Big Girl
by
paula marshall

CHAPTER ONE

"MY DEAR Constantia, how like Papa.  Inconsiderate in life, how should we
expect him to be any different in death?  To leave his estate in trust at the
lawyers, and the will only to be read at the end of six months to give a
chance for Jack to be traced.  Now the six months is up, the will is to be
read today, and all is still at sixes and sevens.  I suppose there is no news
of Jack?  Useless to expect that, too.  I am astonished that Papa wished him
to be found after what happened twelve years ago."  The Lady Constantia
Maxwell, the speaker's sister-they were the daughters of the late Earl
Devereux-- who was always a little timid in the presence of her dominant
elder twin, Amelia, Lady Thaxted, answered her as placatingly as she could.

"No need to worry, I am surge.  My dear Edward says it is highly unlikely
that Jack is still in the land of the living.  Gone to the devil long ago,
most likely.  The estates not being entailed, Papa is sure to have left
everything away from him.  And since Jack was the very last male heir, if he
is dead, the title will die with him."

Lady Amelia preened herself a little as she listened to these reassuring
words.  As the wife of an inordinately rich peer who was only a baron, she
was certain that her father would have left things so that she, and not
Constantia, would inherit the lion's share of the well-endowed Devereux
estates.  if so, it would almost certainly mean that when the next round of
new peers 5 was created, the Devereux title would be resurrected so as to
raise her husband to it.

"I am sure that we cannot wish that Jack is dead," she said, holding a
handkerchief to a dry eye, for it would not be proper openly to rejoice that
a brother's death was needed to bring about such a desired outcome, 'but
seeing that no one has seen hide nor hair of him since Papa turned him out
and disinherited him, and Thaxted says that so far the lawyers have been
unable to trace him, we must assume the worst, I fear.  Which brings me to
another matter," she finished meaningfully.

Constantia, well aware of what her sister was thinking, mused sadly on the
bright little boy that Jack had been, so unlike his serious and censorious
elder brother Philip, dead these three years after a riding accident.

Such a pity that Jack had become so wild that their father had seen fit to
turn him out so summarily after that mysterious business at the time of their
mother's sudden death.

She and Amelia had been nearly ten years older than Philip, and fifteen years
had separated them from Jack.

Their mother had been only eighteen when they were born.  And what was this
'other matter' of which Amelia was hinting?

"Which matter?"  she asked plaintively.

"The Scrap, of course."

"The Scrap?"

Lady Thaxted was impatient with her echo.  "Cassandra Merton, of course.  It
is what Thaxted calls her.  Such a scrap of a thing.  If Papa has made no
provision for her, what in the world are we to do with her?  I am sure that I
do not wish for a plain stick to be l hung around my neck, to be found a
dowry and hawked about.  I am equally sure that you and Edward will not wish
to be saddled with her, either."  She sighed.

"I wonder why Papa chose to bring her into his household.

He never took the slightest notice of her, and no wonder.  "

"Papa never took the slightest notice of anyone but himself," said
Constantia, a trifle mutinously.

"But you are wrong, Amelia.  He did take notice of her during the last six
months of his life."

"Well, that doesn't help us now.  Nearly nineteen, is she not?  And still has
old Strood to wait on her, even though she no longer needs a governess.  A
fine waste of money.  Turn Strood away, I say, and send the Scrap to be
companion to old Cousin Flora.  She was complaining in her last letter to me
that her companion needed pensioning off--she is growing deaf and foolish."

Since Cousin Flora could also be called deaf and foolish, this suggestion
seemed a trifle harsh on the companion, and even harsher on the Scrap.  "No
hope of marrying her off, then?"  Constantia ventured.  She was never as
hard-hearted as her sister.  But Amelia was not listening to her.  She was
looking around the library.

"The first thing I shall do when we take over,"

she announced firmly, 'is improve Devereux House.  This room, for instance,
has grown most shabby.  Papa had become too much the recluse, Thaxted says.
We have plans for the estates, as well.  They sadly need improvement.  Papa's
agents are living in the Dark Ages--they will have to go too, and soon.  "
She smiled complacently as she uttered these cruel words and added,

"That's all settled, then.  I shall write to Cousin Flora as soon as the
will is read.  The child ought to be grateful that we have settled matters so
well for her."

Out of sight of the two women so callously arranging her future, and that of
other helpless subordinates, the Scrap, Cassandra Merton, sat up indignantly,
her colour coming and going, her dark eyes--her best feature-glowing with
anger.

She shouldn't, of course, have been in the library to hear what was being
said by the great ones of her world.  She should have been sitting in the
small drawing-room, primly doing her canvas work--a singularly boring thing
showing improbably huge cabbage roses on a dull beige ground.  Instead, Cass
had borrowed Lady Thaxted's copy of Sophia, that delightful novel By a Lady
which she was not supposed to read--but was, avidly, every forbidden word .
and wondering why they were forbidden!

The best place to hide herself, she had discovered long ago, was on the wide
window-ledge in the library behind the thick damask curtains, where the light
was good and she had a splendid view of the gardens of Devereux House, just
off Piccadilly.  She was so well concealed that anyone who cared to look for
her inevitably gave up, and assumed that she had retired to her poky room on
the fourth floor, just below the attics where the servants were housed, next
door to the old schoolroom.

Which, Cassandra always told herself severely, was her just and proper place,
since she was that unconsidered, in-between thing, a poor relation of no
consequence given a home by the late Earl Devereux.  He had felt a duty
towards the only remaining sprig of a branch of the family which had broken
away from the main trunk over a hundred years ago.

"Call me cousin, my dear Cassandra," he had told her on the first occasion on
which they had met, even though their cousin ship was such a distant thing.
Just twelve years old and shaking a little in her shabby shoes, she had
gulped a

"Yes, sir' back at him, and that had been that.  He had hardly spoken to her
again until his last illness, when he had surprisingly sought her company,
asking her to read to him because his sight was rapidly failing.

But, in those early years, for her to call so cold and grand a person
co using would have been beyond her.

So, all in all, it was fortunate that their paths had seldom crossed, since
until the end of it she had always lived in the background of his busy life.

And now he was dead of apoplexy, or of disappointment that he had never
achieved office in Lord Liverpool's government which had so recently
consigned the late Emperor Napoleon to exile on St Helena.  Lord Devereux's
place of exile had been the back benches of the House of Lords.

Cass had been reading Sophia partly so as not to think what would become of
her now that her protector was dead.  His married daughters, the Ladies
Amelia and Constantia, both disapproved of her, she was sure, and had never
shown her the slightest affection.  The only source of that was her one-time
governess, aow her companion, Miss Emma Strood, who would doubtless soon be
fussing around, trying to discover where she had vanished to.

The sisters had launched into their conversation so briskly that Cass had
had no time to emerge from her hiding place and inform them of her presence.
And once they had begun to speak of such confidential matters as their
father's will and her own abrupt disposal it was too late.  It would be
highly embarrassing to all parties if she were to reveal that she had
overheard their plans for her.

And such plans!  How unkind of them to speak of her so!  And if Lord Devereux
had not shown her much affection, at least he had been willing to give her a
home--which was more than either of his daughters was apparently prepared to
do.

And Jack, the Earl's missing son.  Where was he?  In all the six years during
which she had lived in Devereux House and at the Earl's big country mansion
at Coverham on the Yorkshire moors, no one had ever mentioned the name of
Jack Devereux to her, other than to hint that he had mortally offended his
father.

She had known the Honourable Philip Devereux, the heir, who had, like his
sisters, disapproved of her as she had disapproved of him.  He had never
called her the Scrap, though.

That piece of cruelty had been left for Lady Thaxted and her husband to
commit.  They had been constant visitors to Devereux House and Coverham, and
the nickname had hurt her more than she could have believed possible.

She had seen much less of Lady Constantia and her husband, Edward Maxwell,
since they were settled on Mr Edward Maxwell's estates in Westmorland.  They
had rapidly travelled south when the news arrived that Lord Devereux, who had
turned into a fretful hypochondriac, was dead.

The vultures, thought Cass unkindly, always gathPAULA MARSHALL 11 ered about
a corpse and, from what ~she had overheard both the Thaxteds and the Maxwells
were certainly vultures.  If Jack, who would be the new Earl Devereux, was
still alive and had not immediately arrived to claim his supposed dues when
his father had died, then that must be counted in his favour.

Cass wondered exactly what it was that Jack had done which was so terrible
that it had resulted in banishment.  As she pondered on this she heard the
door close.  The sisters had gone--leaving her to her book.  But, alas, the
realities of her own life and those of the Devereux family now had more claim
on Cass's interest than the fiction which was Sophia.

She would ask Miss Strood about Jack Devereux.  But Miss Strood was nowhere
to be found.  Like Cass, she was undoubtedly dodging the two Ugly Sisters, as
Cassandra had irreverently dubbed Lady Thaxted and Lady Constantia Maxwell
since she had overheard them in the library.  She had probably sought refuge
in the home keeper room, and was taking tea there, leaving Cass to her own
devices.

Cass made her way to the beautiful front hall where stood the small fountain
brought from Bologna by the third Earl, the late Earl's father.  The
paintings by Tintoretto which adorned the walls had been acquired by the
second Earl on his Grand Tour.  If Jack--or was it John?  -- Devereux brought
anything back with him, when and if he was found, it was to be hoped that
they would not be Tintorettos.  He was far from being Cass's favourite
painter.

