In the Garden of Seduction Read Online Free PDF Page B

motivated Trevor’s wife, it was hard to
judge. But Cassandra suspected it would be wise to remember Mary’s
distrust when she had to deal with Lord Whittingham herself.
    Only two other items lay hidden at the
bottom of the chest, a lace monogrammed handkerchief grown gray
with age and a gold locket. The handkerchief was embroidered with
Mary Lamberton’s initials, and Cassandra ran her fingers over the
raised stitches trying through touch to absorb something of the
woman who had sewn them.
    However, not until she reached for the
locket did an appalling sense of what had happened today finally
take hold of her. She snapped the locket open.
    Two fine miniatures stared out at her, one a
man, the other a pretty woman. Until that moment, she had been
rather detached as she examined the contents of the box as though
what was in it would not drastically change her life. But the sight
of the couple with the promise of a bright future shining on their
young, expectant faces filled her with uncertainty.
    The woman, dark-haired with large brown
eyes, had a sweet, timid smile, and though Cassandra liked the
looks of her, she couldn’t detect a relationship. But the
man! Her heart rose in her chest, for he wore a male version of
her own features. There was no doubt he was her father, despite his
complexion being fairer and freckled and his hair more orange than
red. A jaunty grin indicated a devilish nature and, though she
suspected he had been a trial while he lived, she identified with
the personality emanating from the tiny painting. She swallowed
over a sudden ache in her throat.
    Here was something she had been missing all
her life, and she’d never had a clue. Intuition should have warned
her but it hadn’t. She’d been happy, blithely so, and never, given
a hundred alternatives, would she have guessed what today held in
store. Cassandra wanted to toss herself into the middle of her
four-poster bed and weep until she could not produce another tear.
Can’t do that, she thought stubbornly, for tears were a weakness
she rarely indulged in.
    Instead, she planned to undress, lay her
exhausted body down and try to recapture some of the rest that had
been lost to her the night before. Perhaps when she awoke she would
find all of this had been a bad dream—a very bad dream.
    It was, however, many hours before she
slept.
     
    *****
     
    Cassandra bolted upright in the bed. How
long had she been asleep? The room was bathed in darkness, so it
must be night. Strange, no one had come to wake her.
    Awareness came slowly as she stared at the
vague outlines of her furniture. And then a sudden memory of the
day’s events caused her to moan aloud. Oh Lord, why couldn’t she
have been left to her slumber?
    Her head ached and she felt parched. She lay
back against the pillow and closed her eyes, for the throbbing in
her temples made her feel queasy. She swallowed, her throat muscles
protesting the effort to make them work despite her thirst.
    Perhaps a glass of warm milk would do the
trick. She knew she must be desperate to consider such a remedy,
but in the order of things she found most distasteful, warm milk
had taken a tumble down the list.
    The house was eerily quiet and, more than
the milk, she wanted to leave the solitude of her room and make
certain the world outside was still spinning. Where was
everyone?
    Cassandra pushed back the covers and reached
for the silk wrapper on the end of her bed. She put it on, stepping
into the deserted corridor. As she walked down the passage, she
felt a heightened sense of her surroundings—the pictures on the
wall, the carpet under foot.
    She arrived at the head of the staircase
with its carved teak banister and ran her hand along the railing,
soaking in the texture and the warmth of the polished wood. Her
gaze moved downward to the foyer, as big as a small room. A
chandelier fashioned from Austrian crystal hung from the vaulted
ceiling, casting refracted light onto the Italian marble of