Cassin returned to Surrey from London with a two-part plan: marry Lady Wilhelmina Hunnicut promptly, and keep away from her indefinitely. Or at the very least until they’d pulled the anchor of Stoker’s brig and sailed safely away from her.
Cassin’s sojourn to London proved nothing if not that the longer he remained in the same country, the more he would be tempted to seek her out—and not just to take her to bed, which he urgently wanted to do. He found himself wanting to learn if his proposition for unattached sex had turned her irrevocably against him. To compare her notion of the future to his and weigh the possibility of some compromise. To discover how willing she might be to eventually leave London for Yorkshire.
It was a conversation he hoped, eventually, to have (her body he also hoped eventually to have), but considering the threat of his uncle and the as-yet-unmined guano, his future was too uncertain to make any promise. There was no tangible future he could conjure for them at this point, and to discuss the unknown seemed disingenuous and unfair.
And so he had stayed away, counting the days until the wedding. When the day finally arrived, he steeled himself to be remote, detached, and businesslike to the bride.
But good Lord, what a bride.
She’d worn a deep-purple gown, almost black, and just a hint of plum. The dark silk was scattered here and there with tiny, wine-colored embellishment. Silk rosebuds? Embroidered berries? He tried and failed not to stare, his eyes drawn again and again to the little details clustered just above the swell of her breasts, at her delicate wrists, along the small, tight seam that circled her body just above her waist.
Her hair had been piled high in a profusion of elaborate braids and trimmed with wine-colored ribbon. The effect accentuated the bright, clear beauty of her face and the elegant curve or her neck. Even the perfection of her small ear, dabbled with freckles, bobbed with a pearl, was enhanced somehow by the drama of her hair. Still, Cassin passed the ceremony glowering at the high sculptural mass of it, making a study of exactly how he might dismantle the braids and ribbons if he were allowed to touch it.
Cassin’s vague plan for detachment had been to allow himself to stare at her—for this he could not help—but to avoid engaging in real conversation with her. It was the verbal sparring that pushed him over the edge, after all; the debates and teasing and her dazzling cleverness.
Despite the distance of fifty miles, his time in London had only compounded his preoccupation with her, and he’d lain awake at night, burning to return to her. Now that he was near her, seeing her as his bride, working together to perpetrate this . . . whatever it was . . . this mutually beneficial collaboration, his desire raged nearly beyond his control.
In the end, it wasn’t the wedding day as much as after the wedding, the hours between when he married her and when he could steal himself away again. Brevity, remoteness, and formality had been his very loose plan. And for a time, it worked, as long as they were surrounded by clergymen and Lytton relations and, inexplicably, her mother’s show ponies. But eventually, inevitably, bride and groom were forced to face each other with fewer and fewer interruptions. And then were entirely alone.
“And so we’ve done it,” Cassin said lightly after the final guest had gone.
Willow answered with a small smile. “So we have.”
It was only one o’clock in the afternoon. Her mother had excused herself to look in on a foaling mare. The relations who planned to remain overnight had retired to their rooms to rest. The servants descended on the strewn dining room like ants, clearing the table settings, flowers, and food with swift efficiency. At Caldera, his family tended to lounge around the drawing room after a party, enjoying the last of the wine and gossiping about the guests, but not at Leland Park. Instead, bride and groom stood in the deserted entryway, watching through the door as the last carriage rolled away.
The impulse to reach for her was so great that Cassin heard himself speak instead. “Lady Wilhelmina—” he began formally, feeling like an idiot. He’d referred to her simply as “Willow” since he’d agreed to marry her.
She laughed at him, a reaction he deserved, and softly shut the door. “You may address me as ‘Countess,’ ” she said.
While he gaped at her, dazzled by her laugh, she turned and began to make her way down the corridor. Her mother’s scrum of small dogs scuttled from surrounding rooms to follow at her feet.
For a long moment, he watched her. From the very first, watching her had been one of his favorite occupations. She was always engaged, mindful of even the smallest details of her surroundings; now she picked at the festive garland strung on the banister, touched the base of each ivory bust in a succession of candlelit nooks. A servant with a heaping tray dropped a linen napkin, and she stooped to collect it. His hand itched to reach out for her, to steady her by the waist, to linger there and lean in close enough to smell the warm cinnamon scent of her.
