Chapter 3

Hell on earth. Who was that man, immaculate in fawn trousers and a great-coat, so exquisite it heightened Cass’s awareness of what was beneath it, staring as if she was on offer in a whorehouse window? Sexual confidence sizzled so strongly in every line of his body it seemed to transfer itself to the beautifully tailored, softly colored clothes—ten guineas as she lived and breathed.

A right bad one. Cass you stay well away, her mother’s whisper rang in her ears, although she couldn’t exactly remember the last time she’d seen her.

The fifteen pairs of eyes looking at him were perfectly understandable. Only consider the candlelight gleaming on his unfashionably short sable hair. And those eyes. The cool appraisal, sizzling confidence. What wasn’t understandable, when she certainly wasn’t going to be the sixteenth, was her head swiveling his way as if it didn’t belong to her but to one of them. Why was he looking at her—no, she was not mistaken—as if she were meat and he were something carnivorous? So the intense focus of the regard turned her insides to mush?

She waited for his stare to make its way around the room: over the books, the golden-tooled volumes, the shining silver candelabra, the ancient terrestrial globes, the women. Decorous, far prettier women, far younger than herself. And she thanked God when it did.

Then it swung back.

Stay well away? She’d like to. What was he playing at? Looking at her like this?

“Would you care for something else?” Belle, resplendent in a shimmering, oriental blue gown, her carefully pinned hair adorned with a matching rose, beckoned a liveried footman.

“I’m sorry?” Cass fought the urge to fan herself. What she’d care for right now? What was wrong with her?

“A little lemonade perhaps?”

Lemonade? Cass glanced at the tray of glasses glimmering in front of her face. When brandy straight, stiff was on the go? She wound a gloved hand around the nearest crystal stem. “Thank you. Yes, I’ll have that.”

“But, Cassidy.” Belle laughed uneasily. “Is that wise? Think of the recital …”

“Oh, I am, Belle. Rest assured. Nothing’s closer to my mind. My heart too.”

That flutter in her stomach needed settling. Maybe this wasn’t the right remedy, it was certainly better than nothing. Already her palms were coated in a sticky sweat at the thought of the recital—Belle’s idea, not hers—why add to it by having a manor house garden of butterflies flutter in her stomach?

“Trust me,” she added, raising the glass to her lips. “The recital will go all the better for a little—”

“Oh! Oh, my sacred stars and heavens!”

Cass paused midsentence. Mid-slug too. Had a ghost just materialized on the Turkish rug? The blood rushed from Belle’s face. Cass reached to take her hand, not something she’d normally touch with fire tongs, but there was a first time for everything and the thought that Belle might collapse made her charitable.

“Devorlane!” Belle bounded from the chair. “I can’t believe it! Ten years! Oh my … my … ”

Lord.

Definitely the word Cass’s jaw hung open on.

“My darling … Devorlane!”

Cass snapped her jaw shut and brought her gaze back. So? The long-legged, lean-limbed specimen, with the carnivorous stare and gleaming Hessian boots, was Devorlane. The famed Devorlane Hawley. Soldier. Duke. Satan’s spawn by the looks of him. In fact if looks could kill Belle would be be dead on the rug. Buried too.

“Yes, Belle.”

Or maybe that was just the impression given by the emerald eyes—ten carats if they were a day—sitting like ice-chips beneath long, straight brows? The slight hint of stubble darkening his shockingly sensuous upper lip? Not that she blamed him. Wherever the good fairies had been the day Belle came into the world, it certainly wasn’t around any cradle of hers. Within a five mile radius either.

“Ten years,” he continued. “An eternity to be without certain things. The things one holds dear.”

Pardon her for smothering the yawn and fiddling with her skirt front, but when she’d been without so many things for almost the whole of her life, did this aristocratic specimen of blazing masculinity seriously expect her to pity him? Angling for her attention was more like it.

Well, despite the fact he was so damned handsome, no-one should be allowed to look like that, he wasn’t getting it.

“Don’t you think?” he added.

Thinking wasn’t possible actually given the look he levelled on her. Fortunately the swirling patterns on the ornate rug were very interesting that way.

