Page 32 of Impetuous

She started to speak, but nothing came out, and she had to try again. “You look as if you are about to go out to fight the Roundheads.”

“Mmm. More likely tuck one of Charles’s toy spaniels under my arm and mince about the court.”

“You?” Cassandra smiled. “Never!”

“Why, thank you…I think.”

“’Twas meant as a compliment. Come, we should see how we look.”

Cassandra led him through the trunks and boxes to where a long cheval glass stood propped against the attic wall. She was not aware that she had taken his hand to lead him there until she saw their clasped hands reflected in the looking glass. She dropped his hand as if it had suddenly grown hot. Her eyes flew involuntarily to his in the mirror. There was none of the amusement she had expected, only a fierce flame, a fire that mirrored the sudden spark deep inside herself. She wished suddenly and intensely that Olivia and the twins were back at Moulton Hall instead of here with them.

It required a physical effort on her part to turn away from him. “This is not getting the letters found,” she said stiffly, sounding priggish even to her own ears. “We should get back to work.”

“You are right, of course.”

“Cassie…” Olivia complained. “What about the other things in the trunk?”

“Check through them, of course. This trunk is most encouraging.” She kept her voice carefully businesslike, not betraying that her pulse was running a trifle fast or that she could still feel the way Philip’s hand had felt in hers as she had led him to the mirror. It had been so hard and firm in contrast to hers, so warm, so…exciting. She cleared her throat, jerking her mind back to the matters at hand. “It, ah, is the first thing we have found from the right century. However, it is a little too early, I think. Perhaps we should move our search closer to it. Except that the attic isn’t completely neat and orderly.”

“Why don’t Olivia and the boys work from the wall in?” Neville suggested. Cassandra thought his voice was enviably, irritatingly, devoid of emotion or nerves. “You and I will come in from where we are, and perhaps it will lie between the two.”

Cassandra agreed and retired behind the boxes to get rid of the Cavalier lady and return to the workaday woman who was committed to the search for Margaret Verrere’s letters. She shrugged off the faint deflation she felt when she was once again in her own worst clothes and returned to the trunk she had been methodically unloading earlier.

They continued to work through the afternoon, but though they covered another large chunk of the attic, they did not find anything relating to Margaret Verrere or her father. Finally Cassandra sat back on her heels with a despondent sigh and wiped the sweat from her forehead with an unlady-like swipe of her hand.

Sir Philip removed his watch from its pocket and opened it. “I fear we must stop. I have to return to the inn to get ready for this evening’s dinner.”

“Oh!” Cassandra jumped to her feet. “Sweet Lord, what time is it?” When Sir Philip told her, she let out another moan. “What was I thinking of? I have to get back to Moulton Hall to prepare for the party.”

She had left everything humming along, but one never knew what might have happened to derail her plans—contradictory commands from her aunt, or Joanna’s meddling, or an obstacle she had not foreseen and which none of the servants were willing or able to take care of without the advice of someone in authority. She had meant to leave herself plenty of time to look over the house and the food preparations, and make sure that everything was in order, but she was, she realized now, much too tardy, and she would probably have to skimp on her own preparations for the dance.

Well, that was something that was of little importance, she told herself as she bade Sir Philip a short farewell and hurried with the children up the hill toward Moulton Hall. She had never been one to shine at parties, and she dimmed even more than normal around Joanna’s beauty and vivacity. Why, she didn’t even have a new gown to wear. The coffee-colored satin she planned to wear was at least three years old, and the new lace and ribbons, and the resewing she had done to the skirt, could not make it appear new. Moreover, it had not been a good color for her, and she had wished that she had not ordered it from the dressmaker in Bath, but it had been too dear not to wear it.

