averted gaze.
“So you’ve heard then.”
“I do not care,” she said. Without looking at him, she reached for the clasp of her cloak at her throat. “Do you hear me, Mr. DeWitt? I do not care. Not a whit. Not a jot. Not one iota.”
Her usually competent fingers were fumbling with the clasp. The cloak slipped back off her shoulders, revealing her smooth upper arms, the swell of her breasts.
“Let me do that,” he said.
She flipped up both palms toward him, as if to ward off evil. He stayed away. She peeled off her gloves, gathered them in one hand. Perhaps she meant to slap him across the face with them. One did that in matters of honor. She would call him out. They would meet the next morning at dawn, walk their twenty paces, and she would shoot him.
Except, of course, that she did not care.
She slapped the gloves onto the table and attacked the clasp again viciously, with the fingers that had caressed his hand the night before.
“I care about my sisters and my mother. My friends, my house, my pigs, my roses, my cat.” The clasp gave way. The cloak slipped from her shoulders and he reached for it, but she whirled it away from him, into the hands of the footman, who grabbed it and ran. “I do not care about you, or your activities.”
“If I might explain.”
She was already gliding toward the stairs and away from him. Her evening gown swirled around her legs, the legs he had never seen and never would. Her hair was in some complicated arrangement and tendrils escaped down the back of her neck. He would never see that hair loose; he had not realized until now how much he wanted to.
With one foot on the bottom step, she paused and looked back at him. The candle on the wall picked up the fire in her hair, at odds with her icy demeanor.
“I do not care if you bed every woman in England, France, and China.”
“Cassandra, I swear I never—”
“Good night, Mr. DeWitt. Mr. Das.”
She swept up the stairs and out of sight.
“You hear that, Das?” Joshua stared at the empty stairs, wondering that they weren’t covered in frost. “She does not care. Not a whit, or a jot, or one iota.”
“Ah…I’m going home now,” Das said.
Joshua was still staring at the stairs and hardly heard him leave.
Alone in her bedchamber, Cassandra turned and turned on the rug, her nightcap a twisted, rumpled mess in her hands. She had prepared for bed and sent away her maid, because she hadn’t known what else to do. But it was too early to sleep, and her hands shook too much to sew, and her brain was too addled to read.
If only she were at Sunne Park now. In these hours after dinner, they’d all be in the drawing room. She and Lucy and Emily might act out one of Emily’s plays, perhaps the one where Romeo and Ophelia eloped to the Forest of Arden. Or they would play games, like Musical Magic or Ribbons, and Lucy would insist upon the most dreadful forfeits. Or perhaps they would sing, try out the harmonies on a new song, and Mama would join in, and Mr. Twit would leap onto the pianoforte and stomp on the keys until he got a cuddle.
She didn’t care. She did not care.
The bed loomed in the corner of her eye. Joshua had lain there, and talked about his childhood. He’d laughed at her sleepwear and teased her mercilessly and cradled her face, and the whole time, he’d known that—
The fiend!
Cassandra flung aside the nightcap. She tore out of her room and down the stairs, and burst into his study.
The fiend sat by the fire, unusually still, so she made sure to slam the door. And what did he do but turn his head, raise his brows insolently, and lounge back in his chair.
A gentleman does not stay seated when a lady is standing, she could tell him, but why bother? A gentleman did not leave his coat and cravat lying around on the furniture. A gentleman did not curse in front of ladies. A gentleman did not bed the woman who had eloped with his wife’s former betrothed.
The rising of her blood threatened to unlock her tongue. No: She was not one for dramatics or theatrics, tantrums or tirades. Her sisters were the lively, passionate ones. Cassandra was calm, sensible, practical.
She would be calm and sensible tonight.
“You will explain,” she