Cassandra was standing before the empty fireplace, one wrist propped on the mantel, the other hand pressed to her mouth. She was weeping quite audibly.

She turned her head toward him, red-eyed and aghast, before turning it sharply away again.

"Oh," she said, making an attempt at bright normality, "you took me by surprise. I look a mess. I arrived home only an hour ago and changed into something comfortable but not very elegant."

She was plumping a lone cushion on the chair beside the fireplace, her back to him.

"Cass." He had hurried across the room to set both hands on her shoulders, making her jump. "What is the matter?"

"With me?" she asked brightly, straightening up and deftly evading his grasp as she went to move a vase a tenth of an inch from its original place on a table behind the chair. "Oh, nothing. Something in my eye."

"Yes," he said. "Tears. What has happened?"

He followed her and handed her a handkerchief. She took it and dabbed at her eyes before turning toward him, though she did not look at him. She smiled.

"Nothing," she said, "except that Alice has got married and is going to live happily ever after with Mr. Golding, and Mary and Belinda are going away with William, /also/ to live happily ever after, and I was indulging in a little self-pity. But they were partly tears of happiness too. I /am/ happy for all of them."

"I am sure you are," he said. "Will /you/ live happily ever after too, Cass? Will you marry me? I love you, you know, and they are not just words spoken to make you feel better about the situation. I /do/ love you. I cannot imagine life without you. Sometimes I think you are the very air I breathe. Can I hope that you love me too? That you will forget about ending our betrothal and marry me instead? This summer? At Warren Hall?"

There. It was all blurted out. He had had a month to prepare a decent speech, but when it had come to the point he had not been prepared at all. And he had not chosen a good moment. She was in deep distress, and his words had not helped. Almost before he had stopped speaking she was across the room and looking out the window.

But she did not say no. He waited with bated breath, but she did not say anything at all.

She was not silent, though, he realized after a few moments. She was sobbing again and doing a damnably poor job of stifling the sounds.

"Cass." He went to stand behind her again, though he did not touch her this time. He heard a world of misery in the one word he had uttered.

"It is not just self-pity, is it? Are you trying to find a way to let me down gently? Can't you marry me?"

It took her a few moments to bring herself sufficiently under control to answer him.

"I think I probably have to," she said then. "I think I am with child, Stephen. No, I don't /think/. I /am/. I have been trying to tell myself otherwise for a few weeks, but I have… /missed/ for a second time now.

I am with child."

And she wailed so uncontrollably that all he could do was grasp her by the shoulders, turn her, and hold her against him while she wept into his shoulder.

He felt weak at the knees. His heart felt as if it were somewhere near the soles of his boots.

"And that is so dreadful, is it?" he asked when her sobs had subsided somewhat. "That you are with child by me? That you must marry me?" /Not like this/, he thought dully. /Not like this. Please not like this/.

But he had slept with her on two successive nights when he ought not to have done so, and now he must bear the consequences. They both must.

She had tipped back her head and was looking up at him with red, frowning face.

"Oh, I did not mean it that way," she said. "I did not mean it that way at all. But how can I do it again, Stephen? I thought I was barren after the last time. It was more than two years before Nigel died. How can I do it again? I /cannot/."

Tears ran unheeded down her cheeks again, and he understood.

"I cannot offer guarantees, Cass," he whispered, cupping her face with his hands and drying her cheeks with his thumbs. "I wish I could but I can't. What I /can/ promise, however, is that you will be loved and cherished – and given the very best medical care – throughout what remains of the nine months. We will have this baby if love and wanting can accomplish it."

He blinked away tears from his own eyes.

Cass was expecting a /baby/. /His/ baby.

And she was terrified of losing it.

So was he.

"I can do it alone, Stephen," she said. "You don't need – "

He kissed her. Hard.

"I do," he said, "because it is my child and you are my woman. And because I /love/ you. It does not matter now if you love me or not, but I will keep on wooing you in the hope that one day you will. And I will make you happy. I promise I will."

"I have loved you almost from the first moment," she said. "But, Stephen, it seems so unfair – "

He kissed her hard again and then smiled at her.

She smiled a little tremulously back at him.

"Have you seen a physician?" he asked her.

"No."

"Tomorrow you will," he said. "I'll have Meg go with you."

"She will be scandalized," she said.

"You do not know my sisters very well yet, do you?" he said.

She rested her forehead against his chin.

"Cass." Terror caught at him again. "I will keep you safe. I swear I will."

Foolish words when she was going to have to go through a pregnancy and, he hoped, childbirth essentially alone.

It was no wonder many women were of the opinion that men were helpless, rather useless creatures.

"I know you will," she said, wrapping her arms about his neck. "Oh, Stephen, I did not want things to happen this way, but I do love you. I do. And I will see to it that you never regret any of all this."

He kissed her again.

He was feeling rather dizzy. It was done. Not at all as he had planned it. Not in any way as a result of all his careful wooing. But because one evening more than a month ago he had allowed her to seduce him and had then agreed to be her protector because she was destitute and he was angry.

An inauspicious beginning.

A beginning that had begun a child's existence.

