Chapter 29

When Cassie had entered the library, she felt a flood of relief when she recognised the man fighting with Ellington. All the hatred, she had tried to feel for him after Delaney's visit earlier that day, vanished at that moment. She realised that she did not hate him, it was, in fact, the opposite; she loved him. And she knew that, whatever the future held for her, she would always have a place in her heart for him. 'Damien,' she had said, almost in a whisper, 'you have come for me.'

As soon as she entered the library, he turned around to look at her. 'Cassie,' he replied just as quietly, 'Cassie, my love.'

Ellington, who must have sensed his chance to get the upper hand in the fight when Cassie entered the room, pulled back his fist to hit Damien. Cassie cried out to warn him, but was too late, as Ellington's fist connected with a thud to Damien's jaw. Damien then reeled backwards and fell heavily to the floor, knocking over a table as he went down.

Ellington winced and cradled the knuckles of his right hand, that were bruised and bloodied from the fight, with his left. He looked over at Cassie and smiled. 'Thank you, my dear, for distracting Silverton,' he said smoothly, 'that fight was becoming a little tedious. Your entrance was indeed timely.'

Ellington started to walk over to her, but he soon stopped dead in his tracks, when he noticed what she was holding in her hand. Since the fight had finished, and Damien had been knocked to the ground, she had lifted her right arm and had carefully aimed the pistol at him. 'Do not come any closer,' she said firmly, her arm shaking a little with the weight of the gun.

He laughed gently, as though he was highly amused at the situation he had found himself in and put his right palm up to signal that he was not going to come any closer to her. 'And what,' he said, motioning with his other hand towards the pistol, 'do you intend to do with that? I hope you are not thinking about using it on me. That, my dear, would not be wise.'

'I will use it,' Cassie said, after taking a deep breath and steadying her arm. 'If you come any closer, I will shoot.'

'I doubt that very much,' Ellington said condescendingly, as he took a step closer, 'I do not think that you have it in you, to shoot me in cold blood.'

Cassie, using the thumbs of both her hands, pulled back the cock of the pistol until it clicked. Once she knew it was locked in place, she carefully placed her index finger of her right hand on the trigger. 'Is that a risk you are willing to take?' she said, looking at him directly in the eye and lifting the pistol a little higher, aiming it at his chest.

He laughed again. 'If I seriously thought you were going to shoot me, I would be quaking in my boots,' he said dramatically. 'But I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you will never have the courage to pull that trigger. Come, my dear Cass, and let us stop all this foolishness. We can be friends once more.'

'Do not come any closer,' she said, her face expressionless. 'I am not your dear Cass. You had proved to me, even this afternoon when you tied me up, that you have little, or even no regard for me.'

'That is not fair,' Ellington said, his brow furrowed, 'I only tied you up for your own safety. I did not want you to hurt yourself. You must understand, my dear, I still love and care for you.'

'Love,' Cassie spat out, 'you do not know the meaning of the word. Love does not punish and humiliate. Love does not inspire fear. You never loved me, and you never had any intention of loving me. You took my innocent romantic notions and my girlhood dreams, and you twisted and manipulated them into something debase and shameful. I told you earlier that I no longer fear you. In fact, standing here looking at you, with your life in my hands, I feel nothing.'

Ellington took another step towards her. 'That's enough, Cass,' he said sternly, 'give me the pistol.'

'No,' Cassie said as she repositioned her arm, 'no, I will not.' She then took a deep breath and gently squeezed the trigger.

Cassie's world almost came to a standstill, as the flint sparked and ignited the gunpowder. Then, a loud deep resonating bang reverberated around the room, as the small lead ball left the barrel and was propelled towards its intended target. As soon as the shot was fired, her right arm was flung back, and she was nearly thrown to the floor, with the force of the recoil. Once she had regained her balance, she found it difficult to determine whether she had hit Ellington. Thick, acrid smoke, from the recently ignited gunpowder, filled the room, making it impossible to see what had happened. She could not tell if he cried out in pain, or even if he fell to the floor, because the loud bang of the pistol had momentarily robbed her of her hearing, and her ears now rang with a loud high pitch squeal.

'Cassie,' she eventually heard in the distance, as her hearing gradually returned, 'Cassie, are you alright?'

The pistol slipped through Cassie's fingers and fell with a thud on the floor. As she stared in front of her, dark spots began to dance in front of her eyes, almost obscuring her vision. As they began to slowly increase in size, she felt herself slipping away into the oblivion that was beckoning her. She was just about to let herself slip into the comforting darkness when she felt a man's arms enclose around her waist. 'Cassie,' she heard him say, as he held her against his body. 'My dear, dear Cass.'

