‘He once told me that what you did and what you said you did were two different things.’
She shook her head.
‘In that he is wrong. There were others...others who died because of the mistakes that I made.’
The names of those she had consigned to the afterlife came to mind, people planted through loyalty into a land that was not their own and then murdered for their service. Aye, the world ran red with the blood of martyrs and hers had been included in that.
Lebansart.
Silver-tongued Leb.
His knife had been sharp and his words were sharper still.
Bitch. Traitor. Murderer.
Once she had been none of those things and now she was all of them, marked for anyone to see. Her penance.
She smiled through the anger and held Hawkhurst’s returning puzzlement as though it were only of a small importance, a trifling consideration.
‘Do you ever think, my lord, that when the world shifts in its truths sometimes one just cannot go back?’
‘Often,’ he replied, ‘and I believe it is a shame.’ As they turned with the music, Cassandra caught the face of Nathaniel watching them, his eyes devoid of feeling.
* * *
‘Cassandra Northrup is nothing like I expected her to be,’ Stephen said as they stood to one side of the room beside a pillar. ‘In fact, I would go as far to say that after that conversation I am half in love with her myself. But she’s hiding things. Big things. You can see it in her eyes when she looks over at you, Nathaniel, and she does that often.’
Nat did not want to hear this, for the cords that had held them together had been cut so irrevocably.
‘Why did she go to Paris after Perpignan, Nat? She did not arrive back in England until eighteen months after you did. Why didn’t she just come home?’
Lebansart. Sandrine’s face turned up to his as she had left, his hands curled into hers. He wished he did not care any more, but the days beneath the Pyrenees had defined their relationship, and he found he could not let her go.
He hadn’t slept with another woman since. Not one. Just that single thought made him furious. Was he destined to be for ever trapped in his feelings from the past, unable to move on with all that was being offered now? A man for whom the holy words of matrimony meant a loyalty that remained unquestioned and unbroken.
‘Well, I think it is safe to say that the youngest Northrup daughter has weathered her rocky start this evening, Nat, and I can well see why. Dressed in gold she looks like something out of a fairy tale.’
A line of young swains milled about Cassandra, though she did not seem enamoured with the fact, for her frown was noticeable even at this distance.
But Nathaniel had had enough of conjecture and, excusing himself summarily, he wound his way through the substantial crowd and out of the wide front door.
Hailing his coachman, he settled into the cushioned seats and closed his eyes. For the first time ever in his life he was at a loss as to what he should do next and he didn’t like the feeling one little bit.
Cassandra Northrup threw him completely, that was the trouble. And when he had held her in the dance all he had wanted was to bring her closer. Her scent, her eyes, the feel of her skin against his.
She was a lethal concoction of beauty, brains and betrayal, but something else lingered there, too. Vulnerability, sadness and fright. What was it she was hiding? What had happened after Perpignan?
Stephen had liked her and so did Acacia. In fact, even given the collective anger of society against her earlier in the evening, he had never met a soul who did not admire her personally, apart from her uncle.
An enigma.
And she was still his wife despite all that she thought to the contrary.
He shouldn’t see her again, but he knew that he would, her invitation to accompany her at night through the back streets on her charity business too tempting to turn down. What if she was hurt? She was not strong enough to rebuff a grown man who meant business, a fact he had found out in the house in Whitechapel when he had easily subdued her.
Another thought surfaced.
She had changed in four years. He could see it in her stance and in her eyes and in the way she had held the knife in the room on Brown Street in the darkness.
He had tried to teach her a few of his best tricks of attack in the final days before they had come down into Perpignan. The blade she had taken from Baudoin was a good weapon, light and comfortable in her fist.
‘Grip hard and keep it upwards for this one.’ He had turned her slightly, one foot away from each other. ‘Position your body behind the knife, for if you lose concentration even for a moment you will be dead.’
‘Like this?’ She had taken to the lesson with a surprising accuracy, her footwork balanced and the line of her arm strong. Perhaps it was the legacy of months of being a captive, never again stamped into every movement.
‘Being left-handed will give you an advantage because your attacker will not expect it so use this quickly before he has time to define it and go in under the arc of his forearm. Close contact negates skill to some extent so aim for the artery here on the outside of the leg. He will be protecting everything else.’
So far he had explained the rudiments in the slow motion of tutelage, but now he grabbed a stick that looked solid and stood before her. ‘Try it on me.’
She shook her head. ‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘I might hurt you.’
He began to laugh, the sound echoing around the small clearing, and Nat thought right then and there that this is what it felt like to be happy, here, with a beautiful girl dressed as a boy in the mountain passes of the Pyrenees.
‘You are a woman,’ he managed to say when he finally found his breath, ‘and I have been at it a while.’
‘Why did you start?’ She had lowered the blade and faced him, small curls of gold-red that had escaped her plait dancing in the wind.
‘Belonging, I think.’ He could not believe he had been so honest and that an answer to a question he had often asked himself should have been as self-evident. ‘My parents died when I was young and after that...’
‘You had trouble finding yourself.’ Sheathing the knife, she came forward and wrapped her arms about him. Tight and warm. ‘I was the same. After Mama it seemed as though I had no compass.’
‘No true north,’ he answered softly.
Her eyes fell to his lips and the smile she gave him held invitation as he brought his mouth across her own. They knew nothing of each other and everything, the truth of their bodies speaking in a way words never could, telling secrets, finding the honesty. They had been hurt and they had survived. Right now it was enough.
All he could do was to keep her safe.
The note came on the third day after the Forsythe ball.
Tonight. 11:00 p.m. Wear black.
That was it. No directions. No meeting point. He held the letter up against the light and looked at her handwriting. Small and evenly shaped, no flourish of curve or wasted embellishment. No signature.
She would come here, he was sure of it, because there was no other place that had been mooted. Perhaps she expected trouble and to give an exact