Chapter 29

"Become your mistress?"
Had someone sucked her mouth dry?She remembered that very first day she'd found herself an object of ridicule at Starkadder's? 'Oh whot 'ave we 'ere? Little Miss Toffee-Snout. Wif her brother. Lord Snotter-Nose.' Two terrified children. She thought about the things that had happened since, everything, to come to this. My God.
Had she really thought he wouldn't be so low? A man whose aspirations were half an inch off the ground?
A man who asked for a kiss when she'd demanded to know what he wanted,wasn't going to let her off the hook for nothing.
"And if I don't?" Why not ask? After all she wasn't anyone's servant, his mistress either, so she wasn't exactly going to oblige.
"I'm not mean, Miss Armstrong. You have ten minutes."
Ten minutes? She gave a little start. To pack up her life here? And Gil in the herb garden for God's sake? That might present difficulties.
"Ruby and Pearl?"
"Will not be joining us, I am afraid."
"But-"
It wasn't what she was asking.
"They're not my type. Ruby is ... well ... Isuppose the kindest thing I could say is that Ruby is Ruby. As for Pearl? Pearl is plain. If it's going to be a m閚age, I choose my partners with care."
The measuring coolness of his eyes beneath those straight brows, the lack of curl to what she already knew were sensuous lips, left her in no doubt she heard these words.
She wasn't going to agree. Nothing was further from her mind because nothing was worth that. Not for her, a woman who, having escaped chains, would never be bound again. Who saw the door there and knew she was going to walk through it. Ten minutes. She had ten minutes. Code green she believed. Time to gather up a few items in addition to the bags stashed in cupboards here and in Barwych itself.
But she needed to be honest about why she now prepared to forgo, not just the chance to stay here and find out who she was, but to examine papers that might prove it. Prove it? If it was anything to do with him she wouldn't. There was no doubt about that.
She needed to be clear, now it came to uprooting Ruby and Pearl, that it was nothing to do with her fear of giving up the one thing she'd never given any man. The bit of her life she exerted control over. Because it was the only bit that was hers.
And nothing to do with fearing to give it to him.
And she wasn't.
Which was why, despite the way instinct screamed, she raised her chin.
"Very well, Lord Hawley, you win. I'll be your mistress."


***

"Be his mistress? Have yer gone stark ravin' bonkers? Saff, yer can't. No. I won't hear of it."
Standing there in the bedroom at Barwych, Cass knew exactly how this looked. But how the hell could she leave here while there was breath in her body? Until she discovered who she was? It was all she had.
Besides, deep down, in places no light had shone on for years, she refused to cower. If her skin had sweated perhaps but it didn't.
Any situation in life was mobile. Changeable. At twenty-seven, was she holding on to something she should let go of? And if she was going to let go of it, well, at least it wasn't with Gil.
'I choose my partners with care.'
She folded her chemise into the battered valise. Did he think because he'd seen her underwear, seen her, she liked words like that? Plainly. Well, she didn't. Certainly not given what she'd seen of his partners this far. Unless he meant, 'care to cheese everyone off,' care to make everyone look at him. Unless he was blind as a blindfolded bat, choose and care were not words she'd use in connection with his partners. She reached for her stockings from the heap of clothes on the bed.
"You hearing of it or not, has nothing to do with this. Short of leaving here within the hour, I have no choice."
"I knew I should have soddin' well fetched the meat mallet. I knew I should have swung. As fer takin' yer ter soddin' Chessin'tun. Yer can't. Yer just can't."
"Let go of my stockings, Ruby." Cass grasped them. "And stop arguing. I don't have time. The carriage will be here soon. I've made up my mind. Anyway he has things I want ... I mean the papers of course."
At least, she hoped she did. Funny how her mouth dried though. As if she was human when she was solid stone.
"Look, yer think I don't know yer little secret."
"I'm sure you do." She cleared her throat of the constriction. It seemed they all did. For the first time that bothered her because for the first time it seemed silly. "It was hardly less than common knowledge."
"Well, then, take this." Ruby dug her hand into her apron pocket. "I mean I guess now Gil ain't sufferin' no more slings'n arrows'n that, I don't need it. Probably don't need them pockets either now the truth's out."
"What is it?"
"Laudanum."
"Laudanum?" Cass stared at the tiny glass phial.
"I got it fer Gil's cough."
Cass could imagine. The cough would be the last thing Ruby bought it for.
"Go on, take it. Fer him. Yer give him enough of it and he won't know a thing."
Cass's palms sweated on the cool silk of the stocking. How true. But laudanum? Wouldn't that show Ruby she was scared? And not just Ruby. Why not signal to herself from the top of the hilltop there she was scared? Of him?
Besides, what if she tipped too much and some accident befell him? Mother of God, maybe for that matter that was what had happened to Gil?
"Don't be silly. I wouldn't want to kill him."
"I mean it." Ruby closed Cass's fingers around the phial. "Yer ain't nothin' like me. I soddin' knows yer. Known yer all them soddin' years. Since that first day'n all. Known why yer never wanted no man when yer could have had plenty. Their protection'n all,whot some of 'em offered fer yer.How keepin' yerself was a matter of whot pride yer had left yer. This'll cost yer. Just a little drip--it's all yer needs to make all yer troubles go away fer the night. Then ... then yer can do yer searchin'."
She could. Especially when it was what this was about really.
Was she prevaricating over this phial because he wasn't unhandsome? And she was thinking about losing something at twenty-seven that, to quote Ruby, was no soddin' good to her? Well?
She was a thief. A corner was never so tight she couldn't escape it. Even that night with the Wentworth emeralds had shown her that. Providence had taken the form of his coach, just as she was facing a trek across frosty fields to the nearest town. Then it had taken the form of him when the coach had stopped. Why shouldn't it now take the form of that phial? The proof she needed? And then, whatever happened next?
It would mean leaving here, of course. But Devorlane Hawley had made it clear he didn't intend for her to stay. Were she to prove this place was rightfully hers, that she had been stolen away and forced into thievery, would some kind of pardon exist for a woman like her?
She doubted it. Any one of her crimes was enough to hang her. But Ruby was right. Laudanum had its uses, and she would be a complete fool not to face Devorlane Hawley without it. And if she didn't, Ruby might think she was keen.
"Very well." She clasped the phial. "But only for tonight."
"What about the rest?"
"Expect me back by midnight, will you? Code orange, I'd say. The best we could hope for."