What foolish things to think of!  She had no more idea than the man in the
moon what the missing Jack Devereux might be doing or what he might be like.
It would be much more sensible to visit the housekeeper's room and see if
Mrs James would consent to give her a cup of tea.  Her room had been a refuge
for Cass when she had first come to Devereux House, but since she had reached
the the ripe old age of almost nineteen Miss Strood had gently suggested that
it was not proper for Miss Mellon to hobnob with servants, even superior ones
like Mrs James herself.

Well, pooh to that today!  She much preferred Mrs James, even if she were
only the housekeeper, to either of the two great ladies who had disposed of
her so callously.  She was to walk poodles, was she?  Or read religious
tracts to a deaf old woman--for she knew that Cousin Flora was of the
Methodistical persuasion, adhering to the Countess of Huntingdon's connexion.
"A most genteel mode of worship', she had told Cass some years ago, on her
one visit to Devereux House.  Mrs James welcomed her warmly.  She thought
that Miss Merton looked a trifle wan and, ignoring the slight disapproval on
Miss Strood's face, she immediately put her big copper kettle on the fire to
make a fresh pot of China tea.

She also set out her most delicate porcelain cup and saucer, produced a plate
of biscuits baked only that afternoon, and sat Cass down in her most
comfortable armchair.

"Miss Strood, why does no one ever speak of Jack Devereux?"

questioned Cass, after she had drunk her tea.

The reaction of the two women was interesting.  Mrs James shook her head and
Miss Strood primmed her mouth.

"My dear child..."  Miss Strood's diction was even more formal than usual as
she answered Cass.

"He' was Lord Devereux's younger son, who was disinherited and
turned out without a penny twelve years ago for being wild.  Something to do
with stolen money or property, I believe.  It happened before my time here.
I do know that re' lord ordered that his name should never be mentioned again
by anyone, either servant or family, on pain of dismissal or banishment."

 "I gathered that,"

interjected Cass inelegantly, her mouth full of biscuit.

"But what exactly did he do?"  It soon became apparent that neither the
housekeeper nor Miss Strood really knew why the Earl's younger son had been
turned away.

"He was reputed to be a very wild young man," admitted Miss Strood at last,
'not at all like Mr Philip.  He was very steady.  "

"Too steady."  Mrs James, who was normally a comfortable soul, was acid.

"I liked Master Jack; he always had a friendly word for us all.  Mr Philip,
now, he took everything we did for him for granted."

"There's not so much as a picture of him anywhere," Cass commented.

"Oh, re' lord had them all taken down.  I remember that there was one
splendid portrait of him as a very young man, done before he and re' lord
were at outs.  It was taken up to the attic.  He had his pet hawk on his arm.
He always loved animals, did Master Jack.  Mr Philip, now, he couldn't abide
them."

"Oh, that portrait," offered Cass, without thinking.  She had gone up to the
attics beyond the servants' rooms one day when she was bored.  She had looked
out of the small windows across London and then had explored among the broken
boxes and old furniture and the paintings propped against the walls.

Curious, she had turned some of them around.  They had been mostly brown with
age, as though good gravy had been poured over them, but she had come to one
which had held her entranced.  She had been fourteen at the time and had
fallen in love with the unknown and handsome young man pictured inside the
ornate gilt frame.  She had thought that he resembled every hero in the
Minerva Press novels which Miss Strood had recently and reluctantly allowed
her to read.  He was tall and shapely, with long legs, russet coloured hair
and curious greeny-yellow eyes.  He wore a fashionable version of country
clothing: his jacket was green and his pantaloons, descending into highly
polished boots, were a deep cream.  But it was his smile and his rapt
attention to the hawk on his outstretched wrist which had held Cass in thrall.

She could believe that the pictured young man had been wild, for she had
thought that he resembled his hawk, but she could not believe that he would
do anything wicked enough to deserve being turned away for ever from his home
and family.  She couldn't believe that he was dead, either, whatever Lord
Thaxted had said.  He had seemed so alive and kicking--a favourite saying of
Geordie, the groom who had looked after her pony when she had been a little
girl before she had lost her parents and been taken in by the Earl.

There had been some enchantment in the portrait which had wrought its magic
on Cass, so that whenever she had been bored or lonely she had gone up to the
attic, had turned the painting around and had sat before it so that she could
imagine that the hero in the novel she had been reading looked exactly like
him.

Miss Strood said coolly,

"So, Cass, you found it when you were exploring in the attics?"

Cass, surprised into a reversion to her childhood-- 15 which was not, after
all, so far off--put her hand before her mouth and then, taking it away with
a rueful grin, said,

"You knew, dear Stroody?"

"Of course, but it seemed a harmless enough way for you to pass a dull
afternoon, and I could have a nap in peace."

Fellow conspirators against the dull and proper regime laid down for Cass by
the late Earl, they grinned at one another.

"I feel let down and cheated," announced Cass dramatically, reaching for yet
another biscuit.

"There I was, thinking that I was rebelling against you and the Earl, and you
knew all the time what I was up to."

"And about the window-seat in the library too," Miss Strood agreed, taking a
biscuit in her turn.

"Mr Hunt told me about that."

Mr Hunt was the Earl's librarian.  He and Miss Strood had arranged a course
of reading for her; having improved the schoolgirl French which Miss Strood
had taught her, Mr Hunt had recently been introducing her to Latin.

She was aware of Miss Strood and the housekeeper smiling kindly at her; Cass
knew that without them and Mr Hunt her life would have been barren indeed.
And, shortly, she would be losing them all for good.  Poor plain Scrap, to be
disposed of like an unwanted picture: not turned towards the wall, but sent
to be companion to a cross-grained old woman.  The only wish that she had
left before she was retired from life forever was that she might meet Jack
Devereux, to find out what he looked like twelve years after his portrait had
been painted.  If he were alive, that was.

Cass was just about to take another biscuit, despite Stroody's disapproving
eye--she always asserted that if Cass indulged her overlarge appetite she
would become fat, despite Cass remaining obstinately and painfully thin
whatever she ate--when there was a knock on the door and Mr Greene the
butler, came in.

"Beg pardon, ladies--' he bowed, '--but Miss Strood and Miss Merton are
required to attend on Lord and Lady Thaxted, and Lady Constantia and Mr
Edward Maxwell in the library.  It seems that the reading of the late Earl's
will is to take place this afternoon.  Lord Thaxted was most particular that
all the members of the late lord's household should be present.  That, of
course, means you, Mrs James."

What a to-do followed!  Mrs James and Miss Strood at once declared that they
were not properly attired to be present at such an important occasion.  Cass,
dressed in a drab grey high-wasted poplin gown of indeterminate style, with a
small Quakerish linen collar, could not have cared less what she was wearing.

Miss Strood wailed at Mr Greene,

"Is there no time for Miss Merton and myself to change into something more
comme il faut?"

A shaking head from Mr Greene stifled Miss Strood's complaints--to Cass's
relief.  Nothing was more calculated to induce boredom in her than to be
constantly changing one's clothes--particularly when one had a wardrobe as
limited as Cass's.  To change from drab grey to dull brown, and both
outdated, was hardly her notion of passing an exciting afternoon.

So, at least one person following Mr Greene to the big withdrawing room was
happy.  Further happiness for Cass would consist of being in the library with
Mr Hunt, spending a pleasant afternoon with him and his book learning.

Once they reached the library they found that Lord Thaxted was thoroughly in
charge of everything.  Quite why this was so Cass was at a loss to
understand.  True, he was the husband of Amelia, the late Earl's elder
daughter, but until the will was read no one could know whether that entitled
him to give orders so grandly around Devereux House.

She said as much to Miss Strood, who replied in a shocked tone,

"It is not for very young ladies to question such things, Cassandra.  You
grow above yourself."  She only called Cass Cassandra when she was really
cross with her, so Cass said no more, simply contented herself with thinking
all the things which she was apparently not to say, but which so obviously
needed to be said.

No need to distress poor Stroody overmuch--particularly when they were so
shortly to lose one another.

It was plain that she was unable to please anyone since, when they reached
the library, Lord Thaxted, who was already there with a small covey of legal
gentlemen standing deferentially by him, glared impatiently at her late
arrival.  But was it Cass's imagination or was there a gleam in the most
important legal gentleman's eye which had a touch of the satiric in it?  Cass
had discovered some time ago that she could, if not exactly read minds,
understand or feel what people were actually thinking rather than what they
ought to be thinking.

Chairs had been set out, and they were all directed to sit in them by Mr
Greene.  Cass was at the back, almost out of sight behind the senior servants
and the Thaxteds and Maxwells.  She thought that the gleam in the chief
lawyer's eye grew brighter when, once they were all seated, Lord Thaxted, a
portly man with a rubicund face, announced brusquely,

"Get on with it, man, what are you waiting for?  After all, you have had six
months to prepare for this day!"

The chief lawyer, a Mr Herriot as Cass was later to discover, bowed, a little
too humbly, she thought-more secret satire from him, perhaps?  In as neutral
a voice as he could manage, he murmured,

"With all due deference, m'lord..."  a phrase which Cass, despite her youth,
knew really meant the exact opposite of what was being said.

"With all due deference, my lord," he repeated, 'we must wait a moment before
the remaining member of the party arrives.  "

"Now who the devil can that be?"  roared Lord Thaxted, whilst his wife looked
daggers at both the lawyers and the company.

"Are we not all assembled here?"

