Chasing Cassandra (The Ravenels 6)

He’d been disgusted—but hardly surprised—by the upper crust’s reaction to the London Chronicle’s exposure of the Marquis of Ripon and his son, Lord Lambert, as vicious, lying bastards who’d intentionally tried to ruin Cassandra’s reputation. Ripon’s friends and associates had hastened to excuse his actions, and cast as much blame as possible on the young woman he had publicly humiliated.

The marquis had made an error in judgment, they had said, while he’d been distraught by the misbehavior of his son. Others had claimed it was a misunderstanding that, while unfortunate, had turned out well enough in the end. The wrongly accused Lady Cassandra had ended up married, they reasoned, so no real harm had been done.

It was generally agreed in elevated social circles that although the marquis’s behavior was regrettable, the lapse must be overlooked in a gentleman of such assured rank. Some people pointed out that Ripon had been punished enough by the embarrassment of his son’s infamous conduct, as well as the shadow cast over his own reputation. Therefore, the brunt of the blame was heaped on the absent Lord Lambert, who it seemed had decided to resume his grand tour of the continent for an indeterminate length of time. Ripon, for his part, would be welcomed back into the fold when the scandal had faded.

In the meantime, social mavens decided that no harm would come of paying calls to Lady Cassandra and her wealthy husband, and cultivating an advantageous association with them.

Tom would have liked to stick to his original plan of telling them all to go to hell, except that Cassandra seemed pleased by the visits. He would tolerate anything, no matter how galling, if it made her happy.

Since the age of ten, work had been the main part of Tom’s life, and home had been the place of brief but necessary intermissions, where he conducted the rituals of sleeping, eating, washing and shaving as efficiently as possible. Now, for the first time, he found himself plowing through his work so he could hurry back home, where all the interesting things seemed to be happening.

In the first fortnight after their honeymoon, Cassandra had taken charge of the house at Hyde Park Square with an impressive attention to detail. Despite all her talk of lingering and being a lady of leisure, she was a whirlwind in disguise. She knew what she wanted, and how to give directions, and how to approach the complex web of responsibilities and relationships that comprised a household.

An assistant had been hired for the elderly cook, and new dishes were already being served at the table. After reviewing the household routines with Mrs. Dankworth, it was agreed that two additional housemaids and an extra footman would be hired to reduce the staff’s workload in general. They had too little time off per week, Cassandra had explained to Tom, which was exhausting and dispiriting. She and the housekeeper had also agreed to soften a few rules to make the servants’ lives less codified and uncomfortable. For example, the housemaids would no longer be obligated to wear the silly popover shaped caps that served no purpose other than to designate them as housemaids. Such small concessions seemed to have buoyed the general atmosphere of the house noticeably.

The extra parlor Cassandra had commandeered for her private office was filled with sample books of paint, paper, carpeting and fabric, as she had decided to replace portions of interior decorating she considered shabby or outdated. That included the servants’ quarters, where worn bed linens, blankets and towels had been replaced, as well as several pieces of rickety or broken furniture. A better quality of soap would be ordered for their personal needs, instead of the coarse soap that made the skin dry and the hair brittle.

It annoyed Tom that there were details about the lives of his household staff he’d never been made aware of, nor had he thought to ask about. “No one ever mentioned that my servants were being given the cheapest possible soap,” he had told Cassandra with a scowl. “The devil knows I’ve never been a miser.”

“Of course not,” she soothed. “Mrs. Dankworth was only trying to be economical.”

“She could have told me.”

Diplomatically, Cassandra said, “I’m not sure she felt comfortable talking to you about household soap. You seem to have told her you didn’t want to be bothered by the details, and to use her own judgment.”

“Clearly my opinion of her judgment was too high,” Tom muttered. “I’d rather not have my servants scoured raw with caustic soda and petroleum soap.”

In the ferment of activity, Bazzle was hardly forgotten. Cassandra had taken him to a dentist for a professional cleaning, and then to an oculist who administered an eye examination and pronounced his vision excellent. After that, she’d taken him to visit a tailor who had measured him for new clothes. Although Cassandra hadn’t yet found a private tutor to bring Bazzle up to the educational level of other children his age, she had undertaken to teach him the alphabet. He’d found it dull and tiresome, until she’d purchased a set of painted alphabet blocks that featured pictures as well as letters. At mealtimes, she labored to teach him basic manners, including how to use his utensils properly.

Although Bazzle adored Cassandra, her relentless attentions were probably a large part of the reason the boy was so insistent about continuing to accompany Tom to the office in the mornings. Once a tutor was found, however, Bazzle’s visits would have to become curtailed.

“Fingers is as good as forks,” Bazzle grumbled as he went with Tom to a food stall for lunch one day. “Don’t need no utenskils, and no alphabet neither.”

“Look at it this way,” Tom said reasonably. “If you’re eating at a table beside a fellow who knows how to use his fork properly, and you can only eat with your fingers, people will think he’s smarter than you.”

“Don’t care.”

“You’ll care when they give him a better job.”

“Still don’t care,” came Bazzle’s sullen reply. “I likes sweeping.”

“What about operating a big excavating machine, and digging up an entire street instead of sweeping it?”

To Tom’s amusement, Bazzle’s expression lit up with interest.

“Me, dig up a street?”

“Someday, Bazzle, you could be in charge of a fleet of large machines. You could own companies that make new roads and dig tunnels. But those are the jobs that go to men who use forks and know their alphabet.”

ON THE DAY Tom brought Cassandra to visit his offices, he hadn’t expected that all businesslike decorum would have been so utterly abandoned by everyone from department heads down to the secretaries and accountants. They crowded around her and fawned as if she were visiting royalty. Cassandra was gracious and charming amid the crush, while Bazzle clung to Tom’s side and looked up at him with mild alarm. “They all gone orf their chumps,” the boy said.

Tom kept a protective arm around him, reached for Cassandra, and managed to usher them both to his private offices on the top floor. As soon as they reached safety, Bazzle looked up at Cassandra with his arms locked around her hips. “I got squashed,” he told her.

She smoothed his hair and straightened his cap. Her reply was forestalled as someone approached and stumbled against a chair, nearly tripping.

It was Barnaby, who had just entered the office and caught sight of Cassandra. Tom reached out automatically to steady him.