"Lady Paget," he asked her, "do /you/ like /me/?"

Everyone else did. He was, she suspected, society's darling. And it was not just his extraordinarily handsome, angelic looks. It was also his charm, his ease of manner, his sunny demeanor, his… Oh, that extra something that no words could adequately describe. Charisma? Vitality?

Kindness? Genuineness? His beauty and popularity did not appear to have made him conceited.

He had taken his beauty and used it to make people his friends, to make them smile and feel good about themselves. She had taken her beauty and snared for herself first a husband and now a lover. He was a giver and she was a taker. /Was/ he?

Was /she/?

"I do not even know you," she said, "except in the biblical sense. How can I know if I like you or not?"

He turned his head to gaze very directly into her face – and she realized how very close they were, crammed together on the seat of his sporting curricle. She could smell his cologne.

"Exactly," he said. "I have no idea either if I will like you or not, Cassandra. But it seems strange to me that last evening you set out deliberately to seduce me while today you seem intent upon getting rid of me. Is that what you want?"

She wished his eyes were not so blue or his gaze so intense. There was no escaping blue eyes. Blue eyes made her uncomfortable. They drew her in deep and in so doing stripped her of everything she most wanted to keep in place – /not/ her clothes, but… Well, they were fanciful thoughts, and she had never had them before. She had never noticed before now that she disliked blue eyes. Probably she did not. It was just /his/ blue eyes.

He had called her Cassandra.

"What I want," she said, smiling at him and lowering her voice, "is /you/, Stephen. In my house, in my bedchamber, in my bed. All this is quite unnecessary."

She swept her arm about to indicate the park and the afternoon crush of carriages and horses and pedestrians they were fast approaching.

"I have always thought," he said, "that a relationship between a man and a woman – even that between a man and his lover – ought to be about more than just what happens between them in bed. Otherwise it is not a relationship at all."

She laughed at him, and something tugged at her heart and was instantly quelled.

"If you believe sex is not enough," she said, "then you have not yet spent enough time in /my/ bed, Stephen. You will learn to change your thinking. Will you come tonight?"

She was not sure she had ever said the word /sex/ aloud before now. It was extraordinarily difficult to say.

"Do you wish me to come?" he asked her.

"But of course," she said. "How else am I to earn my living?"

He turned his head to look at her again and she read in his eyes not the desire of a man who looked forward to bedding his mistress again tonight but something that looked almost like pain. Or perhaps it was merely reproach.

He did not truly believe, surely, that they could ever be /lovers/. He could not be /that/ naive or unrealistic.

It was too late for further private conversation. It was partly a relief – she was wishing more than ever that she had chosen another man last evening, someone less innocent, less /decent/, someone more earthy, someone who would accept the connection between them simply for what it was – sex for money, regular sex for a regular salary. Someone who had not accused her of wearing a mask.

Even /thinking/ the word /sex/ was difficult.

Partly it was no relief at all to be among the crowd, to be on display as she had been last evening but even more so if that were possible. She was perched on a seat above most of the crowd. It was virtually impossible for anyone /not/ to see her.

She wondered if it was deliberate on Lord Merton's part, and guessed that it was. He surely had other carriages that he might have used. And yet he had not brought her to flaunt before his male acquaintances. He had been angry when she had suggested it.

He smiled cheerfully at everyone, touching his hat to the ladies, calling greetings, stopping to exchange a few words whenever someone showed a willingness to talk to /him/. Cassandra guessed it was far fewer people than usual. But whenever someone did stop him, he introduced her, and she inclined her head and sometimes spoke.

As with most of the guests in Lady Carling's drawing room, some people were willing to speak with her, Cassandra found, even if only to ask her how she did. But of course, she had had Lady Carling to sponsor her there, and she had the Earl of Merton here. There had been the Earl and Countess of Sheringford last evening.

Perhaps there were always a few kind people. Perhaps her cynicism had become too extreme. Perhaps she need not be the total outcast she had expected to be. Or perhaps now she was a curiosity to whom some people could not resist drawing close. Once the novelty had worn off, so would her welcome.

It was hard /not/ to be cynical.

It did not matter. In many ways she had always been an outcast.

Predictably, it was mostly gentlemen who stopped to speak with Lord Merton and therefore to be introduced to her. And Cassandra looked at them all and wondered if she might have chosen more wisely last evening.

But how could one choose wisely when one knew absolutely nothing about the man concerned except perhaps his name and the fact that he was probably wealthy? Though how could one know even that when so many gentlemen lived beyond their means and were up to their eyebrows and beyond with debt?

She had thought she had chosen a husband wisely. She had been eighteen then. She was twenty-eight now. Perhaps the only wisdom she had gained in the intervening years was to know that when one chose a man to give security and stability to one's life, one ought to choose a protector rather than a husband.

Freedom was worth more than anything else of value life had to offer.

Yet for a woman it was so very elusive.

