“How’s Father?” asked Riordan blandly.
Only a slight flaring of the nostrils revealed that Lady Millicent found the question tactless. “Not very well, I’m afraid; but I’ll tell you all about that later. So! It’s really true, my youngest child is married?”
“As you see.” He drew Cass’s cold hand to his lips, putting a tender kiss on her knuckles.
“I’m delighted for you, of course, but I must confess to a teeny bit of surprise. I’d thought you and that lovely Harvellyn girl would—ah, but one never knows, does one? And who’s to say an impulsive marriage hasn’t as good a chance for success as one more carefully considered?” No one answered. “Well, I’m sure I wish you a long life of perfect happiness together.” Her ladyship’s attention seemed to wander as she spied friends across the way. “Oh, dear, there’s never any time to talk at these large affairs, is there? But we’ll all be seeing one another tomorrow at George’s, won’t we? Just the family, how lovely. Ta!” And she sailed away.
Smiling tightly, Riordan watched his mother depart on the arm of her youthful escort. “What I love about Mother is her warmth,” he said, lowering a cynical eyebrow at Cass. “Don’t you feel welcomed into the bosom of the family now, darling? And you’ll be enjoying that same graciousness and cordiality from all of them, I assure you.”
She kept silent. Inwardly she was trying to understand how he could stand there and tell such a monstrous lie to his own mother, straight-faced, however much he disliked her.
“Come, love, you have to speak to me sometime. What will people think?” He put his fingers lightly on her jaw and tilted her face up. The expression of hopeless disappointment clouding her gray eyes made him clench his jaws and quell the urge to shout at her. But there was no time to say more; other guests were arriving and they must greet them together.
His brother George, Viscount Lanham, resembled him hardly at all, thought Cass, except perhaps around the mouth; but no, Riordan’s was strong and sensual, she amended after a moment’s inspection, and George’s was merely sensual. Fulfilling Riordan’s prediction, George kissed her and put his hands on her at every opportunity—which wasn’t very often because Riordan made a point of keeping her anchored to his side. He got her away from his brother as soon as he decently could, on the excuse that he must officially open the festivities by leading her through the first contredanse.
“I don’t want to dance with you,” she told him as he guided her out on the floor—the first words she’d spoken to him directly in many minutes.
“Nevertheless, you will,” he retorted, annoyed. The music and the dance began. “Would it be too much to ask you to smile occasionally, my love?” he asked in a quiet, deceptively pleasant tone as he led her down a double line of admiring ladies and gentlemen. “You’ve proven you have no conversation; are you out to show you’ve a disposition to match?”
She pressed her lips together, disdaining to answer.
“No, really, darling, I know meeting my family has been a bit of a shock, but your eloquence this evening leaves a great deal to be desired. Are you feeling all right?”
Forcing an amiable smile, she said softly but succinctly, “Go to hell.”
He made a low bow to her curtsy. “Ah, my sweet, how I adore the sound of your voice. What we need to work on now is the message.” He took her hand and held it high, leading her in a stately pivot. “Some men prefer quiet wives, I’m told, but I’m not one of them. I do, however, want one who doesn’t curse at me.”
“I’m not your wife.”
He pressed the small of her back with a light hand and grinned down at her. “Not lately, that’s true. But after tonight you will be again. Careful, darling.” He held her elbow when she missed a step.
She couldn’t even pretend to smile now. “You couldn’t possibly—” The intricacies of the dance separated them at that moment. She glared across at his smug, insufferable countenance and contemplated bolting. He would catch her before she went three feet, but at least she’d succeed in embarrassing him.
As if reading her thoughts, he reclaimed her a few beats before the music required it and took her hand in a stronger grasp. “Couldn’t possibly what, my angel?”
She gritted her teeth. “What kind of a man would want a woman who despises him?” she ground out in a harsh whisper.
“The kind who’s tired of waiting, I expect.” His own smile was beginning to wane.
“I have no intention of allowing you to touch me, tonight or any other night.”