“Devorlane, how well you look. Why, the way Tilly went on and on and on about your leg wound, I imagined you might even be brought in here on a stretcher, in a wheel—”

“It’s a scratch.”

Despite staring nonchalantly at the rug, she felt his coldly burning stare swing to her. “Compared to other things.”

What was that supposed to mean? That she was to be compared to a scratch? Or that she was a thing? Or … ? The floor pitched in Turkish carpeted waves around her, as she shot to her feet.

“Cassidy! You’re surely not leaving us?”

Was the act on a par with nicking the crown jewels? Something Cass had considered once or twice but never done.

“No … Um … I … ” She grasped her fan tighter, feeling the slats dig through the soft cotton of her glove. There must be some excuse she could think of. “Was just going to check the—the--”

Aspidistra? One stood over by the door.

“Cassidy?” Knowledge? Surprise? Something flickered under his sensuous eyelids. “Cassidy Armstrong?”

Cass’s heart scudded across three beats. Cassidy Armstrong? My lord, what chance presented itself here? Was she seriously going to pass up the chance to learn what she’d come all the way to darkest Berkshire to find? Bolt because she’d never been at a house party as a properly invited guest, instead of one who rifled bureau drawers and forced open chests without thinking, who was always one step away from the noose?

Bolt? Because a man stared at her? A salacious devil who couldn’t keep his eyes to himself? Was she stark, raving mad?

Wasn’t it bad enough she’d just leaped to her feet fearing he knew she was Sapphire? When fear wasn’t in her vocabulary? How the hell would he know her as Sapphire? How would anyone here know her as that? She’d never looked the same way twice. She wouldn’t be Sapphire otherwise.

Well? Was it possible he was actually going to tell her the truth that eluded her? The one she’d held to for twenty-two years? Say, ‘because you’re Cassidy Armstrong, the rightful owner of Barwych?’ She set the empty glass down on a side table—chipped, in need of restoration, but still worth a bob or two.

“How … how do you know my name?”

“I made it my special business to acquire it from Tilly.”

“I see.”

In itself? Enough to turn her insides to queasy froth. What made her think they were about to acquaint themselves with the Turkish rug, however, was the casual manner in which he now also acquired the chair opposite. No bow. No hand kiss. Nothing. Just a complete ignoring of her, so she might as well not be there, as he brushed past.

“Do forgive me, Mrs. Armstrong, at times that scratch is painful.” Leveling his gaze on her, he flicked the creases from the knees of his trousers. Then he stretched his long, lean legs across the rug. All the way across, blocking her exit to the door. “I acquired it in the Portuguese Peninsular. Do you know of such places?”

“The Portuguese Peninsular?” Belle’s mouth dropped open all the way to her chin. “Devorlane … Don’t be ridiculous. Why on earth should Cassidy know of such places? She’s a widow for goodness sake.”

“Really?” The flicker in his dark eyes said there was nothing more ridiculous. “You know I find that simply amazing. Doubly, truly amazing.”

While she hadn’t thought it ridiculous before, she could see now, that standing here like a frump in crow feathers, he did have a point. She’d just been a little too taken up with the way he flicked those trouser creases and stretched his legs to consider that Belle was right to tell him off. The Portuguese Peninsular? Maybe he did mean the place, but it was unlikely.

He knew her all right. And not as Cassidy Armstrong of Barwych, Lord Armstrong’s rightful heir either. So it was vital she cease admiring his trouser creases and find out from where exactly he knew her, so she could decide what the hell to do about it. She cleared her throat, offered her coolest stare.

“Name, chair, scratch. It sounds like you’ve acquired a lot of things, my lord.”

His prickling emerald gaze—seventy five carats if it was a day—swept her face. “Oh. Some things are worthier of the pursuit than others, Mrs. Armstrong.”

Pursuit? If ever there was a word calculated to make her feel like a leashed falcon, and each of her breaths rise so sharply against the bars of her whale-boned corset, as if they would not be satisfied till they snapped it in two, it was …

Some things.

Still she gave what was surely an exquisite shrug. “It’s Lady Armstrong, if you don’t mind.”

“Lady?”

