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Cassie felt the heaviness lift from her heart. There was a reason he had not come to Verwood. “Do you know what happened? May I ask? Did she end it?”

“Oh, she did!” said the duchess with a laugh. “Dramatically and publicly. She threw his ring at his feet at the races, and it has hindered her cause.”

Cassie stopped cold. Instantly the scene was before her, Amabel with her mother and friends in the fashionable enclosure, choosing her moment to inflict the most humiliation on her rejected lover.

“May I tell you a bit of our history?” The duchess gently tugged Cassie back into motion.

“Of course, I must be the most self-absorbed of companions,” Cassie replied.

“Not at all. I am glad you have confided in me. My husband spent years in court fighting for his inheritance. He has excellent solicitors as does Raven’s grandfather. Both men know how to deal with Ramsbury’s legal maneuvers. And you must not fear the Ramsburys too much. The facts of the case will be more damaging to their reputation than to Raven’s. Isn’t there a saying about being tarred with one’s own brush?”

“I’m glad Raven has such friends,” Cassie said.

“Raven and the others were my pupils once, which is a story for another day, but what may I do for you? Do you doubt Raven’s love?”

Cassie felt her cheeks redden.

“Am I too frank?” the duchess asked. “You did not come to London simply to talk about him.”

“No, not at all,” Cassie admitted. “What I hope, what I have been thinking, is that there might be a way for me to meet him. I don’t know where, a party, a ball, though it is hardly the season, but somewhere where I could show the world my … respect for him.”

“I see. I admire your courage. The world has rated him far below his worth, and that has always chafed at him, but you could show him that the world’s opinion means nothing next to the good opinion of the woman he loves.”

“Can it be done?” Cassie asked.

“Oh yes. I know just the thing. We must make it very public. Are you game?”

Cassie nodded.

“Good. Then Sunday’s the day. You and your cousin Mrs. Howarth must put on your finery and prepare to drive with me in the park at the fashionable hour. Maybe a new hat is in order?”

“The park? Will he be there?” Cassie thought it unlikely. The park on a Sunday was Amabel’s world.

“Getting Raven there will be my husband’s work. Trust me, he is up to it.”

They reached the front of Marianne’s house, and Cassie was fairly certain that her cousin was peeping out her front window as the duchess bid Cassie farewell and entered her carriage. In any case, Marianne met Cassie as she came in.

“How extraordinary! I suppose she is doing some looking about here in Brunswick Square for one of the duke’s charities.”

“Not at all, Marianne. She has invited us to go driving in the park with her, and recommends that we treat ourselves to new hats.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

By the time the duchess’s smartly turned-out landau, with a pair of high-stepping matched bays and a footman behind, passed through the crowd of equipages entering Hyde Park, Cassie knew they had been noticed. Though neither Amabel nor her circle would be in town in August, the year-round denizens of London who took note of the duchess and her companions would fuel London’s tireless gossip machine.

Around them phaetons, cabriolets, a barouche or two, and even one lumbering old closed coach streamed through the screen at the entrance to the park heading for the Ring, the place for the fashionable to see and be seen. Marianne looked about, as the duchess discreetly identified some of the more prominent members of the elite, the renowned beauty, Lady Blessington among them. An enormous gray horse carried a military gentleman. An old lord of Falstaffian proportions dwarfed his rather delicate phaeton. A daring boy in a sailor suit dashed across the line of carriages in pursuit of a small dog.

Once they entered the long line of carriages winding through the park, they became part of an unhurried scene in which voices and laughter mixed with bird cries and a band playing somewhere, and always the steady clop of horses’ hooves and the crush of wheels against gravel. The grass had a golden hue, and a few leaves of stately elms showed the autumn yellow to come. The lake was a steely patch of blue, fringed with reeds. Cassie readied herself to meet Raven. The duchess insisted that Cassie sit in the forward-facing seat so that she would be spotted. She wore a gown of serene glacial blue for a calm she was far from feeling with just a dash of garnet silk ribbons on her hat for boldness.

The duchess smiled encouragement. “He will be here.”

In the crush of vehicles, they had not gone far when there he was, on horseback, coming along the parallel track. At his side, also mounted on a fine horse, was the Duke of Wenlocke. Raven’s face when he saw her told Cassie how ill-prepared he was for the moment. His roan horse did a little dance until he brought it under control. His stunned gaze did not leave Cassie’s face.

The duchess’s own carriage came to a halt. There was a moment’s confusion, and then Raven slid from his mount, and the duchess’s footman went to take charge of the horse. An exchange of satisfied glances passed between the duke and duchess, Marianne directed a questioning look at Cassie, and then Raven opened the carriage door, letting down the steps, and offering Cassie his hand to aid her descent. Cassie, her spirits dancing, took that hand.

He was as she remembered him from that first day, tall and elegant, with a defiant flash in his dark eyes that she now understood. He was a raven among lesser birds, no fearful barnyard fowl preening and squawking and getting his feathers ruffled. He was haughty and cheeky, too.

He took her arm in his, and they began to walk, headed anywhere and nowhere in the rich ripe summer of sun-warmed earth and drying grass. As they sauntered on, he adjusted his stride to the rhythm of hers.