She drew on her long gloves and smoothed them out until they were no longer even slightly twisted.
The lawyer had thought she had an excellent case. He thought he could get her all that was owed her in a fortnight, though Cassandra would be perfectly happy with a month. She would be able to pay Stephen back and forget that she had ever done anything as sordid as offer herself to him as a mistress.
Though she did not regret the two nights she had spent with him. Or the picnic.
The picnic, she knew, would always be one of her most treasured memories.
He was going to be hard to forget.
But he had restored some of her faith in men. Not all were unreliable and untrustworthy and downright nasty.
She would remember him as her golden angel. She took up her ivory fan and opened it to make sure it was in perfect working condition.
During his outing with Alice this afternoon, Mr. Golding had invited her to join him in Kent for a couple of days at the end of the week to celebrate his father's seventieth birthday with the rest of his family.
It was surely a significant invitation.
Alice had not said yes – or no. She had waited to see if Cassandra could spare her. But she had been almost vibrating with suppressed excitement and anxiety. Ten minutes after Cassandra had arrived home, five after Wesley had left, she had been seated at the escritoire in the sitting room, writing Mr. Golding a letter of acceptance.
She was in her own room upstairs now, trying to decide what clothes she would take with her.
Cassandra slipped her feet into her dancing slippers and went downstairs to wait for Wesley. Her timing was perfect. He rapped on the door as she was descending the stairs, and she was able to wave Mary back to the kitchen and open the door herself.
"Oh, Cassie," he said, looking her over admiringly. "You will cast every other lady into the shade."
"Thank you, sir." She laughed and twirled before him, suddenly lighthearted. "You look very handsome yourself. I am ready to leave. We do not need to keep the carriage waiting."
But he stepped inside anyway and closed the door behind him.
"I am still outraged about your jewels," he said. "A lady ought not to be seen at a ball without any. I have brought you this to wear."
She recognized the slightly scuffed brown leather box as soon as she saw it. One of her favorite activities when she was a girl had been to lift it out of her father's trunk and open it carefully to gaze inside and sometimes to touch the contents with a light fingertip. Once or twice she had even clasped it about her neck and admired herself in a glass, feeling horribly wicked all the time.
She took the box from Wesley's hand and opened it. And there was the silver chain as she remembered it, though it had been polished now to a bright sheen, with the pendant heart made of small diamonds. Their father had given it to their mother as a wedding gift, and it was the one possession of any value that had not been sold during any of the lean times, or even pawned.
It was not an ostentatious piece and was probably not of any great value. Indeed, the diamonds might even be paste for all Cassandra knew.
Perhaps that was why it had never been sold or pawned. But its sentimental value was immense.
Wesley took it out of the box and clasped it about her neck.
"Oh, Wes," she said, fingering it, "how wonderful you are. I will wear it just for tonight. And then you must put it away and keep it for your bride."
"She would not appreciate it," he said. "No one would except us, Cassie.
I would rather you kept it as a sort of gift from me. Though as far as that goes, I daresay it belongs to you as much as it does to me. Devil take it, you are not /weeping/, are you?"
"I think I am," she said, dabbing at her eyes with two fingers and laughing at the same time. And she threw her arms about his neck and hugged him tightly.
He patted her back awkwardly.
"Is your maid /Mary/?" he asked.
"Yes." She stood back from him, still fingering the necklace as she looked down at it. "Why?"
"No reason," he said.
A minute or so later he was handing her into the carriage he had hired for the evening, and they were making their ponderous way through the streets to the Compton-Haig mansion.
How different her arrival was this time. This time she was handed down to the red carpet by a liveried footman and made her way inside the house on her brother's arm. This time she felt free to look around and appreciate the marble hallway and the bright chandelier overhead and the liveried servants and the guests all decked out in their evening finery.
This time a few people caught her eye and nodded to her. One or two even smiled. She could happily ignore those who did neither.
Wesley led her along the receiving line, and this time she could meet the eye of everyone in it because she had been invited and because her name could no longer inspire the shock it had created last week.
And this time, as soon as they had stepped inside the ballroom and she was looking about her, admiring the banks of purple and white flowers and green ferns, Sir Graham and Lady Carling came to speak with her and to be introduced to Wesley, with whom they did not have an acquaintance.
And then Lord and Lady Sheringford came to bid them a good evening, and Mr. Huxtable came to ask Cassandra for the second set. A couple of Wesley's friends came to speak with him, and one of them – a Mr.
Bonnard – reserved a set later in the evening with her.
"Damn me, Wes," he said, lifting a quizzing glass halfway to his eye, his head held firmly in place by the height and stiffness of his starched shirt points, "I did not know Lady Paget was your sister. She certainly got all the looks in the family. There were precious few left for you, were there?"
He and the other friend, whose name Cassandra had already forgotten, brayed with identical merriment at the witty joke.
And then Stephen was there, bowing and smiling and asking, a twinkle in his eyes, if Lady Paget had been kind enough to remember to reserve a set for him.
She fanned her cheeks.
"The first and second sets are spoken for," she said, "and the set after supper."
"I sincerely hope," he said, "none of those dances are the waltz. I shall be severely out of sorts if they are. May I dance the first waltz with you, ma'am, and the supper dance too if they are not one and the same? And one other set if they are?"
He was openly distinguishing her. It was not poor etiquette to dance twice in an evening with the same lady, but it was something everyone present always noticed. It usually meant that the gentleman concerned was seriously courting the lady.
She ought to say yes to only one dance. But his blue eyes were smiling, and the lawyer had said two weeks, even though he had admitted that it might be one month, and after that she would be leaving London forever to find herself a pretty little cottage in an obscure English village, and she would never see him again. Or have to face the /ton/ again.
"Thank you," she said, her hand falling still as she smiled back at him.
And she remembered how, only a week ago, she had stood alone in just such a ballroom as this, looking consideringly at all the gentlemen before picking him out as her prey.
Now there was a little corner of her heart that might always belong to him.
The more fool she.
"Shall we?" Wesley said, and she could see that couples were beginning to gather on the dance floor for the opening set.
The evening was not, after all, to pass without some unpleasantness.
Mr. Huxtable came to claim the second set very early and led Cassandra onto the floor long before most other couples came to join them. It was clear to her that he wished to talk with her – but that he did not want to do so in anyone else's hearing.