She descended the stone steps before the townhouse, holding Alex’s small hand in her gloved one, the nursemaid following silently behind them.
She felt glorious this morning. Could that be because she’d finally saidnoto Edmund and Vanessa? Because of the weather? Or because they were to be meeting friends?
Cassandra surmised it might be a combination of the three, and that pleased her. She hadn’t realized how lonely she’d been until the previous night’s dinner party. She had actually laughed in company at some joke someone shared at the dinner table! She couldn’t remember the last time she’d done that. How small her world had shrunk in the past six years since she married Richard!
As they walked the three blocks to the park, she remembered when she met the Marquess of Darkford during her first season. She’d been sponsored for her come-out year by her aunt, the 4th Duchess of Ellinbourne, alongside her cousin, Charlotte, the Duchess’s eldest of five daughters. She’d been quite awed when the Marquess requested the honor of adding his name to her dance card. She’d stammered something, she didn’t remember what, as this tall, blond-haired man with a rakish smile and clever blue eyes signed his name with a flourish. It was for the supper dance.
She’d thanked him as she’d curtsied. He’d touched a gloved finger to her chin, nodded, then turned to walk off.
As a country clergyman’s daughter, she’d been surprised when the dashing Marquess’s roving eye had settled on her. That began a formal courtship with an interestingly punctiliously correct amount of attention from the Marquess, no more.
Near the end of the season—after Charlotte had accepted a marriage offer from David Childe, the Earl of Coyle and there was much rejoicing in the Ellinbourne household—Darkford approached her for permission to address her father for her hand in marriage.
He told her bluntly he was not looking for love in a marriage. He looked for a reasonably educated woman not prone to the vapors. He desired a woman from a good family, who would provide him an heir. A marchioness to stand by his side; but—and he was clear about this—not get in the way of his enjoyments. He admired Cassandra’s quiet beauty, intelligence, and manner. She was everything he desired in a Marchioness—if she did not cut up over his personal activities, he finished with his rakish smile.
His matter-of-fact attitude stung Cassandra’s young heart; however, she knew that as a clergyman’s daughter with the little dowry she would bring to a marriage, her chances of marrying for love were slim. And she thought, perhaps, she was half in love with the dashing, handsome marquess. She made him the promises he desired, assuming his personal activities meant his mistresses as was the wont of so many gentlemen of the ton. And so she’d become the envied Marchioness of Darkford.
She did not realize, until several months after the marriage, that her husband’s proclivities were not for a mistress. He had an unhealthy obsession with demons, devils, and the occult.
CHAPTERTHREE
The Outing
Lakehurst spotted Lady Darkford, her son, and his nursemaid as they negotiated their way through the noisy crowd of hawkers and the carriage and the horse traffic congestion on the street that ran before the park. At least it was early enough that “Rotten Row,” the gravel road that ran east to west through Hyde Park to Kensington Gardens, was not likeways crowded with horseback riders and carriages. He compressed his lips. He should have thought of waiting for them across the street outside the park gates to escort them here. He touched Gwinnie’s arm and pointed toward the street.
She turned from her quiet conversation with her maid, Rose, to see them. She waved at them and excitedly jumped up and down. Typical Gwinnie.
Gwinnie ran forward to greet them. She grabbed Lady Darkford’s free hand, enthusiastically shaking it up and down as she looked at Alex.
Startled but pleased with the enthusiastic greeting, Lady Darkford blushed.
“You’re tall!” Alex exclaimed, looking up at Gwinnie and over to Lakehurst.
Gwinnie giggled. “Yes, we are.”
“Alex,” his mother said, “this is Lady Guinevere and Lord Lakehurst. Make your bow, please.”
He looked up at her, deep furrows between his brows and confusion in his dark brown eyes. “Uncle Edmund says I only bow to dukes and royalty ’cause I’m a marquess,” he said.
“If you were an adult, that would be true,” Lady Darkford gently agreed. “However, you are still a child and children bow and curtsy to adults they are introduced to. It is a show of respect,” she told her son.
“Oh-h-h!” said Alex. “All right.” His expression turned serious. He looked at Lady Guinevere and Lord Lakehurst and bowed deeply at the waist. “I am most pleased to meet you,” he said solemnly.
“Oh, fustian,” Gwinnie said. “We are going to have fun today!” She bent down to pick up Alex and settle him on her hip, scrunching up the fabric of her yellow-figured walking dress.
Lakehurst nearly laughed at the shocked expressions on Lady Darkford’s and the nursemaid’s faces at his sister’s action and the frowns on the faces of strangers around them. That was Gwinnie. She didn’t care a farthing for what anyone thought. She was her own unique person, and he loved his sister dearly.
“My brother found something in our old schoolroom he thought you might enjoy,” Gwinnie told Alex, who could not help leaning back in her arms and staring at her in wonderment.
Lakehurst took his cue from his sister and opened the small canvas bag he carried. He pulled out a small wood sailboat attached to a coil of rope and handed it to Alex.
“A boat!” Alex exclaimed, bouncing on Gwinnie’s hip.
“A boat!” protested Gwinnie, “I’ll have you know that is one of his majesty’s ships of the line, ready to sail on the Serpentine!”
Alex looked at his mother. “Can I, Mama?”
“May I,” corrected Lady Darkford, then smiling, gave her consent.
