The bit of cake Cassie had eaten sat uneasily in her stomach.
Like the pieces of a dissected map, the puzzle came together, finally making sense. Harbury’s reluctance to dismiss the steward. His evasiveness when talking about his past. His reaction when she suggested he write Anderson’s daughter.
Howcouldhe have kept such a thing from her?Whyhadn’t he told her?
She didn’t know how her heart could simultaneously be beating in her throat and broken into a million pieces.
She’d thought they were building something new.
All the while, she’d existed only in her rival’s long shadow.
Chapter Fourteen
As their visitto the Wexfords droned on, Cassie kept her responses pleasant, her interested expression fixed, but, all the while, a dirge was echoing in her mind. Lady Pennington—Harbury’s precious Viv—had grown up with her husband on the estate.
Though she refused to face him, what she could see of his profile grew increasingly ashen—an obvious sign of guilt. Clearly, he’d known exactly how she would feel about the revelation.
She ignored him and his imploring, puppy-in-repentance looks—looks which, even out of the corner of her eye, impressively rivaled Mercy’s. But she couldn’t give him her attention. If she did, she was certain she would erupt. And she refused to relinquish what remained of her dignity.
Her husband had damaged her pride quite enough.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” she said to Lord and Lady Wexford as they were leaving, “I do look forward to seeing you again.”
She grasped the older woman’s hand warmly, smiling with a false cheer that would have rivaled her mother’s counterfeit gaiety, and her mother had been the best actress Cassie had ever known when it came to the dutifully polite concealment of internal distress.
The coachman helped her back into the carriage. She angled herself resolutely toward the view, very aware of—but still not acknowledging—her husband.
No sooner had he taken his place by her side than he attempted to speak. “Cassandra—”
“Don’t.” She crossed her arm over her chest and raised her flat hand over her shoulder…a universal signal tostop.
“Please—”
She shook her head. “Not now.” And possibly notever.
She didn’t want to see him. She didn’t want to hear him. And she most certainly did not want to feel his touch.
“Cassie—”
“Are you as hard of hearing as your father’s friend? Or only equally uncaringly oblivious?”
The only response to her query was the squeak of the carriage’s wheels.
After a few long minutes, she heard Harbury sigh. She’d no idea what, if anything, he was trying to communicate by his audible exhalation, but, for a time, they jostled along in blessed,blessedsilence. Then, the coach hit a rutted bit of road, and she grasped the strap to keep herself from being jostled backwards and inadvertently landed in her husband’s lap.
She couldn’t bear contact and only wished the strap could also stop her battered, bruised heart from knocking around inside of her chest.
Behind her, something thudded against the bench’s padding.A fist?
“Cassandra, Idemandthe chance to speak.”
Demand?She shot him a hard, sidelong glance.
But a husband could, couldn’t he?
By law, he could demand of a wife almost anything he wished.
How utterly unfair.
