My dear Mariah— Sir Robert began—a familiar greeting, even after so many years, for, if what Madame Zirelli had said, she’d not seen him for nearly twenty.
Cressida tried to remember what she knew of Sir Robert. He was married. He had children, she thought. Though his had once been a name with which she’d been familiar, she’d not heard mention of him in years.
I do not know if this will find you, or indeed where you are or whether you are married. I was saddened at news which filtered through to me in Basle, where I’ve lived the past sixteen years, of your divorce, but I hope you have found the happiness you deserve.
Throughout the fifteen years of my marriage, I have thought of you with great fondness, hoping that life has treated you well. I have been living abroad, returning only recently after my dear wife, Lucille, died, and indeed I’d not have risked stirring up the past, Mariah, were it not for an occurrence some weeks ago which begs for clarification if I am ever to sleep easily again.
It is difficult for me to write this, but I have no choice for if—as I believe—I have been in ignorance these past nineteen years, then you have carried a terrible burden.
Several weeks ago, I attended Lady Sommer’s ball where I chanced upon a girl who bore such an astonishing resemblance to you that I cried out to my friend, “Who is that young woman?”
“Don’t you know your own niece?” he told me. “Your sister’s child, Miss Madeleine Hardwicke. She is to marry Lord Slitherton in six weeks.”
In the intervening sennight, I have pondered the matter and my disquiet has not abated.
Mariah, you cannot know how distressed I was at our enforced separation and the lengths to which my parents went to ensure I remained at Oxford rather than rush back to see you when I heard you’d been engaged as a governess in Dorset.
As you did not reply to my letters, I did not persist, thinking you wished to close that chapter of your life.
It is strange, returning to England after sixteen years to find both my parents dead, and soon to follow them to the grave, my older sister, whom I feel I never knew, the mother of a child she believed she could never have. I have so many unanswered questions.
Perhaps you have some of the answers. Nothing would gladden my heart more than to meet with you again, so we may discuss all that happened so many years ago.
With fond memories,
Yours ever, Robert.
Cressida dropped the letter. Madame Zirelli’s kindness toward Cressida had stemmed from a genuine wish to supply her with the knowledge to control her own fertility, because it was this lack of knowledge that had ruined her own life.
Ruined, because she’d been stripped of a child she could never know.
Tonight Madame Zirelli had learned that Miss Madeleine Hardwicke was the daughter she could never acknowledge. In three days, Miss Hardwicke would marry the aging peer, Lord Slitherton.
Cressida refolded the single sheet of vellum and tapped the table with it, unable to dismiss the uncomfortable knowledge that the wedding would be as decidedly lacking in joy for Madame Zirelli as it would be for Miss Hardwicke. And poor Miss Hardwicke would have to live with the consequences for many unhappy years to come.
Slowly, Cressida rose, tossed back her head and studied her face in the looking glass.
She could not think of Miss Hardwicke now. Cressida had other priorities. No, poor Miss Hardwicke and her unhappy state of the heart would have to wait.
But maybe, just maybe, she thought as she pinched color into her cheeks and bit her lips, she could unite some unlikely forces and give the ton something to really get excited over. Something that would advance the cause of womanhood, for a change.
* * * *
“Cressida!” Justin, billiard cue in hand, jerked round as Cressida pushed open the double doors to the games room and stepped inside. A nervous tic pulled at the corner of his mouth as he regarded her through black eyes shadowed within cavernous sockets.
Cressida felt as if her heart were torn asunder. Her poor darling had been pacing the house like a caged beast, tormented, since she’d all but cast him out without a hearing all those hours ago. She tried to banish her guilt quickly with the knowledge that she had the power to bring the joy back to both their lives.
“You don’t have to explain a thing, my darling,” she whispered, advancing toward him until their bodies were almost touching. Warily, he watched her, still uncertain of her motives, clearly unwilling yet to take her into his embrace.
“Good Lord, Cressy. What are—?”
“Hush,” she whispered as she undid the buttons of his breeches and slid one hand into the slit to cup his balls gently. His instant erection, straining against her hand, sent a surge of satisfaction through her, and she stepped in to close the gap, pressing her lips to Justin’s mouth, which had pursed in surprise. With one hand on his shoulder and the other fondling his manhood, she kissed him deeply, her tongue darting inside to explore the cavern of his mouth, thrusting and tangling with his, bolstered by a confidence she’d rarely felt as she registered his excitement building in tandem with her own.
He dropped the billiard cue and stepped back, trapped between the edge of the heavy table and her body, which she offered up to him in anything but sacrifice.
“God, Cressy, I hope you know what you’re doing,” he croaked, somewhere, it seemed, between horror and wary delight.
“Absolutely,” she reassured him, lowering herself to her knees and gently easing his engorged cock out of his breeches. Her eyes widened. God, now that she could actually see it in the light, it was huge. She’d never seen it like this before—face-to-face, as it were. So this was the power he wielded with such devastating results…under cover of darkness in the bedroom, beneath the counterpane.