Cassin began to trail behind her, admiring her as she admired the beauty of her home.
Brevity, remoteness, and formality, he reminded himself. It was unfair to encourage an intimacy that he could not reciprocate—possibly for years.
She glanced over her shoulder. “It was nice of Tessa and Joseph to attend the wedding. It shouldn’t matter, not really, but I missed my friend Sabine.”
“Yes,” Cassin agreed, cautiously following. “Besides your servants and your mother, Tessa and Joseph were the only guests with whom I was acquainted.”
While he was in London, Cassin’s partners, Joseph and Stoker, had both agreed to marry Willow’s two friends. The combined income from the girls’ three dowries was more than £100,000. This meant the partners had the money they required for the guano expedition and he could now comfortably provide for Caldera through winter.
“It’s sweet, really, how well Joseph and Tessa get on,” Willow was saying. “But I’m not surprised. She has always been acutely attuned to falling in love. A love match was at the forefront of her mind, even when I was writing the advertisement.”
“Well, I was shocked. Joseph enjoys a pretty girl as much as the next man, and there have been many girls in his life, but he’s had a very rigid stance on marriage. It was a goal, but a very distant one. Now he claims three weeks was all it took to fall madly in love.”
Willow had wandered down the great hall to a sweeping stairwell that rose in a gentle curve to the next floor. Cassin followed five steps behind.
“They were inseparable at the wedding, weren’t they?” Willow said. She reached the stairs and began to climb, whispering to the dogs. “Beaming. Mostly at each other.”
“Yes, I saw that,” he said. He paused at the bottom step and watched her. He called, “Joseph had been the most anxious to reach Barbadoes, and now he’ll be the last to leave England.”
“The wedding Tessa’s parents are planning cannot be rushed. They’ve invited all of Surrey and half of London.”
“Meanwhile, Stoker and your friend Sabine were married alone before a vicar. After just two days.”
“Also not a surprise,” said Willow. She paused at the top of the stairwell and looked at him. Slowly, warily, against his better judgment, he began to climb. Brevity, remoteness, and formality.
“I believe there was some real urgency there,” he said, “considering the abuse of the uncle.”
“Yes, and thank God,” said Willow. “We knew Sir Dryden was hateful, but Sabine had concealed how violent her uncle had become.”
“Apparently the man had her locked in a cupboard on the day Stoker called to meet her,” said Cassin. “Well, we needn’t worry; this will not happen again. Stoker rarely makes a fuss. When he is motivated to assert his displeasure, it is typically not with words. And it is not soon forgotten.”
“I know Sabine was grateful, even if she asked to be taken to my aunt in London and left alone. There again, I am not surprised. She has been so cautious and solitary since her father died. Despite Mr. Stoker’s assistance, she is distrustful of strangers.”
“Hmmm,” said Cassin. “Stoker himself is solitary soul. He is naturally suspicious of everyone, especially women. I would have been glad to see him at the wedding, but he detests social gatherings, and he would have been a foreboding presence, alarming old women and frightening children.”
Cassin stopped climbing two steps from the top. He looked up to her. “Where are you going?”
She gestured down the corridor. “Perry has fallen behind on packing. I’ve no choice but to lend a hand. I am anxious to get underway as soon as possible.”
Cassin looked down the corridor. He’d already followed her too deep into the house. Now he was upstairs, facing a corridor lined with what could only be family bedrooms.
Packing, he thought. Packing had the ring of monotony and labor. This was . . . endurable. And he’d learned quickly that any scenario including her maid, Perry, was as devoid of sexual tension as Christmas morning.
Willow and the dogs began down the corridor, and he took a deep breath and followed, passing a series of closed doors. Brevity, remoteness, and formality, he chanted again in his head, but the words had lost their meaning. He could think of little more than the nearness of her.
“Willow?” he called suddenly. His voice was too loud. He cleared his throat. “I plan to return to London tonight.”
She froze, mid-step. Her shoulders tensed.
“You’ve said that your move to London was well in hand,” he said. “That Mr. Fisk would drive the wagon with your trunks, and you would travel in the carriage your mother has given you. I took you at your word and planned to ride ahead tonight.”
She did not respond.