"Not quite," riposted Mr Herriot with a smirk; as though on cue, the door at
the far end of the library opened--the secret door between two tiers of
bookshelves which gave access to the late Lord Devereux's study--and two men
entered by it.

At the sight of them Lord Thaxted almost bellowed, "By God, no.  I refuse to
countenance this."

No wonder, thought Cass, for the first man who came in resembled no one whom
Cass had ever met before, either in appearance or in his clothing.

He was very tall, broad-shouldered, slim-hipped and long-legged.  His
clothing was shabby in the extreme.

He wore a pair of elderly bottle-green trousers, not pantaloons, above
heavily scuffed black half-boots.  His jacket, also shabby, was a long
wide-skirted navy blue one, with large brass buttons of the kind which
sailors on shore wore.  His shirt was clean--had once been white, but much
washing had frayed it and had turned it cream.  His cravat was simply a black
silk scarf, loosely knotted so that the ends hung down in front of his
disastrous shirt.

But it was his face which drew everyone's attention.  It was the hardest and
coldest which Cass had ever seen.  So hard and cold and harsh, indeed, that
it made the appearance of every other man whom she had ever met seem soft and
womanish.  His hair was a deep brow ny-red, long, and tied back in the manner
of the late eighteenth century.  His nose was as aquiline as a hawk's or an
eagle's, and his mouth was a grim straight line, frightening in its severity.

But it was his eyes which told the fascinated Cass at whom she was staring.
They were a feral greeny-yellow beneath straight black brows--they were those
of the handsome young man in the portrait in the attic!  Here was Jack
Devereux at last!  So shocked was she by him and by his changed appearance
that Cass did not even see the large square man who followed him like his
shadow.

For a moment after Lord Thaxted's bellow there was a deathly silence.

Then the grim man before them spoke.

"Who the devil are all of you?"  he demanded in a parade-ground voice.

"What are you doing in my house?  I want the whole pack of you, except the
servants, out of here in the hour."

CHAPTER TWO

ANOTHER deathly silence followed before there was a clamour of raised voices.
Lord Thaxted jumped to his feet, bawling,

"And who are you, I should like to know, to give orders here?  And you, sir,"
he now roared at the lawyer, who was doubtless, Cass thought, grinning behind
his impassive mask.

"Why have you brought this ... creature here to insult us all?"

Mr Herriot replied, his voice sounding as though he occupied an island of
calm in an ocean of storm,

"No creature, m'lord, but the proven and undoubted John Augustus, fifth Earl
Devereux, present became, on the instructions of the late Earl, he was traced
and found, and the will was read to him, as the late Earl so ordered, in my
office earlier this morning.  He has, as his words to you have indicated,
inherited all, with one proviso of which I am instructed to inform you, as
well as some details concerning his bequests to a number of old servants."

Further clamour ensued.  Amelia announced that she had no intention of being
left high and dry by her father, who must have been in his dotage to do such
a thing as disinherit her, whilst Constantia staged an elegant swoon, falling
half across her husband.  Lord Thaxted, his face turning even more purple
than usual, announced loudly,

"Have you run mad, man?  You have said nothing to me of this either before or
after my late father-in-law's death.  No word that my wife and her sister
were to inherit nothing."

Jack Devereux's thick brows rose.  He was lounging against one of the pillars
which upheld the painted library ceiling, a sardonic expression on his face,
apparently content to let his lawyer speak once he had thrown his thunderbolt
at them.

Nothing loath, Mr Herriot began again, after giving a short apologetic cough.

"M'lord, I did try to warn you to take nothing for granted about the
disposition of the late Earl Devereux's estate, but you chose to ignore me.
I could not make myself completely plain because to have done so would have
been to go against his instructions--which I was legally bound to follow--to
divulge nothing until the will had been read to the new Earl."

The company thought that he had paused, but he had not.  He gave another
apologetic little cough and said no more.

Edward Maxwell, that mild and lethargic man, spoke at last.  Since the late
Earl's death he had been content to let his more dominant brother-in-law take
the lead.  Lord Thaxted having been reduced to helpless splutterings, he now
chose to comment.

"And that is all?"  he asked.

"We are to learn no more?"

Jack Devereux, still lounging against the pillar, said in his harsh,
commanding voice, "Have you grown deaf, sir?  My man here plainly said that
there was a little more to it than that I had, surprisingly, I agree,
inherited everything.  Were you to cease badgering him he might inform you of
the rest.  He might also read to you what my late father had to say of you,
but I would A m~AULr.  OIRL?  advise that you did not ask him to do so.  You
might not like what you heard."

"I like nothing about this," bellowed Thaxted, standing up now, his chair
thrust behind him.

"Particularly you, yourself.  Where the devil have you been for the last
twelve years?  Are you, sir--' and he addressed the lawyer now '--completely
certain that this ... rogue... is truly Jack Devereux?"

"The fact that you consider me a rogue," Jack said coolly, his feral eyes
glowing, 'would doubtless seem to confirm that I am the unwanted Jack,
wouldn't you say?  You undoubtedly thought me a rogue years ago, when I was
more conventionally attired and bespoke-- did you imagine that I might have
changed?  "

Whatever Cass had thought Jack Devereux might be like, she could not have
imagined the man who stood before them.  If everyone else was behaving
exactly as she would have expected them to--including Miss Strood, who was
whimpering into her handkerchief, "Oh, Cass, if he turns us out, wherever
shall we go?"  -then he, at least, was proving a surprise.  Hardly a pleasant
one, perhaps, but none the less a surprise.  As troubled as Miss Strood about
her possible future, Cass was, nevertheless, finding the whole scene as good
as a play.

And one which she was having the pleasure of appreciating without the chief
character in it even being aware that she was present.  Seated at the back
behind the large chef and the equally large Mr Greene, she was sure that Jack
Devereux and his silent shadow-- and who was he?  --did not even know that
she existed.

What he would do when he learned that the late Earl had taken her into his
home and kept her for the last six years, she couldn't imagine.  Presumably
he had not seen fit to mention her in his will.  Unless, of course, he had
counted her as one of the servants--but she didn't think that he had.

And, in their disappointment, how merciful to her would Amelia and Constantia
be?  Suddenly, the banishment to Cousin Flora, which had seemed so terrible,
might now be viewed as some sort of a lifeline!  To this had she been reduced
in a few short minutes.  She would have to collect her wandering thoughts;
Lord Thaxted had been persuaded to sit down, although Jack was still lounging
against his pillar, and Mr Herriot had taken the will from its parchment
envelope and was reading from it that the late Earl had left everything to
his supposedly lost heir, John Augustus Devereux.  At this point the lawyer
paused dramatically.  Oh, yes, Cass decided, suppressing a nervous giggle, he
was undoubtedly enjoying himself, with all his recent tormentors at his mercy.

He resumed, 'with one condition, that, since I have decided that I do not
wish the name and title of Devereux to become extinct, my son John shall have
conditional charge of all that I die possessed of for the duration of three
months only, during which time he must immediately take to himself a wife.
From that moment on, he shall inherit unconditionally all of which I die
possessed.  If, however, he chooses not to marry, then everything will revert
to the Crown, for I have no desire to enrich those whose sole interest in me
has been to inherit that which I may leave, and who could scarcely wait for
me to die to do so.

"It is my last dying wish that my son John will do as I beg of him, and thus
ensure the continuation of the Devereux line."

"He was mad," announced Amelia dramatically, 'quite mad.  He must have been
to recall and reward after such a fashion the son whom he once threw off.
And why should he have thought that Jack would oblige him.  He had never done
so before.  Jack took his hands out his pockets, abandoned his lounging
position and walked to stand beside the lawyer.

"Oh, but I am determined to do so," he announced pleasantly, his grin as
feral as his eyes.

"It is, you must all agree, worth saddling one's self with a wife in order to
inherit such a prize.  Certainly you all thought it worth while to spend the
best part of your lives dancing attendance on him in order to inherit, so you
can't criticise me for snapping up what is mine by right.

"I have already decided that I shall ask the first marriageable woman whom I
meet to become my wife.

I don't doubt that she, too, will think that being the Countess Devereux will
be worth the pains of having me for a husband!  "

This came out with such sincere and good-natured savagery that Cass felt like
applauding--or would have done if her own position had not been so
precarious.  "And in the meantime," Jack continued, still in the same
pleasantly savage tone,

"I meant what I said.  I want the pack of you out of here.  I've changed my
mind and will give you until tomorrow morning.  To insist on you going on the
instant would discommode your servants more than you, and they don't deserve
that of me, even though the rest of you do.  And, speaking of the servants,
Mr Herriot, let us hear the rest of the will."

It was read in silence.  M'lord had been more than generous to those who had
been his retainers for so long, but, as Cass had half expected, there was no
mention of her.

As he finished, Mr Herriot folded the will and laid it on the desk before him.

"Has anyone any questions of me, before I take my leave?"  he asked.

"If so, pray put them now.  We shall save a deal of time."

Beside Cass, Miss Strood, who had also not been mentioned, was quietly
sobbing.  For where would she and poor Cassandra go now?  Cast to the winds,
first by the old Earl and now by the new--for like Cass she was bitterly
aware that they could expect no help from the passed-over Ugly Sisters now.

