Gwinnie set Alex down, then took his free hand. Swinging their hands between them, the two of them set off for the edge of the long, man-made lake commissioned by Queen Caroline in the last century. Created by damming the River Westbourne, it ran through Hyde Park and into the Kensington Gardens grounds.
Lakehurst offered Lady Darkford his arm as they followed, with the maids trailing after them.
* * *
“Your sister is a delight!Why is she not married with scores of children of her own?” Cassandra asked Lord Lakehurst.
“The simple answer would be to say she is too busy. Beyond that?” he shrugged. “A matter of circumstances, more than anything,” he said.
Cassandra sighed. “I should give anything to be as carefree as she appears to be.”
“She has many demands and stresses on herself. She uses days like today for respite.”
Cassandra nodded slowly. “I think I understand that.”
He led her to a bench in the shade of one of the elm trees Queen Caroline had planted near the lake. They sat down, silent, as they watched Alex and Gwinnie put the boat in the water. Alex fiercely held the long rope tethered to it in a small, clenched fist like he would hold a kite string he feared would escape him.
“Forgive me for saying so; however, I understand from what your brother said last night that you have not had an easy time of it with your son’s guardian and executor,” Lakehurst said.
Cassandra looked back at her son walking along the lakeshore, pulling the boat through the water. She smiled slightly, the curiosity was understandable given the events of the previous evening. “The fault is partly mine. I-I did not take my husband’s death well.”
“You loved him,” he said gently.
She shook her head as she wryly smiled. “No, not at all, but I respected him as my husband. He was good to me and a good father,” she told him crisply, not wanting to think of all else he had been. A man of a dual nature.
He nodded. Then his brow furrowed. “You said your husband’s relations think you suffer from Hysteria?”
She laughed shortly, her eyes fixed on Alex and Gwinnie. “They do. I’ll concede I mayhap have suffered so right after his death.—It was horrendous,” she said heavily, remembering her wild hysterical attempts to get Edmund and Vanessa to believe her when she told them all that had occurred. And how angry she had been at their placation and whispered consultations with a doctor to drug her with laudanum. If it hadn’t been for Richard’s cousin, Raymond Stillworth, and her brother, the Duke of Ellinbourne, she might now reside in an asylum.
“They do not allow that I have changed in the last eighteen months. That is what has my brother so aggrieved, I feel.”
He nodded.
Gwinnie had her skirts clasped in one hand and leaned slightly down to hold Alex’s hand as they skipped together along the dirt bank, giggling. Cassandra smiled at the sound of Alex’s laughter mixed with Gwinnie’s. He had so few opportunities to merely play. A wave of guilt assailed her for not having provided Alex with more activities a child would enjoy.
She had been consumed with fear since her husband’s death. She felt like the nightmare wasn’t finished. The memories, the horrors and fears continued to plague her dreams… when she least expected them to, and without reason. Throughout her life, she’d considered herself a practical person, not given to flights of fancy. But the events of that night seared her soul, leaving scars greater than the one she bore above her left breast. There was more to come, she felt sure of it! Though in truth, she had no reason to feel so. It lay like a sleeping serpent coiled within her.
“I have a confession to make to you,” Lakehurst said after a moment. “And an apology,” he added.
She slowly turned from watching Gwinnie and Alex, pulling her thoughts back from the abyss they teetered upon to face Lord Lakehurst. “Yes?” she said, forcing a smile to her lips.
“That book you threw across the parlor…”
“Yes?” she said, again, her attention now entirely on the viscount, and with that attention came the heat of embarrassment rising up in her cheeks for the memory of throwing the book.
“I’m very familiar with every page of that book,” Lord Lakehurst solemnly told her, looking down at his hands clasped between his legs.
She cocked her head to the side, now giving him her full attention.What is he saying?
“I know the book… I know that chapter…” he said slowly. He looked up at her, “I know it because I wrote it.”
Cassandra didn’t know what she was expecting to hear; however, it wasn’t a confession that he wrote that book!
“You wrote that!” she said, her voice cracking.
The memory of what she read and the memories of that night collided in her mind.
No! No!