'Damien,' she whispered, 'is it you?'

'Yes, my love, it is,' he said tenderly. He then lifted her in his arms and brought her to one of the leather chairs by the fire.

'Is he... dead?' she asked as he rested her on the chair.

'No,' he said, as he touched her cheek and smiled at her, 'you shot him in the right shoulder.'

The smoke that had filled the room had dissipated, and Cassie was now able to see Ellington on the floor, clutching his right shoulder with his left hand. A deep-red pool of blood was oozing out of the wound and was beginning to accumulate around his fingers. 'He will live, more's the pity,' Damien said to her. 'Stay here while I get rid of him,' he said, as he gently kissed her forehead. 'After tonight, I guarantee that you will never set eyes on him again.'

Cassie watched as Damien crouched down to Ellington and took his handkerchief and pressed it into the wound. 'You will live, Ellington,' he said roughly as Ellington cried out in pain as the compress was applied. 'You will have to get to a surgeon as soon as possible. I suggest you take your newly acquired servant, Mr Appleby, with you. He will be able to find someone close by, that will dig out the shot.'

'I will see the bitch hang for what she did,' Ellington said, looking furiously at Cassie. 'As soon as I am patched up, I will go and find a magistrate, and I will make certain that the full force of the law is applied.'

'That, old chap,' Damien said firmly, 'would not be very wise. If you attempt to make Miss Stanford's life difficult, you may find that it is you instead of her, who is dangling at the end of a rope.' Ellington cried out in pain once more, as Damien pressed harder on the handkerchief that was binding the wound. 'I do not think that it will take much digging around to find some sordid incident that I can use against you. Your affairs have hardly been run within the confines of the law.'

Ellington looked at Damien with a cold, hard expression on his face. 'I'm going to kill you, and that whore of yours,' he said, as he gritted his teeth in response to the pain.

'I do not think that would be wise,' Damien said, as he placed Ellington's hand on his wound. 'If you do not want to die, I suggest that you press down hard on the compress. It should help stem the bleeding until you can get to a surgeon.'

Ellington winced in pain, as he pressed as hard as he could on the already bloodied compress. 'I'm going to call Appleby. If he gets you to the local surgeon on time, you may just well live. But, I suggest you get that idea of revenge out of your head. If I, or any of my friends, ever see you in London again, I will make certain that you face the full force of the law. You're finished, Ellington. Finished!'

Ellington looked deadly pale, as he lay on the floor looking up at Damien. He did not say a word when Appleby came silently into the room and hauled him up by the shoulder, but he did moan with the pain as he was guided with unsteady footsteps towards the door.

Once they had gone, Damien turned to Cassie. 'Cass,' he said, as he strode back over to her. 'I am going to take you upstairs, where you can rest.' Without waiting for her to respond, he picked her up in his arms and carried her up the stairs to his bedchamber. He gently laid her on the bed and stroked away the stray hairs from her face, that had escaped from her chignon during the chaotic incident.

As she lay on the bed, her eyes slowly opened, and she looked at him. 'Damien,' she whispered, almost inaudibly, 'you came for me.'

Damien knelt next to the bed and took her hand in his. 'It turns out,' he said, with a grin, 'that you did not need me at all. It is a lowering thought to think that my services, as a gallant knight, were surplus to requirement. In fact, looking back on the whole incident, it was you, who saved me.'

'Oh, Damien,' she said, as she reached out to touch his cheek, that had been bruised and battered in the fight, 'he hurt you.'

'That,' Damien said, still grinning, 'is the merest of scratches.'

He then took her by both of her hands and noticed the makeshift bandages that she had wrapped around her wrists earlier that evening. Little spots of blood had already begun to seep through the thin linen. 'That looks suspiciously like one of my shirts,' he said lightly, as he unwrapped the linen bandages to take a closer look at the wounds below.

'I am sorry,' she whispered, looking down at her wrists, 'but it was the only thing I could find to use as a bandage.'

'No, Cass,' he said, now looking at her seriously, 'you must not apologise to me.'

Cassie winced in pain, as he continued to unwrap the linen strips. The blood from the cuts had begun to clot and bind to the material of the bandage. 'Did that bastard tie you up?' he said angrily, as he looked at the cuts on her wrists. 'When we came in, I noticed that there were remains of rope on the floor by the end of the bed. Did you cut yourself trying to free your hands?'

Cassie looked at him and nodded. 'Yes, I hid your penknife in my pocket, just before Ellington arrived, and I managed to cut myself free after they had tied me to the bed.'

'They?' Damien said, frowning. 'Who else did this?