No one said a word.  Cass, suddenly aware that were she to say nothing,
nothing might be what she gained, stood up before she had time to be afraid
of being unladylike and drawing attention to her selL "Mr Herriot," she
asked, 'am I to understand that the late Earl Devereux made no provision for
my companion, Miss Strood, and myself, Miss Cassandra Merton, in his will?
And, if so, pray will you tell us where we may be expected to go, if we are
to leave by tomorrow morning, as the new Lord Devereux wishes?  "

She had the pleasure of seeing Jack Devereux's head swing sharply to where
she had appeared between the twin bulks of the chef and Greene--both of whom
re' lord had remembered, whilst forgetting her.  She had not wished to beg,
but Jack Devereux had been so plain-spoken that he could hardly complain if
such an insignificant creature as herself should also make her A BIDDABLE
GIRL.  9 position as clear as he was making his.  Oh, yes, such a manner less
lout of a fellow deserved nothing more than that those who had to suffer him
should be as brusque as he was.

The heads of Amelia, Constantia and their spouses also swung round.

Amelia began angrily,

"Well, really--' before Jack Devereux rudely interrupted her.  " Now, who the
devil have we here?  " he' demanded of the lawyer, in the parade-ground voice
which he had used earlier.

"Who is neither relative, nor servant, and of whom I have no knowledge?"

Mr Herriot took him by the sleeve and whispered quickly and urgently into his
ear; Jack Devereux nodded as he spoke.  Then he began to speak equally
quickly and urgently to the lawer, one hand outstretched, the other ticking
off points on his fingers, as though he were issuing instructions.

Mr Herriot looked across to where Cass was still standing, although Miss
Strood had tried to pull her back into her seat by tugging at her gown.  Cass
had resolutely refused to oblige her.  With no one to defend her she must
defend herself, or go homeless into the street.  To do--what?  It did not
bear thinking of.

She watched whilst, under his breath, Mr Herriot began to remonstrate with
Jack, but nothing he was saying seemed to register with him, for he was
shaking his head and smiling.  He pushed the lawyer away and said aloud,

"Enough!  I have made up my mind.  Miss Mellon, I wonder if you would do me
the honour of joining me here?"

Uproar followed again.  None of it touched Cass.  She had begun to live in a
world gone mad as everything that had underpinned her life collapsed about
her.  If that was what the monster before her wanted, then she would do as he
wished.  She pushed her way along the row of curious servants to emerge into
the aisle and walk coolly up it towards where Jack, his lawyer and his shadow
stood.

She thought that Jack's shadow gave her a shrewd and a pitying stare, but she
had no time for that.  She gave the new Earl a bow, not a deferential one,
but as from one equal to another for, however much he intimidated others, she
would not allow him to intimidate her.

Now that she was near to him she could see the returned prodigal more
clearly.  He had, she noted, shaved very carefully, even if the rest of him
was farouche.  Though he was shabby, he was spotlessly clean, as was the hand
he had placed over his heart when he had bowed to her.  It was square and
strong; his fingers were spatulate and his nails were cut short, but had been
carefully trimmed.  There was a deep wave in the reddy-brown hair, and that,
too, was clean.  Some intuition, some knowledge of the truth rather than what
others wished to be considered the truth, told Cass several things.  First
and foremost, what Jack Devereux was wearing was not necessarily the clothing
he usually wore.  Secondly, she also knew that whatever Jack Devereux was
now, he had once been a soldier.  He resembled nothing so much as the
portrait of the condottiere, an Italian mercenary captain of the early
fifteenth century, which hung in the library.  There was the same expression
in his feral cat's eyes, in the set of his body, in the uncompromising thrust
of his stern mouth.  He was ready for instant action.  Worse, the instant
action he was ready for now was to do with her.

But she must not flinch as his eyes took her in: her slightness, her
Smallness, her plainish face, her undistinguished brown hair, the whole aura
of permanent poor relation which she and her clothing gave off.  Cass thought
that she hated him as she watched him so ruthlessly catalogue what she was,
the predatory eyes roving over her.  He began to speak, and his first remark
surprised her, for it was a question.

"Exactly how old are you, Miss Merton?"

 "I shall be nineteen in a month, re' lord

He shook his head at her.

"Not, m'lord, Miss Merton, Jack."

Cass nodded.  Oh, yes, he was a bully, as she had realised from the first
moment he had walked into the room.  When he said

"Jump' in that gravel voice, he expected people to jump.  But she would not
jump for him.

Something in her attitude must have reached him, for he said softly, "I do
not intend to hurt you--quite the contrary..."  His voice tailed off and he
was cataloguing her again.

"I have another question for you, Miss Merton.  Think carefully before you
answer me.  You heard the will read just now?"

Why should that need a careful answer?  Nevertheless, she paused a moment
before replying, "Yes, Jack."

"And you understood what the will said?  That I must marry before three
months are up?"

Cass said,

"Yes, Jack," again.  What could he be getting at?

"And you have no home, now that you have lost this one.  My father saw fit
virtually to adopt you, but did not see fit to leave you the means of living
after his death?"

Cass repeated,

"Yes, Jack," again, but her face said quite plainly, why should you be asking
me questions to which you already know the answer?  She was aware that behind
her the assembled family and servants of the late Earl were hanging on his
words, as baffled as she was.

"I should like to offer you a home, Miss Merton."  Salvation, surely.

But Cass did not like the gleam in his strange eyes.

"Have you nothing to say, Miss Merton, to my kind offer?"

He was mocking her now.  But she was equal to him.  She was resolved always
to be equal to him if she were to be a dependant of the new Earl as of the
old, since being unequal with the old Earl had left her abandoned to the
world.

"I suppose, Jack, from the manner in which you speak to me that there is a
condition attached to this offer.  I should like to know what it is."  She
would also have liked to know what he was thinking, although the knowledge
would not have pleased her.  Miss Skin and Bones is a shrewd piece, being his
silent verdict on Miss Cassandra Merton.  "You are right, Miss Merton, and it
is clever of you to guess.  You heard me say that I would ask the first
marriageable woman whom I met after I became Earl to marry me, so you may
have a roof over your head if you will become my wife."

He had made the declaration before the whole room.  And if there had been
uproar before, it was as nothing to what followed now.

Miss Strood let out a loud and anguished cry.  Almost as loud as the one
which came from the Thaxteds.

Jack's silent shadow was smiling ruefully, as though it was all he expected
from his companion.  Mr Herriot was shaking his head.  The only unmoved
persons in the whole room were Jack himself and Miss Cassandra Merton, who
had put her head on one side to examine him as solemnly as though he were a
rare species of insect.  Or so it seemed to the amused Jack.  "Do you expect
an answer now, Jack?"  she asked him as the noise died down.  Miss Strood had
risen from her chair and was rushing up the aisle towards them.  To protect
her, no doubt.  Cass did not need protecting.  "I would like an answer as
soon as possible," he said, as though he were saying the most natural thing
in the world, and was not behaving so preposterously that his audience could
hardly believe what he had done, was doing, in making a public proposal to a
penniless young woman whom he had only just met.

"Seeing that it will save me three months' tiresome chasing of marriageable
women if you accept me.  You are a lady, you appear to be healthy and have
enough spirit to endure me as a husband.  A man could hardly ask for more."
Something inside Cass shrieked, A woman might ask for love, but I suppose
persons of our class cannot demand that.

Instead she said, as cool as he was,

"Then, Jack, I suppose I must accept you.  I am, I collect, as big a bonus to
you at this moment as you are to me--seeing that by marrying one another, we
shall each acquire a roof over our heads which we might not otherwise
possess!"

Jack threw his head back and let out a crack of laughter.  Behind Cass, a
disbelieving Miss Strood, her hands over her eyes, let out a low moan at
these appalling goings-on which defied all the careful etiquette by which her
life had been ruled up to this moment.

Jack stopped laughing, to say,

"Bravo," and then, to the dismayed watching spectators,

"You heard that, I trust.  Miss Merton has agreed to marry me.  The
conditions of my father's will are to be fulfilled.  I give you all, sisters
and brothers-in-law, leave to remain here so that you may see us legally
married as soon as a special licence has been obtained."

He bowed to Cass, who stood silent, swaying slightly, as the enormity of what
she had just agreed to struck home.

But it was too late to retreat or to deny what she had done.  She had,
without any real pressure being put upon her, publicly and formally said that
she would become the monster's Countess.  Through a haze of sudden fright at
her daring she could hear Jack telling her that he wished to speak to her
alone, about their marriage, the legal and other arrangements for it, and the
organisation of their life after it.

He had taken her small hand in his large one and had begun to lead her from
the library into his late father's study.  He signalled to his shadow to
follow them, and was about to order Mr Herriot remain in the library until he
halted as its big double doors were thrown open.

The excitements of the afternoon were not yet over!

CHAPTER THREE

AN EAGER-FACED young man of flyaway appearance, in his very early twenties,
pleasant-looking rather than handsome, rushed into the library to stare at
the company which was about to process solemnly out of it, the day's business
plainly being over.  "Oh, I say!"  he exclaimed.

"I'm late, aren't I?  Didn't get your message, sir," he went on, addressing a
grim- faced Edward Maxwell, 'until an hour ago when I arrived at my rooms
after travelling up from Brighton.  Had to change, don't you know.  My
presence wasn't needed, I trust?  "

"Not really, Fred."  Frederick Maxwell's usually lethargic father was both
short and acid.

"But it would have been all the same if it had.  In any case, it has been a
fool's errand for all of us."

