She realized she was already absently running her fingertip in a slow caress over the little plaque on the bench. And he was watching this rather fixedly.
“I wonder who Helene Durand was?” she said idly.
She stopped tracing the plaque.
He lifted his head with apparent effort.
His eyes looked somnolent. Rather stunned. He’d clearly been imagining something, too.
He took a breath. “She was the mother of Lucien Durand, Lord Bolt. Mrs. Durand’s husband. You’ve met him, no doubt. His father, as you likely know, is the Duke of Brexford. And the duke was... ah... not married to Bolt’s mother. He was unkind to both of them.”
“While your attempt at discretion is both touching and wholly inadequate, Ihaveheard the word ‘bastard’ before, Mr. Cassidy.”
He smiled slowly. “But you probably never truly felt like using it until you met me.”
She quirked the corner of her mouth wryly. “I think it’s very sad, though. I don’t understand how he could be so callous to his son and his . . . er . . . Helene Durand. Family is family. My own father knew his father, and his father knew his father, on back for centuries. It’s extraordinarily comforting. After all, the strongest trees have the deepest roots.”
“My father didn’t know his father at all,” Mr. Cassidy said offhandedly.
She was silent.
“Now you’re shocked,” he noted accurately.
She was. An entire branch of Mr. Cassidy’s family tree was all but invisible to him. For an instant, she could almost feel the wind of the abyss under her feet. This seemed nearly inconceivable to her. And yet there were likely many people just like him.
It was another thing that felt like a challenge, like raccoon hats and manual labor.
And perhapsthiswas why he liked the newness. He would need to createsomethingof lasting value, and he could do it where everything was new. A person needed a foundation.
“In other words”—he stretched his arms casually above his head, reaching for the sun, and Lillias watched that movement because she was helpless not to—“my father was aliteralbastard, Lady Lillias.” His implication being, that he, Mr. Cassidy, was of course being the figurative sort. “It seems reprehensible treatment of women isn’t confined to the upper classes.”
“I suppose it isn’t,” she said politely, after a moment. She was freshly, acutely certain she should not be participating in this conversation.
There was a lull.
“Do you perhaps need a cheroot for your shaken nerves?” he said with gently ironic solicitousness. “Perhaps a half of the light ale at The Wolf and...?”
She supposed no one knew what that fourth word on the sign used to be.
She craned her head toward the little pub. She half wished she could, just to see the inside of it.
Still, she didn’t speak. She’d already been given a good deal to think about.
He seemed to sense this. Mr. Cassidy pressed his lips together, and looked off toward the end of Lovell Street. Then he returned his gaze to her. “Well, all’s well that ends well, Lady Lillias, because my father met my mother and they are responsible for my presence here before you, for which I know you are grateful.”
She had the sense that he was inspecting her as closely as she’d been inspecting him, and similarly wishing he did not want to ask more questions.
“I suppose it’s a fortunate thing there was only ever one of you, Mr. Cassidy.”
He offered a quick, crooked smile. “I have some devastating news for you. I had a brother, and he was even better looking than I am.”
Just then a cart pulled by a stocky gray horse clattered into the courtyard. It appeared to be filled with lumber.
They both shot to their feet.
And just like that, they found themselves standing mere inches apart, just about a single exhaleaway from touching. In seconds, those inches evolved into a trap. Dense as velvet. Subject to its own natural laws.
Because surely this was the only reason that neither of them seemed able to move even as the elapsing time... five seconds... ten seconds... twenty... became officially unseemly.
