggle up when he was doing it?’
‘Doing it? Oh!’ Cassandra suddenly saw that they’d been talking at cross-purposes. ‘No, I thought I told you, we never did…that.’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘It wasn’t him, or anything he did that made me cold and uncomfortable. He was always a perfect gentleman. It was after. When I got home again. That was the worst bit. My stepfather refused to take me back. Said I was a…well, I don’t want to repeat any of the names he called me.’ She shuddered, recalling the look of glee on his face when he’d said that her behaviour obliged him to wash his hands of her. That from now on she was dead to him and to her mother, and to her brother. That she must never return and not a penny would she ever have from either of them.
‘Betty and I had no money left and nowhere to go.’
‘Betty?’
‘The soldier’s wife I told you about. The one who came with me, to lend me respectability on the journey. Fortunately, my stepfather hadn’t seen her, since he’d been too busy shouting at me and forbidding me to enter the house. She had the sense to sneak round the back and ask the servants if any of them knew of anywhere else we could go. And the cook, who’d been with the family from before my mother’s second marriage, let her know about an aunt of mine who was supposed to be living in a scandalous manner. I’d never heard of her before, because, well, nobody talks about scandalous aunts to young girls, do they?’
‘I don’t suppose they do, no,’ said Rosalind, enthralled. ‘And they took you in, did they?’
‘Ah, eventually, yes.’ It had taken weeks to reach the house in Devon. She and Betty had to walk all the way, foraging for food from the hedgerows as they went. They must have looked like scarecrows by the time they knocked on the front door of the cottage in Market Gooding, so she supposed it wasn’t so surprising the two older ladies had been reluctant to let them in. It was only when Betty had broken down in tears, saying they had nowhere else to go and threatening to lie down and die in their front garden, that they’d said they supposed the pair could stay for a while until they thought of something else.
They hadn’t been there long before discovering why the two ladies had been so reluctant to have them stay and also why they didn’t have any live-in servants already. Although the house was relatively spacious, they shared a bedroom. Betty had explained to the puzzled young Cassandra that the pair of them were in love with each other, in a romantic way, and were probably worried about what people would say if they found out.
‘For my part, Miss Cassy,’ the pragmatic Betty had declared, ‘I don’t care what they get up to as long as they give me houseroom. And nor should you.’
And she didn’t.
‘Betty gradually took on more and more of the household chores,’ she said, ‘and I became an apprentice in their dressmaking enterprise.’
Rosalind frowned. ‘You had to work with the needle to earn your living?’
Cassandra nodded, maintaining the fiction that her aunts used to disguise the real reason why they chose to live together, without a husband between them. People accepted the story of them being indigent females, throwing in their lot together and plying their needles to eke out a living, assuming that neither of them had managed to find a husband to support them. And the aunts, and now Cassandra and Betty, too, took great care to conceal the fact that they loved each other in a way that society would find shocking. As Rosalind might. Which was why she wasn’t going to tell her about it. Or, at least, not right now.
‘So what was all that about running through Guy’s fortune?’
‘I don’t really know. I mean, he did leave me some money in his will—’
‘Oh, did he die, then?’
‘Yes, in the retreat to Corunna. Along with Betty’s husband, which actually settled her position in my aunt’s household. She is their cook-housekeeper now, with a proper wage to reflect her status.’
‘And Guy left you a fortune…’
‘No. I mean, he didn’t have a fortune to leave. I receive a small annuity, that is all. Though even that took me by surprise.’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘Even though he kept in touch, after the way things had ended, I didn’t really believe a word he wrote.’ She wouldn’t even have written to let him know where she was and what had become of her, if her aunts had not insisted, saying that he was responsible for it and should shoulder the blame. ‘I mean, he said that he considered himself betrothed to me and that he would carry through on his promise to marry me as soon as we were old enough. And that he would always take care of me, no matter what. But…’
But Rosalind had clearly lost interest in Guy.
‘So that Colonel was blowing a lot of smoke, then? He really has no reason to threaten you, or force me to go home?’
‘Well, no, not exactly. But,’ she said, lowering her voice and leaning in a bit closer, ‘if he decides to make trouble for us, people might feel obliged to look a bit deeper into the reasons Godmama is giving everyone for our, um, relationship. And rumour can be terribly damaging.’
‘So what are we to do?’
Cassandra had no idea. ‘We will ask Godmama,’ she said. ‘I am sure she will come up with one of her clever notions.’ And if not, well, at least she’d had a few weeks in London, which she’d thoroughly enjoyed, before having to pay the piper.
It was just such a shame that Rosalind’s plans, too, would come to nothing.
‘Godmama,’ said Cassandra, the moment they stepped through the front door of the house on Grosvenor Square which the Duchess called home. ‘We need to speak with you, Rosalind and I.’ She glanced at Captain Bucknell, who had been their escort as usual that night, and who was still loitering in the hall. ‘In private.’
‘Yes, yes, in the morning,’ said the Duchess, as the butler reverently removed the cloak from her shoulders.
‘I am afraid not, Godmama,’ said Cassandra. ‘We shall neither of us be able to sleep for worrying. Could we not just step into the drawing room for a while? I am sure you will excuse us, Captain,’ she said, forcing herself to smile at him sweetly, ‘won’t you?’
‘Oh, ah, I suppose I could do that,’ he said, looking a bit annoyed. Which didn’t surprise her. For usually, after acting as their escort for the evening, he would stand in the hall, arm in arm with Godmama, watching the girls go up to bed. Cassy suspected that he never left the premises before he’d spent several more hours with Godmama. ‘That is, I mean to say…’
‘Dear Captain Bucknell,’ said Godmama, tripping across the hallway and extending her hand for him to kiss. ‘It was so kind of you to escort us to the ball. How lucky I am to be able to rely on you so very often, for the most tedious of favours.’
She meant, Cassandra supposed, all the times she’d put him to use as a partner for the girls to practise on. He’d nobly allowed them to tread on his feet during the dancing lessons given by the wizened