Page 28 of The Damsel
Cassandra’s expression shifted as she stared at him, as if wrestling with annoyance and sympathy. Finally, she heaved a sigh and motioned for him to follow her.
“I cannot very well send you back to Briarwell in such a condition. The least I can do is allow you a place to warm up and dry off. Come along.”
Without waiting to see if he would follow, she turned and began trudging up the sloping path through the trees and toward the dower house. For a moment he contemplated refusing, turning back the way he’d come and returning home, the cold and his wet clothes be damned. She hadn’t seemed happy to see him, which only made the fact that he’d been thinking of her for the past four months all the more embarrassing. Besides, it was clear she was doing this because she didn’t want to be responsible for the consequences of sending him out into the night in such a condition.
But then, that nagging curiosity about her reared its ugly head, prompting him to follow wherever she might lead. There was also the prospect of a warm fire and dry clothing, so the choice seemed clear enough.
He rushed to follow her, unsteady on shaking legs and numb feet. He blew warm air into his cupped hands to keep them thawed and followed her through the trees and toward the cottage.
Even in the dark, he could see that the abandoned property had been prepared for its new occupant, the overgrown yard and garden tamed into some semblance of order, the roof repaired, and the door freshly painted. The manor itself, several acres deeper onto Easton Park lands, would need a bit more attention before the Duke of Penrose could visit or invite guests. After Bertram’s indiscretions had bankrupted the family, his father had attempted selling off all his unentailed property, including Easton Park. But, the destroyed reputations of the Fairchilds had kept any potential buyers away. So, the family had been forced to abandon the property, and here it had sat, crumbling and falling deeper into ruin while its tenants found new homes and the servants sought employment.
“Will your uncle take up residence in the manor soon?” he asked, the silence putting him on edge.
She glanced at him from the corner of her eye as they passed a small garden enclosed by a stone wall with wrought iron adornments along its top.
“Not anytime soon … at least, not until after the end of the coming Season. Penrose is partial to London and so are the rest of my family. I wanted out of the city, so he offered the dower house.”
They neared the back of the cottage, where a pair of doors hung open to a terrace.
“Have you found Suffolk to be preferable?”
“It is quiet and isolated without being too far from Town … which is all I required. I suppose the manners of some of our neighbors leaves much to be desired, but I expected nothing less.”
He scowled to know she might have been treated poorly, but was hardly surprised. His own mother had spoken of Cassandra as if she had the plague.
Holding a finger over her lips, she led him into a darkened drawing room. On the table near the door sat a taper in a brass holder. She gestured for him to close the doors behind them and took up her candle.
The place remained silent and still as they moved through a narrow corridor toward the front of the house. Then, he followed her up a steep staircase to the second floor, careful to keep his footsteps as light as possible.
Cassandra's taper cast their shadows against the wall, oblong shapes stark and exaggerated in the circle of yellow light. Opening the second door on the right, she ducked into a bedchamber. Robert followed, sighing with relief as the heat of a crackling fire began warming his face. He still shivered a bit, but no longer felt as if he’d been stabbed in the heart with an icicle.
“Take off your clothes.”
The command came so suddenly, her voice shattering the silence of the room, that for a moment Robert could only stare at her. He flushed, her words calling all sorts of erotic memories to mind. He thought of taking off his own clothes, then hers, then laying her before the fire and …
“So that I can lay them near the hearth to dry,” she added, raising an imperious eyebrow at him.
Where before he’d been freezing cold, he was now burning up with embarrassment. He felt like an utter dolt for his wandering thoughts. Of course she only wanted to make sure his clothes were dry.
“Here. Wrap this around yourself once you’ve disrobed.”
She offered him the counterpane from her bed, then began undressing herself. Robert laid the blanket over the back of a nearby armchair and began peeling off his clothes. While he let each garment fall into a pile on the floor, he could not help but stare at Cassandra, who neglected the privacy screen on the other side of the chamber as she let her dressing gown slip down her body. He paused, his fingers trembling at the buttons on his trousers as he watched her work the fastenings down the front of her nightgown.
The rapidly opening gap of the garment displayed the swells of her breasts, the wet fabric clinging here and there, leaving little to the imagination. Biting his lip, he lowered his gaze when she glanced up to catch him staring. Stilling his numb, shaking fingers, he began working his own buttons again.
“You can turn your back if it offends your sense of modesty to look,” she said. “But … well, you’ve seen all of me, haven’t you?” God, had he ever.
“Right, of course,” he replied, daring another glance at her.
She had moved to the fireplace and stood there in the buff, brushing her wet hair with smooth, rhythmic strokes.
His next words fell out before he could think better of them. “Not that I’d look away because I … I mean, I like looking … you …”
No woman had ever robbed him of words. Even with Daphne he’d always had the perfect, honeyed words on the tip of his tongue.
Cassandra turned him into a bumbling idiot, and he wasn’t certain he liked the feeling.
“I think you’re beautiful,” he finally managed.