"How so, sir?"  Fred was still eager.  His happy stare found Jack, Cass
standing beside him, and he opened his mouth to ask his father who the devil
was the commoner who had poor Scrap in tow.

Cass was acutely aware that, like the great cat whom she thought he
resembled, Jack's whole body had immediately tensed when Fred Maxwell had
burst in.  She knew this because he was still holding her hand.

And that was the oddest thing too.  For, from the moment he had taken it, it
was though pins and needles had invaded it, had run up her arm and had
travelled down her body to her toes.  She had never, in her whole short life,
been so conscious of the presence of another person.  It was an almost
hurtful sensation, but delightfully exhilarating.

"Who's he?"  Jack rasped at Cass out of the side of his mouth, meaning Fred.
Well, perhaps it wasn't surprising that he hadn't recognised Fred, who had
still been a boy when Jack had been thrown out of the nest.

"Your nephew Frederick Maxwell," Cass whispered back.  She didn't add, He's
rather wild, like you were, but there's no malice in him--in fact he's rather
silly.  For some reason, she thought that there might be quite a lot of
malice in Jack Devereux.  He was watching his brother-in-law explain who he
was to a bewildered Fred.

"My uncle Jack?  The new Earl?  Never!  You're hamming me, sir.  He looks
like a longshoreman touting for work."

This came out so loudly and so incredulously that Jack heard it and began to
laugh.

"He's truthful, at least," he remarked to Cass, his face one grin.  He
dropped her hand and walked over to where Fred was now staring at him.

"Hello, Fred.  Yes, I am your uncle.  I didn't recognise you, either.  Not
surprising, since you were little more than a howling babe when I last saw
you.  You've come on a lot since then."

Fred remembered his manners at last.  He gave the new Earl a low bow, said
cheerfully,

"Sorry I wasn't as respectful just now as I ought to have been.  But you must
admit that I couldn't really have guessed who you are.  You don't look a bit
like Grandfather, or Uncle Philip, that's for sure."

"We must meet again soon," offered Jack, more friendly towards young Fred
than he had been to any of his elders, 'but not today.  I have an
engagement--' and he pulled out of his coat pocket a battered watch to check
the time '--shortly, I see, so I must leave when Miss Merton and I have had a
comfortable chat about our coming marriage.  "

Fred turned scarlet and then white.  He had a tend re for Cass which he had
never confessed to anyone, and certainly not to her.

"You're going to marry Cass?  How long have you known her?"

Jack consulted his watch again.

"About fifteen minutes, I should say.

Your papa will inform you why I am marrying her, if you are curious to know.
" " Well, it's the oddest thing I have ever heard of,"

returned Fred.

"I suppose there is a reasonable explanation for it,"

he offered doubtfully.

"Well, I haven't time to give you one now."  Jack wasn't doubtful at all,
Cass noticed, only amused by what was happening.

"Nor have I time to listen to you now," said Fred eagerly.  Amiable and eager
were his middle names.

"I

am due at Fronsac's Fencing Academy later this afternoon, for a lesson with
their new master, Jacques Duroy.  "

For some reason this seemed to amuse Jack Devereux mightily.  He began to
laugh, pulled out a tattered piece of clean linen which served him as a
handkerchief and wiped his eyes with it.  All his relatives, scandalised,
watched this performance with stony faces.

They were even more scandalised when Jack remarked, as coolly as though he
were discussing matters of the most supreme gravity,

"Well, that's an odd coincidence, Fred, my lad, seeing that you're coming to
have a lesson with me.  I'm Louis Fronsac's new instructor.  I should
scarcely call myself a master."

"You're an instructor!   In a fencing academy!   You can't be!   Besides,
your name's not Duroy.   You're a Devereux."   Fred was only uttering the
thoughts of all those in the library, masters and servants, who were
listening, fascinated, to this exchange.   For the moment no one had any wish
to leave.

"I'm Duroy at the Academy because the customers like to think that all
fencing masters are French.  And I teach there because, until this morning,
if I hadn't worked for my living I'd have starved."

"Well, you needn't work now," remarked Fred incontrovertibly.

"On the contrary."  For the first time Jack was grave.  "I have a duty to
work for Louis until he finds a replacement for me.  He gave me employment
when no one else would.  I owe him a debt of gratitude, and that's the
biggest debt of all--as you may find out if you live long enough."

This last dour remark broke the strange interlude in which Fred had held the
floor on his own.  Jack turned away to rejoin Cass, and the noise of angry
voices rose again behind him.  Lord Thaxted pushed Fred on one side and
caught Jack roughly by the arm to detain him.  Cass watched Jack freeze.  He
stood quite still, his back to Thaxted, resisting his pulling arm.  And then,
his face an Aztec mask, so expressionless was it, he half turned, removed the
offending hand and said conversationally,

"I'll thank you not to manhandle me, Thaxted.  I've killed for less.  Say
what you have to without touching me again."

"Damn you, Jack Devereux," Thaxted roared, 'you're as ill-conditioned as you
were when your father turned you away.  But even you must see that the Earl
Devereux cannot continue to be a so-called fencing master in a low dive where
blackballed gamesters and pigeons to be plucked, like Fred here, congregate.
"

This pretty speech had the disadvantage of setting Jack laughing and causing
Fred's father, Edward Maxwell to exclaim,

"Now, see here, Thaxted, you wrong Fred, indeed you do.  There's no real harm
in him--and why should he not learn to fence?  Louis Fronsac's as respectable
a house as any."

Thaxted had gone beyond reason.

"Not with Jack Devereux in it, it isn't.  The sooner he mends his manners and
takes his proper place in the world, the better.  What will society think...?"

He got no further.  Jack turned back again, thrust his face into his
brother-in-law's and said between his teeth,

"I don't give a damn what society thinks, or you either.  And if you weren't
Amelia's husband I'd teach you a lesson in manners."

He drew back as Thaxted recoiled from the feral mask presented to him, and
said cheerfully to Fred, "See you later, my boy.  Don't take any notice of
Thaxted here.  He never had any sense when I first knew him, and he seems to
have lost what wits he had whilst I've been away!"

"Oh, I won't," exclaimed Fred happily and tactlessly.  In the meantime,
Amelia shrilled at her husband, "You aren't going to let him get away with
speaking of you like that, Thaxted, surely?"

The large man, Jack's companion, spoke at last, to Amelia, of all people, in
a commiserating voice, pitched somewhere midway between educated speech and
that of the commonalty.

"Oh, I shouldn't advise you to make him provoke Jack too much, missis, if I
were you.  Jack's even more of a devil with pistols and sabres than he is
with a rapier, and that's saying something.  He's got a short fuse, too."

Missis, indeed!  As though she were the cook or the housekeeper!

Amelia clapped her hands over her ears and made for the doors.  Cass was hard
put to it to contain her amusement.  This was wrong.  This was not seemly.
They were here because a great man and a relative of them all had died; since
Jack Devereux had arrived, he had turned the place into a bear garden.  The
joke was that he was the bear who ought to have been baited, and instead he
was doing the baiting.  She was certain that every word he had uttered had
been designed to strike home.  There was nothing impulsive in him, only cold
calculation.  If he had been humiliated, turned out into the world to fend
for himself, unloved and ignored by all, he was paying them all back in coin
of his own choosing, not theirs.  But whatever was she marrying?  Why in the
world had she decided to live with this cold-hearted brute with a vicious
tongue?  Cass almost wavered in her resolve, but then Jack took her gently by
the arm and led her into the study, shutting the door behind them, and she
was changing her mind again.  For was he not offering her a kind of
freedom--the freedom not to starve?

"It's true what I said to Fred," he told her.

"I haven't much time to talk to you, and I am needed at the Academy.  But I
wanted to reassure you.  I meant it when I said that I had no desire to hurt
you.  It's quite plain from what Herriot said to me briefly just now that
you are one of their victims.  You and your companion, who were about to be
turned into the street.  I wanted to secure your future, and as you so
accurately pointed out, I can do so by benefiting both of us.  You understand
me?"

Cass nodded.  She didn't know whether he frightened her more when he was
speaking to her so coolly and reasonably than when he was in his savage mode.
Which was the true man?  Did she want to find out?

Well, one thing was certain.  Life with him was never going to be dull.  And
what had he been doing before he had become a fencing teacher?  Fred had said
that he was a new instructor.  Had he always been one?  She had thought him
to have been a soldier, but perhaps she was wrong.

He was speaking gravely and seriously to her.  "Before you marry me, I must
make one thing plain.  I intend this marriage to be one in name only.  I
shall not touch you--other than in friendship, that is.  That is partly why I
have chosen you to be my wife.  I have no desire to have a family, and every
desire to thwart my late father by marrying to secure the estates and then
not providing the Devereux line with the heir he so dearly desired.  Damn the
line, I say.  I will see that you have a rich and comfortable life, and in
return you will be faithful to me.  You look the faithful sort."  He means
that I am plain and biddable, thought Cass numbly.  But let him wait until
after he has married me!  He says that he is giving me freedom, and I mean to
enjoy myself as I have never been allowed to do before.  I shall keep my word
if he wishes me to be faithful-but that is all.

But she said nothing, bowing her head meekly.  And with a quizzical
expression on his harsh face, he began to speak again.

"If this bargain is not to your liking, say so now, and I shall go outside
and tell them that you have changed your mind, and I must start looking for a
bride again.  I don't think that I shall have much difficulty in finding one,
do you?"