A somewhat sordid beginning that had somehow kindled a mutual love and passion.

Life was strange.

Love was stranger.

Cass was going to be his wife. Because she was with child. And because she loved him.

They were going to be /married/.

Stephen laughed and grasped her about the waist and swung her around in a complete circle until she laughed too.

22

CASSANDRA arrived at Warren Hall, Stephen's principal seat in Hampshire, on a sunny, breezy day in July. She was going to stay at Finchley Park, one of the Duke of Moreland's properties a few miles away, until her wedding, but it was here Stephen was bringing her first. He wanted to show her what was to be her home.

As soon as the carriage turned between the high stone gateposts that marked the entrance to the park, Cassandra fell in love with it. The driveway wove its way through a dense forest of trees, and there was an instant impression of seclusion and peace and – strangely – of belonging.

Perhaps it was because Stephen's hand was in her own and he was so obviously happy to be here.

"It has been my home for only eight years," he said, watching the passing scenery and her with equal attention. "I did not grow up to it.

But it felt immediately… /right/ when I first saw it. As if it had been waiting for me all my life."

"Yes." She turned her face from the window to smile at him. "I think – I hope – it has been waiting for me too, Stephen. It seems I have always been waiting for my life to begin, and now at the grand age of twenty-eight I have the odd feeling that it is happening. Not /about/ to happen, but happening. The present, not the future. Have you noticed how so much of our living is done in the future, Stephen, and so is not really living at all?"

It was only with Stephen she could talk in such a way and be sure to be understood. The future had almost always been the only part of her life that had seemed bearable. At times even the future had crashed to a halt, and she had been left without hope. Mired in despair. But no longer. For once in her life she was living the present and enjoying every moment of it.

He squeezed her hand.

"It seems that good things often have to happen at someone else's expense, though," he said. "Jonathan Huxtable had to die at the age of sixteen for me to inherit, and Con had to be illegitimate."

"Jonathan was his brother?" she said.

"He had some sort of… illness," he told her. "Con once told me that his father always called the boy an imbecile. But Con also told me that Jonathan was pure love. Not loving, Cass, but love itself. I wish I had known him."

"So do I," Cassandra said, returning the pressure of his hand. "How did he die?"

"In his sleep," Stephen said. "On the night after his sixteenth birthday. Apparently he had already outlived the span predicted for him by the physicians. Con says Jonathan would have loved me – the one who would take his place when he died. Is it not strange?"

"I think I am beginning to understand," she said, "that love is /always/ strange."

But they had no further chance to explore that idea. The carriage had drawn clear of the trees and Cassandra, moving the side of her head closer to the window, could see the house, a large, square mansion of light gray stone with a dome and a pillared portico and marble steps leading up to the main floor. There was a stone balustrade surrounding what seemed to be a wide terrace before the house, though there was an opening in front for steps leading down to a large parterre garden of flowers and paths and low shrubs.

"Oh," she said, "it is beautiful."

Was it possible that this was to be her home? Her mind touched briefly upon the imposing splendor of Carmel, which she had always found somehow gloomy and oppressive – even during the first six months of her marriage.

But she pushed the memories away. They were of no significance to her any longer. They were the past. This was the present.

"It is, is it not?" Stephen said, sounding both pleased and excited.

"And it is going to have a new countess in two weeks' time."

He had purchased a special license rather than deal with all the bother of banns. Even so he had suggested that they wait two weeks instead of marrying immediately. Perhaps they /ought/ to marry without delay he had said, given the circumstances, but he wanted them to have a wedding to remember, surrounded by their closest family and friends. And he wanted, if she did not mind terribly much, to marry in the small chapel on the grounds of Warren Hall, rather than in London or even at the village church.

Cassandra had not minded the wait, though she had felt her own lack of family and friends. Not a /total/ lack, though. Wesley was coming – he had gone straight to Finchley Park with the duke and Vanessa and would meet her there this evening. And Alice and Mr. Golding, and Mary and William and Belinda, were going to come the day before the wedding.

All of Stephen's family members were coming. So were the duke's mother and his youngest sister and her husband, and Sir Graham and Lady Carling, and Lord Montford's sister with her husband. And Mr. Huxtable, of course. And Sir Humphrey and Lady Dew were coming from Rundle Park near Throckbridge in Shropshire, with their daughters and their husbands, and the vicar of Throckbridge, who had been Stephen's main teacher until he was seventeen.

The Dews, Cassandra learned, had been like a part of the Huxtables' family while they had lived in Throckbridge. They had allowed Stephen to ride the horses from their stables. Vanessa had been married to their younger son for the year before his death from consumption. They considered Vanessa's children to be their grandchildren.

"A new countess," Cassandra said. "The Countess of Merton. I will be very glad to shed my Lady Paget persona, Stephen. It is the only reason I am marrying you, of course."

She looked into his eyes and laughed.

His lips were curved into a smile.

"That is such a lovely sound," he said.

She raised her eyebrows in inquiry.

"Your laughter," he said. "And what it does to your mouth and your eyes and to the whole of your face. I think there has been precious little laughter in your life, Cass. If I have given you that, it is of far more precious value than a name or a title."