Becket's Last Stand

She shook her head. “Not as long as you’re here, no. You’d never let anything bad happen to me.”

His smile faded. “Cassandra, you sound like some vacant-headed miss in a fairy tale. We all protect each other, that’s our way. But I need you to be afraid, just a little bit. I need you to depend on yourself, in case I’m not here.”

She placed a hand on his forearm. “But where would you be, if not here? Are you going to London? I know Chance is going there again, Julia told me, to search for Beales, but you won’t go, will you?”

He shook his head. “No, I’ll stay here. But there are times when I’m assigned to the ships, and if an attack were to come while I’m at sea on the Respite, I need to know that you will obey Ainsley, do exactly what is expected of you, even if that means boarding the frigate and heading to America. No hesitation, Cassandra, no arguing. I need to know that.”

Cassandra pushed her tongue forward, to moisten her suddenly dry lips. “But you’d come for me in America. Just as soon as you could?”

He looked away from her. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. Once this is over, once Beales is out of our lives, I might decide to travel the Continent for a while, or possibly look for an estate of my own. I’ve been reading quite a bit about farming. A useless enterprise here on the Marsh, but there are some interesting things being done in crop rotation elsewhere in Kent.”

“Is that so?” Cassandra said, then bit her lip.

“I know, I’m boring you to flinders, aren’t I? Which means I don’t suppose you’d like to hear about an American inventor I’ve read about for some time now. There’s talk of a submersible boat he might consider testing somewhere here in England, and— Cassandra, stop looking at me like that.”

“How am I looking at you, Court?” she asked him blinking furiously, as tears were daring to sting at the backs of her eyes. “Am I perhaps looking at you like a woman who realizes that the man she loves would rather sink to the bottom of the sea in a submersible boat than be with her?”

“Cassandra, please don’t say things you can’t possibly mean, not—what in bloody blazes did you do to your hair!”

She’d been so angry with him that she hadn’t realized that her hood had fallen back in her agitation, and she quickly raised her hands to her head, attempting to hide the surprise she’d planned to spring on him at the dinner table, when there’d be others there to deflect his anger. “Nothing. I did nothing to my hair.”

“You cut it,” he said accusingly as she tried, without success, to pull the hood back over her hair. “How could you have—why did you do that?”

“We didn’t cut it, Court. For pity’s sake, all we did was put it up, see?” She turned her back to him and began pulling out pins, letting them fall to the ground as she pulled and tugged at her annoying curls until they tangled around her fingers, tumbled down past her shoulders, all her childish ringlets blowing crazily in the breeze from the Channel.

“Thank God,” he said, reaching out to touch a thick ringlet that had fallen directly between her eyes.

“Yes, yes, thank God,” Cassandra said, pushing the lock of hair behind her ear, not that it did much good, for her hair was so fine, even though she had masses of it, that it just fell into her face once more, it and several others. “You say that because you don’t have to brush it, Court. There are days I wish I could be sheared, like one of the sheep. I hate my hair. I loathe it. It…it makes me look like a baby.”

He looked at her for a long moment, and then shook his head. “Someday you’ll change your mind about that, Cassandra. Probably the first day you step into Society and the gentlemen trip over themselves, rushing to your side.”

“I don’t want gentlemen tripping over themselves, Court. Why do people think I should want that? Morgan says she’ll give me a Season, and then amuse herself by turning away the undeserving, vetting all those who propose marriage to me, and even have Ethan place bets at his club as to who first will compose an ode to my stupid, upturned nose.”

Courtland smiled. “Your nose isn’t stupid, Cassandra. It’s delightful, and fits your face very nicely. Although I believe I’d rather Julia introduces you to Society. Morgan would probably help you fall into scrapes every second day.”

“It doesn’t matter, because I’m not going into Society, joining a gaggle of simpering little girls on the lookout for an advantageous marriage. Papa will go to America, I’m daily more certain of that, and I will have no choice but to go with him, the unmarried daughter, the spinster. And all because you, Courtland Becket, are the biggest fool in nature.”

“Because you love me,” he said, pulling the hood up over her hair, tucking her curls away from her face. “Cassandra, you have no idea what that word even means. You’re too young.”

It was an old argument, and she had no new answers.

