“Thank you, Cousin,” Cassidy said with that throaty little rasp of excitement. “It must be this dress. I’ve never had one like it before.”
“Call me Quentin, please. And the gown merely enhances your natural beauty—Cassidy, if I may?”
Cassidy laughed, the startled sound of a girl at her coming-out encountering the practiced charm of a man-about-town. “The back drags like a fish’s tail. It’s .so close around the legs, I feel like a roped heifer. I can barely breathe. But Rowena said that everyone in London wears all this so tight—” She broke off, as if she’d suddenly guessed the impropriety of discussing feminine garments with the opposite sex. Silk whispered as she turned. “I wouldn’t have known what to do without Rowena and Isabelle’s help,” she said. “Do you like it?”
Braden heard the subtle difference in her voice and knew she was addressing him. He felt her unseen gaze as he might feel the sun come out from behind a cloud.
She wanted his approval. She wanted smooth compliments from him, the sort that came so easily to Quentin. She still hadn’t guessed.
Would Telford find Cassidy beautiful now, in her London gown selected by Rowena’s faultless taste? Did a change of clothing strip away the roughness, the awkwardness, the naivete of the trouser-clad American girl who’d washed up on his doorstep?
“The dress is… most appropriate,” he said. “Rowena chose well.”
“Oh, dash it.” Quentin said. “Forgive me, ladies. Brother, I have an urgent letter from Gevaudan, regarding the Convocation. He told me to deliver it to you immediately. I’d completely forgotten.” Paper rusded in his hands. “Here it is.”
Braden reached for the letter. The marquis de Gevaudan, his maternal grandfather, had not written in many years. Perhaps the marquis was planning to attend the Convocation in spite of his poor health—
The sheet of paper grazed Braden’s fingers and then was snatched away. “Oh, how clumsy of me,” Quentin said. “I’ve dropped it.”
There was a moment’s pause. Braden stepped forward impatiently. “Kindly retrieve it, Quentin.”
“Let me,” Cassidy said. He heard her kneel to pick up the paper.
“Thank you,” he said, holding out his hand.
She hesitated. “But this is—”
“If you please.” She handed it to him, and he glanced down. “I’ll read it later.”
“How can you read a picture?” Cassidy asked.
Mrs. Smith gasped softly. Gripped by suspicion, Braden felt the surface of the paper.
It was not marked with the usual impressions of writing. The lines engraved on the surface were softer, larger, more random, forming shapes instead of letters.
The betrayal caught him unaware, like a piece of furniture left just a little out of place to trip him up in a familiar room.
“A rather nice likeness of Cassidy, don’t you think?” Quentin said. “I did the sketch in the carriage on the way here.”
A sketch. Quentin had deliberately tricked him, and let the paper fall so that Cassidy and Mrs. Smith could see its contents. See, as he could not, that it wasn’t a letter at all.
He opened his hand and let the paper drift to the carpet.
“My brother,” he said, “knows perfectly well that I cannot judge the accuracy of the portrait. His demonstration is hardly subtle, but it is effective.” He looked directly toward Cassidy. “You see, I am blind.”
Five
At first Cassidy was certain he was joking. She smoothed the gathered front of her skirt and smiled uncertainly, her heart still racing from the day’s countless new experiences. She’d gone out with Rowena into London’s damp, alien canyons to find new clothes, as Greyburn had ordered. She had taken Rowena’s cool advice, let herself be turned about and pinned and measured like a doll by the women in the shops, one after another. She’d been bombarded by deafening noise, dazed by crowds of people the likes of which she’d never seen, ushered directly from shop to carriage and carriage to shop, shown a dizzying array of gloves and hats and parasols, talked over as if she had no mind other own, pinched and pulled into a ready-made dress that made it impossible to walk with more than the shortest stride. She had stared at herself in the mirror and not known who looked back out of the glass.