"No," said Cass simply,

"I'm sure that half the mamas in society would throw their daughters at you,
and you would be spoilt for choice.  So why me?  You could have rank or
beauty, or rank and beauty.  You know I have little rank, and it is plain by
the way in which you speak to me that you don't think that I have beauty
either.

So again, why me?  "

"For that very reason," drawled Jack carelessly.

"I don't want some spoiled and pouting miss, who would expect me to dance
attendance on her and would cry at and to Mama if I wish to go my own way.
Now, according to Mr Herriot you are a sensible girl, who will do your duty,
as you have been doing since my father brought you into his house, and will
spare me all missishness I might otherwise acquire.  Still haven't changed
your mind?"

A mute shake of the head was Cass's response to this.  "Good.  Now, before I
go, have you any questions to ask me?  Not long ones, I beg."

"Yes."  Cass, putting her hands behind her back, said demurely,

"One question.  Who is your shadow?  What is his name?  And will he be part
of our household?"  She rather liked the 'our household' bit.  It told him
how determined she was to see him as her soon-to-be husband--no missishness
there.

If Jack was surprised by this unexpected request, he did not show it.

"He is Dickie Dickson.  He is my great friend, and we owe each other our
lives--which creates a bond between man and man, you understand.  And yes, he
will be part of our household.  He will be my general factotum and still my
friend--not really a servant at all.  We have been Dev and Dickie far too
long for that."

Dev and Dickie.  There was one other question she must ask him, even if she
could guess by his manner that he was anxious to be away.

"Dev and Dickie.  He knew your true name, then?"  Jack shook his head.

"Until today he and the world-or that part of it in which I have lived for
the past twelve years--has known me as Jack Devlin."

Cass thought that it would not be wise to ask him exactly in what part of the
world he had been living and what he had been doing in it.  If he wanted
her--or anyone else--to know, he would tell her or them.

Patently he did not.  She didn't think that Dickie possessed a looser tongue
than his master.  It was also patent that they were a good pair.

"Enough.  You have no more questions for me?"  he asked, raising those strong
eyebrows and giving her his feral stare.

Cass had none for the present, but there was one thing which she couldn't
resist saying--even if one ought not to twist the tiger's tail.

"He won't like it, you know," she offered him elliptically.  But,
surprisingly, he knew what she meant.

"Lord Thaxted, you mean?  That Dickie and I will be friends and not master
and servant?"

Cass nodded.

"Then he may go to the devil.  I take it that you don't.  Mind Dickie and me,
I mean."

"Oh, no," Cass said.

"That is your mystery, as Mr Hunt, our librarian, once told me when we were
discussing some ancient manners and customs.  Each age and person has their
own, he said."

"Did he, indeed?"  Jack was grave again.  Perhaps she had surprised him a
little.  And now he was bowing over her hand, as elegant as Lord Thaxted
would have liked him to be with everyone, and not just with her, in private.
Before he straightened up he kissed the back of it, leaving behind such an
odd but pleasant burning sensation that long after he had gone, 'to do his
duty' as he had said, she could still feel it, as though he had put a brand
upon her.

Which must be a sort of wizardry he was practising on her, must it not?  And
did everyone feel like that when he touched them, or was she the only victim?
-- if victim was the right word.

And now she must go to see dear Stroody and tell her that she was safe.  And
there was another qualification she must make--if anyone could be counted
safe who was to live in Jack Devereux's shadow.

"Child," said Miss Strood sorrowfully, 'do you know what you are doing?  "

"No," said Cass.

"Of course not.  Not at all.  But I need a home.  And so do you.  He is
giving us one.  It's as simple as that."

"Oh, yes, child, but at what a price!  To marry him, such an ogre.

Does he not frighten you?  "

"Yes," said Cass, 'of course.  " There was no point in denying the truth~
Anyone who was not frightened of ^ B1DDABLE GIRL?

him must be a fool.  As Lord Thaxted had been, downstairs in the library.
But he excited her too, and she couldn't say that to poor Stroody.

"He is using you."  Miss Strood's voice had become a wail.  She plainly saw
Cass laid out on Jack's bed as on a sacrificial altar, her body the price for
security.  A joke, really, seeing that he had decided not to touch her.

"True."  Cass nodded.

"But then, I am using him, so we are quits.

Would you rather that we walked the streets?  Whatever the Ugly Sisters might
have decided to do with us, once Jack arrived they were ready to abandon us.
To spite him--and the late Earl.  " Now this was a piece of shrewdness which
until today Cass had scarcely known she possessed.  Was it Jack Devereux, or
being in a tight corner which had brought it on?

Miss Strood had no answer to Cass's last statement.  Her thin hands worked
convulsively together, plucking at one another.  She had lived on the verge
of ruin for so long that she could not believe that she had been saved.  She
did not like to think that Cass had been sacrificed to save her.

More than that, in all their previous dealings she had been the dominant one,
Cass her pupil.  Now their positions were reversed.  Cass had gone beyond her
and she would never catch up with her again.  Cass would be Lady Devereux,
the mistress of a grand establishment, a personage in her own right--as Jack
would be in his.

Hesitantly she asked,

"Do you wish me to remain with you, or would you rather I looked for another
post?"  She knew that Cass would 'see her right' as they said, but there was
a plea in her voice that she should not be left to go, friendless, into the
world.

Cass spoke as lovingly and gently as she could.

"Of course I shall want you to stay with me, Stroody.  I shall need a friend."

She was surprised at her own calm--no more surprised than Miss Strood was,
perhaps.  But then poor Stroody did not know the truth: that Jack Devereux
did not want her, would not touch her--at least not yet, for Cass was
hard-headed, and thought that he might change his mind when he had been Earl
for a little while and found that he wanted a child after all.  "Damn the
line', he had said earlier, but would he always mean it?  No time to think of
that now.  For the present, he meant it, and that must be enough.

And she was not sacrificing herself as poor Miss Strood believed--or was she?
Queen Elizabeth, Good Queen Bess, had cried aloud when she had heard that
her cousin and rival, Mary, Queen of Scots, had borne a child,

"And I am but of a barren stock?  She, Cass, would be of a barren stock.
Unless Jack changed his mind, that would be her sacrifice.

Might it not have been better to have been turned out, to have taken her
chance of ruin, the ruin which awaited those of genteel birth thrown upon the
street?  She had no illusions as to what her destiny would have been.  She
doubted very much that the Lord would have provided her with anything better
than the opportunity to sell her body; after all, He had provided her with
very little in her short life so far.

But that was being ungrateful to Him--for had He not provided her with Jack
Devereux?  -- and Jack Devereux she would have to be content with.

Miss Strood was watching the changing emotions chase themselves across
Cass's face.  It was as though she were growing up before her.

"Don't do this, child," she said, and put her arms around Cass as though to
protect her.

"Somehow we shall survive without you becoming Lord Devereux's prey."

Cass comforted her by patting her on her back.  She wished that she could
tell poor Stroody the truth.  But that would not be wise.  She had survived
so far in her life by telling very little of anything to anyone.

"There, there, there," she crooned.

"No need to repine.  He will play fair with me, I am sure."  But she mentally
crossed her fingers as she spoke.  For what did she really know of him?

Comforting Miss Strood was a tiring occupation--for both of them.

Finally, Cass sent her companion to rest in her own small room, a few doors
away from Cass's, leaving Cass to do the same thing in hers.

But she had hardly sat down on her hard and narrow bed, little better than
that of a servant, when her much needed solitude was broken by a peremptory
knock on the door.  Without waiting for Cass to reply, the door was flung
open wide, and Amelia Thaxted, wearing the face of a tragedy queen, advanced
upon her.

"My poor dear child," she exclaimed, her tone suggesting that she and Cass
had been bosom bows until Jack's sudden reappearance, and that she was
renewing that friendship on the instant in order to help Cass in her time of
need.

"This marriage is quite impossible.  Most unfair to you at your young age to
be saddled with such a violent rogue as Sack Devereux appears to be.  Thaxted
and I are in agreement, as is dear Constantia, that we shall find you a home
between us, so that you do not feel the need to sacrifice yourself to him in
order to gain a roof over your head?  She paused dramatically.

Sacrifice!  Was everyone obsessed with the word where she and Jack were
concerned?  No one, apparently, had thought that she was being sacrificed
when it had been agreed that she should be sent as companion to a
bad-tempered old woman in the far North, and that poor Stroody should be
turned out on the street.

Cass decided to find out what new fate, if any, had been decided on for her
companion.

"And Miss Strood?"  she asked pleasantly, as though falling in with Amelia's
wishes.

Oh, this was better--it showed that the child knew her proper place--which
was not that of the Countess Devereux.

"Naturally, we should also offer a home to Miss Strood until she finds a new
post.  It won't be for long, of course, as I am sure that you understand."
"I see," said Cass, and then fell silent.

Silence was rapidly taken as consent.

"I am to tell Thaxted, then, that you will give up this ridiculous notion of
marrying Jack, and be taken under our wing?"

Their wing?  Where had that refuge been before Jack's sudden and unwanted
arrival, when she and Constantia and the rest of them had been so willing to
turn her away?

It was plain that in their desire to thwart Jack, to make it difficult for
him to fulfill the conditions of his father's will, his sisters and their
husbands were prepared to do anything to stop his marriage to Cass.

Cass's swift agreement had solved his problem for him on the instant, so
anything which delayed his acquiring a countess would please them mightily.
If they were not to inherit their father's estates, then they would try to
prevent Jack from doing so.

