Chasing Cassandra Page 8

  “No, but—” Phoebe broke off with a laugh. “My goodness, do you take everything so literally?”

  “I’m an engineer,” he said defensively, following her out to the guest cottage.

  Chapter 8

  “WHY ARE YOU WALKING like that?” Pandora asked as she and her husband, Gabriel, accompanied Cassandra downstairs to dinner.

  “What way?” Cassandra asked.

  “The way we used to when we were little and had ballerina fights.”

  That drew a grin from Gabriel. “What’s a ballerina fight?”

  “A game to see who can stay on her toes the longest,” Pandora explained, “without sinking back down to her heels or toppling over. Cassandra was always the winner.”

  “I don’t feel like a winner at the moment,” Cassandra said ruefully. She stopped by the side of the hallway, leaned back against the wall, and hiked the front hem of her dress up to the ankles. “I’m walking this way because of my new shoes.”

  Pandora crouched down to investigate, the skirts of her lavender silk evening dress billowing and collapsing like a gigantic petunia.

  The blue satin shoes were narrow, pointed at the toes, and studded with pearls and beads. Unfortunately, no matter how often Cassandra had worn them around the house to break them in, the stiff leather lining wouldn’t soften.

  “Oh, how pretty,” Pandora exclaimed.

  “Yes, aren’t they?” Cassandra said with a little bounce of excitement, followed by a wince of discomfort. The night hadn’t even begun, and blisters had already started on her toes and the backs of her heels.

  “The heels are so tall,” Pandora observed, her forehead crinkling.

  “Louis Quinze style,” Cassandra told her. “We ordered them from Paris, so I have to wear them.”

  “Even if they’re uncomfortable?” Gabriel asked, reaching down to help Pandora to her feet.

  “These shoes are too expensive to be uncomfortable,” Cassandra said glumly. “Besides … the dressmaker said tall heels would make me appear more slender.”

  “Why are you still worrying about that?” Pandora demanded.

  “Because all my dresses are too tight, and it would take a great deal of time and money to have everything altered.” She heaved a sigh. “Also … I’ve overheard the way men gossip at dances or parties. They point out all a girl’s physical flaws and debate whether she’s too tall or short, or if her complexion is smooth enough, or whether her bosom is adequate.”

  Pandora scowled. “Why don’t they have to be perfect?”

  “Because they’re men.”

  Pandora looked disgusted. “That’s the London Season for you: Casting girls before swine.” Turning to her husband, she asked, “Do men really talk about women that way?”

  “Men, no,” Gabriel said. “Arsewits, yes.”

  THREE HOURS LATER, Cassandra limped into the quiet, empty conservatory. Soft ripples of light reflected from the indoor stream and jostled against shadows cast by ferns and palm fronds. It looked like the room of some underwater palace.

  Painfully she made her way to the steps of a small stone bridge and sat in a billow of blue silk organza skirts. Tiny crystal beads had been scattered among the multiple layers of delicate fabric, casting glints across the floor. She sat with a groan of relief and reached down to work a shoe off her throbbing left foot.

  Dinner had been lovely, actually, the atmosphere infused with wit and good cheer. Everyone had been genuinely happy for West and Phoebe, who had both seemed to be in a daze of bliss. The food itself had been spectacular, starting with rich circlets of foie gras laid out on slabs of ice arranged down the center of the mile-long table. An endless procession of courses had struck perfect chords of salt, butter, smokiness, and richness.

  But all through the extravagant meal, Cassandra had been increasingly miserable as the chisellike edges of her shoes had cut into the backs of her heels and shredded her stockings. She’d finally resorted to slipping the shoes off beneath the table, and letting the air circulate over her pulsing, burning feet.

  Thankfully she had been seated next to Lord Foxhall, whose engaging company had helped to take her mind off the discomfort. He was remarkably suitable and eligible, and so very nice … but he didn’t stir her interest any more than she stirred his.

