‘You would let that worry you?’
‘I try to stay out of the notice of others. I have limited the occasions that I come into the public sphere and the two times I have done so lately have both been difficult.’
‘Society does not quite know what to make of you, which could be a bonus if you use it wisely. I am certain that your charity would benefit.’
‘I am not so sure. The Daughters of the Poor relies on the generosity of those of wealth to give donations towards ruin without ever having to confront it.’
She always surprised him, he thought, always made him feel alive in a way he seldom had been in years. Her dimples. Her hair edging her face in curls.
‘I can protect you.’
His words fell into the silence as she pushed the door open and escaped outside in one fluid movement. Once there she stopped and spoke quietly.
‘I can protect myself, Nathaniel, but I thank you for your help tonight.’
But he did not leave it there. ‘If a ball is too public, come to a private dinner, then, and tell me why I should make a donation to your endeavours.’
‘I am certain that would be most inappropriate...’
‘A hefty donation...’ he added when she still hesitated.
‘Very well.’
‘A carriage will be sent for you the day after tomorrow at eight.’
She nodded quickly and then she was gone, pacing towards the front stairs of the Northrup mansion with the singular purpose of retreat. He watched her until the door shut and her shadow flitted briefly against the thin curtains of the downstairs salon.
* * *
My God, she should have declined his invite, she thought as she gained her room and leaned against the doorframe. She ought to be downstairs in the room off Alysa’s laboratory, helping the others settle Miss Milgrew in for the night, but she could not risk letting anyone see the panic that was making her hands shake and her heart beat faster.
Nathaniel Lindsay made her careless and he made her feel things that she should not: warm things, hopeful things, things that held her both in thrall and in fear. Running her fingers across her brow, she felt the clammy sweat of dread. None of these hopes were for her and to imagine that they were would be to simply ruin everything that was.
She had a life, a good life, a worthwhile life. In the past years she had managed to find a way through adversity and to experience...contentment.
Cassie smiled at the word. Contentment. To anyone else such an emotion might be perceived to be a bland and worthless thing. But to her it was everything; a way forward, a light after the darkness and the beacon that called her on each and every day. After Nay part of her had shrivelled up and died and after Perpignan joy was an emotion she thought never to know again. But she had known it with Jamie, holding him close against her breast in Paris where she had delivered him at night, the cold fear of aloneness failing to douse the warmth and love she was consumed with.
Jamie had allowed her a purpose, a new beginning, a way back.
And now here in London all these years later another chance was being offered. Nathaniel had held her in the carriage as if he would like to offer more than a donation, but she did not dare to believe in such a promise. Not yet. Not now. Not when anyone on seeing father and son together would realise that there was no question of paternity.
The risk of everything had her sitting, her head between her legs, trying to find the breath she had forgotten to take.
‘I can protect you.’
What did Nathaniel mean when he spoke of protection? The protection of marriage? The protection of being a mistress? The protection of lust and need translated into the flesh, a transient and momentary connection that would wither as soon as he saw the marks upon her breast.
Traitor.
No man could want to make love to an embodiment of betrayal. Not even one who had seen her before, whole and beautiful.
She crossed to the mirror, making certain that the door catch was on before she undid the buttons on her shirt. The cuts stood out, dark red against pale, three long slices of agony.
Lebansart’s legacy.
‘Tell me what was in the documents, Sandrine. Tell me and live.’
She had recited the names without further hesitation: her child’s safety or that of two faceless men whom she had never met? There was no real struggle, a fact that she was to relive over and over in nightmares that wouldn’t fade. She had stood there with the blood from her breast sticky against her fingers and she had itemised all that she had seen.
He wrote her words carefully in a book with a brown leather binding and a quill whose feathers had seen better days. The ink had stained his finger with black. Little details. Remembered. Her voice had shaken as she spoke.
‘Good. Very good. You were worth the trouble.’ Those were his words as he had left the room.
Leaving her to die, slowly, from a loss of blood. But he had no notion that she was her mother’s daughter and that she would know exactly what to do to lessen the flow and survive. A heavy wad of sheet and two long belts wrapped tight across them before lying face down on the thick mat and willing herself out of panic.
Survival. She breathed as shallowly as she could and tried not to move at all. And then after a few more hours she began to feel less lightheaded and warmer, the quilt she had heaped upon herself an added comfort and the noon-day light at the window spilling across her.
It had taken her another hour to find the energy to leave the room and make her way into the street. A doctor on a visit to a patient had found her and bundled her into his carriage and after that she struggled with living for a very long time.
Except for Jamie. Except for the growth of a child, Nathanael’s child, the only thing anchoring her to the world as everything spiralled into despair and hopelessness.
Her uncle’s friend had bought her a ticket to Paris as soon as the fever left out of respect for the Mercier family. He had arranged for his small house in Montmartre to be opened for her and sent two maids and a butler along to help her in her quest for independence.
She did not mention her pregnancy and allowed him no notion of her own family back in London. She needed to think and to plan. She needed to find Nathanael if she could and she needed to be well away from Lebansart.
The house was quiet and situated in a street not far from the Sacré-Coeur, with a view across the rooftops of the city. Even with the beauty of white marble washed in rain she was lonely and sad, shock reaching into the depths of her soul.
And then one day whilst sitting in a park, wrapped warmly against the capricious springtime winds, a colourful bird had come to sit on the branch of a shrub in front of her and her baby had moved.
Life returned. Hope blossomed. The want to survive overrode the desire to simply cease to be, and she recovered.
Rebuttoning her shirt, Cassie looked back at herself in the mirror. No longer as thin. No longer as sad. No longer hobbling into each successive hour with the burden of betrayal heavy on her shoulders. The Daughters of the Poor had given her life a purpose and Jamie had given her body a heart. She could not endure uncertainty again. If she went to Nathaniel’s dinner tomorrow night she would tell him she couldn’t.
It was that simple.
Nothing was simple.
Nathaniel was dressed down tonight, his clothes less formal, the unbuttoned white collar of his shirt bold against the dark of his skin, a loose garment that gave him a sense of danger and familiarity.