A Match Made in Bed (Spinster Heiresses #2)(52)

“Soren, when I’m in the country, I feel as if I’ve been buried alive.”

“Did you feel that way at Camberly’s?”

“At the house party? Three hours from London? You know it isn’t the same.”

“Cass, you are—”

“Cassandra.” The word exploded out of her.

Her best intentions—to let him call her whatever he liked as long as he was happy—were suddenly a denial of herself. Her hands had balled into fists. “I prefer to be called Cassandra. I’ve said this before. You ignore me.”

She waited, ready for him to belittle her desires.

A tense silence settled between them.

He spoke. “I must return to Pentreath.”

“I will stay here.”

“You can’t. There is not enough money. But the most important reason for you coming with me is that you are my wife.”

“Then why don’t you want to please me? Why would you want me to be so unhappy?”

“Why must you be coddled?”

That charge upset her. “Coddled?” She warned him back with a raised hand. “I’ve just saved you from ruin and I don’t receive a say concerning my future?”

“No,” he answered. “I want you with me and I must return to Cornwall. I must return to my son.”

That was not an answer she could have anticipated.

The world seemed to reel a moment in her mind and when it righted itself, she looked to him, believing she’d misunderstood. “Son?”

“I was married before.”

That news shocked her even more. She moved away from him. There was a chair by the desk next to the window. She sat, folding her hands in her lap, and leaned back against the hard wood. It was solid, unlike anything she was feeling right now.

Soren had a son. He’d been married. “Why didn’t anyone tell me these things? Why didn’t you?”

“Cassandra,” he said, her name both a plea and an impatient demand for her to be sensible.

But she wasn’t feeling particularly sensible at the moment. “You had time. I danced with you—”

“You actually were trying to do everything in your power not to dance with me,” he reminded her.

She conceded the point. “But you could have mentioned a son.”

“I did. I told you yesterday morning I wanted to save Pentreath for him.”

She frowned. “I don’t remember you saying anything of the sort.”

“It was on the dueling field.”

Cassandra shook her head.

“Well, there was quite a bit happening at the time. You can’t be blamed for not fully understanding what I meant.”

He had not followed her across the room but stayed his ground. That was good. She needed the distance from him to think. He had a son. A child by another woman. “This is a great deal to ponder on top of the other revelations of the day. Everything I believed about you is now suspect, just as everything I had once thought about myself, including who my father was, has turned out to have no more substance than mist.”

“I’m not mist, Cassandra.” He’d used her full name without any “witticisms” to it. “And I believe we can work together to build something of substance.”

She didn’t know if she agreed with him.

Now, he crossed the floor to her and took a seat in the chair on the other side of the desk. “She was a local from Upper Canada.” He spoke as if she had asked the question.

She hadn’t. She was incapable of managing clear thought.

“The marriage turned out to be unhappy.”

She didn’t look at him. Cassandra couldn’t. Her thoughts were in turmoil. Dear Lord, she was married to Soren, and she knew nothing about him. She knew nothing about herself— “There was a massacre. Mary was killed in it.”

His statement startled Cassandra out of her dark daze. “Massacred?” Did he jest? No, his expression was too solemn. “What happened?” She had to ask.

“It was before the war. Shortly, that is. Things happen. People take matters in their own hands on the frontier.”

“Who killed her?”

“It is not known. She was Lenape and it—”

“Wait, Lenape?”

He leaned an arm on the desk. “The Lenape are a tribe. Mary was native.”

“Oh.” Cassandra had no other response. She hadn’t pictured Soren with a wife, let alone one who wasn’t of his class.

When she didn’t say more, he continued. “Mary’s clan was not warlike.”

“And they were massacred?” Cassandra vaguely remembered reading of such things happening. She’d not imagined it as anything that would impact her life . . . but it had been part of Soren’s. He’d killed men. He’d fought. He’d known a world that was alien to her.

“Yes. By another tribe. I know nothing beyond that.”

“You weren’t there?”

He sat back. A wealth of pain and regret shone in his eyes, bringing home to Cassandra that they discussed a woman who had obviously been important to her husband.

“I wasn’t there,” he said. “She’d left me. She wasn’t happy living in my world.”

“Why not?” Cassandra asked with a surge of loyalty.