Cassandra let the curtain drop. “What on earth does he do, just sitting there?”
Sybil suppressed a giggle. “Well,” she said, “let us see. He sits across from your house and he’s sent red roses and begged your forgiveness. I would say the lord has made his feelings known.”
“Does he really wish to cause talk, sitting there like a servant across from my house? Has he not already caused enough talk about me?”
“He is causing a great deal of talk abouthimself,” Sybil said. “It was spoken of last evening, before this latest gambit. It is said he is hopelessly in love with Miss Knightsbridge, but she will not have him. It was even said, though I hardly give it credit, that he approached you before Lady Blakeley’s dinner and was firmly rebuffed.”
Cassandra colored. “That part is true, and I suppose a compliment to the ability of the English to ensure that no news goes unadvertised. I did not wish to encounter him and urged him to go, which he did.”
“Goodness,” Sybil said, “and now he does watch the house like a soldier on guard duty.”
“It hardly matters to me what he does,” Cassandra said. “He might guard the Tower of London for all it signifies to me.”
Sybil glanced up at her friend. “If he had not been a part of what happened to you, would you look upon him differently?”
“Well, I would say, that is, as you know, I never had a wish to become a duchess. For one thing.”
“Putting that aside,” Sybil said, “if he had never injured you and was always to be a viscount, what would you think?”
“The idea is so far removed from what is true that I had not thought of what I would think. Why do you ask me, Sybil?”
Sybil bit her lip and said quietly, “We did so wish to marry for love, Cass. For all his faults, I believe he loves you. Truly loves you. While I, myself, could never forgive what those gentlemen have done, it strikes me that you are of a different temperament.”
“How can you say so?” Cassandra said, for lack of anything better to say while her thoughts were in such a jumble.
Sybil pulled the curtain back and peeked at Lord Hampton in his vigil on Lord Dalton’s stoop. “I say so because of that,” she said. “He’s making himself a laughingstock and I do not think Lord Hampton is accustomed to making himself the butt of jokes. It seems to me that he no longer cares for humiliation, he has a loftier goal in mind.”
“Ridiculous,” Cassandra said. Though she said it, she could not deny that something stirred in her. The lord had been forced to dress as a footman, but he was not forced to appear a lunatic sitting in front of her house.
Sybil was right—he was making himself a laughingstock. It would not be an hour before the gossipers got hold of the idea. One person would pass by in a carriage and off the report would fly over the city like a hawk dropping mice from its maw.
“He is entirely ridiculous,” Sybil said, “though I wonder if you hold it against him.”
“Sybil,” Cassandra said, “you have just said yourself that you would not forgive.”
“True, but my family has a long history of maintaining feuds until every party involved is dead. For all that, though, I will admit to having struggled against Lord Lockwood’s apologies—there have been so many of them!Heis only a friendly acquaintance; I cannot say what I should do if there was something more there.”
“I did not say there was anything more than friendship between me and Lord Hampton,” Cassandra corrected.
“No, you did not say it,” Sybil said gravely. “And yet, I think it.”
Cassandra had no answer to that, so crossed the room to May and gave her a pet. She felt uncomfortably questioned and examined and at least her mastiff had nothing to inquire about.
Chapter Nineteen
As far asCassandra could tell, Lord Hampton finally decamped from Lord Dalton’s steps sometime after sunset. Throughout the day she’d found little opportunities to casually peek out a window, and there he’d sat. She’d even seen Lord Lockwood stop on his horse and been waved away. Lord Dalton had come out of his house and appeared to argue with his friend, before marching back inside and slamming the door.
She supposed she must now believe that he held a real regard for her. The question she could not firmly answer was what her own feelings might be. She was torn between her heart and her head.
Her heart, if she were to finally be honest with herself, was drawn to Lord Hampton. Had always been, really. Her clear heart, that did not give quarter to the stings of insults and the pricks of wrongs, beat faster for him. From that first moment of seeing him on his horse as he approached the Bergrams’ ball, to their rather uncomfortable start, to the various dinners in which they better understood each other. He stirred feelings in her that no other gentleman had.
If only those feelings were not intertwined with her feelings over what he and his friends had done to her. Her head appeared to be the master ofthoseparticular feelings and her head called her heart deranged for even entertaining any idea of Lord Hampton. Her head, while clear in its own way, could not ignore the stings and pricks. Like an old wound, she was healed on the outside but still ached on the inside.
She would be ridiculous to countenance him! Her head railed against looking the fool for giving way to him. In truth, considering him would not confer any favor on either one of them. If she accepted him, convincing herself that she had forgiven him, would not ugly feelings resurface sometime in future? Would she not experience some little irritation and find all those feelings flooding back?
No matter. He’d thoroughly debased himself by sitting outside of her house all the day long and got nothing for his trouble. She suspected she had delivered the message of her intent quite clearly. He would take her at her word and make himself scarce going forward.
If he suffered at all, it would not last. A man like that would never suffer long. There were too many who wished to entertain such a gentleman that he would soon be diverted and wonder why he had ever thought to pursue a lady who wished to have nothing to do with him.
