Page 40 of From Duke Till Dawn
“Swindlers,” she corrected. “My hope is they’ll give us what we’re after.”
“You won’t have any cachet with them,” he pointed out bluntly. “They won’t talk.”
“You don’t know that,” she returned.
He looked at her acidly. “If you’ve treated half the swindlers in London the way you’ve treated me, they’ll want nothing to do with you.”
“I know.”
Cassandra stared down at her half-eaten breakfast, no longer hungry. What would it be like to have someone, anyone, believe in her? Impossible. There was only one person on her side, the same as it had been her whole life. She once thought she had a champion in Alex, but that had been based on a lie. Now that he knew the truth, he was at best a reluctant guardian. He would give her the protection of his body and his title. But his heart would never be hers.
Chapter 8
The carriage rolled through the city streets, heading—via Cassandra’s directions—to one of London’s less reputable corners. Alex had never been to this dusty, crowded section of the city. It was very clearly not his territory of club, parliament, or ballroom. He grew less certain of himself the deeper they traveled, which was an unusual feeling for him. Yet he made certain he outwardly kept his composure and air of self-assurance, if only for the sake of his admittedly battered pride.
Surely none of his other female acquaintances even knew of the place. Cassandra, however, told his driver precisely where to turn and what landmarks to use. It was obvious she knew this grim area well. It unnerved him to contemplate her at the mercy of London’s most vicious elements. A desire to protect her and shelter her rose up whenever he thought about her vulnerability.
He had to push that desire away, or at least hide from her that he felt any softness toward her. Most likely, she’d take advantage of his compassion, and he couldn’t allow that to happen again.
She gripped the seat cushion tightly with ungloved hands, her knuckles forming white circles. Staring out the window, her face was pale, her lips a tight line.
Cassandra was taking a risk coming here—that much was certain. It had to be a measure of how desperate she was to hazard showing her face in this thieves’ neighborhood. Yet she didn’t turn back. Was it fear of Alex’s threat or her own valor that impelled her forward?
With her attention fixed on the alleys and byways outside the vehicle, he covertly studied her. Blonde and delicate of feature, she was still one of the loveliest people he’d ever seen. His chest squeezed hard whenever he looked at her, filling him with resentment and longing and sadness.
Other than her outward beauty, nothing about her was real. He would be damned if he let her see how much she affected him, even now, knowing who and what she was.
She’d faced the staff of the gaming hell with exceptional bravery, even knowing that they would be out for blood. What kind of courage did it take to live so uncertainly, existing from one swindle to the next?
He reminded himself that she used him, and men like him, to get what she wanted. But at the thought of countless other men smiling at her, pining for her,lovingher, barbed jealousy rose up, choking him.
“What is this Martin Hughes to you?” he asked, breaking the silence. “A lover?”
She stared at him, aghast. “The thought of going to bed with Martin makes my gorge rise.” She pressed a hand to her throat, as if forcing down bile. “He’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a father.” Glancing to one side, as though looking into the past, she murmured, “My real father was thrown into the Marshalsea for debt. It was just him and me after my mother left. I couldn’t have been more than three when she packed and hared off to God knows where.” She said this flatly, accustomed to the betrayal.
Alex’s hands tightened on his walking stick as he absorbed this, appalled that a woman could leave not only her husband, but her child, as well.
He had no memory of his mother tucking him in at night. Nor reading him stories. Those tasks, and countless others relating to Alex and his two younger sisters, had been left to nursemaids. As an adult, he saw his mother only at Christmas, when his sisters and their husbands and children also gathered in Norfolk. The Dowager Duchess offered her papery cheek for kisses and gave out oranges and books on etiquette, observing the antics of her grandchildren with a fond but faintly bemused eye.
She had never been very demonstrative. Yet, at the least, she had been there every day, a stately and beautiful presence at the other end of the dining table. He hadn’t felt loved, but he had felt wanted.
“I was just a tyke,” Cassandra went on, “so I stayed with Da in prison. I kept busy, though. Ran errands, smuggled things in for the prisoners. For pennies. It was enough to keep us in coal and bread. But Da just wasted away. Missing my mother, stuck behind the walls of the Marshalsea. He died there, covered with a thin blanket. The other prisoners cleaned us out while his body cooled.”
Shock and sorrow struck him with equal force. What miserable memories, and how awful that she’d had to endure such suffering.
Yet he wondered... Was she telling the truth? Or were these more of her embellishments? The almost-mechanical way she recited her history—without inflection, without emotion—made him think this was the truth. She had to distance herself from the misery or else let it drag her down to drown.
He made sure to keep his face impassive, almost distant, as he listened to her relate her history. It was either that, or show her how much her past torment affected him.
“I was nine. Didn’t have any living family,” she continued, “so when they tossed me out of the Marshalsea, I had nowhere to go. The streets became my home.”
Rough consonants and vowels altered her voice, so different from the round, soft tones she’d used in Cheltenham. But that had been a disguise. This was truly the first time she spoke to him as herself.
Mistrust hovered like a stinging wasp between them, yet to hear her talk now as Cassandra Blake, the woman from Southwark, was nearly a gift. This was real. This was true. A hot gladness wove through him, treasuring this small prize.
She gazed back at him, but her sight was still far away. “Learned how to pick pockets. What men to stay away from because they wanted to use my body. I slept four to a pile of straw in a Southwark flash house.”
Alex’s nursery had been enormous, with a mother-of-pearl inlaid rosewood cradle and whole armies of toy soldiers. When he’d been naughty, his nursemaid might not have given him a second helping of pudding.
