The Accidental Countess (Accidental #2)(13)
Hunt arched a brow. “Seems odd. She’s left town knowing you were coming?”
“Apparently she left before she received my letter informing her that I’d be here this afternoon.”
“Damn the luck.”
Julian smiled slightly. “Yes, well. I’m going to follow her there. We cannot become engaged. She needs to hear it from me in person. It’s only right. The sooner I speak with her the better, and if I can’t go with you and help you find Donald, at least I can do right by Miss Monroe.”
Hunt nodded. “I wish you well, Swift. How long will you be gone?”
“The house party is for a sennight and as luck would have it, I’ve been invited. I’m not certain how long I’ll stay, however.” Not that he’d mind being in Patience Bunbury’s presence for a bit.
“What do you plan to do after that?”
Julian met his friend’s stare. “I intend to travel to France and help you find Donald and Rafe.”
Hunt squinted. “I’m to be gone for a fortnight. I hope to hell I find them, Swift, and that it’s all settled by the time you return from Surrey. I’ll see you back here in London in two weeks’ time. One way or another, I intend to have news.”
Julian returned to his seat and tossed back the rest of his brandy. They both knew Hunt might well be on a mission to find Donald’s and Rafe’s bodies. Julian couldn’t think about that now. He wouldn’t think about it now. He stood and shook his friend’s hand. “Good luck and safe travels.”
Hunt walked him to the front door. “I look forward to introducing you to Lucy. She’s a spitfire to be sure, a troublemaker, some would say, but her heart is very much in the right spot.”
Julian raised a brow. “A troublemaker?”
“As troublesome as she is beautiful, I’m afraid,” Hunt added with a laugh. “I’ll have to tell you some of the stories about her antics when she was trying to dissuade me from my courtship of Cassandra.”
Julian laughed. “It sounds as if Her Grace is someone I’m quite looking forward to meeting.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The devil on Cass’s shoulder had won. It was that simple. The devil came to her sometimes, the pesky little beast, after their first meeting on her sixteenth birthday. How well she remembered his awful insistence that day. His advice had been surprising, to be sure, and ultimately futile. But in the matter of Lucy and the fictitious house party, in the end, Cass had listened to the horrible little fiend. From his perch on her shoulder, he had enticingly told her she might have a bit of fun at a house party with Julian, regardless of the outcome and the hopelessness of the entire situation. Oh, she had doubts, scores of them, worries and doubts and outright anxiety, but she’d managed to push it all aside and pretend.
Pretend. That’s what Lucy said they were doing. It was a lark, like acting in a play. And they so adored plays. The servants would pretend, too. Lucy had simply told them all that they were having a sort of playacting house party, something like a masquerade, but without the feathers and dominoes. Lucy could be so persuasive.
“Haven’t you been telling me that you want to change? Be different? Stand up to your parents more?” Lucy had prodded, knowing exactly how to prod. “Now’s your chance. Be bold! Do the things you’ve never imagined you could do. You’ll surprise yourself, I’m certain of it.”
She’d surprise herself? Cass had liked the sound of that. She’d spent her childhood and young adulthood following every rule to the letter. She’d painted and sung, and played the pianoforte. She’d curtsied and danced and said all the right things to all the right people. She’d been demure as if she invented demureness. She’d listened to her mother and father, been kind and understanding to her older brother. She’d asked after all the servants, seen to all of her friends, and now, now, just what if it was her time? Her time to be a bit scandalous, her time to finally break a rule or two instead of just daydreaming about doing it.
“For the next sennight, you are Patience Bunbury,” Lucy had announced. And somehow that had given Cass permission to go ahead and break rules. She wasn’t demure Cassandra Monroe any longer, she was Patience Bunbury and she’d already decided … Patience Bunbury was quite wicked indeed.
And so Cass had jotted off a letter to Pen, informing her that she’d done just as her cousin had asked and told Captain Swift that Pen was attending Patience Bunbury’s house party. Cass just happened to leave out the part that she herself was en route to that same house party and, oh, pretending to be Patience, as well. Instead, she’d told Pen that she and Lucy were retiring to the country for a bit. Cass had been certain lightning would strike her as she’d written the letter. It was dreadful of her to continue to lie, first to Julian, now to Pen. But that pesky little devil didn’t care.
“Pen started it,” Lucy had pointed out with a shrug. That had only served to make Cass feel all the more guilty. That was absolutely no excuse. Was it? Oh, there was that blasted devil again.
Cass traced her finger along the windowpane of the coach as she and Lucy traveled to the countryside. They bounced along in the duchess’s new, resplendent vehicle, Cass trying not to bite at her fingernails every time she so much as thought of what she was traveling into: a giant falsehood.