‘If Mama was still here she would know what to do, but she isn’t. She’s gone,’ Cassandra shouted back, for after an evening sparring with Nathaniel Lindsay she was heedless. ‘It was all my fault that she died. I was the one who did that.’
They had seldom spoken of the day of the accident, the memory too painful for them both. Their beautiful and clever mama falling down upon the floor, her eyes wide open with surprise and pain and then nothing. Save Reena with her hands on her ears in exactly the same way she held them now, her face creased with disbelief.
The laughter was unexpected.
‘Mama’s science is what killed her, Cassie. Mama and her foolish insistence on having us help her.’
The shock of the words kept Cassandra still.
‘Alysa only thought about her experiments. Don’t you remember that? She lived in her laboratory. Her scientific discoveries were her babies so much more than we ever could be and the thought of saving the world soul by soul through uncovering unseen sicknesses was what drove her. If she had not been killed in that particular accident, then there would have been another.’
Such revelations amazed Cassie. ‘You never told me this.’
‘I tried to because I could see that you thought it was your fault, but you loved her too much to listen and then you got sick.’
Heartsick. Body-sick. Soul-sick.
Leached of life by guilt and then by shame.
‘I should be rejoicing in my affliction in any case and not decrying it. I would have never met Kenyon otherwise for I would have heard his horse behind me and got off the path. What a loss that would have been.’
The day just kept getting stranger.
‘Kenyon Riley?’
‘Of course. I am getting older, old enough to imagine I should never have the chance of a family. I love him and he has asked me to marry him.’
Pieces of a puzzle clicked into place. Kenyon’s presence at the school, his interest in everything that they did, his generosity and his kindness.
‘You have been distracted lately, Cassie. I wanted to tell you, but you were never here. You were always dressed in your boy’s clothes and out in the night, helping others.’
Mama. Maureen. Kenyon.
My God, she had missed all the signs of change.
‘There is a problem, however, and I think it is only fair that you hear of it from me. There are whispers in places that say you were the woman in Lord Lindsay’s bed in that whorehouse in Whitechapel, and they are gaining in traction. Kenyon has tried to douse the rumour, but it seems you were seen.’
Maureen’s careful diction made the accusations sound so much worse, each rounded word ringing out the ruin.
‘Tell me it is not true, Cassie, and we can refute it together. I can say you were here with me and that they were mistaken...’ Her voice petered off as Cassandra shook her head and anger lit her dark eyes.
‘He forced you?’
‘No.’
‘You wanted him?’
‘No.’
‘Then why?’
Because I was abused once by monsters who held no mind for a young, thin, sick and frightened girl. Because Nathanael Colbert saved me from hell and we were married under other names in a town I can barely remember. Because I betrayed others to save his life. Because I have killed men by my hand and by my words and he hates me for it all.
That is what she could have said, might have even tried to had her brother not have chosen that very second to interrupt them and come tumbling into the room with a parrot upon his shoulder.
‘I was given this by a sailor in the park who had come from India and wanted to go back again without the bother of a bird. Sixpence, he charged me, and he said I was to call him “Mine”.’
At the sound of his name the bird lunged from his perch on Rodney’s arm up on to the gold clip in Maureen’s hair, pecking at the glitter to create havoc. And Cassie knew without a single doubt that any moment of truth was well and truly lost.
‘Mine. Mine. Mine’, she heard them both calling as she slipped through the doorway and left.
* * *
Cassandra lay in bed that night and thought of all that Maureen had said. If the gossip about her were to become widespread, what would happen? Nathaniel Lindsay would hardly be stepping forward with an offer of his hand. Again.
Wonderful and terrible.
The day had been that. Maureen’s good news balanced against her bad. The guilt felt about her mother’s death lost into the wonder of Reena meeting Kenyon Riley and all because she did not hear the hoofbeats of his horse as they came from behind her. Despite everything else, Cassie smiled and rubbed at the china shard Nathanael had threaded for her in the tiny village of Saint Estelle.
They had come down into the settlement late in the afternoon, the thin sunlight slanting on to their faces as they walked in silence after their night at the pools. Cassandra had not dared to break with words the magic that danced about every part of her body.
This was what she had heard of in the ballads and in the books. This crawling, sensuous, languid warmth that sifted through everything and left her different.
She wished they might find a room somewhere, alone, and begin all over again. The punching throb of need made her groan, and he turned.
‘Are you hurt?’
The redness began at her breast and crept up on to her cheeks, a wave of heat similar to that she had felt last night. Unstoppable. She was like a woman in a story book, a woman with little will of her own and a singular wish for the feelings expressed in the works of the Romantic poets Celeste and she had read under the candlelight.
Thrilling.
Please.
The word coiled inside her like a snake waiting to strike.
Please. Please. Please.
She saw the moment he understood what it was she hid, blue darkening across silver in a will all of its own.
Lust it might be for him, but for her love held on at the edges, grasping tentatively. The feel of the ring against her skin deepened it, a circle that held them together, caught in the company of each other, pledged to God.
And by flesh now, the feel of him within her, the building joy of need, the hours of play and delight so different from anything she had known at Nay.
She shook away the darkness. No. She would not think of that again.
‘I will find us a room.’ His voice sounded strained and unnatural.
* * *
This time the feeling was different. This time they circled each other fully dressed in a chamber that was...comfortable. Now instead of a strange world far from the one they knew, a certain familiarity crept in. The crystal of the glasses. The bed with its feather quilts. A window where the blinds had been drawn across the remains of the day; curtains of floral damask much like the ones hanging in the library room at home. Bread and wine sat upon a gilded tray on the table.
The consequences of choices already made settled in. One day she would be back in London and this would all be a memory.
She began to unbutton her shirt, but he stopped her.
‘We will eat first.’
First.
She shook her head. She was not hungry for food or wine. She did not want to wait until they had supped and spoken, all the normal things that happened