vows two days later in the chapel to one side of the Lindsay town house and it was a small and private occasion. Stephen Hawkhurst was the best man and Maureen the bridesmaid. William Lindsay, the old Earl of St Auburn, had sent a note declining his attendance. Cassandra’s sister Anne had not been able to make the journey down from her home in Scotland because she was expecting her fourth child.
‘You look beautiful, Cassandra,’ Nathaniel said as she came down the stairs, her gown of cream silk shimmering in the new day.
‘The seamstress you organised was wonderfully fast and this time around I even have shoes.’
He laughed and took her hand, but poignancy lingered beneath the humour as both thought of the small house by the river.
‘Now and for ever,’ he whispered, brushing his lips across her cheek despite the onlookers, and Jamie standing between them wriggled in delight.
When the clergyman called them to an altar fashioned with flowers, the three of them linked hands and walked forward, her father, brother and Kenyon Riley just behind them.
‘Dearly beloved, we have come together in the presence of God to witness and bless the joining together of this man and this woman in holy matrimony...’
They looked at each other. This time they would be married under their own names, properly formed and completely legal.
* * *
A few hours later Stephen asked if he might speak to them both in the library where they would not be disturbed. After shutting the door he brought forth a leather satchel and took out a wad of documents from within.
‘I have a wedding present for you both.’
Nat stepped forward, the frown on his brow giving Cassie the inkling that he might know what was held within the papers. They looked important. Her own heart began to beat fast.
‘It is the official report from the British Service about the events that transpired in Perpignan after you were hurt in Languedoc, Nat.’
‘God.’ Her husband’s curse was soft.
‘It is not what you might think,’ Hawk said quickly and handed him over the account. ‘I have underlined the most crucial parts. Perhaps your wife might like to hear them.’
‘No.’ Her own voice, stiff with shock. How could Stephen Hawkhurst do this to her? She knew what would be within the letter, knew it to the bottom of her breaking heart. But Nathaniel was smiling and there was the suspicion of tears in his eyes as he began to read.
So it is concluded that on the fifth of November 1846 at about nine p.m. two masked men broke into the house of Mr Didier Desrosiers and Mr Gilbert Desrosiers in Toulouse, France, and killed each of them with two shots to the head.
Our agent in Languedoc, Nathaniel Lindsay, was also found on the right bank of the Basse River in Perpignan in the afternoon of the sixth of November 1846 with injuries to his head, stomach and right arm received by unknown enemies of England.
Despite extensive searching the perpetrators have never been brought to justice.
The fifth of November? The day before they had reached Perpignan. The day before she had told Lebansart the names. The day before she had branded herself a traitor. The day before shame had been scorched into memory.
‘It was not me, after all.’ The words slipped from her, tentative and unbelieving. ‘They were already dead?’
‘How did you know to find this?’ Nat spoke now directly to Stephen, the relief in his tone evident.
‘When you said you had married Cassandra Northrup in France I knew that you would not have done such a thing lightly. When you then went on to say that she had betrayed you, I realised there must be more to the affair than you had told me. At the Forsythe ball your wife made it known that there were others who died in Perpignan because of her actions and so I decided to find out exactly what it was she meant. After much searching I located this in a box that had been lost amongst others in the record room.’
‘Lost?’
‘Discarded, I think. Unsolved deaths. Cases closed to further enquiry.’
‘But their deaths were not my fault?’ The room felt farther away than it had been and a spinning lightness consumed Cassie as she groped for the chair at her side and sat down upon it. Hard. Nathaniel perched before her, taking her hands in his own.
‘This is the best wedding present anyone could give us, Hawk,’ he said, fingers warming her coldness. ‘Cassandra was already pregnant when Guy Lebansart caught us at Perpignan. By reciting the names she had seen on the letters in the place she had been captured, she was trying to save both me and our baby.’
‘But her confession and your injury took place the day after the Desrosiers died and at least a hundred miles to the south, so any information she gave was useless.’
‘I didn’t kill them.’ Tears of deliverance fell down her cheeks. ‘I didn’t,’ she repeated, the beauty of what the words implied washing across her like a balm.
‘You have both been to hell and back on a lie. But you married her again, Nat, even knowing this?’
‘When you love someone, you love them, Hawk, and there would be no argument in the world that would keep me from Cassandra. But this...this allows us peace.’
Standing up, he faced Stephen Hawkhurst. ‘I should have tried to find out all that transpired after that day, but I could not. I never wanted to sift through the files and know the betrayal.’
‘Yet you kept her name out of everything. I am not certain, had it been me, that I could have done that. King, country, oaths and all.’
Nathaniel laughed. ‘They are all nothing against love, my friend. Wait until you find it.’
Gathering the documents, Stephen replaced them in the book. ‘If Shavvon knew I had removed these...’ He left the rest unsaid. ‘But if I have them back tonight he will never need to know anything of it. He sends you his best, by the way.’
Cassie looked up at her husband and wondered just exactly who this Shavvon was that they were speaking of.
‘Our boss,’ Nathaniel explained quietly. ‘At the Service.’
‘But now this case is closed. For good.’ Stephen faced them both as he promised this and then he was gone, the documents in hand as the door closed behind him.
‘A marriage and a reprieve,’ Nat said as he drew Cassandra up against him. ‘A binding and a freedom. It has been quite a day, Lady Lindsay.’ She could feel his breath against her cheek, soft and known.
‘Lady Lindsay. I like the sound of that.’
‘My wife. An even better resonance.’
‘And what of the marriage night?’ she whispered, watching the flare of complicity and question in his pale eyes. ‘I think we should celebrate Hawk’s gift.’
‘I am completely at your disposal, my beautiful Sandrine,’ he returned, lifting her into his arms and taking her to bed.
