Snowbound With The Baronet by Hale Deborah

Author:Hale Deborah
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance, Historical Romance, England, Love Story, Regency Romance
ISBN: 0987805177
Publisher: Deborah Hale
Published: 2014-02-19T14:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

FINALLY! AFTER FOUR years she had her answer at last.

As Cassandra bustled around the kitchen, helping Mrs. Martin prepare breakfast, she exerted herself to look and sound cheerful. Not for a moment would she give Sir Brandon Calvert the satisfaction of guessing how downcast her spirits truly were.

His seemingly off-hand comment to Mr. Martin, about having made youthful mistakes and learned his lesson, ran through her thoughts over and over. Each time it struck her heart a blow.

Hardly a day had passed since she’d watched him stalk away, humiliated by her rejection, that she had not wondered how he might have reacted if he’d known the truth. Often her imagination had taunted her with rose-colored fancies of what Brandon might do if he learned that she had sacrificed her happiness to protect him from ruin.

When this terrible storm had thrown them together so unexpectedly, her curiosity about what might have been intensified into an insatiable need to know. It had goaded her into casting aside her pride to reveal the shameful truth about her family. Looking back, Cassandra wondered if she had been laying a foundation to help him understand why she’d been forced to refuse him.

At first it seemed to succeed. When Brandon had shared his family secrets, she’d felt a deeper connection between them than ever. She wondered if they had somehow sensed that common bond from the very beginning of their acquaintance. Brandon’s assurance that he did not hate her had given her further hope.

Hope for what? Cassandra sliced a loaf of bread with fierce vigor, relieved to have some vent for the tumultuous emotions swirling and churning inside her. Had she been daft enough to think Brandon would sweep her into his arms and confess that he had never stopped loving her? Did she imagine he would recognize the harm she had tried to spare him and cherish the sacrifice she’d made on his behalf?

Instead, when she’d confessed her most painful secret at last, Brandon had crushed her ridiculous hopes. He’d ignored everything but the fact that she had not been entirely truthful with him. Did he not realize how impossible that had been for her?

For an instant, Cassandra permitted her mask of cheerful industry to slip long enough to aim a baleful glare at the back of Brandon’s head. Did he have so high an opinion of his own strength of will that he believed he could withstand her father’s machinations to safeguard his fortune and their marriage? Cassandra knew better.

Such thoughts stoked her indignation the way she might have added fuel to Mrs. Martin’s kitchen fire, making it burn fiercer and hotter. It protected her against the cold desolation of her quenched hopes and the icy sting of knowing Brandon considered their relationship a youthful folly, which he repented.

He claimed to have learned his lesson from that mistake. But what was that lesson? Never to trust a woman again? Never to give his heart? Vexed as Cassandra was with him, those possibilities still grieved her.

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