I am your paid servant. I am /not/ and never will be your slave. You will ask me /no more/ personal questions. You will intrude no further into my life. If you cannot accept this – that we are man and mistress – then I will give back the ridiculously large sum of money you sent me this morning and show you the door."
She listened to herself, appalled. What was she /saying/? She did not have all his money left to give back. And she knew as surely as she was lying here in his arms that she would never find the courage to do this all over again with another man. If he took her at her word, she was destitute – and so were Mary and Belinda and Alice. And Roger.
He withdrew his arm from beneath her head and his body from against hers so that suddenly she found herself lying flat on her back. He swung his legs over the far side of the bed, got to his feet, and walked around to her side. He stooped and picked up his clothes, tossed them over the foot of the bed, and proceeded to get dressed.
Even in the darkness she knew he was angry.
She ought to say something before it was too late. But it was already too late. He was going to go away and never come back. She had lost him merely because he was glad she did not really think herself better off without her dead children.
She would not say anything. She /could/ not. She was all done with seducing him, with playing the siren. It had been a desperate idea from the start. A foolish idea.
Except that there had seemed – there /still/ seemed – to be no alternative.
She waited in silence for him to leave. After she had heard the front door shut behind him, she would put her nightgown and robe back on and go down to lock and bolt the door. And that would be the end of that.
She would make herself a cup of tea in the kitchen and dream up another plan. There had to be /something/. Perhaps Lady Carling would be willing to give her a letter of recommendation. Perhaps she could find an employer who had never heard of her.
He had finished dressing, except to pick up his cloak and hat from the chair just inside the door as he left. But instead of moving toward them, he was bending over the dressing table, and suddenly the room was lit up with a flare of light from the tinder box and he set the flame to the candle.
Cassandra blinked in the sudden light and wished she had pulled up the bedcovers while there was still darkness. She disdained to do it now.
She gazed at him with all the scorn and hostility she could muster as he drew out the chair from the dressing table, turned it slightly, and sat down on it.
He had reversed the situation from earlier this morning, she realized – or yesterday morning, rather. He was seated on the chair, looking at her on the bed.
Well, let him look his fill. It was all that was left to him.
"Get dressed, Cassandra," he said. "Not in those things on the floor.
Real clothes. Put them on. We are going to talk."
Just as she had said yesterday.
There was no discernible anger in either his face or his voice, only a certain intensity in his eyes.
But it did not occur to her to defy or disobey him.
He had all the gentle power of angels, she realized as she crossed the room, naked, to her dressing room and began pulling on the clothes she had been wearing during the evening. It instilled fear. Not fear of bodily harm, but of…
She still did not know the answer. For some things there were no words.
But she /was/ afraid of him. He was somehow in her life, where she did not want him or anyone else to be. Not even Alice.
He was there. … /you, who are in some sort of relationship with me/…
/11/
HE ought simply to leave as soon as he was dressed, Stephen thought.
But he did not do so. He could not.
He knew nothing about the normal sort of relationship men enjoyed with their mistresses. But then, he could not think of her as his mistress despite that damnable exchange of money that her circumstances had made necessary. … /when we are together in this room and this bed, we are employer and mistress… man and woman. We are not persons to each other. We are bodies. You may use my body as you will… but all the money in the world will not buy you me/.
He did not /want/ to buy her. He wanted to… /know/ the woman into whose bed he was buying his way. Was there something so wrong about that?
She did not want to be known. /I am off limits to you. I belong to myself. I am your paid servant. I am not and never will be your slave. You will ask me no more personal questions. You will intrude no further into my life/.
Of course, she knew no more than he about the normal relationship between a man and his mistress. He doubted she had slept with any other man except her husband until last night. Despite the siren's act, which she tried so persistently to play, she was not a courtesan.
She was merely a desperate woman trying to make a living for herself and a few hangers-on. Though that was probably an unkind description of the people who lived with her. The former governess who had been walking in the park with her two days ago was probably past the age when she might find further employment with any ease. The maid was an unmarried mother and would be virtually unemployable as long as she chose to keep the child with her.
Stephen got to his feet and went to stand at the window while he waited for Cassandra to finish dressing. He opened the curtains and gazed out at the empty street. It was probably not a good idea to stand thus in the window, though, a candle burning behind him. The neighbors across the street might know that only women lived here.
He pulled the curtains across the window again and turned to lean back against the windowsill, his arms crossed over his chest.
Cassandra came out of the dressing room at the same moment. She looked at him and then took the chair. She arranged the skirts of her pale blue dress unhurriedly about her. A faint, mocking smile lifted the corners of her lips. She had tied back her hair again but not put it up.
Finally, when he said nothing, she looked up at him and raised her eyebrows.
"I beg your pardon," he said, "for prying into your life and causing you pain."
Her eyebrows stayed arched upward.
"You did not cause me pain, Lord Merton," she said. "As I remember it, you caused me a great deal of pleasure. I hope I caused you at least an equal amount."
"Where do your servants sleep?" he asked her. "And the child."
"On the floor above this," she said. "You need not fear that our pantings and moanings have been penetrating walls and keeping anyone from sleep. And they are not my servants. They are my friends."
She was not a likable woman when her mask was in place, as it so often was. The very best thing in the world for him would be to leave. The money he had sent her yesterday morning would keep her and the others for a short while. After that… Well, she was not his responsibility.
But the trouble was that the woman who wore the mask did not exist, and he did not /know/ the woman behind it. He did not know if he would like her or not.
She did not want to be known.
She had killed her husband.
Good God, what was he /doing/ here?
But she had brought with her to London an aging governess, a waif of a maid who had lost her job, the maid's very young child, and the damaged dog. She had determinedly sought him out as a protector so that they would not all starve – them, as well as herself.
"This is their home," he said. "I sully it when I come here to exercise my rights as your employer. I impinge upon the innocence of that child."
That fact had bothered him since he saw her yesterday afternoon, rosy-cheeked and tousle-haired and wide-eyed. One of life's precious innocents. He had even thought at the time that perhaps she was Cassandra's. It made no real difference that she was not. This whole situation was… distasteful.