Cressida's Dilemma

“I don’t know what made you think it, but Madame Zirelli is not my mistress.”

Catherine cocked her head. “Then why were you at Mrs. Plumb’s with her?”

“I heard she was your mistress before you married me,” Cressida whispered.

“Yes,” he said, carefully, “before I married you, she was my mistress.”

“Then you admit you lied to me just now!” Cressida clapped her hand to her mouth. “Why not just tell me I forced you away? That I pushed you into the arms of this woman who could be relied upon to…give you the comfort I couldn’t—”

“Good Lord, Cressy, you are overwrought!” Seizing her shoulders, Justin drew her up, tilting her chin with his forefinger as he forced her to meet his eyes. “That is not what happened at all. I have not been unfaithful in mind or body for the entire eight years we’ve been married.”

“Then tell me, what were you were doing at Mrs. Plumb’s?” begged Cressida. “Last week, when I saw you there for the first time, you were in her sitting room, clearly not expecting me. Yet when a…widow in need of manly attention came knocking, you—”

“Do you think I don’t know my own wife?”

Cressida shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know.” Miserably, she sank down into the cushions beside Catherine. “I didn’t know what to think, but I wanted you back, Justin.” She stared at her feet. “And then when I saw you with…that other woman… I realized I knew nothing.”

“Cressy, I want to explain everything to you. Like who she is and what she is to me. But”—he glanced at Catherine—“I want to explain when we are alone.”

Catherine patted Cressida’s shoulder. “All fixed,” she said brightly. “You were entirely mistaken, my dear, and I’m so pleased this drama is on such shaky foundations. However, if it really is nothing more than a snowflake in a snowstorm, surely I can be privy to Justin’s simple explanation as to what he was doing at Mrs. Plumb’s with his apparently former mistress?”

“I’m sorry, Catherine, but I’m taking Cressida home to continue this conversation…in private.”

His hand on Cressida’s wrist was enough to send the blood rushing to her head, demonstrating yet again that she had no resistance against him.

“If you have no secrets, I wonder why you won’t reveal why you

were at Mrs. Plumb’s at all?” Catherine asked sweetly.

Justin stared down at them, his face an inscrutable mask. No hesitation as to what he was about to do, or regret as to what he had done, crossed his handsome, normally mobile features.

With a curt nod at Catherine, he muttered, “You are a dangerous woman, Catherine, but sadly, you have not a care for the hurt you cause your cousin.”

Cressida was half on her feet, but her obvious wavering was too much for him. Before she had a chance to make her decision, Justin bowed, then turned on his heel and left.

Chapter Ten

For two hours, Catherine had ranted on about a husband’s inability to remain faithful to his wife and about a wife’s duty for the sake of womanhood to punish him for his failings.

For more than twenty years, she’d bullied Cressida, making her cousin feel small and insignificant. Cressida was too small of stature to command the respect the tall—now gaunt- looking—Catherine received as her due. Cressida’s nose was too small for her little face, though the long shadows cast by the dim firelight tonight turned Catherine’s into a hawk- like proboscis wedged between the hard angles of her cheeks.

Catherine had implied that by extraordinary good fortune, Cressida had snared a jaded noble on the rebound, although in the happy years that had followed their marriage, Cressida had been able to dismiss Catherine’s jibes.

Yet here Cressida now was, cowering on the Egyptian sofa beside her bullying cousin, having just dismissed her ever-patient, ever-loving husband when any decent wife would have heard him out and any loving wife would have perhaps gone further than that. Instead Cressida had allowed Catherine to hold her hostage in her drawing room in an attempt to poison her mind against Justin.

How had she allowed Catherine to assume her former pre-marriage position of such power over her? Cressida wondered as the clock in the passage struck three. What kind of wife did it make her if she couldn’t even give her husband an honest hearing?

As the final chime faded into silence, Catherine exhaled on a gusty sigh and turned back from the fire. The lines of her face were pulled taut with the disdain now ingrained in her character. Why had Cressida not noticed it before? Catherine’s dissatisfaction with life was poisoning her from within, and her remedy was to make everyone else as miserable as she was. She looked twenty years older than she had last week, twenty years older than Cressida, who had been born in the same year. Bitterness had sucked her dry, and Cressida realized in that moment what happened to women who could not, or would not, forgive. Women who wouldn’t even give their husbands a hearing, much less a little of the kindness they were forced to seek elsewhere. Like a dog with a bone, she kept chewing. “Really, Cressida, I don’t know how you can even contemplate forgiving your husband’s disgraceful behavior. He was at Mrs. Plumb’s for goodness’ sake. His conduct is deplorable. When will you learn to trust your instincts?”

When will you learn to trust your instincts? Had Catherine really asked her that? Like a virtuous virago desperate to sink her teeth into another juicy victim, mauling Cressida and Justin at each other’s expense? Rage burned slowly through her veins, filling her with the fire and fortitude she needed to make her own decisions against a formidable opponent.

Before Catherine could take a breath to launch further into her theme, Cressida decided she’d heard enough. With quiet majesty, she smoothed her skirts and rose. “Actually, Catherine, I am going to finally trust my instincts,” she said in clipped tones, enough at odds with her character to make Catherine raise her eyebrows. “I’ve had enough of your hectoring for one night. Actually, for a lifetime.” She straightened her décolletage in the looking glass above the mantelpiece, pinching her cheeks to heighten the color. Businesslike, she said, “My poor coachman will have to be roused so I can return to find Justin and let him tell me what he was doing at Mrs. Plumb’s before I tell him my side of our little domestic drama of the past ten months.”

“Justin? How can you believe a word of what he says?” Catherine looked mightily put out at her uncharacteristic determination, Cressida noted as she glanced at her cousin’s reflection in the mirror. Catherine gripped the fire screen behind her. “You heard the way he lied to you, telling you your eyes deceived you when you know very well what you saw.”

“What I saw does not confirm Justin was unfaithful.” Cressida continued to make those subtle but important improvements to her appearance in front of the looking glass, enjoying the novelty of Catherine’s helplessness to stop her. “What’s more,” she added crisply as she tucked a curl behind one ear, “if he was unfaithful, I now know what I intend to do about it.”

“That’s the spirit.” But Catherine sounded uncertain as she watched Cressida continue to preen. And when Cressida turned back to her after plumping up her breasts and tugging at her black lace-edged décolletage, Catherine was frowning.