“Then I’ll have to take what’s mine without your permission.”
“I’m not yours!”
The dance had ended a few seconds before; they bowed and curtsied hastily and stalked off the floor more like duelists than newlyweds, though he still held her hand.
“Cassie! Lord, if you ain’t a sight! Give us a kiss.”
“Oh, Freddy!” She threw herself into her cousin’s open arms with heartfelt affection, her eyes misting. “Oh, my, I’m so glad to see you.”
“Faith, I’m glad to see you, too! I wouldn’t have missed this for anything. Hullo, Philip, congratulations and all that.” The two men shook hands, Riordan a bit grimly.
“How’ve you been, Freddy?” asked Cass. “I haven’t seen you in ages.”
“I’m tip-top, as usual, and Cassie, I’ve got the most smashing news. I’m to be married, too!”
“No!”
“She said yes last night—I haven’t even told Mother. I’d have brought her along tonight, but she’s come down with a chill. Hope it ain’t related to saying yes! Ha ha!”
“Oh, Freddy, that’s marvelous. I’m so happy for you. Is it Ellen Van Rijn?”
“Yes, and she’s a peach of a girl, Cassie, I know you’ll love her. But isn’t it wonderful, both of us getting married? Who’d have thought it last spring in Paris, eh?”
She said something inaudible.
“But say, you haven’t heard the rest. Guess who else is about to tie the knot?”
“Who?”
“Mother!”
“No! To whom?”
“Fellow named Edward Frane. Ugly blighter, but rich as Croesus. You knew him, didn’t you?”
She could only nod with her mouth open. As angry and out of patience with Aunt Beth as she was, she wouldn’t have wished Edward Frane on her. Still, the arrangement had a certain symmetry. She sincerely hoped they would make each other happy, but she wouldn’t have staked much on it in a wager. The irony wasn’t lost on her that she’d once refused Edward Frane in a fit of indignation because he’d asked her to be his mistress, and yet that was exactly what she had become to Philip Riordan.
Freddy led her in the next dance, Riordan’s brother George in the one after that. Then came a succession of partners, some of whom she knew and some she didn’t. She began to feel ill, but since dancing was preferable to speaking she never said no. Always she could feel Riordan’s eyes on her, though she scrupulously avoided looking his way. She was aware that he was drinking, not pretending to drink, though so far it seemed to be with moderation. Once, when they were together, she said, “I see you’re drinking again,” keeping her tone flat and unweighted.
“Would you rather I didn’t?”
“It’s perfectly immaterial to me one way or the other.”
He stared into his wine. “Curious. It’s immaterial to me, too.” And he put the glass down.
A little later, when the musicians paused, he claimed her from her latest partner and led her to an alcove where Lady Helena Strong sat ensconced, sipping ratafia with two other matronly guardians of the door to the haut monde. Lady Helena spoke to Cass with only a trifle more civility than she had in the eyeglass shop two months ago. After a bit of stiff chit-chat, Riordan asked pointedly about Walter, Lady Helena’s son, which brought a bright flush of color to her cheeks—inexplicable to Cass until she recalled that he’d once lent the Strongs a great deal of money to conceal Walter’s unseemly theft from the family business.
/> “Oh, by the way,” he continued with scarcely a pause. “The invitation to your fête champêtre arrived. Thank you so much. We’re delighted to accept, aren’t we, Cass? A weekend in Oxfordshire sounds just the thing before the winter term begins.”
Lady Helena looked as if she’d swallowed half a dozen sharp stones. She made a swift and valiant recovery, though, and expressed pleasure that they could attend in halting but determined accents. When Riordan took her hand and kissed it, no one but Cass saw the solemn wink he flashed her ladyship in farewell.
“I take it we were not invited to the fête champêtre?? Cass whispered as they made their way toward the dining room.
“Not until now,” he confirmed, smiling and nodding to friends as they went.
“Why did you do it, force it on her like that? It was practically blackmail.”