“Will your mother find it odd that I don’t stay the night?” he asked the back of her head.
Finally, she turned, searching his face, her wide blue-green eyes looking for something, perhaps, that she hadn’t heard him say.
“My mother will be in the stable all night with the mare,” she said, and then she turned away. There was a closed door behind her, and she pushed it open. Dogs filed into the room at her feet.
Cassin squinted into the brightness of the room beyond. It was airy and light, pale walls bathed in midday sun. White, so white.
“Congratulations, my lady,” sang a cheerful voice from the floor. Perry knelt over a trunk. “Oh, and your hair . . . it still looks so beautiful.”
“Go to the kitchen and have a piece of cake, Perry,” Willow said quietly. “The footmen will devour it, and there will be nothing left for you.”
The maid’s head popped up at this suggestion, and she scrambled to her feet. She bobbed a curtsy to Cassin as she darted out the door. Five dogs followed in her wake.
Cassin stared back at the room. A bedchamber. His wife’s bedchamber.
His knees locked.
I should run, he thought.
I should follow the maid and leave for London now, just as I’ve said. She will be angry and disappointed but not heartbroken.
Instead, he took a step inside. And then another, and another, and another, until he was in the bright, white room, which was dominated by a bright, white bed.
He looked around as if in a daze. Every non-wooden surface was of the purist white or softest ivory. The bed—tall, wide, almost square, he’d never seen a bed like it—was a profusion of gauzy lace, fluttery canopy, and folds and flounces of heavily draped material. Cushions and coverlets abounded, white on ivory on white, velvet on linen on cotton. It was a like a soft platform designed for no other purpose than—
He swallowed hard and looked away. Fluffy white carpets stretched across the floor. Low-slung eruptions of fluff, barely distinguishable as chairs, reclined before the fire.
Taken together, it was an oasis of cool, beckoning, bedlike surfaces. A pasha’s tent, bleached to colorless layers of softness. The image of Willow’s bright auburn hair flashed in his brain, splayed out against all of that soft whiteness.
He ran a hand through his hair, continuing to walk inside, step after thoughtless step. He was hit by the distinctly cinnamon scent of her. His mouth began to water; he heard his heartbeat drum in his ears.
Willow, meanwhile, ignored him. She paced the floor in an energetic line, biting her fingertips to loosen her gloves. She yanked them off and tossed them on the back of a chair. She strode to a bureau and yanked the doors open wide. The shelves were bare except for a stack of folded yellow fabric, and she snatched it up, crossed to the open trunk, and deposited it carelessly inside. Each movement was quick and jerky. She did not look at him.
“You’re cross,” he said, but he thought, Thank God. If she gave me even the slightest invitation . . .
She returned to the bureau and yanked open a drawer. It was filled with what appeared to be silk stockings. She scooped up an armful and returned to the trunk.
“Cross?” she asked slowly, affecting an expression of exaggerated confusion. She went back to the bureau for another armful of silk. “Would I describe what I’m feeling as cross? No, I don’t believe I would. What I am feeling is . . . weary. So incredibly weary.” She was back at the bureau, yanking open another drawer.
“Because of the wedding?” he guessed.
“No. Not because of the wedding. I’m cross as you put it, because I am always the last to know,” she said loudly, scooping up a limp tangle of something silky and pink and striding to the trunk.
“The last to know?” he repeated.
He was trying to follow the conversation—honestly, he was—but he was transfixed by the strident, energetic, almost incandescent vitality of her. Her cheeks were pink; her bosom rose and fell. Her sculptured coiffure was beginning to erode under the agitated jerking and stooping and flinging. First one auburn tendril, and then another. Burgundy ribbon slipped loose and slid to the floor. A lock of hair fell across her cheek, and she blew it away. Cassin licked his lips.
“Yes, the last to know,” she said, gathering up another armful from a drawer. “I am the last to learn of what . . . what . . . thing will happen to me next. Even now—especially now. After I’ve taken such great pains to make my own way. Meanwhile, you and every other man I know may do as he pleases.”
She fished an empty velvet bag from the tangle of silk in the trunk and hauled it to the mirrored vanity. Pulling open the drawer, she began to drop brushes, hairpins, combs, and loose ribbon into the bag.
“If you wish to go to London tonight,” she said, “you shall do it. When you wished to go to London after the proposal, you went.”
