not dare to lick them in case he interpreted such an action wrongly. With eyes downcast she swallowed back tears and sat perfectly still, pleased when the horses were called to a halt and the door was opened to the Northrup town house.
The footman helped her out. Nathaniel did not touch her or look at her. It was as if three feet were a thousand miles as she climbed down onto the white pebbles.
‘If I hear any other news about Sarah Milgrew I shall let you know, Miss Northrup.’
‘I would be indebted, Lord Lindsay.’
The polite manners of society hung across an undercurrent of weariness and then he was gone.
* * *
White’s was busy when he flung himself down on a leather wingchair opposite Hawk half an hour later and ordered himself a double shot of their strongest whisky.
‘A run in with the mysterious Miss Cassandra Northrup, I presume?’
Nat ignored Hawk’s jibe because the whole fiasco was just too confusing to dwell upon right now. ‘Another woman has been brought out of the river.’
‘Lord.’ Hawk sat forward. ‘Who is it this time?’
‘A girl whom the Daughters of the Poor had found and given a home to. The sister of one of those dragged from the Thames last month, I am guessing.’
‘Was there a meeting of the Venus Club that night?’
‘No.’
‘Damn.’
‘But the girl had made enquiries the evening before at the Sailors Inn concerning her sister. The tavern keeper remembers her asking. I also know the name of her home town, so perhaps something happened there?’
‘Bits and pieces dropping into the jigsaw. God, how I love this game.’
‘I doubt the youngest Northrup daughter would see it in those terms, Stephen. She was furious to hear I had been at a meeting of the Venus Club.’
‘You did not enlighten her of your true purpose?’
‘And run the risk of having her poke her nose into the whole conundrum? It is getting more dangerous by the day and she seems to think she is indestructible.’
‘I see your point.’ Hawk leant forward and frowned. ‘Have you been in a fight? Your face looks bruised.’
‘Cassandra Northrup hit me. Hard.’
Stephen began to laugh. ‘She makes you foolish, Nathaniel, and it’s about high time that one of us found a woman who managed to do that. Besides, she is your wife.’ He raised his glass and drank, his smile laconic. ‘It’s been years since you have given any woman the time of day and this one...’ He stopped as though picking his words carefully. ‘This one makes you feel again.’
Anger. Wrath. Irritation. Frustration. Helplessness. Fear. For what she was involved in and for the risks she took. Aye, Hawk was right in his summation of strongly feeling something. Nat stayed quiet.
‘There is another matter that I have heard amongst the whispers of gossip, Nat, and I am not sure if this is a good time to tell you of it.’
‘Something about Cassandra Northrup, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
Nathaniel took a breath in because by the tone of voice that Stephen was using he knew the news was bad. ‘What is it?’
‘She has a son.’
The bottom fell out of his world in one dizzying and frantic sort of disbelief. Of all the things he had expected Hawk to say this was not one of them.
‘How old?’
‘Word is that she returned from Paris with him in tow.’
Nat’s hands scraped through his hair as he tried to recover a lost composure.
Was the child his?
Anger filtered his world with a red haze, the beat of his heart drumming in his ears as he put down his glass. Had Sandrine been pregnant in Perpignan and not told him? His mind skirted back to the timings.
After his behaviour in the carriage he felt it unwise to confront Cassandra with this new question, for the answer she gave back would determine everything. He wished that he could have gone then and there to her and sworn that the parenthood of her son did not matter to him.
But he knew that it did. With care, he straightened in the leather seat.
‘Is it yours?’
Stephen’s voice came through a billowing loss and for the first time in a long while Nat found himself unable to formulate even the smallest of thoughts.
* * *
Cassie held her son close against the night and listened to his breathing, the moon coming in between the curtains of patterned velvet, illuminating the bed with its paleness.
Jamie came to her room in the night with a wail of worry, another dream disturbing slumber and leaving him upset and frightened. Often she instructed his nanny to let him come to her in the early hours before the dawn if he awoke for she liked sleeping with him.
She wondered if he remembered his time in Paris, the uncertainty, the desperation. She hoped he held no recollection of her crying out for Nathanael and searching for a face that might look like his in the Place des Vosges or the busy markets of Les Halles. She had walked the length and the breadth of the city, hoping that she might see him once in the uniform of an army officer, in the Luxembourg Gardens and the Parc du Champ de Mars opposite the L’Ecole Militaire. Just to explain. At the Hôtel des Invalides she had waited on the esplanade and searched. This face and that one. Men ravaged by battle and memories, but none of them were Nathanael Colbert.
Today in the carriage she had hated him. No, she shook her head for that was not quite true. Even membership in a club renowned for its debauchery could not dull the hopes she harboured. His kiss had been full of anger, a savage punishing caress, but underneath the fury, passion simmered. She had felt it sliding beneath intent and taking root, anger compromised by lust.
Crying over the loss of Sarah before finally going to sleep and then being woken when Jamie had padded into her room in the small hours of the morning, Cassandra felt dislocated.
Life and death was entwined irrevocably and now, as the moon waned and the dawn called she knew that she would have to be honest no matter what the consequences. Jamie was a boy who needed a father and it was only right that she gave Nathaniel Lindsay the chance to get to know his son.
Their son. A child born from love and from passion.
Tears pooled behind her eyes. Jamie was the reason she had lived, a calling hope when everything else had been lost. He had looked like Nathaniel from the first moment he had been born, wise eyes staring up at her under a shock of black hair. And every single year the resemblance had grown.
Turning over, she looked at the ceiling and remembered the kiss in the carriage. She wanted that feeling again, pounded
