“In what way?”
“He is not English, is he?”
“No, Greek.” His attention caught by a smoldering log that had fallen half out onto the hearth, the earl went over to the fireplace to nudge it back into place. He remained there, leaning a forearm on the mantel and looking down at the flames. “I encountered him on that ship I told you about, the one with the rascally captain. He was the first mate.”
“And you offered him a position?”
Sheffield smiled oddly as he looked across the room at her. “Nothing so ordinary, I’m afraid. Shortly after we docked in Italy, he saved my life.”
Cassandra stopped playing abruptly. “He—?”
“Yes. I was set upon by thieves, and there were too many for me to handle. If not for Anatole, I would have been knifed in the back and left to bleed to death. It was the first time he saved my life—but not the last.”
Obeying her instincts, Cassandra rose and went to him, halting so that they faced each other. “You must have been very young,” she ventured, remembering that Anatole had been with the earl for a number of years.
“I was twenty-one.” He gave her a twisted smile. “Wild and bitter and bent on getting myself killed because I was convinced life had nothing more to offer me. God knows why Anatole chose to follow me across half the world, but he did. He kept me alive until I’d the sense to look out for myself, and after that he made himself useful—in fact, indispensable.”
Cassandra studied his hard face curiously. “And you returned here—?”
“Four years ago. It took the next two years and more to get this place in some kind of order. The house had been closed up since I left England, and had been allowed to virtually fall into ruins, so I had my work cut out for me.”
Which, she thought, was a fair explanation of why he had vanished so completely from the London social scene; he had been either out of England or else very much occupied here for the past ten years.
“I see,” she said.
“Do you? I have not been what anyone of sense would call a suitable match for a young lady, Cassie.” Matter-of-factly, Sheffield added, “I had succeeded to the title when I was nineteen, and found myself the possessor of a vanished fortune, useless properties, and a name painted black going back five generations. Naturally, it did not take long for me to add to the sins of my ancestors. I left England very much under a cloud and not quick enough to avoid the scandal I’d caused.”
Cassandra had certainly been curious about his background and, in particular, the sin that had earned him the condemnation of society, but in that moment all she wanted to do was to ease the strain in his low voice.
“Stone—I heard all the rumors about you when I first came out.”
He was obviously surprised, and not a little wary. “Good God, are they using the sins I committed more than ten years ago to frighten debutantes?”
She kept her voice solemn. “Oh, yes, and it’s quite effective. They never explain what, exactly, you were guilty of, but then it never seems to be necessary. All those horrified whispers and sad shakes of the head are enough to cause any girl to think twice if she is contemplating some reckless act.” Pondering the matter, she added thoughtfully, “I daresay you have saved any number of parents from the consequences of rash daughters. I shouldn’t doubt it if they were not actually eager to welcome you back to society.”
The earl smiled slightly, but his gaze was very intent on her. “I was not ostracized, you know. I can return if I choose to do so.”
“I know.”
“I suppose I should go back from time to time—if only to prove I lack horns and a tail.”
Cassandra smiled. “Don’t forget the cloven hooves.”
“Has there been no other scandal in England since I sinned?” he demanded a bit ruefully.
“Not really. I believe it was because of the war.”
“The war?”
“Yes. You see, so many of the young men were occupied with the war for so long that they simply had not the time or energy to get much tangled in scrapes and scandals.”
In a grave tone he said, “I begin to see that the sin I was most guilty of was one of bad timing.”
Sin. She wondered if he was fully conscious of his use of the word. “And you could hardly be blamed for that. After all, you were very young.”
“Older than you are now,” he retorted.
Cassandra laughed but said, “In any case, you should probably return to London society at least long enough to show that you have become perfectly respectable.”
“For all you know, that might not be the case at all,” the earl warned her in a voice that was not quite humorous. “They say some things are in the blood, and mine is certainly wicked enough to give any rational young lady pause—even without tales of my dissolute past. Perhaps I am only biding my time for my own amusement.”
“Until?” she said, interested.
“Until I have . . . won your trust. It is the classic method of rakes, you know.”
“Perhaps.” She was smiling.
He looked into her big gray eyes and then shook his head a little in wonder. “You are not the least bit afraid of me, are you, Cassie?”
“Should I be?”
“Virtually alone with me in my house, cut off from the outside, no chaperon—”
“Should I be?” she repeated steadily.
He reached up and touched her face very gently, the very tips of his fingers tracing the delicate arch of her brow, the curve of her cheek, and the clean line of her jaw. “I would not harm you for the world.”
Cassandra wondered if she was breathing, but it did not seem important. She felt feverish, yearning, vulnerable, and yet enthralled. His touch was like something she had felt in a dream, and if it was a dream, she did not want to awaken. She heard her voice and was not surprised that it was husky. “Then I have nothing to fear.”
For a moment it seemed that he leaned toward her, but then his hand fell to his side and he smiled at her, only the intensity of his dark eyes hinting at something not nearly as calm as his voice when he said, “You promised to play for me.”
“So I did.” She turned and went back to the pianoforte, and when she began to play, she was not much surprised to realize that her fingers had selected a love song.