Baron Montford came to exchange pleasantries with Cassandra and to chat with his brother-in-law for a few minutes. He had three other gentlemen with him, including Mr. Huxtable, who still looked somewhat satanic to Cassandra. He looked very directly at her with his dark eyes while the other gentlemen talked and laughed. At some time in his life his nose had been broken and not set quite straight, she could see. She was very glad she had not chosen /him/ last night. She had the feeling that his eyes could see through her skull to the hair at the back of her head.

And then, just as those gentlemen were moving on in the opposite direction from the one the curricle was taking and Cassandra looked around again, she saw a familiar face – that of an auburn-haired, good-looking young man, who was sitting in an open barouche beside a pretty young lady in pink. He was smiling at something she was saying to a couple of scarlet-clad officers on horseback.

The Earl of Merton's curricle was almost upon them. The officers rode on, the young lady smiled at the smiling young man, and they both turned their heads to look about at the crowd.

Their eyes alit upon Cassandra at almost the same moment. The two carriages were almost abreast of each other. Without thought Cassandra smiled warmly and half leaned forward.

"/Wesley/!" she cried.

The young lady put both hands up to her mouth and turned her head sharply away – as several others had done to a lesser degree during the past fifteen minutes or so. The young man's smile faded, and his eyes regarded Cassandra with dismay, wavered, and then looked away from her.

"Move on," he said with some impatience to the coachman, who really had nowhere to go until all the carriages in front of him moved on too.

The Earl of Merton had a little more space in front of his curricle.

Even so, it seemed to take an excruciatingly long time for the two vehicles to have completely passed each other.

"Someone you know?" Lord Merton asked quietly.

"Take me home," she said. "Please. I have had enough."

It took him a little while to draw free of the crowd, but at last they were moving at a faster pace along a path that was blessedly free of much other traffic.

"Young, was it not?" he said. "Sir Wesley Young? I have only a slight acquaintance with him."

"I would not know," she said foolishly, spreading her hands in her lap.

"I have never seen him before."

"He just /looked/ like a Wesley, then, did he?" He glanced across at her, smiling. "Don't let him worry you. Giving the cut direct is something some members of the /ton/ delight in doing. Many others have /not/ given it. I believe you will find more and more people accepting you and treating you with open good manners as the days go on."

"Yes," she said. And she watched her hands begin to tremble and then shake. She curled one into a hard fist and gripped the handrail beside her with the other. She clamped her teeth hard together so that they would not chatter.

"Ah," he said as they approached the park entrance at Marble Arch, and for a moment his gloved hand covered hers on her lap, "you really /do/ know him, then."

"My brother," she said, and clamped her teeth together again.

He had come to visit her a few times during her marriage. He had come to the funeral last year. And he had hugged her tightly afterward and assured her that he did not for a moment believe that she had had anything to do with the death. He had told her he loved her and always would. He had urged her to return to London with him, to live with him until she was over her mourning and grief and was healed enough to return home to live at the dower house.

And then, after she had said no and he had gone, he had written to her – twice. And then suddenly silence, even though she had continued to write to /him/. Until a month ago, when she had written to tell him that her life had become so intolerable that she had to leave, that she would have to impose upon his good nature until she had her life in order and somehow found a way to move on. He had written back then to tell her that she must on no account come to London since her notoriety had preceded her. Besides, he would be unable to offer her any help in the immediate future as he had promised friends to travel to Scotland with them to explore the Highlands. He expected to be gone for at least a year. He was allowing the lease on his rooms to lapse.

He loved her, Wesley had assured her in that final letter. But it was impossible for him to change his plans – too many other people would be inconvenienced. And Cassie /must not/ – he had underlined the words twice and so heavily that the ink had splattered into tiny blots above and below – come to London. He did not want her to be hurt.

"Your brother," Lord Merton said. "You were a Young, then?"

"Yes," she said.

He turned his team out onto the street, slowing to avoid a crossing sweep, who jumped back out of the way and then reached out to pluck out of the air the coin Stephen threw.

"I am sorry," he said.

That she was a Young? Or that her own brother had just given her the cut direct? Or both?

It was only after the funeral, of course, that things had got really nasty, that the accusations had started to fly, that /murder/ had been spoken of rather /than accident/.

Cassandra wanted to be at home. She wanted to be in her own room, the door firmly shut behind her, the bedcovers over her body and her head.

She wanted to sleep – deeply and dreamlessly.

"You need not apologize for something you did not do," she said, raising her chin and speaking as haughtily as she was able. "I was surprised to see him, that is all. I thought he was in Scotland. I daresay something happened to cause him to change his mind."

Gentlemen did not go touring Scotland during the spring, when the whole of the fashionable world was in London for the Season. And gentlemen who were really not very wealthy at all did not go touring for a whole year.

Gentlemen who were traveling in a group would not find it difficult to excuse one of their number who needed to change his plans because of a pressing family concern.

She surely had not believed him when she read his letter – so much shorter and terser than the letters he had used to write. She had chosen to believe because the alternative was too painful.

Now she could disbelieve no longer.

"Tell me about him," Lord Merton said.

She laughed.