The vanity drawers were full, and she removed every article without discrimination, tossing them all into the bag. When she leaned to dig deeper in the drawer, he was treated to a generous view of her straining neckline.
“I sent you a note,” he managed to say.
“Oh yes,” she said, “the thoughtful and informative one-line note. Thank you so much.” She dragged the velvet bag, now full, to the trunk and dropped it in. She marched to a small writing desk near the window and flung open the drawer.
“If you wish to call upon my aunt,” she went on, “and interrogate her without my knowledge, you may.”
“I could not leave the country without knowing you would be settled in suitable accommodation, Willow. Safe and provisioned for with the comforts to which you are accustomed here at Leland Park, and that is no small thing.”
She pulled page after page of parchment from the desk drawer, scanned it, and then stacked it into one of two piles. “If you wish to sail Barbadoes and muck around in the bird droppings,” she went on, “you may do that. My brother has the same freedom. He’s gone to India, and we may not see him again for years. Sir Dryden may beat my friend Sabine until her eyes are black if he wishes.”
“Careful, Willow, I’ll not be put in the same lot as Sir Dryden.”
She continued as if she hadn’t heard. “Even Mr. Fisk comes and goes as he pleases. My late father, may God rest him, still lends his reputation and name to my mother. She relies on these to conduct the business of the stables, and he is dead.”
She tossed the last of the parchment into the first stack and looked at him. “Meanwhile, I must ply, and wheedle, and wait and wait and wait, and pay you £60,000, and promise to take no lovers—ah, but wait! God only knows if you and I will ever be lovers. It’s out of the realm of possibility to apply some supposition to this.”
One of the ribbons in her hair flipped across her nose. She made a shrill noise of frustration and took it by the end and yanked. This set off an avalanche within her coiffure, capsizing the highest braids. Long, roped plaits tumbled down her back, molting pins as they fell. She squeezed her eyes and pulled the ribbon again, harder this time, letting out an angered cry.
“Willow, wait,” he said, and he crossed to her. “Stop. Allow me.”
He was beside her in three strides, gently tugging the ribbon from her frustrated grip, running his fingers along the silk until he’d located the last tenacious pin. Working swiftly, gently, he removed every other offending pin, massaging as he went. Braids were loosened and released. Heavy, creased locks of hair dropped down to her shoulders. Gently, he scratched her scalp.
Willow let out a soft, breathless sigh. Molten desire, which had hovered oppressively just outside Cassin’s consciousness, hit him with throat-closing force. He was swimming in the scent of her, the heat of her, the closeness of her lips, just a breath away.
“I’m sorry, Willow,” he rasped, his best answer under the circumstances. His brain function was growing dimmer and dimmer. And then, “Turn around.”
By some miracle, she complied. He reached for the braids and pins in the back of her head.
“Yes, you are sorry,” she said softly. “And I am sorry. And we’re all so very sorry. And you are leaving Leland Park tonight—alone.”
“I am trying to give you what you want,” he said. He could barely hear his voice over the rush of blood in his ears. With hands that shook, he sifted through her hair for more pins. “I am trying to get you to London.”
“Yes, I suppose you are, and I should not be selfish. If I wait long enough and accept whatever last thing anyone deigns to tell me, then I shall eventually get some part of what I want. Lucky me. I should not be bothered that you get what you want, always, in every instance, on your terms, and in your own time.”
He heard himself laugh—a coarse, bitter sound. “Is that what you think?” he growled, leaning down to whisper the words into her ear. “That I have everything that I want?”
She sucked in a breath. The room was bright, and he could see the jumping pulse point in her pale, slender neck. It took every scrap of his weakening self-control not to drop a kiss on the spot, to feel the skin throb beneath his lips.
“If that’s what you believe,” he went on, his voice a rasp, “then you are not paying attention. Or are more innocent than I thought.”
She listed a little, swaying toward him, and let out a little sound of desperation or surrender.
Cassin snapped. In one swift movement, he dropped his hands to her waist and spun her around to face him.
“Because what I want,” he said, “what I really, desperately want has nothing to do with going to London or Barbadoes or the far side of the moon, and everything to do with picking you up, tossing you on that bed, and making you my wife in earnest.”