The Complete Regency Bestsellers And One Winters Collection. Rebecca Winters

ton will recognise you as my intended. No one then would dare to criticise.’

      ‘And your grandfather?’

      ‘Who knows? Such a pronouncement may even bring him from St Auburn as he has hoped for such an occasion for ever. Jamie’s existence will make him delirious.’

      ‘You almost make me believe that it could be this easy for us.’

      ‘Well, we have waited for years to be together again and that must be some kind of a miracle.’

      She curled into him, holding tight. ‘I have missed you. Missed this. Missed talking and loving. Missed closeness.’

      He felt her breath at his throat, gentle and honest. Like his life was now with her in it. He wanted to protect her for ever and love her until they were old and grey with a million memories shared between them. The harsh and raw realities of the past faded into this new serenity, Cassandra and Jamie in the very centre of a world reformed.

      Her finger traced the tattoo on his forearm. ‘What does this mean?’

      He smiled. ‘It’s one of the symbols from the healing temples of Asclepius. At the time, in the backstreets of Marseilles, I was looking for resurrection and renewal. Later on it always reminded me of the thin line between life and death.’

      ‘Being a spy must have been dangerous work. Your body is covered in scars.’

      ‘It’s the price one pays for not carrying arms and being out of uniform. Blending into a community is not always as easy as it might sound.’

      ‘But you have stopped?’

      ‘Almost.’

      ‘I am glad for it.’

      ‘And for the first time I think I could settle at St Auburn and run the place, farm the land, sit as a judge at the country courts, grow vegetables. All the things I once would not have seen sense in.’

      She laughed.

      ‘With you and Jamie there it all feels possible.’

      Cassie turned then to look at him, the light in her eyes bright and clear. He could never decide whether they were more green than blue. Today they seemed an exact mixture of both. ‘I think I loved you the first moment I saw you in Nay, with your dimple...here.’ She touched his cheek.

      ‘Show me,’ he returned and brought her against him, the sunlight from the new day creating a river of warmth on their bed.

      * * *

      They renewed their vows two days later in the chapel to one side of the Lindsay town house and it was a small and private occasion. Stephen Hawkhurst was the best man and Maureen the bridesmaid. William Lindsay, the old Earl of St Auburn, had sent a note declining his attendance. Cassandra’s sister Anne had not been able to make the journey down from her home in Scotland because she was expecting her fourth child.

      ‘You look beautiful, Cassandra,’ Nathaniel said as she came down the stairs, her gown of cream silk shimmering in the new day.

      ‘The seamstress you organised was wonderfully fast and this time around I even have shoes.’

      He laughed and took her hand, but poignancy lingered beneath the humour as both thought of the small house by the river.

      ‘Now and for ever,’ he whispered, brushing his lips across her cheek despite the onlookers, and Jamie standing between them wriggled in delight.

      When the clergyman called them to an altar fashioned with flowers, the three of them linked hands and walked forward, her father, brother and Kenyon Riley just behind them.

      ‘Dearly beloved, we have come together in the presence of God to witness and bless the joining together of this man and this woman in holy matrimony...’

      They looked at each other. This time they would be married under their own names, properly formed and completely legal.

      * * *

      A few hours later Stephen asked if he might speak to them both in the library where they would not be disturbed. After shutting the door he brought forth a leather satchel and took out a wad of documents from within.

      ‘I have a wedding present for you both.’

      Nat stepped forward, the frown on his brow giving Cassie the inkling that he might know what was held within the papers. They looked important. Her own heart began to beat fast.

      ‘It is the official report from the British Service about the events that transpired in Perpignan after you were hurt in Languedoc, Nat.’

      ‘God.’ Her husband’s curse was soft.

      ‘It is not what you might think,’ Hawk said quickly and handed him over the account. ‘I have underlined the most crucial parts. Perhaps your wife might like to hear them.’

      ‘No.’ Her own voice, stiff with shock. How could Stephen Hawkhurst do this to her? She knew what would be within the letter, knew it to the bottom of her breaking heart. But Nathaniel was smiling and there was the suspicion of tears in his eyes as he began to read.

      So it is concluded that on the fifth of November 1846 at about nine p.m. two masked men broke into the house of Mr Didier Desrosiers and Mr Gilbert Desrosiers in Toulouse, France, and killed each of them with two shots to the head.

      Our agent in Languedoc, Nathaniel Lindsay, was also found on the right bank of the Basse River in Perpignan in the afternoon of the sixth of November 1846 with injuries to his head, stomach and right arm received by unknown enemies of England.

      Despite extensive searching the perpetrators have never been brought to justice.

      The fifth of November? The day before they had reached Perpignan. The day before she had told Lebansart the names. The day before she had branded herself a traitor. The day before shame had been scorched into memory.

      ‘It was not me, after all.’ The words slipped from her, tentative and unbelieving. ‘They were already dead?’

      ‘How did you know to find this?’ Nat spoke now directly to Stephen, the relief in his tone evident.

      ‘When you said you had married Cassandra Northrup in France I knew that you would not have done such a thing lightly. When you then went on to say that she had betrayed you, I realised there must be more to the affair than you had told me. At the Forsythe ball your wife made it known that there were others who died in Perpignan because of her actions and so I decided to find out exactly what it was she meant. After much searching I located this in a box that had been lost amongst others in the record room.’

      ‘Lost?’

      ‘Discarded, I think. Unsolved deaths. Cases closed to further enquiry.’

      ‘But their deaths were not my fault?’ The room felt farther away than it had been and a spinning lightness consumed Cassie as she groped for the chair at her side and sat down upon it. Hard. Nathaniel perched before her, taking her hands in his own.

      ‘This is the best wedding present anyone could give us, Hawk,’ he said, fingers warming her coldness. ‘Cassandra was already pregnant when Guy Lebansart caught us at Perpignan. By reciting the names she had seen on the letters in the place she had been captured, she was trying to save both me and our baby.’

      ‘But her confession and your injury took place the day after the Desrosiers died and at least a hundred miles to the south, so any information she gave was useless.’

      ‘I didn’t kill them.’ Tears of deliverance fell down her cheeks. ‘I didn’t,’ she repeated, the beauty of what the words implied washing across her like a balm.

      ‘You have both been to hell and back on a lie. But you married her again, Nat, even knowing this?’

      ‘When you love someone, you love them, Hawk, and there would be no argument in the world that would keep me from Cassandra. But this...this allows us peace.’