“My mama knew she loved Papa when she was no older than I am now. A year from now, she was a mother. I’m not a child anymore, Court, except to you.”

“You’re a child as long as you act like a child, Cassandra,” he told her, putting his hands on his thighs, as if preparing to stand, walk away from her.

But not this time. This time she wouldn’t let him dismiss her so easily. As Morgan had told her just the other night, it was time she took the initiative.

“Is this the action of a child?” she asked, grabbing on to the edges of his cloak and pulling herself toward him.

Before he could react, push her away, she aimed her mouth at his, sealing herself against him with more enthusiasm than finesse, for it was her first kiss.

She felt a shock, a shiver, run through them both. Hers delicious. His, probably more one of surprise, hopefully not disgust.

She let go of his cloak and flung her arms around his neck, holding him close, grinding her lips against his, goading him into reacting, daring him to remain his stoic, quiet, immovable self.

For a moment, she felt his mouth soften.

For a moment, she felt his arms raising up, as if longing to clasp her close, hold her against him.

For a moment.

And then he pushed her away and stood up, looking down at her in that stern, solemn way he had, that fruitless display of being So Grown-Up when she was Such A Child.

“Cassandra…” he began, and then sighed. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“But I did do it,” she told him, getting to her feet. “And you liked it, I know you did.”

“No, sweetheart, I didn’t. I know we’re not brother and sister, we’re not bound by blood. But that still doesn’t make it right. You’re Ainsley’s daughter, a man I owe my respect, my admiration, and definitely my life. It would not be fair to him, or to you, to deny you the world that’s out there because of some wrongheaded idea you’ve got that you and I are destined to be together. And I’m too old for you, in any case. Years too old.”

“Papa was nearly as old as you are now when he married my mother. We have a life to live, Court, and you’re wasting it, being so stubborn.”

He smiled, seemed to relax somewhat in his skin. “Is that supposed to be in the way of a proposal, Cassandra? If so, I think the wrong person is speaking here. And this person is not speaking of proposals.”

“Only because that person is thick as a plank!” Cassandra said, losing her temper. “Just you wait, Courtland Becket. One day you will go down on both knees, begging for me to love you, and I will snap my fingers—like this!—and laugh in your aged face.”

She turned on her heel and lifted her skirts as she ran up the steps, chased by his voice. “And don’t put up your hair again!”

Tears were stinging at Cassandra’s eyes by the time she threw open the French doors to the drawing room and burst inside, intent on crossing the room and heading up to her bedchamber, to have herself a good cry, probably, or to curse Courtland in private.

“Callie? Where are rushing in from, sweetheart?”

Cassandra stopped, wiped at her eyes. “Nowhere, Papa,” she said. “It’s…it’s coming on to rain.”

He folded the newspaper he’d been holding in front of him and motioned for her to join him on the couch. “It’s difficult to find a moment not crowded by so many other people, isn’t it? Let’s take advantage of this one, shall we?”

She nodded, untying her cloak and folding it over the back of a chair, pretending not to notice when her father looked at her hair, that was as wild as the wind could make it. “Is there something you wanted to discuss with me, Papa?”

“Must there be something in particular to discuss?” he asked her as she sat down beside him, kissed her cheek.

Cassandra believed her father to be the most handsome man in creation, and had no doubt her mother had taken one look at him and fallen desperately, totally in love. Even now, with silver working its way into his coal-black hair, he had the look of a prince, perhaps even a king. Tall, slim, straight.

She looked at the portrait of her mother, life size, hanging above the large fireplace, and wished, not for the first time, that her father had posed with her, so that she could just once see them together as they were on the island, young, wonderfully in love, and so very, very happy.

“Mama was so beautiful,” she said, sighing. “Do you still miss her?”

“Every day,” he said, also looking at the portrait. “You’re so very like her, you know.”

Cassandra shook her head, having heard this before, but never believing it to be true. Posed in a gorgeous, full-skirted striped dress of vibrant hues, her ebony hair hanging in ringlets past her shoulders, eyes such a vibrant green, her mother had been glorious, so alive, Cassandra had often, as a child, felt certain she would jump down from the painting at any moment to give her daughter a hug. “I’m small, like she was, but she was so colorful and I’m so…so bland.”