  Whereas Tom Severin and all his complexities seemed to have caught and stuck, burrlike, to her awareness. He’d been seated near the other end of the table, beside Lady Grace, one of Lord and Lady Westcliff’s dashingly pretty daughters. She had glossy black hair and a wide smile with very white teeth. She had seemed rather taken with Severin, laughing frequently, taking obvious interest in their conversation.

  Severin had looked superb in formal evening attire. A man like a blade … sleek and hard, his gaze sharp with intelligence. Even in a room full of accomplished and powerful men, he stood out. He hadn’t once glanced in Cassandra’s direction, but she’d had the feeling he was aware of her and was deliberately ignoring her.

  Every time Cassandra had glanced at the pair, the food in her mouth had turned bitter, and she’d had difficulty swallowing. Her mood, not especially elevated to begin with, had deflated like a cooling soufflé.

  The crowning indignity had occurred when dinner had finally, finally ended and Cassandra had tried to slip her feet back into the detested shoes. One of them was missing. She had slid an inch or two down in her chair and hunted for the shoe as inconspicuously as possible, but the blasted thing had disappeared.

  Briefly she’d considered asking Lord Foxhall to help. But he probably wouldn’t have been able to resist the temptation of telling someone about it later—who could blame him?—and she couldn’t bear the thought of being laughed at.

  As she’d considered her dilemma, however, she’d realized it was unavoidable; she would be laughed at. If she left the dining hall without the shoe, a servant would find it and tell the other servants, who would tell their masters and mistresses, and then everyone would know.

  Her toes had searched the floor frantically.

  “Lady Cassandra,” Lord Foxhall had asked quietly, “is something troubling you?”

  She’d looked into his friendly dark eyes and forced her lips into the shape of a smile. “I’m afraid I’m not one for these long dinners with no opportunity to move about.” Which hadn’t been true, of course, but she could hardly tell him the problem.

  “Neither am I,” Foxhall had said promptly. “Shall we go for a stroll to stretch our legs?”

  Cassandra had maintained her smile, her brain sorting through various responses. “How kind of you to ask—but the ladies will be gathering for tea, and I wouldn’t want my absence to cause comment.”

  “Of course.” Foxhall had gallantly accepted her excuse and stood to help her from her chair.

  With one shoe on and the other missing, Cassandra’s only recourse had been to proceed on her toes, ballerinalike, hoping her voluminous skirts would conceal that she was missing a shoe. Gliding toward the doorway, she’d tried to look composed while breaking out in a sweat of anxiety.

  As she’d winced and cringed amid the chattering crowd of guests all making their way from the room, she’d felt a subtle touch on her bare elbow. Turning, she found herself looking up into Tom Severin’s face.

  “What is it?” he’d asked in a low undertone. Ice-cool and steady, a man who could fix things.

  Feeling hot and foolish and off balance, she’d whispered, “I lost one of my shoes under the table.”

  Severin had registered that without even blinking. “I’ll meet you in the winter garden.”

  And now she sat here, waiting.

  Gingerly she pulled at the silk stocking where it stuck to the back of her heel. It smarted and stung, and came away with a little spot of blood. Grimacing, she rummaged beneath her skirts, unfastened her garters, and removed the ruined stockings. She compressed them into a wad and tucked them in a concealed pocket of her gown.

  With a sigh, she picked up the discarded s
hoe and scowled at it. The pearls and intricate beading glittered in a slant of moonlight. So beautiful, and yet so incompetent at being a shoe. “I had such high hopes for you,” she said dourly, and threw it, not with any real force, but with enough strength to hit a potted palm and send beads scattering.

  Tom Severin’s dry voice cut through the silence. “People in glass houses really shouldn’t throw shoes.”

  Chapter 9

  CASSANDRA GLANCED UP WITH chagrin as Tom Severin entered the conservatory. “How did you know something was wrong?” she asked. “Was I that obvious?”

  Mr. Severin came to a stop a few feet away from her. “No, you hid it well. But you winced as you stood from your chair, and you walked more slowly than usual.”

  Some part of her brain registered surprise that he’d noticed such details, but she was too preoccupied to follow the thought. “Did you find my missing shoe?” she asked apprehensively.