She did not like to admit it, but the truth was that she coveted the dress her aunt was wearing tonight. Well, not that actual dress, of course, for anything her aunt could wear would have been so short that Cassandra’s ankles would have showed and so large around it would have swamped her. What she envied was the material. It was a lovely light gray satin, perhaps not the favored color for a young woman, but Cassandra had been certain that its color would complement her eyes, and, besides, the color had a shimmer to it that lifted it above mere gray and seemed to contain flashes of mauve and lavender and other elusive pastel colors that enlivened Cassandra’s pale skin.

Aunt Ardis had seen her staring at it in the shop window one day in Fairbourne, and she had come over to see what it was that had caught Cassandra’s attention.

“Why, what lovely material!” Aunt Ardis had exclaimed, and for a brief moment Cassandra’s heart had leaped with hope that the woman would purchase it for her, seeing what a perfect color it was for Cassandra.

Instead, she had said, “How lucky that you saw it, Cassandra. It would make a lovely dress for me. Edged with black lace, perhaps. Come, let us go inside. Of course, the dressmaker here in Dunsleigh is hopelessly behind the times, but perhaps, just this once, she could whip up something acceptable.”

So Cassandra had gone in with a heavy heart, biting her tongue as her aunt ruined the material with rows of ruffles and the addition of lace and ribbons and fichu until it was girlish and overdecorated enough to suit Aunt Ardis’s tastes. Cassandra did not think that her aunt had taken the material she had loved and made it her own out of sheer cruelty. It was, she thought, simply that her aunt was so uncomplicatedly, utterly selfish that it never occurred to her that she might give up something she liked to anyone else.

Of course, the dress was nothing Cassandra would want now. Still, when she was dressed in her old café-au-lait satin, her hair hastily twisted up into a simple knot, she could not help releasing a little sigh as she glanced over at her aunt and saw the shimmer of color in the pale, watery silk as the soft glow of the candles touched it.

But Cassandra was not one to bemoan circumstances that she could not change, and, besides, she had her hands full making sure that the dinner went off smoothly and that no one was left standing about with no one to talk to. She circulated through the room, signaling to a footman when refreshment was needed and stopping beside Squire Harrelson’s chair to chat when she saw that he was sitting alone, pinned to his chair by the latest in a long string of hunting accidents. The squire’s desire to hunt far outpaced his ability to ride, and over the years he had acquired an assortment of broken arms, sprained ankles and bruised hips that would have daunted a lesser man.

She sensed rather than saw when Sir Philip entered the room. She wasn’t sure how she knew, for she had never felt anything quite like it before. But all of a sudden the skin on the back of her neck prickled, and she could not stop herself from glancing quickly behind her. She saw Sir Philip standing in the doorway, his eyes on her. He smiled when she spotted him and started across the room toward her.

Aunt Ardis quickly waylaid him, however, and dragged him across the room to meet the vicar and his wife and daughter. It was not until after dinner that Cassandra actually talked to Sir Philip, though she saw him now and again across the room and smiled. Sir Philip was not a guest whom she needed to worry about being entertained; he would have to be fighting off everyone all evening, for he was the prize of the party. Nor did she have any desire to give either Joanna or Aunt Ardis the slightest reason to scold her for trying to “compete” with Joanna for Sir Philip’s affections. Though she cherished none of the delusions the Moulton women did that Sir Philip had any regard for Joanna, life would be much easier as long as Joanna and Aunt Ardis thought he did. While Aunt Ardis and Joanna were hot in pursuit of a supremely eligible male, they cared little for what Cassandra was involved with.

However, sometime after dinner, as Cassandra was turning away from Mr. Winton’s boring, braying sister, escaping at the first reasonable lull in the conversation, she almost ran right into Sir Philip, who was standing behind her. She gasped, then laughed.

“Sir Philip. I am sorry. I did not mean to run you over. I did not realize you were standing there.”

He deftly drew her away from the loud Miss Winton, saying in a low voice, “I was hiding behind the curio cabinet. I did not wish to call attention to myself, as I feared I would have to join your circle. Having been ensnared by Miss Winton for ten interminable minutes earlier this evening, I was very cautious.”

“Wise man,” Cassandra murmured.