"Wing' was the wrong word for Amelia to use.

"Dog in the manger' were the right ones, that was sure.

"Cass?  Cass?"  Heavens above!  Amelia was pleading with her!  And what a
delightful turn-up that was, given that Cass's conversation with her had
always taken the form of bullying roars from Amelia directed at the poor
dependant on Devereux charity!  Cass would give her an answer, and as plain a
one as she could.

"Oh, no."  She smiled sweetly.

"Much though I would like to accept your kind offer, I have given my word to
Earl Devereux--' she would not say Jack '--and I must keep it.  Now, had you
made it earlier then I should have been bound by my word to you.  But as it
is..."  And she shrugged her shoulders eloquently.

Was not this the most delightful revenge for the selfish way in which her
disposition had been arranged?

The only flaw was that she could not let Amelia know that she was aware of
the somersaults which Jack's offer had caused them all to turn.  That would
be most unwise.

Amelia turned purple again at this demure answer.  She could almost have
sworn that the child was laughing at her as she made it.  Desperate, she
tried again.  She had told the others that she would bring Cass round, and
she would not give up without a right.  "You can hardly wish to go through
this pantomime of a marriage simply to become Countess Devereux?  What use
would a title be against the unhappiness that 47 a union with such a
the'er-do-well as Jack would bring you?"

"True," sighed Cass, 'but I gave my word--a trifle hastily, perhaps--and I
must now live with it.  We even shook hands.  " She pulled her handkerchief
out of her small reticule and wondered whether to dab her eyes with it, but
thought that that might be going too far.  She had already gone too far.
Amelia could see that the case was hopeless.  She clenched her fists and hid
them in the skirts of her gown--a maroon one, which did nothing for her
complexion.

"I have to say that I consider that you are being most unwise, and when in a
few months you come running to us for help, life with such a one as Jack
being unsupportable, then do not think that Thaxted and I, or dear Constantia
and Edward will be willing to help you.  I have given you your opportunity to
retract--and you have refused it.  Mark that!"

She finished with an exclamation of such violence that Cass shrank from it.

"You have made your bed, my girl, and you must lie on it--with him!"  Which
was not quite the threat that she thought it was.

CHAPTER FOUR

Two men were fencing when Fred Maxwell walked into the big hall of Louis
Fromac's Academy, which was situated in an old house in an alley off the
Haymarket.  Fronsac had been a protege of Henry Angelo and was widely
regarded as one of the supreme modern masters of the small sword.

The room was lit with long windows that were curtained, when Fred arrived, to
prevent the sun from blazing into the duel lists eyes.  Light came from
several chandeliers beneath a high roof.  A small audience was watching the
two men, who were both dressed in the formal court clothing of the late
eighteenth century: white silk shirts, black silk knee-breeches, and light
black silver-buckled shoes.  To complete the illusion of the past they both
wore their hair long, carefully tied back with black grosgrain ribbon.

They were fencing with light buttoned foils, masks over their faces.

To watch them was as good as watching a play, or a ballet danced without
music, so excellent was their performance.  There seemed to be little to
choose between them in skill.

A page or flunky, a large watch in his hand which he constantly consulted,
suddenly rang a bell.  Immediately, as though they were automata, both men
stood back, pulled off their masks, raised their foils before their faces,
and kissed them as though they had been involved in a duel to the death
instead of a demonstration of the beauty and elegance of fencing for the
benefit of the group of watching novices who had just finished their own
lessons.

It was only when the two men, nothing between them in height and grace,
walked towards him, panting and sweating slightly, that Fred realised that
one of them was his new-found uncle Jack Devereux, so different was he in
appearance and manner from the 'longshoreman' which Fred had dubbed him
earlier that day.

Jack had seen Fred walk in as he had swung away from his employer, Louis
Fronsac, to dodge that gentleman's attack in tierce.  They usually worked out
together at some point in each day to keep their competitive edge.  Too much
time spent in teaching novices and incompetents was likely to destroy their
fine control.

Dickie Dickson, who sat watching them, a sabre across his knee, was a good
performer with that weapon, but had to acknowledge that he was not in the
same class as Louis and Jack with a small sword, however much they tried to
help him to improve his performance.

"Thought that you might give your lesson a miss after this afternoon's
brouhaha, sir," remarked Jack as he towelled his face and watched Fred's man
help him to prepare for his lesson.  He had seen Fred's surprise at his
changed appearance, and was happy to have wrong- looted him.  He had made a
specialism of wrong-footing people from the day on which he had been turned
away from his home, had been thrown down the steps of Devereux House by three
sturdy footmen and told never to come back.

Now he was watching his nephew, and presently began his lesson as
impersonally as though he had never met him before, calling him 'sir' most
respectfully, which only served to embarrass Fred mightily.

Especially since it soon became plain to Jack that whatever Fred might excel
at he was never going to become a master of the small sword, however hard he
tried.  And try he did; Jack had to grant him that.

After half an hour's gruelling work Jack led Fred to a mirror, and made him
lunge at it, pointing out that, while he did so, Fred could see for himself
that his body was at quite the wrong angle for his thrusts to be successful.
By the end of the lesson Jack was still perspiring lightly, whilst Fred's
shirt and breeches were wet through: he was soaked to the skin.

The lesson over, Jack led Fred to a small table at the rear of the big hall
where drink was set out--ale, wine, port and several large pitchers of
lemonade.  Jack picked up a glass and poured himself lemonade whilst Fred,
feeling a bigger fool than ever after his inept display, downed a giant
tankard of ale.

Jack surveyed Fred's stocky body, not at all that of a master fencer--he was
too short for one thing, and his reach was ineffectual--and asked
conversationally, "Tried boxing, have you, sir?"  Nothing in his voice or
manner betrayed that he thought that he and Fred were relatives and social
equals.

Rendered uncomfortable by Jack's professionalism and servant-like
impersonality, Fred muttered,

"Come off it, Uncle.  You are my uncle, goddam it and that ass Thaxted is
right.  You shouldn't be capering here, calling your inferiors " sir"."

The reaction he got surprised him, but would not 51 have surprised anyone who
had known Jack Devereux for the last twelve years.  He seized Fred by the
throat and pinned him, spluttering and turning purple, against the wall.

"You damned young puppy, has no one taught you sense or manners?  A few
months as a seaman on a Navy ship or a private in the infantry would do
wonders for you.  I do an honest job for an honest day's pay, which is more
than you have ever done, and I demean neither myself nor my clients by
calling them sir.  They paid for that, as you have done.  And in here I'm not
your uncle, remember that.  I'm Louis Fronsac's man.

Besides, out of here I'll have you call me Jack, or nothing at all.

Understood?  "

Jack could not understand why he was so angry.  For most of the last twelve
years he had kept his hot temper under firm control.  But ever since he had
walked into Devereux House and seen that pack of parasites who called
themselves his relatives battening on the work and labour of others, he had
felt the red rage building in him, and poor silly Fred was getting the
benefit of it!  He released Fred and stood back.

"Shouldn't have done that, sir," he said, conversational again.

"Most unprofessional, but you did ask for it, sir.  Now, answer my question,
sir.  Do you box?"

Fred felt his bruised throat, then replied with as much dignity as a man
could whose voice was hoarse and whose eyes were watering after such a
vigorous manhandling,

"A

little, Duroy.  A little.  "

He was pleased that he had remembered Jack's professional name, and Jack was
pleased, too.  There was hope for the boy yet.  All he needed was a little
discipline.

"Had any lessons from Jackson?"  He cast a cold eye over Fred.

"You're a trifle overweight, sir.  I recommend less ale.  Try the
lemonade--or water."

"Last year.  He said that he thought that I was promising, but I fancied
myself with a small sword.

That's why I'm here.  "

"A mistake, sir, I think."  Jack was polite without being servile.

"I

don't think you've much talent for it, to be honest.  My advice is, go back
to Jackson and let him work on you.  "

Fred was suddenly resentful.  He had wanted to cut a dash with the foils, not
sweat and grunt like a bruiser.

He decided that attack was the best form of defence, and damn his uncle.
Jack .  if he attacked him again.

"Really mean to marry Cass, do you?"

"Not here," riposted Jack grimly.  He had no wish to discuss Cass or any of
his affairs with this half-fledged boy.

"I don't want to discuss Miss Mellon here."  "Here," returned Fred robustly.

"Here, because I'm the gent, ain't I?  So you must obey me.  Do you mean to
marry her?"  He felt briefly and exhilaratingly in charge of the tiger before
him.

"Yes, sir."  Jack suddenly grinned and pulled an imaginary forelock.

And who am I mocking, he thought, myself or poor Fred?

"Right," said Fred, 'and now let me tell you something.  If you do anything
to hurt Cass you'll have me to reckon with-- understood?  "

Jack was hard put to it not to laugh at him, but for Fred's sake kept his
face straight.  Which was more than Dickie, who had been eavesdropping on
their conversation, could do.  He was openly smiling at the mere notion of
young Fred being able to force any kind of reckoning on a man who could, if
he were so minded, kill him in a dozen different ways, choose how.
Nevertheless, he was pleased to see that Jack did not mock at his nephew, but
nodded as gravely as though he were Fred and Fred were him, in terms of age
and experience.

