Devil's Embrace (40 page)

As Edward set her back down upon her feet, the feel of his mouth against hers was still vivid in her mind, and her color was high. She tried to relieve her embarrassment and her uncertainty with inconsequential chatter. Edward smiled down at her, his once painful memories of her rapid-fire way of asking questions, of saying whatever popped
into her mind, becoming again, quite naturally, amused tolerance.

He answered her questions in a normal tone of voice, as if they had never been apart. “They are Scots, to the man, of the 42nd Highlanders. They are known as the Black Watch and mightily feared by the rebels.”

Cassie stared at their checkered bonnets and their bare, knobby knees. “This is very exciting, Edward. I have never before actually seen their battle dress.”

“That group to the right are Hessian grenadiers. You can always recognize them by their blue coats and the high brass-fronted caps. It is said that their mustaches are as black as they are because they use the same colored wax paste as on their boots. Like the 42nd Highlanders, they are effective, disciplined fighters, but they are barbarians.”

“Barbarians, Edward?”

“Yes. The stories of their atrocities, recent in fact, from New Jersey, make my blood curdle. Unfortunately, even here in New York, they are many times like unleashed dogs. One of the bastards even tried to force himself on Jen—” He immediately broke off, cursing himself for his loose tongue.

Cassie quirked an eyebrow at him. “Jen, Edward? Who is she?”

He shrugged. “Jennifer Lacy. She and her father are loyalists and friends of mine.”

“You must tell me about her sometime,” Cassie said.

Edward gazed down at Cassie’s proud, classical profile. He could not converse with her even about the most mundane, trivial matters as if nothing had ever occurred. Important things, painful things, kept cropping up, willy nilly. Dear God, he thought, I don’t even know what happened to her.

It was as if Cassie had become as uncomfortable as he. “There is much to tell you, Edward.”

“Yes, I know.” He drew in his breath and kept walking.

But she did not intend to tell him that this vast, uncivilized land made her feel she had been transported to the very ends of the earth. She glanced up at him and smiled. She had known Edward all her life, trusted him implicitly
and loved him. Yet she felt afraid and terribly uncertain, at a moment when her happiness should have been complete. It would have been complete, she told herself angrily, if it had not been for
him.

“We will soon be at my lodgings.”

She marveled at his dispassionate tone, as if she were a soldier in his command about to provide him with a report. Yet she knew that it was just his way. She had expected him to try to protect her from his own sense of shock and confusion.

She felt nervous, and said aloud her first inconsequential thought. “Everything looks so new, so unfinished.”

“Yes. Shortly after we took New York from the rebels and their General Washington, there was a huge fire. It is likely that the rebels started it. Unfortunately, the rabble had stolen all the church bells so there was no way to raise the alarm. The fire began in a sailors’ brothel, down near the Battery, at Whitehall Slip. It spread rapidly, for there was little water and practically no equipment to fight it with.”

“You were here in the fire?”

“I was, but there was little to be done. A good third of the city burned. Even the beautiful Trinity Church was gutted.” He paused a moment and waved his hand. “This is a fortunate section of New York. All is finally rebuilt here, thank God. The New Yorkers are sturdy folk, and the rebuilding continues. I fancy that the Great Fire of London in the last century was no more devastating than was this one.”

“I did not worry much for your safety, Edward. And yet you were here, during the fire and during all the fighting.”

To her surprise, Edward laughed grimly. “That I was. It has been a winning display of military strategy on both sides. Had General Howe but given the order during the battle for New York, we could have cut the main body of General Washington’s army to shreds. But he did not act. He is always one to ponder, to mull over every alternative, pertinent or not, to stroke his fat chin and do nothing. This
rebellion
is being conducted by amateurs, Cass, but I begin to believe there are a greater number of fools in the
English command than in the American ranks.” Edward drew to a stop, thankful that he could at last stop blabbering at her.

“This is where I live, Cassie. Not Delford Manor or Hemphill Hall, I’m afraid, but still sufficiently comfortable.”