'Mr Appleby,' Cassie said as she closed her eyes.

'Stay here,' Damien said gently to her, as he touched her cheek. 'I am going to go to the kitchen to get some water, and then I will clean those cuts and redress them for you.'

When he left the room, Cassie swung herself off the bed and removed her shoes and dress, and then lay back down. As she lay, looking at the ceiling, she thought to herself that it had been a long and eventful day. She felt a wave of emotion well up inside her, as she thought that he, Damien, the man she loved, had come back to Abbotgate; just for her.

✽✽✽

It did not take long for Damien to return to the bedchamber with a jug of warmed water. Fortunately, just before he had dismissed Appleby, his errant servant must have heated some water for tea. He poured some of the water into a porcelain basin and put it on the side table next to the bed. He then took a cloth and began to dab carefully at the cuts on her wrists.

Cassie looked more beautiful than ever, as she sat up in bed, illuminated by the warm candlelight. He noticed that she had removed her golden hair from its untidy chignon, and it hung loosely around her shoulders. He had forgotten just how long and luxurious it looked when it was freed from its constraints. Her bright blue eyes, glistened with tears as she looked at him, and he felt a stab of guilt for leaving her for so long. If he had been here earlier, he thought to himself, none of this would have happened.

He took a damp cloth and cleaned away the blood, that was still oozing from the cuts, before carefully dressing the wound.

'Thank you,' Cassie said, as Damien tied the second bandage tightly around Cassie's wrist.

Damien stood up and began to shrug his jacket from his shoulders. But, after the fight he had just had with Ellington, he was stiff, and every time he moved, he felt a sharp stab of pain. 'Let me do that,' Cassie said, as she stood up from the bed and walked over to him. She very gently pulled his well-fitted jacket from his shoulders. Once his jacket had been removed, she began to remove his shirt, by carefully pulling it over his head. Once his shirt had been removed, he looked down at himself and saw the large purple bruises that were beginning to develop on his stomach.

'Please, sit down,' Cassie said gently, as she guided him over to the bed. Once he was seated, she poured out some clean water into another basin and began to bathe the blood away from a large gash just above his right eye.

'Cassie,' he said, as he looked at her directly, 'we need to talk.'

Cassie smiled and touched his cheek with her fingertips. 'You need to rest,' she said, 'you look exhausted.'

She then crouched down and began to remove his Hessian boots. 'I can do that,' he said. After everything she had gone through that day, he felt guilty that she was now waiting on him.

'No,' she said firmly, smiling up at him affectionately, 'you must let me.'

Once she had removed his boots, he said, tapping the space next to him, 'please, sit next to me, Cass.'

When she sat next to him on the bed, he took her hand in his and squeezed it tightly. 'Cass,' he said, in a whisper, looking at her with troubled eyes, 'please find it in your heart to forgive me.'

She looked at him and smiled. She was nearly the same height as him, and when she looked at him, their eyes were at the same level. 'There is nothing to forgive,' she said reassuringly, 'you came for me.'

Damien, for the first time in many years, felt close to tears, 'no, Cass, I...'

Damien did not have a chance to finish what he was about to say. Cassie put her index and middle fingers on his lips and said, in a whisper, 'shhh.' She then leant forward and brushed her lips against his. As their lips touched, he closed his eyes and felt a stab of desire, like a bolt of lightning, shoot through him. As he savoured the sensations that she evoked, he put his hand around her waist and pulled her gently towards him. He felt her soft feminine curves pressed against his own body, and it felt like he was once more where he belonged; in the arms of the woman he loved. As he deepened the kiss, he could feel Cassie responding to his touch. She parted her lips and wrapped her long arms around his neck, drawing him even closer to her.

After several minutes, in that passionate embrace, he drew away from her and placed his forehead against hers. 'Cass,' he said, his voice husky and full of passion, 'I have missed you.'

'I have missed you, too,' she said, as a tear fell down her cheek, 'I thought you were never coming back.'

'There is so much to tell you,' he said, as he touched her cheek tenderly, 'so much has happened since I left here, it is hard to know where to begin.'

Damien took a deep breath and began to tell Cassie everything that had happened to him over the past three weeks. He told her about the accident outside Sir Henry Cavendish's property and his subsequent loss of memory. He told her that Sir Henry had taken advantage of his memory loss and had tried to trick him into marrying his daughter. He also told her that Sir Henry had stolen the miniature and had shown it to Ellington. 'It was not until this morning, when his daughter, the one he was trying to force me to marry, came and told me about the miniature. That was when I knew that you were in grave danger.'

Cassie put her head on his shoulder. 'Is that why you were gone for so long?' she said, in a whisper, 'I thought you did not want me anymore.'

