Mary Balogh - Seducing an Angel

"WHAT I am going to do is find a man."

The speaker was Cassandra Belmont, the widowed Lady Paget. She was standing at the sitting room window of the house she had rented on Portman Street in London. The house had come fully furnished, but the furnishings as well as the curtains and carpets had seen better days.

They had probably seen better days even ten years ago. It was a shabby genteel place, well suited to Lady Paget's circumstances.

"To marry? " Alice Haytor, her lady's companion, asked, startled.

Cassandra watched with world-weary eyes and scornfully curved lips as a woman walked past in the street below, holding the hand of a little boy who clearly did not want either to have his hand held or to be proceeding along the street at such a trot. Everything in the lines of the woman's body spoke of irritation and impatience. Was she the child's mother or his nurse? Either way, it did not matter. The child's rebellion and misery were none of Cassandra's concern. She had enough concerns of her own.

"Absolutely not," she said in answer to the question. "Besides, I would have to find a fool."

"A fool?"

Cassandra smiled, though it was not a happy expression, and she did not turn to direct it at Alice. The woman and child had passed out of sight.

A gentleman was hurrying along the street in the opposite direction, frowning down at the ground in front of his feet. He was late for some appointment, at a guess, and doubtless thought his life depended upon getting where he was going on time. Perhaps he was right. Probably he was wrong.

"Only a fool would marry me," she explained. "No, it is definitely not for /marriage/ that I need a man, Alice."

"Oh, Cassie," her companion said, clearly troubled, "you surely cannot mean – " She did not complete the thought, or need to. There was only one thing Cassandra /could/ mean.

"Oh, but I do, Alice," Cassandra said, turning and regarding her with amused, hard, mocking eyes. Alice was gripping the arms of the chair on which she sat and leaning slightly forward as if she were about to stand up, though she did not do so. "Are you shocked?"

"Your purpose when we decided to come to London," Alice said, "was to look for employment, Cassie. We were /both/ going to look. And Mary too."

"It was not a realistic plan, though, was it?" Cassandra said, laughing without amusement. "Nobody wants to hire a housemaid-turned-cook who has a young daughter but is not and never has been married. And a letter of recommendation from me would do poor Mary no good at all, would it?

And – ah, forgive me, Alice – not many people will want to employ a governess who is more than forty years old when there are plenty of young women available. I am sorry to put that brutal truth into words, but youth is the modern god. You were an excellent governess to me when I was a child, and you have been an excellent companion and friend since I grew up. But your age is against you now, you know. As for me, well, unless I somehow disguise my identity, which would not work when it came time to offer letters of recommendation, I am doomed in the employment market, and in any other, for that matter. No one is going to want to hire an axe murderer in any capacity at all, I suppose."

"Cassie!" her former governess said, her hands flying up to cover her cheeks. "You must /not/ describe yourself in such a way. Not even in fun."

Cassandra was unaware that they had been having fun. She laughed anyway.

"People /are/ prone to exaggerate, are they not?" she said. "Even to fabricate? It is what half the known world believes of me, Alice – because it is /fun/ to believe such a preposterous thing. People will run screaming from me, I daresay, every time I step out of doors. It will have to be an /intrepid/ man that I find."

"Oh, Cassie," Alice said, tears swimming in her eyes. "I wish you would not – "

"I have tried making my fortune at the tables," Cassandra said, checking off the point on one finger as though there were more to follow. "I would have come away more destitute than I already was if I had not had a stroke of very modest luck with the final hand. I took my winnings and ran, having discovered that I do not have anything like the nerve to be a gambler, not to mention the skill. Besides, I was growing very hot indeed under my widow's veil, and several people were quite openly trying to guess who I was."

She tapped a second finger, but there was nothing further to add. She had not tried anything else, simply because there was nothing else to try. Except one thing.

"If I cannot pay the rent next week," she said, "we will all be out in the street, Alice, and I would hate that."

She laughed again.

"Perhaps," Alice said, "you ought to appeal to your brother again, Cassie. He surely – "

"I have already appealed to Wesley," Cassandra said, her voice hard again. "I asked for shelter for a short while until I could find a way to be independent. And what was his answer? He was very sorry. He would love to help me, but he was about to leave on an extended walking tour of Scotland with a group of his friends – who would be seriously inconvenienced if he let them down at the last moment. Where exactly in Scotland would I send this new appeal, Alice? And would I beg more abjectly this time? And for you and Mary and Belinda as well as for myself? Oh, yes, and for you too, Roger. Did you think I had forgotten you?"

A large, shaggy dog of indeterminate breed had got up from his place before the hearth and limped over to her to have his one ear scratched – the other was all but missing. He limped because he was also missing one leg from the knee joint down. He looked up at her with his one good eye and panted happily. His coat never looked anything but unkempt, even though it was clean and had a daily brushing. Cassandra ruffled it with both hands.

"I would not go to Wesley even if he were still in London," she said, after the dog had lain down at her feet and set his chin down between his paws with a huff of contentment. She turned back to the window and drummed her fingertips slowly on the sill. "No, I am going to find a man. A /rich/ man. Very rich. And he will support us all royally. It will not be charity, Alice. It will be employment, and I shall give excellent value for money."

There was a hard edge of contempt to her voice, though it was unclear whether her scorn was directed at the unknown gentleman who would become her protector or at herself. She had been a wife for nine years, but she had never before been a mistress.

Now she would be.

"Oh," Alice said, her voice filled with distress, "has it really come to this? I will not allow it. There has to be another answer. I will /not/ allow it. Not when one of your reasons is that you feel obliged to support me."

Cassandra's eyes followed an ancient carriage as it lumbered its way along the street below the window, its coachman looking as aged as it.

"You will not allow it?" she said. "But you cannot stop me, Alice. The days when I was /Cassandra/ and you were /Miss Haytor/ are long gone. I may have very little left. I have almost no money and absolutely no reputation. I have no friends beyond these doors and no relatives who will inconvenience themselves in order to help me. But I do have one thing, one asset that will assure me gainful employment and restore comfort and security to our lives. I am beautiful. And desirable."

Under other circumstances the boast might have sounded unpardonably conceited. But it was made with hard mockery. For, of course, though it was perfectly true, it was nothing to be conceited about. Rather, it was something to be cursed. It had secured her a wealthy husband at the age of eighteen. It had brought her countless admirers during the nine years of her marriage. And it had brought her, within a ten-year period, a deeper misery than she had ever dreamed a lifetime could hold. It was time to use it for her own gain – to acquire rent for this shabby house and food for the table and clothes for their backs and a little extra to set aside for a rainy day.