The King George Inn on William Street had no graceful elm trees to gentle its gaunt lines. Like many of the buildings they had passed, the King George was spanking new, yet it looked as raw and as unfinished as the bare ground on which it stood. Winter had prevented even the grass from growing back. There was no foliage to soften its stark façade, no flowers.
Flowers. For God’s sake, Cassie, that is another world, only a bad memory. I never wanted it, never wanted him.

“Are you all right, Cass?”

Cassie raised dazed eyes to his face. “Yes, Edward, quite all right. I am tired, that is all.”
I must forget him, else I’ll never know peace.
But she knew, had known for some time, that she would never be able to push him from her thoughts.

Cassie gingerly picked up the skirts of her muslin gown and walked up the unpainted steps of the inn. Edward gave over Delila’s reins to the stableboy and joined her, bearing her portmanteau.

“Ah, Captain Lord Delford. I had not expected you until this evening.”

Cassie attended to a short, monstrously fat man with a face like a full moon and small eyes of sparkling light brown. He wore a huge white apron around his considerable waist, an apron that looked well used. His strange, twangy accent brought a smile to her lips. Did all the colonials talk like this?

“I would like you to meet my wife, Mr. Beatty. She arrived just this morning to join me.”

The light brown eyes narrowed upon her face for a moment. A dimpled smile appeared.

Mr. Beatty had not known the captain to have a wife, but then again, he thought it just like a very proper English gentleman to speak little of his personal life.

“I regret, sir, that I have no other accommodations to offer you and your lady wife.”

“I know there is not an inch of extra space in the city, Mr. Beatty. Please bring her ladyship’s portmanteau upstairs. And tea, Mr. Beatty.”

I do not like tea. Why does Edward not remember?

“Yes, sir. Right away.”

Cassie had been in an inn but once or twice in her life. She climbed the solid oak staircase, uncarpeted and unadorned. The odor of raw wood, ale, and sweat reached her nose. Like New York itself, it was both intriguing and discomfiting.
Everything seems so unfinished, even the people.

“I have a small sitting room and bedroom. It is a corner room with a pleasant view of the river.”

“Your valet? Grumman?”

“Batman,” Edward corrected her absently. My God, he thought, as he opened the door, I am taking her to my room as my wife. He felt his loins tighten and drew back at the intense shock of desire he felt.

“Yes, your batman.”

“Grumman occupies a small room on the third floor. Do you wish a maid, Cassie?”

Cassie remembered the two and some odd months she had spent aboard
The York,
fending for herself, and smiled. “No, it is not necessary. If there is someone to care for my gowns, ’twill be sufficient.”

She stepped into the sitting room and smiled again. No, it was not like Delford Manor or Hemphill Hall—or like the Villa Parese. Clean dimity curtains covered the windows, and several small rugs were scattered about on the wooden floor. The furniture, what there was of it, was plain to the point of starkness, constructed, she thought, with utility in mind. Still, it was a bright, well kept, airy room, fitting for a soldier. After so many days cooped up on
The York,
she was pleased with its spaciousness.

“It is quite satisfactory, Edward.”

A young boy, hardly older than fourteen, appeared in the open doorway, Cassie’s portmanteau tucked under his arm.

“The lady’s luggage, sir.”

Edward seemed oblivious of the fact that the boy’s wide brown eyes, of the same shade as Mr. Beatty’s, were looking at him with open worship.

“Thank you, Will. You may put it in my—the bedroom.”

“My Ma’s bringing your tea, sir, and on her best silver.”

Mrs. Beatty turned out to be as reed thin as her husband was rotund. She stared with unabashed curiosity at Cassie, and, at the natural patrician nod she received from the young lady, she quickly set the silver tray upon the small circular oak table and dropped into a low, quite awkward curtsy. That Cassie appeared to pay no particular attention to her served only to make her seem all the more the great lady.

When they were finally alone, Edward unbuckled his saber and laid it upon the table beside the tea tray.

For the first time, Cassie noticed his slightly limping gait and remembered General Howe’s mention of a saber thrust. “Is your leg badly injured, Edward?”

She seated herself in a none too comfortable chair, sipping the despised tea.

“No. My men and I were on Staten Island—it’s off the southern tip of Manhattan Island—and came across a pack of rebels. One of them managed to strike me in the thigh. It’s nearly healed now.”

“You must be more careful, Edward.”

