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“Good. Because if you were attached, you might have been grieving and upset.”
“I’m not grieving and I’m not upset. I’m angry because of their bleeding incompetence. They should have been able to prevent it. Why can we not bloody well prevent it?”
He kicked the wall. Pain shot through his toe. Stupid wall. Stupid boots. Stupid boys who went around dying. Stupid him. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
His jaw ached. His toe throbbed. His stomach churned. If only Cassandra were here. She would not stop the pain but she would make it easier to bear.
Cassandra, who might be with child even now.
He slumped against the wall, watched a peddler push his barrow through the mud.
What the blazes had he been doing, bedding her? Night after night, he’d made love to her, carefully avoiding telling himself what that meant. And if he did think of it, he thought,it doesn’t always happen, orthe damage is done, orit means nothing to me, I’m going back to Birmingham.
What clever tricks he played on his own mind.
And now his mind had its revenge and played tricks on him. It showed him a picture of Cassandra, with a swollen belly and beatific smile. Of Cassandra, glowing with love, a pink, squalling baby in her arms.
Of Samuel. His little body cold and still and unnaturally white. For hours, Joshua had watched over him, his own body growing still and cold too, but never still or cold enough.
How could he have forgotten? But he hadn’t forgotten, had he? He had simply ignored those thoughts so they would not interfere with his lust. How clever he was. How very bloody clever.
Behind him, the door opened and shut, and then Sir Gordon was with them, a fresh piece of paper in his hand.
“As expected, your name appeared in the guestbook at the time,” he said quietly.
Joshua hefted himself off the wall without looking at either of them. “Right. Let’s go.”
“Perhaps our visit to Mrs. O’Dea can wait for another day,” Sir Gordon suggested, still with that irritating hushed tone that people used to convey sympathy. Sir Gordon had four or five adult children and had likely also lost at least one child. Everyone had, one way or another, though no one spoke of it. Lord Charles had been the Duchess of Sherbourne’s son, and she still got up and put on a stylish turban each day. So why did Joshua feel so alone?
“Yes,” he said numbly, heading for the carriage. “That can wait for another day.”
* * *
Instead of goinghome or back to work, Joshua dragged Isaac around a dozen coffee houses, salons, and taverns, until Isaac was complaining and Joshua had run out of reasons to delay. He felt hollow and bruised, and he hated that he felt like that; he wanted to be with Cassandra, and feared he could not bear to look at her.
Yet when they arrived home and were informed that Mrs. DeWitt and her sisters were in the drawing room, he followed Isaac up the stairs.
“Do you think we are walking into a rose garden or a battlefield?” Isaac whispered to him. “I never know which it will be with these three. Then it changes in the blink of an eye and I never understand why.”
A detente, at least, it seemed: The three sisters and Newell were playing cards. If Joshua was not mistaken, Cassandra and Lucy were partnered together, and Lucy had a glass of sherry by her elbow. If there had been a battle, then Cassandra had either lost or elected not to fight.
She met his eyes and smiled, a smile that crept into the hollowness inside him. He crossed the room and jabbed at the fire with the poker.
“Lucy had a wonderful time with her grandmother again today,” Cassandra told nobody in particular.
“She let me try on one of her old court gowns,” Lucy said. “From when she was lady-in-waiting to the queen about two hundred years ago. It weighs more than a calf, and I had to walk sideways through doors. It turns out that I am extremely talented at walking sideways through doors.”
Isaac was over at the drinks. “Why would you want to walk sideways through doors?” he asked. “Why not go backward like the rest of us?”
Lucy laughed. “It’s the style of gown, silly. It has huge panniers out the side.”
“Ah.” Isaac, having run out of conversation about gowns, poured himself a drink. Joshua, who had never had any conversation about gowns, joined him at the sideboard and studied the bowls of sweets and nuts.
“The skirts are so big, a couple of children could hide under them,” Lucy went on. “Why, I suspect I could hide even a grown man under there.”
All saucy innocence, she waited for a reaction. Joshua looked to Cassandra for guidance. He noticed that Isaac, Newell, and Emily also looked to Cassandra for guidance. Cassandra breathed in, breathed out, and played a card.
“Your turn, Mr. Newell,” she said calmly.