It was like a wonderland. Cassandra stood at the top of the front steps of Sheffield Hall and gazed around in utter delight. Snow had turned the bleak winter landscape into something so beautiful it made the heart ache. The brown grass had vanished beneath a blanket of pristine white, and the bare branches of trees seemed dressed now with their mantle of snow.
Already, the earl’s servant had been at work, for the steps were swept clean of snow, and Cassandra had no fear of her footing as she closed the door behind her and set out. She was warmly dressed—and very glad of it when a sudden gust of wind snatched at her cloak as she was making her way cautiously through the uneven drifts of snow along the carriage drive toward the stables. Though the storm was apparently over, this was still winter and winter’s name might have been caprice; the occasional wind was urgent in its warning that spring was far away.
Cassandra had awakened early and with the most amazing sense of energy. She had had her coffee in bed but had not yet breakfasted; Anatole had reported that the earl had gone down to the stables before his own meal, and she had instantly decided to go in search of him. She needed fresh air and the chance to get a bit of exercise, she told herself—and nearly laughed out loud at the absurdity of this attempt to delude herself.
If Sheffield had vanished into the depths of a dungeon or sallied forth to drive over a cliff, it was more than likely that she would have followed him without hesitation.
She saw her breath mist before her eyes as she did laugh out loud, and shook her head at this odd, bewitched creature she had become. It should have been appalling, she thought, or at the very least shocking, but she could not seem to summon those negative emotions. She was too happy
. She wanted to smile all over, to laugh again and throw a snowball at someone.
Most of all, she wanted to see the earl.
She heard his voice only moments later when she reached the stableyard and followed her ears to find him standing before a row of stables talking to a spare, middle-aged man who was no doubt the head groom or coachman.
“Watch his leg to make sure it doesn’t swell, Flint, but if he’s all right by afternoon, turn him out.”
“Yes, my lord.”
The earl turned then and saw Cassandra approaching, and his smile was instant as he stepped forward to meet her. “Cassie, I would have waited for you if I had known you wished to come down here.”
She was only vaguely aware that the groom had gone away, all her attention focused on Sheffield. He was holding her hand, and she felt a flicker of annoyance that she was wearing gloves. “I had no notion where I would end up,” she confessed. “Is it not beautiful out here? Who has hurt his leg?”
With a chuckle, the earl said, “Yes, it is beautiful—even more so now. And my favorite hack made a spirited attempt to kick down the door of his stable earlier; he dislikes storms and being confined for any length of time, and wants to kick up his heels in his paddock.”
“Impatient as his master, I collect?”
“Now, when have I ever shown you impatience?” he demanded in a voice of mild surprise.
“That first evening,” Cassandra replied promptly. “You looked at me in such a way, and spoke very brusquely.”
“If I was brusque, I beg your pardon.” He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it. “As for how I looked at you, I can only say I was charmed and delighted to find a smoke-eyed beauty quite unexpectedly in my house.”
Cassandra promised herself she was never going to wear gloves again, even if her fingers froze. She drew a breath and said rather uncertainly, “I—I see. Then I suppose I must forgive you.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“You are laughing at me,” she said suspiciously.
He kissed her hand again, and there was a gleam in his dark eyes that was something more than laughter. “Never. Are you warm enough? May I show you my horses before we go back to the house?”
“I am quite warm enough, and I would love to see your horses.” She smiled up at him.
He continued to hold her hand instead of tucking it into his arm, an arrangement Cassandra was delighted by. She did not even feel self-conscious when Sheffield introduced her to his head groom, Flint—but she was rather glad to be told that her coachman had borrowed a hack and ridden out first thing to check the condition of the roads just as he had said he would.
She was glad that John Potter was not confronted by the sight of her and the earl holding hands most improperly—but her coachman’s eagerness to check the roads was an unwelcome reminder of time ticking away. The roads were not passable today, she knew, but what of tomorrow or the next day?
With that in her mind Cassandra’s pleasure in being with the earl during the casual tour of his stables was even more precious to her than it would otherwise have been. She could not seem to get enough of hearing his deep voice or watching the changing expressions of his face (had she once thought it harsh?), and every time he said her name it was as if the sound of it touched something deep inside her.
Still, perhaps nothing irrevocable would have happened if Sheffield’s favorite hack had not betrayed his native impatience by trying to ascertain if Cassandra had a lump of sugar hidden somewhere on her person. The big bay gelding nudged her so hard with his Roman nose that she stumbled back away from the stable door and would have fallen had not the earl caught her.
“Oh! My goodness, you—”
“Clumsy brute! Cassie, love, are you—”
They had spoken in the same moment, and she stared up at him as both their voices broke off. Had he said what she thought he had? He was holding her so close . . . even with his greatcoat and her cloak she could feel the hardness of his body, the warmth of him. Her hands had somehow landed on his chest, gloved fingers spread, touching him. Both his arms were around her, and then only one because he had lifted the other hand to push the hood of her cloak back and touch her face with his fingers the way he had last night in the music room.
