Cassie ran a distracted hand through her hair. “Oh, I don’t know. But he has been gone, hours at a time, to Genoa.”
“Of course. He’s spent much time with Daniele, as he has told ye. Lord, madonna, I thought ye’d come to know his lordship better than that.”
Cassie drew a shuddering breath. She wanted to believe him. Slowly, she nodded. “Very well, Scargill. I suppose that I have been hasty, and possibly unfair.”
“More than possibly,” Scargill said, his eyes never wavering from her face.
“Oh, all right. You have dressed me down quite enough. I will consider all that you have said.”
When Scargill left her, Cassie wandered out onto the balcony and gazed toward Genoa. It came as something of a shock to her to realize that she had been with him for nearly eight months now. She frowned and caught her breath. Ten months ago, she and Edward had been making plans for their life together. Try as she might, she could not seem to picture Edward’s face clearly in her mind.
She looked down over the lush gardens, so very different from the gardens in England. Sounds of laughter and lilting Italian came to her ears, and it took her a moment to realize that it was not English she was hearing. It is I who have changed, she said softly to herself, and she knew a moment of panic. I have changed exactly as he said I would.
“Edward.” Saying his name aloud brought nothing save vague memories that seemed to belong to another Cassie, a Cassie who was no longer she.
She wandered downstairs, stopping a moment to breathe in the sweet fragrance of a full vase of roses. Savoring the smell of them awakened her senses, and she knew that, even now, she ached for him. She pounded her fist savagely against the closed library door. It is lust you feel, she thundered to herself. How could you feel more toward a man who has done what he has to you?
She turned abstractedly at the sound of Marrina’s voice. It was Signore Montalto, come to see the earl.
“Ah, ’tis a pity,” he said after Cassie had informed him of the earl’s absence.
She gazed at him, clearly distracted, her thoughts elsewhere.
He mumbled something about papers, and Cassie, in an effort to get him what he wanted and thus have him gone from the villa, motioned him to follow her to the earl’s library. Together, they sorted through the ribbon-tied stacks of documents until Signore Montalto waved the paper he was searching for with a grunt of triumph.
“I have it, signorina. Please inform the earl that I shall return to discuss this matter with him.”
But Cassie hadn’t heard him. Toward the back of the drawer lay a neat stack of letters, letters that all carried the earl’s name and direction, letters all written in the same spidery handwriting.
“Signorina?”
Cassie raised bewildered eyes to Signore Montalto’s face.
“I have found the papers.”
“Si signore,” she said, forcing a smile. She wanted to scream at him to leave her alone, but instead, she schooled herself to escort him from the room and bid him a hurried good-bye.
Cassie quietly closed the library door and returned to the earl’s large mahogany desk. She picked up the letters, four of them in all.
“It cannot be true,” she said to the empty room. The spidery handwriting was as familiar to her as was her own messy scrawl. How many times Becky Petersham had chided her, had tried to train her fingers to form more economical, graceful letters.
With shaking hands, she pulled out a single page, dated not a month before. She read of Eliott and his growing regard for Eliza Pennworthy, an attachment that Becky believed would lead to marriage after Eliott’s year of mourning. For an instant, she did not understand, until she realized that it was her death that Eliott was mourning.
She read hungrily for news of Edward, but found no mention of him until she opened the first letter, written some seven months before. “The viscount’s grief,” she read, “has given me many sleepless nights, though I know that we did only what was necessary. It is my understanding that he has already resumed his military career and is on his way at this very moment to join General Howe’s staff in New York. I trust that he will come to no harm amid the rabble fighting against England. In any case, it is for the best. He was never meant to have my Cassandra.”