Cassie received a wry smile. “I am a soldier, Cass.”

He stood over her for some minutes, seemingly searching for something to say.

“Eliott and I searched for you for over a week.”

He told me that you would.
“Thank you, Edward.”

He began to pace up and down in front of her.

“Tell me now, for God’s sake, what happened to you?”

Cassie set her tea cup next to Edward’s saber and clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “I am sorry that I had to pose as your wife, but I did not believe that Captain Crowley would take me aboard otherwise.”

“It matters not.”

His voice was impatient, and she looked away from him. Of course it did not matter what she said, for as a gentleman, honor would dictate his actions, and she did not doubt
that she would quite soon become his wife, at his insistence. Unless—

“I am no longer a virgin, Edward.”

She saw his lips tighten, but he quickly recovered. “It has been a long time, Cassie. That you are alive is all that is important.” But his hands remained clenched at his sides. She closed her eyes briefly, knowing that he would never tell her how important her baldly delivered fact was to him. His honor would forbid it, and his regard for her feelings.

“Please sit down,” she said finally. “The story is a long one.”

He obliged her.

“The afternoon before our wedding, I went out fishing, with Becky’s approval and encouragement.”

“What the devil does Becky Petersham have to say to anything?”

“You will know, shortly. Do you recall the beautiful yacht you and I saw from the promontory the day before?” He nodded. “It appeared again. It drew quite close, and I saw it was named
The Cassandra.
In short, Edward, the sailors threw ropes about the mast of my sailboat. The owner and captain of
The Cassandra
was the Earl of Clare. He abducted me.”

“Anthony Welles?” Edward pictured the earl, a virile and dashing nobleman, and felt a wrenching tightness in his belly. “But why?”

“He told me he intended to make me his wife. He had planned on my spending a season in London and was going to court me there. Your return to England ruined his plans. Rather than let us marry, he abducted me and crashed my sailboat into the rocks, knowing that everyone would believe me drowned.”

For a long moment, Edward was too stunned to speak. “I don’t understand, Cass. Anthony Welles has known you since you were a child. I am not aware that you ever offered him any encouragement.”

“No, of course I did not. He loved my mother, Edward, before I was born. Perhaps he is still drawn to her, through me.” Even as she spoke the words, she did not believe them.

“That filthy bastard.” Edward smote his thigh with his fisted hand and winced. “He—he forced you?”

“Yes. I told him that he was insane and that I would never wed him. But he would not listen.” She saw the pulse in Edward’s temple pounding furiously. “I am sorry, Edward, to distress you, but you must know the truth.”

“Of course I must, Cass. He took you to Genoa?”

“I tried to escape him once, near Gibraltar, but I could not.” There was no point in telling him of the pirate, Khar El-Din, and her shooting of the earl. “As you know, Lord Welles’s mother was Italian. He took me to his villa, just west of Genoa. That is where I have been until two months ago.” Nor would she ever tell him of her miscarriage. What a miserably brief tale it was, like a person stripped down to a skeleton.

“How did you escape him?”

I escaped him because he did not believe that I wanted to.
“He left the city and I was able to slip away. If
The York
and Captain Crowley had not been in the harbor, it is likely I would have been caught.”

Edward was suddenly struck by a coincidence. “You speak Italian, Cass.”

“Aye, Edward. And that is due, as you know, to Becky Petersham. I had always wondered at her disapproval of you. She is related to him, Edward. In her eyes, I was intended for the earl and none other.”

Edward’s thoughts returned to that afternoon on the beach two days before they were to be married. Cassie would have given her virginity to him then, had it not been for Becky Petersham’s interference. “She appeared distraught at your supposed death. It was a sham, all a sham.”

“She corresponded with the earl. Quite by chance I found her letters. That is how I knew where you were.”

“Eliott still believes you dead?”

“Yes. I have written to him, but the letter will not arrive in England for two months.”

“Did you tell him what had happened to you?”

Cassie thought of the phrases she had penned to her brother, reassuring phrases that expressed little of her
feelings, of her uncertainty with herself. She had written less to him than she had told Edward. “A little. I told him I was coming here, to you, and that I was well. I did not mention Becky’s part in all of it. That must wait until I return.”