That tendency people told her she had to set her jaw—this wasn’t the place to do it, was it, just because he was obviously the kind of vile big beggar who hadn’t grown out of the habit of tearing the wings off pinned butterflies, learned when he was a little beggar?

Widow wasn’t just a touch of genius. Sapphire was dead and buried, with a nice tombstone in Highgate Cemetery all the Starkadder sisterhood had laid wreaths on. Amber—who Cass was still astonished about, given the amount of times they’d torn each other’s hair out in fights—and Jade had wept buckets into their lacey mittens. Emerald too, while Pearl had bawled her eyes out.

So, however he imagined he knew her, he didn’t. For God’s sake, hadn’t he been years in the army?

No. The most he could have was supposition. Supposition wasn’t fact. And that supposition was something she must quash, or face the ruin of all her plans. Twenty-two years of holding tight to the thought, ten of scheming and squirreling so she could come here and prove who she was, the rightful owner of what she rented. A woman not even the ghost of Sapphire could haunt. And not just that. A woman not even the ghost of Sapphire could hang—what she would face if he had more than supposition. She spread her fan.

“Yes. Lady. Didn’t I just say? Your hearing has been damaged by cannon blasts, perhaps?”

“My hearing is like my eyesight. Perfect, Cassidy.” He lowered his rich voice. “Or maybe I should just call you—”

“I may be mistaken, my lord, but I don’t believe I gave you permission to call me by my first name.”

Call her? She may have spread her fan, she didn’t dare use it. Show she was ruffled? How the blazes could he be so sure, beyond the shadow of a doubt, though? So sure he didn’t even seek to pretend to give her the benefit of that shadow and hide behind the social nicety the fact she was dressed as a grief-stricken, innocent widow merited? She didn’t know him at all.

“Yes, Devorlane.” Belle laughed. “Goodness, but what is wrong with—”

“What’s wrong? What’s wrong is that I come home here, after ten years—”

Ten years? Cass’s flesh prickled.

“I was eighteen at the time. Does that ring any bells with you, Cassidy, because certainly there’s clang—”

“I beg your pardon?” The laugh Cass forced was masterful. It was especially masterful given the way he sprung to his booted feet, rather more hastily and terrifyingly than he’d left them.

The cool way she faced him was masterful too though, especially when he stood so close that the hem of her gown brushed his boots and his scent, iced cool cedar wood, washed into her senses like a fragrant tide. Not for nothing had she spent the greater part of her life facing men though.

It wasn’t just a gang of jewel thieves Starkadder had run. How many times had her self-possessed calm prevented any spill of his other operation into her world, although she hadn’t the least doubt a queue of men existed who wanted to bed Sapphire. Who were prepared to pay dearly for it too, one reason she’d always made herself so very useful. Why not?

Eighteen at the time though? Truly she needed not to set her jaw. She had been looking at this from the wrong end of the telescope. The boy, not the man, was who she needed to search her memory for. And if it was the boy, not the man …? Then ..?

“Oh, don’t you mind him, Belle.” She made herself speak. “Goodness no. Matthew always said a military man with manners was as rare as snow in the fiery caverns of hell—”

Belle’s eyes rounded. “Matthew?”

“Yes.”

“But, Cassidy.”

“What?”

“You told me his name was Elgered. At least when you showed me his miniature the other day at Barwych, you distinctly said—”

Oh Christ, so she had. Cass’s mind spun. It spun so fast, she didn’t know how she was able to stand there with what rocketed through it. God save her, the mistake was bad enough, one she never should have made, it was still not bad enough to condemn her. Not taken alone. Only it wasn’t alone.

Matthew.

A winter evening.

The Wentworth emeralds.

The night … the only night anyone had ever seen her.

Sweet Jesus in heaven above. Her pulse rose like a growing tide. Slight to start with, then reaching such a high pitch, the room, and everything and everyone in it, danced. Then, like that same tide, the sea of dresses and people shrank marooning her, watching from a great height. Then the room dropped away. All of it. Everyone in it too. Except for one person.

Him.

This could not … could not be the only man in the world who could identify her. The man not the boy?

This could not possibly be him?