Impetuous. Candace Camp

you. Do you understand?”

      “Of course I understand!” Cassandra hissed back in the same undertone. “I’m not an idiot.”

      He moved off her with a groan. “Bloody hell! What a tangle.” He looked at her, frowning. “You’re the wrong one.”

      “I should certainly hope so,” Cassandra retorted acidly, sitting up. “Oh, my head! I feel as if a thousand hammers were banging away inside it.” Why was she so groggy? And why did she feel strangely hot and tingly inside?

      She looked at the man sitting cross-legged on the bed beside her. She supposed she ought to be frightened, but, once that initial spurt of terror was past, once she recognized the stranger for Sir Philip Neville, she had not been scared, only stunned and confused.

      The lingering emotions from her dream unsettled her, and she took refuge in sarcasm. “What young lady’s room were you trying to break into, may I ask?”

      “I wasn’t breaking in,” he responded, stung. “I was accepting an invitation.”

      “Of course. I should have known.” Cassandra’s voice was dry, and she arched an eyebrow. “I am sure that Sir Philip Neville has ample invitations to enter women’s bedrooms.”

      Neville gazed at her for a long moment. “You are a most unusual female.”

      “So I’ve been told.” Cassandra did not deceive herself that his words were a compliment.

      “I would think a young lady would be...rather more distraught in this situation than you are.”

      “Would you rather that I were?” Cassandra retorted. “I fail to see how it would help matters any if I were to fall into hysterics.”

      “I didn’t say it would help. It just seems more...natural.”

      “I must be an unnatural female, then. It is what my aunt and cousin tell me. They say it is why I never caught a husband. But I think that had more to do with the sad state of our finances than with my attitude, for I have seen odder women than myself marry well, as long as they had a wealthy father. Wouldn’t you say?”

      “I daresay you are correct.” Sir Philip gazed at her in a sort of dazed fascination. He had never before met a woman who spoke in the candid, no-nonsense way this woman did. Indeed, it was something of an oddity to speak to a woman who did not immediately set to flirting with him. He had found that an income of one hundred thousand pounds a year acted as a powerful aphrodisiac.

      “To return to the subject at hand,” Cassandra continued crisply, “exactly why are you in my room rather than that of the female who issued the invitation?”

      Neville grimaced. “I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere.” He turned to light the candle he had set down on the bedside table earlier. Taking out a note from his pocket, he unfolded it and reread it. “Though I don’t see how. It’s quite clear—the fifth door on the right from the stairs. Isn’t this the fifth door?”

      Cassandra thought for a moment. “Yes.” Curious, she rose onto her knees and looked over his shoulder at the note. She gasped as she recognized the blotted, sloppy handwriting and the distinctive looping initials at the bottom of the paper. “My God, that’s Joanna’s script!”

      Neville turned to glare at her, crumpling the note in his fist. “I beg your pardon, madam. This is a private correspondence.”

      “Mmm. I think it’s hardly a private matter, considering that you are sitting in my bed reading it.”

      “It would be the death of her reputation if this were known,” he countered grimly.

      “I think that my reputation is of more concern at the moment, since you are in my bedroom.”

      “I would trust, madam, that you would have enough sense not to bandy it about that you were entertaining a man in your room, and since I have no intention of revealing it, I think it is clear that your reputation is safe.”

      “Of course I have enough sense to keep quiet,” Cassandra retorted, nettled by what she considered a rather excessive concern on his part over Joanna’s reputation. “The one you ought to be concerned with is Joanna, since she is obviously so hare-witted that she directed you to the wrong room.”

      She reached over and plucked the ball of paper from his hand and smoothed it out, bending close to read it in the dim light of the candle. “Ah, yes, I see. She didn’t say fifth door, she wrote fourth. You see? It’s just her abominable handwriting, and she left out the u. She never was much good at spelling, I’m afraid. I can see how you made the mistake—especially with, ah, your undoubted eagerness clouding your thinking. I have had a bit more experience with reading her notes.”

      “Then it is too bad that I did not consult with you first,” Neville snarled, “but, you see, I was not aware that I needed an interpreter.”

      “There is no need to be testy,” Cassandra stated. “And you needn’t worry for your, uh, for the lady’s reputation. I’m not likely to besmirch my family by telling anyone that Joanna makes assignations with men in her bedchamber. She is my cousin, you see.”

      “Your cousin?” Neville studied her face in the candlelight. “That’s odd. I don’t recall seeing you with her.”

      “That is often the case.” Cassandra kept her voice light. She was used, after all, to being overshadowed by her beautiful, flirtatious cousin. Joanna’s guinea-gold hair and large blue eyes generally captured all male attention when she was around.

      Cassandra, at the ripe old age of twenty-seven, knew that she was on the shelf and, indeed, had never been popular with men. She had not “taken” one during her season, and her father had not been able to afford more than one. Cassandra knew, anyway, that any number of social seasons would not have seen her married. For one thing, she had no knack for flirtation and even less interest in it. For another, while she was not precisely plain, her features lacked the even perfection of a true beauty. Her cheekbones were too high, her jaw too firm, and her mouth was much too wide for the popular rosebud look. Even her eyes, which she felt to be her best feature, were a quiet gray rather than a soulful brown or a sparkling blue, and she did not use them to her advantage, instead gazing at the world in a straightforward, clear way that did not lure men.

      So she had retired from the social world after one year, not really displeased that she had not made a successful marriage. She had done the season as a duty for her family. They were, as always, in desperate need of money, and she would have gritted her teeth and said yes if an eligible man had asked for her hand. But she had found no man during the year of her debut whom she had accounted as anything but boring, and she was, frankly, quite glad to return to the bosom of her family at Chesilworth unengaged and unlikely ever to be so. With relief, she had donned her old clothes, wound her hair up into the familiar bun and jumped back into the management of her father’s household, which had fallen into a woeful state in her absence. She found contentment in raising her younger brothers and sister, and intellectual companionship with her father, and if there was anything missing in her life—other than a chronic lack of money—she had not felt it, or at least had not allowed the feeling to dwell long. At social functions, she sat with the matrons overseeing the antics of the youngsters, rather than with the giggling, hopeful maidens, whose conversations she found stultifying, and in the last couple of years, she had even taken to wearing a small cap over her hair in acknowledgment of her spinster status. It was just as well, she thought, that men’s eyes slid past her indifferently. It was much less trying not to have to make conversation about nothing.

      Still...she could not help but feel a twinge of hurt at the thought that Sir Philip had not even noticed her when he was standing not three feet away from her, chatting with Aunt Ardis and her cousin Joanna.

      “You were otherwise occupied,” she continued, not without a sting.

      “I see.” He turned and looked at her. It puzzled him that he could have missed noticing this creature with the wide eyes and tumbling mass of bright hair and...other, entrancing features. His