  For answer, he reached to an inside pocket of his coat and pulled out the shoe.

  Relief radiated through her. “Oh, thank you. How did you manage to retrieve it?”

  “I told one of the footmen I wanted a look underneath the table, as one of the leaves wasn’t quite level.”

  Her brows lifted. “You lied for my sake?”

  “No, I noticed at dinner that the liquids in the wine and water glasses were slightly tilted. The leaf wasn’t set in properly, so I adjusted it while I was down there.”

  Cassandra smiled and extended her hand for the shoe. “You’ve done two good deeds, then.”

  But Mr. Severin paused before giving it to her. “Are you going to throw this one as well?”

  “I might,” she said.

  “I think I’d better keep it until I’m sure you can be trusted with it.”

  Cassandra drew her hand back slowly, staring into his glinting eyes. As she and Mr. Severin stood there with moonlight and shadows playing around them, it seemed as if they’d stepped out of time. As if they were the only two people in the world, free to do or say whatever they pleased.

  “Will you sit beside me?” she dared to ask.

  Mr. Severin hesitated for an unaccountably long moment, glancing at their surroundings as if he’d found himself in the middle of a minefield. He gave a single nod and moved toward her.

  She gathered in her skirts to make room on the step, but some of the glittering blue silk spilled over his thigh as he sat. The scent of him was fresh with soap and starch, and a wonderful hint of dry resinous sweetness.

  “How are your feet?” he asked.

  “Sore,” Cassandra replied with a grimace.

  Mr. Severin examined the shoe critically, turning it this way and that. “Not surprising. This design is an engineering debacle. The heel is tall enough to displace your center of gravity.”

  “My what?”

  “Furthermore,” he continued, “no human foot is shaped like this. Why is it pointed where the toes should go?”

  “Because it’s stylish.”

  Mr. Severin looked sincerely perplexed. “Shouldn’t the shoe be made for the foot, and not the foot for the shoe?”

  “I suppose it should, but one must be fashionable. Especially now that the Season has started.”

  “This early?”

  “Not officially,” Cassandra admitted, “but Parliament is in session again, so there’ll be private balls and entertainments, and I can’t afford to miss any of them.”

  Mr. Severin set down the shoe with undue care and turned to face her more fully. “Why can’t you afford to miss any?”

  “It’s my second Season. I have to find a husband this year. If I go for a third Season, people will think there’s something wrong with me.”

  His expression turned inscrutable. “Marry Lord Foxhall, then. You won’t find a better prospect, this year or any other.”

  Even though he was right, the suggestion nettled her. She felt as if she’d just been rejected and dismissed. “He and I don’t suit,” Cassandra said shortly.

  “The two of you chatted all through dinner—you seemed to get on well enough.”

  “So did you and Lady Grace.”

  He considered that. “She’s an amusing dinner companion.”

  Inwardly rankled, Cassandra said, “Perhaps you should court her.”

  “And have Lord Westcliff as a father-in-law?” he asked sardonically. “I wouldn’t enjoy living under his thumb.”

  Now feeling restless and glum, Cassandra heard the lush music of a chamber orchestra as it filtered through a wire mesh window screen. “Bother,” she muttered. “I wish I could go back to dance.”

  “Change into another pair of shoes,” he suggested.

  “Not with these blisters. I’ll have to bandage my feet and go to bed.” She frowned down at her bare toes peeking from beneath the hems of her skirts. “You should find Lady Grace and ask her for a waltz.”

  She heard his smothered laugh. “Are you jealous?”

  “How silly,” she said stiffly, drawing her feet back. “No, not at all; I have no claim on your attention. In fact, I’m glad you’ve become friends with her.”

  “You are?”

  She forced herself to reply honestly. “Well, not especially glad, but I don’t mind if you like her. It’s only …”

  Severin gave her a questioning glance.

  “Why won’t you be friends with me?” To Cassandra’s chagrin, the question came out plaintive, almost childish. She looked down and rearranged the folds of her skirts, fidgeting with the crystal beads.