"Trust me," Jack said, adding as an afterthought, 'sir.  " Fred thought that
he did.  There was something about Jack Devereux which compelled respect,
whatever his father and his mother, or his uncle and his aunt had said of
him.  He possessed a strength, a sternness which belonged to no one else whom
he knew.  He felt it necessary to add,

"Cass hasn't anyone else to defend her--no father, no brother.  So it's up to
me, you see."

Jack saw.  He saw that Fred was sweet on Cass, to put it at its mildest.  He
also saw that he would never have been allowed to marry her, so he was not
doing Fred out of anything.  Whether he was doing Cass out of anything was a
different matter.  He thought not.  That he was exploiting her, he had no
doubt.  But it was an odd form of exploitation, one had to admit, which ended
up in a penniless girl of plain face and mere skin and bones becoming a
countess.

Even if she did have to take Jack Devereux with the title.

Jack continued to wrong-foot everyone by deciding to live at Devereux House
whilst he continued working for Louis Fronsac, a decision which infuriated
all his relatives and raised the eyebrows of everyone who lived in the polite
world.  Louis had told him that he would release him from his agreement to
work on until he found a replacement, but had met Jack's cold stare and
Dickie's asmued one.

"On no account."  Jack's voice had been even frostier than it usually was.

"You are only suggesting it because I am Earl Devereux.  If I were still
plain Jack Devlin you would not even have considered making me such an offer.
Besides, your offer is foolish after another fashion--think of the extra
money you are earning because so many curious fools are coming here in order
to boast that they have been taught by the Earl Devereux."

Louis had given in, as Dev and Dickie had both known that he would.

He redoubled his efforts to find another fencing master as soon as
possible--it was neither right nor proper that the owner of a great name and
great possessions should be 'capering round a fencing hall', as Fred had to
tactlessly put it.

The only person beside Dickie Dickson who approved of Jack's decision was
Cass.  She was compelled to listen to his relatives bemoaning it--for their
own reasons they had all stayed on at Devereux House for the wedding, which
was to take place ten days after the will-reading.  Even Miss Strood hinted
that she thought his behaviour barely proper.  Great men, with great names,
it seemed to Cass, need not honour their contracts--if made with their
inferiors, that was.  She had said nothing to Jack of her reaction to his
conduct, because after his proposal she had not seen him.  He left Devereux
House early in the morning and only returned long after she had retired for
the night.  It was plain that not only did he not wish or expect her to share
his bed, he did not expect her to share his life.  She knew this because,
shamefully again, on the one afternoon which he had spent at Devereux House,
she had overheard him and Dickie talking about her in the library.

She had been sitting in her favourite place behind the curtain, and he and
Dickie had come in and started to talk before she had had time to let them
know that she was there.

And then it had been too late.  "Why are you doing this, Dev?"  Dickie had
asked him.

"Doing which particular thing, Dickie?"

"You know what I mean," Dickie had grunted.  "Oh, marrying Miss Skin and
Bones," Jack had said carelessly.

Now, this was worse than being called the Scrap, and no wonder he didn't want
to go to bed with her.  Cass shivered, almost put her hands over her ears,
but the instinct to survive was now so strong in her that she listened on.
Knowledge was power, Mr Hunt had so often said, and she wished to know Jack.
Though how that might give her power over him, she had at the moment no idea.

"I would have thought it was obvious."  Jack's voice was still careless.

"She is a woman whom I can marry quickly, without wasting time on some dam'd
fine lady who won't accept me, however much she might want my lands and
title, without me dancing a monstrous quadrille around her.  I've no stomach
for that.  Besides, this one will be grateful--be a biddable girl, I
shouldn't wonder.

Plain is better than pretty.  I doubt whether she will be betraying me with
every hah dome young fellow she sets eyes on.  "

At these callous words Cass clenched her small fists.

Damn him--she would betray him with every handsome young fellow she met, if
she were so minded.

"She's not the usual sort of woman, Dev," his horrid friend was saying.

"I have no " usual sort of woman", Dickie, only the common sort.

They're all much of a much ness you know.  Most women have no character at
all, as the poet said.  I doubt me that this one's different.  "

He was so indifferent, so dismissive, that Cass's toes curled.  Well at least
he was affording her the privilege of hating him.  Just let him wait until
she was his Countess!  She would show him what was what.  Gratitude to him
for her salvation was flying out the window.  She would demand the biggest
jointure she could get, an establishment to rival a crown princess's.  The
Devereux estate could afford it.  She would sleep on satin, dine on lark's
tongues and strawberries out of season, buy Miss Strood, as well as herself,
some decent bonnets.  This descent into bathos almost had Cass laughing out
loud at herself.  She clapped her hands over her mouth.  It would not do to
be discovered.

He was talking about her again.  She wondered if he would mention their
bargain to his friend, but so far he had not.  He had said that it was their
secret and he was keeping it so.

"Why worry at this bone, Dickie?  You have never troubled yourself about my
women before."

"This one's to be your wife, and she's so young... almost a child."

"But a shrewd one, you must admit.  Did you not mark the speed with which she
jumped to be my Countess?"

Damn being your Countess, Cass thought inelegantly.  It was the opportunity
not to starve which I was jumping at!

Dickie changed the subject, asking anxiously, "You're sure that you want me
to stay with you now that you're Earl, Dev?  This kind of splendour ain't my
line, you know.  We all us did the bowing and scraping to others.  We was
never bowed and scraped at."  Jack was laughing.

"Much bowing and scraping we did, Dickie, but I take your point.  This way
round is better, you'll find.  And why should it not be Dev and Dickie in
good times as well as in bad?  Even if I don't wish to be Earl Devereux."

"Will the good times be as good as the bad ones were?"

For a second there was silence, and then Jack spoke, his voice slow and
serious, the carelessness gone from it.

"I take your point, Dickie.  We always stood between authority and those
authority ruled.  The fun lay in reconciling the two things and outwitting
them both.  Who do we outwit now that we are authority?  The answer's simple.
All of them.  All of the dam'd mealy- mouthed canting crew who've always
known where their next meal was coming from.  The men who have never waited
for their death at dawn, the women who have never had to sell themselves for
necessity, only for pleasure.

We always had fun in the past, Dickie, now let's have fun in the present.
We've both got scores to settle with life--let's settle them together.  "

There was silence after that.  Dickie's reply was so low she could not hear
it, and then they were gone.

Cass tried to make sense of what she had overheard.

Miss Skin and Bones was easy enough to understand, if hurtful.  That was
what he thought of her, and there was nothing that she could do about it.
Except make him pay a little after they were married.

But for the rest--what was she to make of that?  What had he and Dickie been
doing?  Conspiring together, of course, but about what?

Cass had given up the puzzle after a little time, and when she had been sure
that they were safely away, had pulled back the curtain and made for her
room.  Miss Skin and Bones.  Yes, he would pay for that or her name wasn't
Cassandra Merton!

"No!"  she had announced furiously to her mirror on the fourth night, when he
had still not had the decency to come near her.

"This is not good enough.  He owes me something, after all.  if he is saving
me, I am saving him."

She had finally gone to bed with a complaining and tired Miss Strood toiling
at her rear at twelve, midnight.

She had pleaded that she wished to finish the book she was reading, in the
hope that Jack and Dickie--she knew that Dickie would be with him--would
arrive home before she would be compelled to retire for sheer propriety's
sake.

One thing was true.  She was having a great deal of trouble sleeping.

And the reason for that was Jack Devereux.  No sooner did she lie down than
he was in her mind whilst she was awake, and in her dreams when she was
asleep.  Which was really stupid, seeing that she did not think that he had
given her another thought after he had walked out of the library on the day
in which she had heard him talking so carelessly of her with Dickie Dickson.
Miss Skin and Bones, indeed!

So it was quite shameful of her to be so obsessed by him--but there seemed to
be nothing that she could do about it.  And it was those feral greeny-yellow
eyes which were doing the most damage to her hard-won composure.

Once in her room, she refused to dress for the night, and scowled first at
the mirror and then at the clock.

She gave Miss Strood time to undress and go to sleep, before she crept onto
the landing and made her way silently down four flights of stairs.  The first
one of them was uncarpeted, because it led to the servants' quarters, except
for the rooms occupied by Stroody and herself.  It was to be hoped that the
Thaxteds and the Maxwells, including Fred, were all snoring peacefully.
Descending into the hall, she could hear male voices coming from the drawing
room.  One of the voices was Jack's--and it struck her that she had only met
him once and overheard him once, and yet everything about him was indeliby
engraved on her memory.  His looks, his voice, his clothes .  she would know
his voice anywhere.

Her hand on the doorknob, she hesitated at the very last moment, overcome by
the enormity of what she was doing.  Suppose the other male members of the
household were there?  It wouldn't matter, if it were merely Fred, but to
endure the stares of the Lord Thaxted and Edward Maxwell .  they had made
their opinion of her plain: from being a rejected poor relation she was now
dubbed an outrageous fortune hunter and was so being described to the rest of
society.  Well, pooh to the rest of society.  But she was A

still made a little unhappy at the prospect of the displeasure of those under
whose thumb she had lived for so long.

She finally turned the doorknob and walked in, a face-saving lie ready at the
end of her tongue to justify her presence if it were necessary.

It wasn't.  Jack Devereux stood facing the door, talking to the only other
person in the room.  Dickde Dickson, of course.  Jack was propped up against
the beautiful marble fireplace which his grandfather had brought from Italy.
He no longer looked like the longshoreman that Fred had called him.

Not that he looked like an ordinary gentleman either.  He was