“Because as odious as she is and as intolerable as her house party will certainly be, she and her friends hold the key to your entrée into the highest social circles in London, Cass. Quite frankly, we can’t do without her.”
Cass stopped walking and faced him in astonishment. “But what difference does it make? I won’t be around long enough for it to matter anyway!”
He still held her hand; he squeezed it until she blanched. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he demanded, his face reddening.
For once it was she who remembered there were people all around. “You’re hurting me,” she said quietly, looking away.
His hold gentled but he didn’t release her. “I asked you a question.”
“To which you know the answer very well.”
“I know nothing except that you are the damnedest woman I’ve ever known!”
“Let me go, Philip. People are watching us.”
“Are they? Then we ought to give them something to see.”
She hissed at him. “Stop it, stop, don’t you—”
Too late. He pulled her against him and cut off her objections with his mouth. “Kiss me back,” he murmured against her lips, holding the back of her neck. She tried to shake her head. “Kiss me, Cass, or I’ll put my hands on your behind.” A muffled gasp of outrage. “Very well—” But before he could slide his hand from her waist to her buttocks, she put her arms around his neck and pressed against him.
“You bastard…”
Taking advantage of her ill-judged decision to speak, he sleeked his warm tongue into her mouth and tasted her, feeling the tremors that shuddered through her as he did so. For another full second she tried to stifle her reaction. Then she gave up. Nothing had ever felt so right as his mouth on hers, his hands pressing her against his long, hard body. Their eyes were closed, their senses engrossed; they didn’t hear the scattering of good-natured applause until the kiss was over. Riordan held her a moment longer before turning toward their small audience with an expression that seemed to say, Who are these people? Cass blushed to the roots of her hair and would have fled in shame and despair if he hadn’t been holding onto her with an iron grip.
“I think they liked that, don’t you, darling? Shall we do it again?” He pressed his lips to her hairline.
“I’m going to kill you,” she muttered in perfect seriousness.
He chuckled and guided her into the dining room, where a sumptuous midnight supper had been laid out on long tables. Feeling better than he had in weeks, he kept his arm around her waist and made her sample delicacies from his fingers until she told him, in complete truth, that if he did it again she was going to be sick on his shirtfront. After that he allowed more space between his offerings, though he kept her hand.
How the next hour passed, Cass was never afterward able to recall; it went by in a dark, buzzing fog as her mind locked in morbid anticipation on what would happen later tonight and her body teetered on the brink of exhaustion. She must have spoken, eaten, drunk wine, moved about, but to her it seemed as if she were locked in a small black room with no one and nothing but her own nightmarish thoughts. The worst was that she’d told Riordan, more clearly than words ever could, that she still wanted him. No, no, that wasn’t the worst—the worst was that in a little while she would give herself to him, freely and without coercion, and then her defeat would be total. The thing she had sought to avoid at all costs, becoming his mistress, would be a fait accompli.
When she’d told him once that making love with him would be “wrong,” she hadn’t been being coy. It wasn’t religion and it wasn’t social disapproval and it certainly wasn’t parental guidance that had formed the basis of Cass’s sexual morality. It was her own hard-fought conviction that people who loved each other had the responsibility to postpone their physical union until they’d made vows of commitment to each other in marriage. That conviction hadn’t stopped her from almost giving in to him more than once, before their charade of a marriage, only to have her heart’s desire thwarted by some timely, or untimely, interruption. And therein lay the source of her anguish: Despite her best efforts, the strongest utilization of her will, Philip Riordan could make her do anything he wanted. The soul-shriveling part of it was that she would have to take money from him when this was all over—she’d have no choice, she had to live—and then there would only be one word for what she would have become. Whore.
