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A sour taste filled his mouth. He had plenty of competitors and rivals. Enemies, even. They came with success. There was always something going wrong, someone trying to best him; that was part of what thrilled him and filled his days.
But this was so…personal.
Das did not say a word.
“I never touched the woman, Das.”
Not that he cared what Das thought.
“I didn’t,” he said.
And Das nodded, once.
Joshua glanced at the clock. “Cassandra’s at some ball and won’t be home for hours. I’ll tell her in the morning. You may as well head home. I’ll deal with this tomorrow.”
He followed Das into the entrance hall, watched him pull on his gloves and coat, seeing only Cassandra as she had been the night before, caring that he was upset, caring that he upset her. Waiting, lips parted, for his kiss.
“You don’t think she might hear about it tonight, do you?” he said.
“Depends how discreet Bolderwood means to be.”
“He’s telling lies about his wife, he’d want to be discreet.” Cassandra had been engaged to Bolderwood once. Oh, hell. What a mess. He should have kissed her when he had the chance. “But anyway, she already told me she doesn’t care.”
Das paused, turning his hat in his hands. He started to speak but stopped as a footman opened the front door.
The evening air rolled in, carrying the sound of a carriage approaching. Pulling up. The door opening. Closing. Voices. Footsteps.
“Well,” Das said. “Now is your chance to find out.”
* * *
A moment later,Cassandra stepped through the doorway, heartwarming in a blue evening gown and velvet cloak. But his pleasure faded when she stopped short at the sight of him.
Their eyes met, held. Joshua felt as naked as he had the night before. Then her focus shifted so that she looked right through him and she swept into the hall.
“Good evening, Mr. Das.” This with a pleasant nod and smile. “And Mr. DeWitt.” This with a frigid tone and averted gaze.
“So you’ve heard then.”
“I do not care,” she said. Without looking at him, she reached for the clasp of her cloak at her throat. “Do you hear me, Mr. DeWitt? I do not care. Not a whit. Not a jot. Not one iota.”
Her usually competent fingers were fumbling with the clasp. The cloak slipped back off her shoulders, revealing her smooth upper arms, the swell of her breasts.
“Let me do that,” he said.
She flipped up both palms toward him, as if to ward off evil. He stayed away. She peeled off her gloves, gathered them in one hand. Perhaps she meant to slap him across the face with them. One did that in matters of honor. She would call him out. They would meet the next morning at dawn, walk their twenty paces, and she would shoot him.
Except, of course, that she did not care.
She slapped the gloves onto the table and attacked the clasp again viciously, with the fingers that had caressed his hand the night before.
“I care about my sisters and my mother. My friends, my house, my pigs, my roses, my cat.” The clasp gave way. The cloak slipped from her shoulders and he reached for it, but she whirled it away from him, into the hands of the footman, who grabbed it and ran. “I do not care about you, or your activities.”
“If I might explain.”
She was already gliding toward the stairs and away from him. Her evening gown swirled around her legs, the legs he had never seen and never would. Her hair was in some complicated arrangement and tendrils escaped down the back of her neck. He would never see that hair loose; he had not realized until now how much he wanted to.
With one foot on the bottom step, she paused and looked back at him. The candle on the wall picked up the fire in her hair, at odds with her icy demeanor.