He put his finger of his left hand under her chin and raised it so that she was looking directly into his eyes. 'I am sorry, Cass,' he said gravely, 'I knew deep down that something was missing, but I could not, for the life of me, think what it was. It was only this morning when Miss Cavendish described your face to me, that all my memories of you came flooding back.'

'But,' she said, her eyes still troubled, 'Mr Delaney told me that you had inherited your grandfather's title and that you are now the Earl of Silverton.'

'Delaney,' Damien said in disgust, 'what was that cad doing here?'

'He came to tell me that I was now surplus to requirements and that you would not want me to stay in your house.'

'Did he now?' Damien replied seriously, 'what else did he want?'

'He offered me his protection,' she said, 'he told me that it was only a matter of time before Ellington found me. After he had left, I packed my bags.'

'Where were you going to go?' he said.

'I do not know? I was going to travel to France and then...' Cassie shrugged her shoulders and smiled weakly, 'I did not think that far into the future.'

Cassie then stood up and walked over to the dressing table and examined the wooden box that had contained the pistol she had used to shoot Ellington. 'Is it true?' she asked quietly. 'Are you really the Earl of Silverton? I did not know if I believed Mr Delaney when he told me, but, I also heard Ellington call you by that name.'

'Yes,' Damien said, as he watched her close the wooden box, 'I found out, that I was my paternal grandfather's only heir.'

'Oh,' Cassie said sadly, still looking at the wooden box, 'I see.'

'No,' Damien said passionately, as he stood up, 'I do not think that you do see.' He walked over to her, stood behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, drawing her closer to him. 'Cass,' he said, as he placed his chin on her shoulder, 'I care nothing for the title or the money. I only care about you. I still want you to be my wife.'

'I cannot,' she whispered, 'I just cannot.'

'Why?' Damien said softly, looking at her reflection in the mirror that was propped up on the dressing-table. 'Nothing has changed. I am still the same man as I was three weeks ago; and, I still love you. You must never doubt that.'

'It is not that,' she said so quietly that he almost did not hear her. 'I know you love me, just as much as I love you. But, Damien; is it enough.' She turned around and faced him. 'Damien, I am afraid, really afraid, that love will not be enough for us anymore. It is certainly not enough for marriage. A man in your position needs a woman who can...' Cassie stopped, and he saw a few tears fall quickly down her cheek. Damien saw that she dashed them away angrily with the back of her hand. 'A woman who can take her place next to him in society; a woman who is chaste and beyond reproach; a woman who can provide him with sons to secure the succession. I can do none of those things. I am spoilt, soiled and completely without honour. I would ruin you and your reputation. You would be better off without me.'

'Cass,' Damien said sternly, 'listen to me.' He put his fingers under her chin and lifted her head so that she had no choice but to look into his eyes. 'I have never been the least bit concerned about what society thinks of me, and frankly, I do not care now I am Silverton. Do you think, up until now, society had even registered my existence? I was a poor infantry officer, in an obscure regiment, who was passed over for promotion, over and over again, because I had neither the money or the necessary familial connections to progress up the ranks. Cass, they can all be damned, for all I care. You, Cassandra Stanford, are the most beautiful woman I have ever met. You have filled my life with a love that I never thought was possible. I do not care about money or position. Please believe me, I would, just for you, renounce it all.'

'What about children?' Cassie said weakly, 'I am not a whole woman.'

'Cass,' Damien said with a sigh, as he took her in his arms, 'I would rather have you by my side the rest of my life, than a nursery full of our sons and daughters. You must understand that without you, my life would be empty.'

Damien then released her and got down on one knee. 'Miss Cassandra Stanford,' he said, taking her left hand and holding it in his right hand, 'will you do me the honour of becoming my wife?'

'I..I' Cassie stuttered.

Damien smiled up at her and pulled out the ring that she had left on the desk earlier. 'I noticed that you had taken off the ring that I had given you, probably after that fool Delaney had visited. Please, I beg you, put it back on. Please, Cass.'

Cassie nodded, and her eyes welled up with tears again. 'You pig-headed, stubborn man,' she said, as she hiccupped through the tears. 'I will marry you,' she said, smiling at him, 'but I hope that you will not live to regret your decision.'

Damien slid the ring on the fourth finger of her left hand. 'Back to where it belongs,' he said, authoritatively as he got back on his feet. 'Now, what's next,' he said, smiling mischievously at her, as he placed his hands on her waist and then slid them down, so they rested on her hips. 'I know,' he said, as his eyes darkened with passion, 'I am going to kiss my betrothed.'