  “My lady,” he murmured, but she refused to look at him. One of his hands came to the side of her face to angle it upward.

  It was the first time he’d ever touched her.

  His fingers were strong but gentle, slightly cool against her hot cheek, and it felt so amazingly good that she trembled. She couldn’t move or speak, only stared up into his lean, slightly wolfish face. A trick of moonlight had turned his blue-green eyes iridescent.

  “That you’d even ask …” His thumb brushed over her skin in a slow stroke, and her breath stopped and started too fast, sounding like a tiny hiccup. There was no mistaking the experience in his touch, sending pleasure-chills down the back of her neck and all along her spine. “Do you really want to be friends?” His voice had softened into dark velvet.

  “Yes,” she managed to say.

  “No, you don’t.” In the electric silence, he drew closer, his face right over hers, and her heart thundered as she felt the warm waft of his breath against her chin. His other hand came to the back of her neck in a light clasp. He was going to kiss her, she thought, her stomach tightening with excitement, her hands fluttering between their bodies like panicked moths.

  Cassandra had been kissed before, during stolen moments at dances or soirées. Surreptitious and hasty kisses, each lasting no longer than a heartbeat. But no erstwhile suitor had ever touched her like this, his fingertips gently exploring the curve of her cheek and jaw. She began to feel unsteady, unfamiliar sensations coursing through her bloodstream, and she welcomed the support of his arm sliding around her. His lips looked firm and smooth as they hovered close to hers.

  To her dismay, however, the expected kiss didn’t happen.

  “Cassandra,” he murmured, “in the past I’ve made more than a few women unhappy. Never intentionally. But for some reason I’m not eager to dwell on, I don’t want to do that to you.”

  “One kiss wouldn’t change anything,” she protested, and flushed as she realized how brazen that sounded.

  Mr. Severin drew back enough to look down at her, his fingertips toying with the fine wisps of hair at the nape of her neck. A shiver chased through her at the delicate caress.

  “If you drift off course by only one navigational degree,” he said, “then by the time you’ve gone a hundred yards, you’d be off by about five feet. In a mile, you’d have strayed approximately ninety-two feet away from your original trajectory. If you’d set out from London to Aberdeen, you’d probably
find yourself in the middle of the North Sea.” Seeing her frown of incomprehension, he explained, “According to basic geometry, one kiss could change your life.”

  Twisting away from him, Cassandra said irritably, “You may not know this, but talking about mathematics eliminates any possibility of being kissed in the first place.”

  Mr. Severin grinned. “Yes, I know.” Rising to his feet, he extended a hand down to her. “Would you settle for a dance?” His tone was calm and friendly, conveying how unaffected he was by moonlight and romantic moments and impulsive young women.

  Cassandra was sorely tempted to refuse him, to demonstrate how little she cared about anything he might offer. But a Strauss waltz was playing in the background, the melody buoyant and yearning, and it so perfectly echoed her own emotions that she felt it down to the marrow of her bones. Oh, how she wanted to dance with him. Even if she were willing to sacrifice her pride, though, there was still the matter of her ruinous shoes. She couldn’t put them on again.

  “I can’t,” she said. “I’m barefoot.”

  “Why should that stop you?” A deliberate pause. “Ahh. I see. All those rules you like to follow—you’d be breaking too many of them at once. Alone with a man, no chaperone, no shoes—”

  “It’s not that I like to follow the rules, but I have no choice. Besides, the temporary enjoyment wouldn’t be worth the risk.”

  “How do you know, when you’ve never danced with me?”

  An agitated laugh broke from her. “No one’s that good a dancer.”

  He stared at her, his hand still extended. “Try me.”

  The laughter dissolved in her throat.

  Her insides were in a tumult, like birds darting and crisscrossing in flight. She reached out with a tremor in her fingers, and he pulled her up firmly. He caught her in a waltz hold, his right hand pressed to the center of her back. Automatically her left hand settled on his shoulder, her arm resting gently along his. He held her more closely than she was accustomed, their hips slightly offset, so his first forward step would slide precisely between her feet.