“Cassie . . .”
It did not occur to her to push herself away, to make some attempt to stop this. It simply did not occur to her. Instead, she offered her lips in the most natural way imaginable, and when his mouth covered hers, she heard an unfamiliar little purr of pleasure in the back of her throat.
She had been kissed by boys—those eager young swains with whom she had shared country dances before her first Season—but never by a man, and the difference was shocking. His mouth was not awkward or wet and she felt absolutely no desire to burst out in giggles at the absurdity of lips pressed together; his mouth was skilled and sure, hard yet silken, and a shimmering heat ignited inside her at the first touch.
Cassandra thought she was melting. All the strength was flowing out of her legs, and the burning inside her intensified until it was a wild fever consuming her. She should have been shocked when the possessive invasion of his tongue turned the kiss into something more intimate than she had ever imagined was possible, but instead what she felt was pleasure and desire, and a dim wonder that he could make her feel this way. . . .
When Sheffield lifted his head at last, Cassandra opened her eyes dazedly, hardly aware that she had uttered a faint sound of disappointment. His eyes had a heavy, sensual look that made her pounding heart skip a beat, and she wished once again that her gloves were off so that she could touch his hard face.
He drew a slow breath, then said huskily, “I have wanted to do that since you walked toward me dressed in blue silk that first evening, so beautiful I could hardly bear it. Must I beg your pardon?”
She should have said yes, she knew, but propriety was beyond Cassandra. Far beyond her. She shook her head, unable to tear her gaze from him. “No.” It was almost inaudible, and she cleared her throat to try again. “No, of course not.”
His already black eyes seemed to darken even more, deepen somehow, until they were bottomless pools into which she knew she could lose herself. Into which she wanted to throw herself, body and soul. Then he bent his head again and rubbed his lips over hers in a brief, almost rough caress that was even more stirring to her senses than the prolonged kiss had been.
“For that?” he murmured.
Cassandra had the dazed notion that he was teasing her, but she was also aware that he was hardly unaffected; there was a tension in his body she could feel, and there was no disguising the hunger of his taut expression.
Her lips trembling and tingling, she whispered, “I am shameless, I know . . . but please don’t beg my pardon, Stone.”
Her tremulous words and guileless pleasure seemed to affect him most oddly. He moved slightly as if to kiss her again, but then his mouth firmed and he put his hands on her shoulders to ease her back away from him. A muscle flexed in his jaw, and there was a note of disbelief in his voice when he spoke.
“I must be out of my mind.”
She blinked, the fingers clinging to his greatcoat beginning to slacken, but her sharp pang of hurt vanished when he continued grimly.
“A cold, drafty stable through which anyone might pass—and probably has—and I want nothing more than to find a pile of reasonably clean straw and make a bed for the two of us.”
Burning color rose in her cheeks, but Cassandra was not nearly so shocked by his blunt desire as she should have been. Instead, she felt a hollow ache deep in her loins, a wild urge to cast aside every vestige of breeding and every principle of ladylike behavior by pleading with him to make that bed and carry her to it, and that shocked her more than anything.
He laughed, a low, raspy sound. “Have I shocked you?”
She caught her underlip between her teeth and felt the sensual tenderness left by his ardent kisses. “No—yes—I don’t know. I cannot thi
nk.”
His rather fierce expression softened, and his hands lifted to frame her hot face. “My poor darling—so bewildered.” His thumb caught her bottom lip and pressed gently until it was free of her small white teeth, and the pad of his thumb rubbed back and forth slowly. “And so damnably young. I ought to be shot for taking advantage of you this way.”
“Ought you?” She met his eyes steadily despite the virginal blush. “Even if—if it is what I want?”
He did not move for an instant, just looked down at her as if her honest response had stolen his breath or stopped his heart. Then, very slowly, he took his hands off her face, lifted her hood carefully to cover her raven curls, and then took one of her hands and tucked it into his arm. He was frowning slightly as he did all this, but it seemed to her a frown of concentration rather than anger, as if it required all his resolution.
“Come,” he said. “We must return to the house.”
“Must we?” she ventured regretfully.
“Yes,” he said, his voice very rough, “we must. Before I forget you’re a lady.”
Stealing a glance up at his face as they walked, Cassandra wondered for the first time if being a lady might prove a definite stumbling block for a girl who wanted to become a woman.
Chapter Four
It was not to be expected that their earlier relaxed companionship could remain unaffected by what had happened in the stables. Indeed, the awareness between them was so potent that Cassandra discovered only a glance from him had the power to stop her breathing, while his dark eyes instantly lit with the now familiar hot glow of desire when they met hers and his voice changed almost imperceptibly when he spoke to her.
She had the suspicion that the dusting of pink across her cheekbones that was all that remained of her blush in the stables had become a permanent thing; when she retired to her room late that evening, the face in her mirror wore it like a muted banner of sensual awakening. And her eyes seemed different, larger and more brilliant, she thought, gazing at her reflection as Sarah took down her hair and brushed it. Smoke-eyed he had said. A smoke-eyed beauty.