Isabelle had little difficulty in guessing the woman’s profession. In the dim light she’d seemed pretty, still untouched by despair and illness. Perhaps she had been born for better things. Perhaps she, too, had once been betrayed, left with no choices at all.
Choices. Isabelle had believed herself beyond the possibility of change in her life when Cassidy had turned up on her doorstep in San Francisco, a slender figure dressed in dusty denim trousers and an oversized shirt, scuffed boots, pack, bandanna, and battered hat. At first glance Isabelle had mistaken her for a boy—until she’d tugged the hat from her head and long hair, thick and black, tumbled loose about her shoulders.
A girl, to be sure. Tall she was, but there was no mistaking the curve of generous hips beneath the cinched waist of the jeans, nor the bosom only partially disguised by the baggy shirt. The face was strong but delicate; it might have been attractive under the smudges of dirt. Striking, at the very least.
“Isabelle?” the girl said, the hat clutched between her work-roughened hands. “I’m Cassidy. Cassidy Holt, Edith’s daughter.”
Isabelle could still recall the shock of that moment. Edith’s daughter. A three-year-old child when Isabelle last saw her; she’d never expected to meet any of the Holts again. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined that Edith’s youngest child would come to find her.
She could see Edith in the girl’s eyes, so wide and gray. But it was not that which arrested Isabelle’s attention. There was something that radiated from the girl, an undefinable purity such as Isabelle hadn’t seen in many years.
Without any notion of the hidden doors she opened, Isabelle had welcomed Cassidy into her modest home. The girl had dropped her heavy pack, then flung herself into Isabelle’s arms.
Isabelle smiled, remembering. She might have been taken aback at such exuberant affection from a stranger if it hadn’t been so reminiscent of Edith. Wild and charismatic Edith, who’d been possessed of so great a power…
But Edith was dead, and her husband and son had vanished. Cassidy was an orphan, raised by her father’s relations. She had come to her mother’s dearest friend for help.
Help in finding her mother’s people in England. It was all in a letter Cassidy had memorized when she was seven years old. A letter meant for Isabelle but never sent.
Forgive me, Edith, Isabelle thought. I owed you so much, but I couldn’t help you when you needed me most.
How many times had she apologized in her mind, and then answered herself the same way: What would you have done? Raised a young child in the kind of life you lived?
Even that was no answer. You could have taken her home. To England.
England, to which Isabelle had sworn she’d never return. Fifteen years ago she could not have done it. But when Cassidy came, everything changed.
Cassidy had already journeyed unescorted through hundreds of miles of rough country, by coach and rail, shielded by her shining innocence. There was no trace of worldliness in her words, her face; in spite of the loss of her parents at so young an age, she hadn’t learned bitterness or cynicism. Not of the kind Isabelle knew so well.
But no amount of hope or courage would see her safely across the sea and into an alien world filled with a thousand obstacles and pitfalls waiting for the uninitiated.
Isabelle was a graduate of that hard school. There was no question of letting Edith’s daughter walk into the dragon’s nest alone.
Escorting Cassidy to England was away of repaying an old debt. Cassidy’s mother had been her one true friend during a very bad time—and, oddly enough, it seemed that experience hadn’t entirely steeled Isabelle’s heart to the gentler emotions.
So here she was, chasing Cassidy across one of the largest cities in the world and praying for the goodwill of a certain Lord Greyburn.
Would he see through her own brazen masquerade? She scoffed at herself. Why should any of them remember her? She’d meant nothing, counted for nothing in their world. Let them accept Cassidy; that was all she asked. Let her kin be less like men and more like beasts, if those beasts were like Edith Holt…