Or so it seemed to Cass’s fevered reasoning as she went through the motions of social civility with his friends, some of whom had become hers, dancing and laughing and sparring in conversation, while a shrill whirring in her ears increased and a sense of unreality encroached on her perceptions. Her skin began to seem too sensitive to touch; people and objects began to look backlit, unfamiliar. She saw herself as if from some distance away, swirling among a colorful crowd of dancers, endlessly changing partners. And then slowly, so gradually she wasn’t aware of it until it was too late to be frightened, it all began to fade away, until at last there was nothing but a pinprick of light far away and a faint humming sound. And then there was nothing at all.
From across the room Riordan saw his wife falter in the dance, missing an intricate connection with her partner. Frozen motionless, he watched her take a tentative sideways step, one arm outflung, frowning a little, her eyes half-closed. He dropped his punch cup and was halfway to her before he heard it shatter on the floor. He had no sensation of running, only of movement, and no idea he was shouting her name. His only thought was that he must catch her before she fell.
He was too late. Like a heap of bedclothes, she seemed to fold in on herself, her arms and legs boneless. Her head struck the floor last, with a sharp crack.
Kneeling beside her, hands shaking, he straightened her crooked limbs, unaware of the oaths and startled gasps of the crowd gathering around him. He held her neck and explored the back of her head with feather-light fingertips, not daring to breathe. A swelling behind her right ear, but no blood. Gradually he became aware that people were urging him to lift her, offering to help him. He waved away assistance and lifted her himself, feeling a painful catch in his heart at how light she was. A man was telling him to follow. He did, blindly, down a hallway to an office of sorts, with a desk, chairs, a divan. The man said something about “Mrs. Willis’s room” and waved toward the divan. He laid Cass down and croaked out, “Get a doctor!” before crouching beside her.
Her skin was clammy and cold and sheened with perspiration. Her face was absolutely without color. He kept saying her name, holding her hands in a tight clench, trying to warm them. When he realized her breathing was shallow and erratic, he pulled her dress down and lifted her, frantically pulling on the laces of her corset in back. When he laid her back down she took a deep, shuddering breath, her eyelashes fluttering. But she remained unconscious, and after that he could think of nothing to do but hold her.
A doctor came. Helpless, he watched him examine her pupils, her pulse, her heart, the back of her head. Through it all he remained in a cocoon of misery, hearing the reassurances of his friends like the buzzing of insects in another room. He was urged to go into the hall for a few mi
nutes and he went, numbly, half-conscious that the doctor must be examining her in some intimate way he wasn’t allowed to see. When the minutes stretched too long, he went to the door and brought his fist back, but at that moment it opened and the doctor told him to come in.
Cass had her eyes closed, but her color was better; she looked asleep, not unconscious. He bent over her and touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers, then straightened. “How is she? Is she going to be all right?” When the doctor nodded, he closed his eyes and privately uttered his first prayer in many, many years.
The doctor, whose name was Mason, spoke softly; he had to go closer to hear him. “Your wife fainted, Mr. Riordan; I imagine she was unconscious before her head hit the floor. In that, she was very lucky—the skull was not broken, though the brain is concussed. She knows her name, however, and where she lives; none of her limbs is paralyzed.”
“Dear God.” He felt relieved, but chilled to the bone.
“Apart from all that, she doesn’t seem to be in very good health. Has she been ill recently?”
“No.” He was shaking his head positively, then stopped. He went rigid. “Has she?”
“Well, I couldn’t say for sure, but she seems weak, perhaps even undernourished, and definitely below her normal weight. My first thought was that she was pregnant, but I’ve examined her and she is not.”
Riordan leaned all his weight against the door.
“I say, she’s going to be all right, you know,” Dr. Mason assured him, patting his arm in a bracing way. “All she needs is a good rest and plenty of wholesome food. And of course she should be kept quiet for the next several days, no activity or upsets, that sort of thing. I’ll look in on her in the morning.”
“Can she be moved? May I take her home?”
The doctor looked thoughtful. “Ye-es, I should think so, if it’s not far—”
“It’s not.”
“—and proper care is exercised. You want to avoid a lot of jolting, is the thing, which would certainly be painful and perhaps even dangerous. Can you manage that, do you think?”