Page 5 of A Wicked Kind of Husband

“Perhaps a letter to your grandmother would suffice.”

“I had considered that but…” Four times a year, Cassandra dutifully wrote to the duchess, and her grandmother dutifully wrote back. The sole purpose of the letters was to acknowledge each other’s continuing existence. “Our relations are strained, so it is best I see her in person. You will not be blamed for my actions,” she added. “You need not fear Mr. DeWitt.”

“I don’t fear him,” Mr. Newell hastened to say. “He is not unkind. He is merely…not restful. He will send you straight home.”

“Not if he does not know I am there.” Mr. Twit flopped onto her feet and she stooped to scratch the cat’s neck. “You say he travels frequently and you are always advised of his schedule, are you not? We simply have to find a time this Season when he is not in London.”

“Hm. I did receive word he is planning a trip to Liverpool. How long do you propose to stay?”

“I need only to convince my grandmother to take Lucy,” she said. “If we plan it properly, we’ll never see Mr. DeWitt at all.”

Chapter 2

“Mr. DeWitt is everything that a husband ought to be,” Cassandra said to her friend Arabella as they strolled through London’s Hyde Park on a fine afternoon three weeks later. “He is conveniently rich, extremely generous, and always somewhere else.”

Cassandra ignored Arabella’s amused if skeptical glance, and concentrated on the marvels around her. On one side of them lay Rotten Row, with its cacophony of horses and carriages; on the other lay the waters of the Serpentine; and pressing all around them were the thousands of people in London who possessed both colorful finery and the leisure time in which to display it.

“Stroll,” however, was an optimistic description of their progress. Navigating the crowd required something more like a slow, improvised quadrille: achasséto the right, aglissadeto the left, and then perhaps a smallsissone.

Unless, of course, one was Arabella, Lady Hardbury, in front of whom space magically opened up.

“Absence is a quality that many women appreciate in their husbands,” Arabella said. “I have not been married to Hardbury long enough to appreciate it in him, but I daresay the time will come when we divide up the country and ensure we are always at opposite ends of it.”

“I cannot imagine that, besotted as you two are.”

“There is that. Besides, what on earth would I do for entertainment if my husband were not nearby to provoke?”

A pair of pastel-clad young ladies approached, hugging each other’s arms as they opened their mouths to address Arabella. Cassandra readied her smile—finally, a conversation!—but Arabella merely lifted her chin and looked them over disdainfully. The ladies discovered an urgent need to be on the other side of the park and hurried away. Arabella smiled with satisfaction and strolled on.

“Why can we not talk to them?” Cassandra asked.

“They are not interesting enough.”

“Arabella, you promised me conversation.” Cassandra stopped in rebellion and narrowly avoided colliding with a trio of elegant gentlemen, who almost fell over in their haste to bow to Arabella and escape. “How am I supposed to forge connections if you do not allow me to talk to anyone?”

“Not any conversation will do.” Arabella scanned the crowd, her uncommon height giving her an enviable view. “Most importantly, so long as you are with me, you will be seen.”

Indeed, everyone wanted a glimpse of Arabella, who, since her marriage to the Marquess of Hardbury, had scaled the slopes of London society and planted her flag firmly at the peak. Those around them watched her while pretending not to, their expressions a mix of longing and fear, and they turned to each other to whisper words that bobbed through the air amid the colorful feathers and parasols, words like “Lady Hardbury” and “Cassandra Lightwell” and “DeWitt” and “Bolderwood.”

“By ‘seen’, of course, you mean ‘gossiped about’,” Cassandra said. “I suppose it cannot be avoided.”

“Itmustnot be avoided. If one is not gossiped about, then one does not exist. What with this promenade and your appearance in my box at the theater tonight, every morning call in every drawing room tomorrow will feature your name.”

“Gosh. What proportion of each call might I merit? A whole minute?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Cassandra. You are notthatinteresting.” Arabella slid her an amused sideways look. “Although with your family history…perhaps half a minute? Multiply that by, say, three thousand conversations, at a very modest estimate—that’s fifteen hundred minutes. Most people would kiss a monkey if it would garner them half that much attention.”

“Why, that’s…Twenty-five hours of gossip, on me alone.” Cassandra twirled her parasol and smiled at the world. “How marvelous I am, to make such a generous contribution to society.”

Society! Oh, how exciting to be in a crowd again! The last time she walked in Hyde Park, she had been Miss Cassandra Lightwell, engaged to Harry, Lord Bolderwood, and Charlie and Papa were still alive. And then—Well, that was then, and this was now. And now, she had nearly three weeks before Mr. DeWitt was due to return from his trip to Liverpool, and she meant to put every minute of it to good use.

Which is what she thought was the purpose of this walk: to smooth her way back into society, for Lucy to follow. Yet she felt less like a participant than a visitor at a menagerie, with Arabella as her guide.

“That fellow over there”—Arabella indicated a fashionable gentleman whose cravat was tied with such complexity it must have required a good three hours—“was last week found guilty of criminal conversation with Lord Oliver’s wife. The jury set the damages at nearly twenty thousand pounds, which of course he cannot afford. The red-haired woman there is Lady Yardley”—a plump, vivacious lady in her thirties with a circle of admirers—“who almost outdid me at the Ladies’ Debating Society the other day. And that handsome gentleman riding the fine bay mare would suit you nicely as a lover.”

Cassandra stumbled and turned the misstep into ajetéto avoid tumbling over. “I beg your pardon?”

“So you are paying attention.” Arabella laughed softly. Which was lovely. Arabella had rarely laughed before her marriage. “Anyway, ’tis not as though your marriage vows mean anything, since you married only to secure your inheritance, and he—Why did he marry you again?”

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