LITMIR.BIZ

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had he last seen her? Nine, ten years ago? At Pemberley, if his memory served him rightly. She had been sitting astride the bow of a tree above his head, hurling crab apples down on him, in a very unfeminine way. He’d been at Westminster School then, not inclined to take any notice of his hoydenish and fortunately distant young cousin.

      Horatio Darcy ushered Cassandra into a big, handsome room, with windows overlooking the river. She looked around her, her attention diverted from her problems by the novelty of her surroundings. Shelves lined the walls, crammed with dusty tomes and stacks of papers tied up with faded ribbons. Dozens of boxes were lodged on the topmost shelves, each with a name written on the front in a spidery copperplate too small to decipher. A large desk stood in the centre of the room, and Mr. Darcy placed a chair for her, before retreating to his side of the desk and sitting down with his hands steepled together.

      Her cousin had grown into a remarkably handsome man, with a fine, tall figure, but he didn’t look to have become any more amiable in the years that had passed since their last encounter.

      “You have come alone?” he asked. “Mr. Eyre is not with you?”

      He spoke the name in an icy tone, which made Cassandra wince inwardly. As if the very mention of James Eyre didn’t make her heart turn over. She took a deep breath to make sure none of her emotion showed in her voice or expression. “Mr. Eyre is presently out of the country,” she said. “And this has nothing to do with him.”

      Mr. Darcy’s eyebrows shot up. “No? I would have thought his presence was of the first importance in such a matter.”

      “If you have summoned me here to talk about Mr. Eyre, then I may tell you at once, that I shall not listen to you.” She began to rise from her seat.

      “Sit down,” he said. “To be perfectly correct, I haven’t summoned you, I merely sent you an appointment. It was Mr. Partington, your father—”

      “Stepfather.”

      “Very well, your stepfather, who asked me to have this interview with you. I question the wisdom of your coming here alone, that is, without Mr. Eyre, because he must surely have a say in what is to be agreed.”

      “Nothing is to be agreed that need concern Mr. Eyre.” It caused her a pang to say it, even though it was the simple truth.

      “Your marriage to Mr. Eyre is only one of the matters that has to be discussed, but since it is the key to everything else, let us discuss that first.”

      “There is nothing to discuss with regard to any marriage between Mr. Eyre and me. I told Mr. Partington how matters stood. If he chooses to disbelieve me, then that is his own affair.” She took another deep breath, she must not show how fragile was her self-possession. “I received a message from you asking me to wait upon you on a matter of business. I did not expect to have my private affairs raked over by you.”

      “I am a lawyer, acting for your father.”

      “Stepfather.”

      “I also have the honour to be a member of the family to which you yourself belong. You bear an ancient and an honourable name, and since you seem determined to drag it in the dust, it is the duty of all the male members of your family to point out to you how wrong is your wilful decision not to marry Mr. Eyre.”

      “It is odd,” Cassandra remarked in a conversational tone, “how everyone now is wild for me to marry Mr. Eyre, whereas only a few weeks ago, it was the last outcome that my family wished.”

      “That was before you ran away with the gentleman in question,” said Mr. Darcy coldly.

      “Eloped,” Cassandra said.

      “Elopements end in marriage, not in cohabitation in London lodgings.”

      Cassandra flushed, hating to have her connection with James spoken of in those terms, although God knew, Mr. Darcy was right. She felt she must defend herself. “When I left Bath in the company of Mr. Eyre, it was on the assumption that we were heading for Gretna Green, where we would be married under Scottish law.”

      “That was not, however, the case, and you were perhaps naïve to assume any such thing. By putting yourself in the power of a man such as Mr. Eyre, you surely must have been aware that you were laying yourself open to all kinds of dangers.”

      “You do not know Mr. Eyre, I believe? So pray do not speak of him in those terms. I and Mr. Eyre have…” Despite herself, her voice faltered. “We have parted, but even so…” She paused, and frowned, her eyes fastened on the floor. Then she raised them to look directly at her cousin. “Have you ever been in love, Mr. Darcy?”

      Horatio Darcy was thunderstruck. “What did you say?”

      “I asked if you had ever been in love. If not, you may be unable to understand how things were between Mr. Eyre and me. I believed then that he was a man I could trust in every way.”

      “If your relationship was as amiable and trusting as your words imply, then it came to a very unfortunate outcome.”

      “When one is in love—”

      “Love, Cassandra, has no place in a lawyer’s office.”

      “There, I felt sure that you had never fallen head over heels in love, or you would be less disapproving of my behaviour.”

      “My personal life has no bearing on this whatsoever. The case is simple. You ran away from the protection of your family, you were under the care of your aunt—”

      “Of my stepfather’s sister, in fact.”

      “Very well, of Mrs.”—he glanced down at the paper in front of him—“Cathcart, who stood in loco parentis to you, I believe, your mother and stepfather having placed you in her care. As I say, you ran away from her house in Bath, and put yourself under the protection of an unmarried man. With whom you lived on terms of intimacy—”

      “As man and wife, in fact.”

      “—terms of intimacy, with, apparently, no concern as to the irregularity of your union.”

      The words were beginning to anger Cassandra, chasing away the surge of unhappiness that swept over her when she thought and spoke of James, of what he had meant to her, of how it had ended. Irregularity of their union; what cold, unfeeling words! True, it was a union unsanctified by church or state, but they had fallen in love, had chosen one another as their life’s companion—or so she had thought—and did a few days or weeks make so very much difference, even in the eyes of God?

      She should have known how it would end, of course; from the moment the coach bowling out of Bath took the London road instead of the road to the north, she should have known that Mr. Eyre had quite a different scheme in mind from what was planned.

      Never for a moment had she doubted his love for her, any more than she doubted her own affections. But prudence had appeared from nowhere, a prudence and a caution she would never have expected in the gallant officer who had swept her off her feet.

      “It will be better to tie the knot when the arrangements have been made with your family,” James had said, leaning forward in the carriage, so that she could not see his face.

      Arrangements. Money, of course, it was money that lay at the heart of his stepping back from an immediate marriage, although prudence hadn’t kept him out of her bed.

      “I dare say,” he had said, succumbing to his passions just as she did, “that this will make it harder for your family to send me packing.”

      He didn’t know her stepfather, and so it had ended, not at the altar, but in this lawyer’s room, with her cousin’s words recalling her to the present.

      “I would be grateful for your attention,” Horatio said drily. “Under the terms of your late grandmother’s will—”

      “I know the terms of the will. Rosings and the land and property naturally go to my brother. I, and my two sisters, are to be provided, upon

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