A Love that Endures 3 Page 29

  As long as she could keep up the act and get out of there.

  But before she could make it out of the venue, a tall man stepped in from outside and stopped her from exiting. An olive-skinned man with a trim beard and styled dark curls. And though he hadn’t been sitting with the rest of the guests, he was impeccably dressed for the occasion in a fitted tuxedo.

  Cassie looked up at him and felt her chest swell with seething rage and burning hatred.

  This bastard. This is the person who helped Katy plot this against me.

  “She framed me for a crime I didn’t commit,” David said, and now the gasps and chatter of the crowd were positively rabid. “She had me imprisoned for five years. She fabricated salacious stories and sold private photos of me without my knowledge or consent. All so she could get a title.”

  “You! You’re full of filthy lies!” Cassie screamed, biting down on the rest of the words that threatened to pour from her mouth. A part of her knew she couldn’t look too angry; she had to look wounded for her plan to work. But the seething rage inside her kept threatening to boil up.

  Cassie tried to shove past David, but he barred the venue’s old, narrow doorway, refusing her the right to leave. Cassie struggled to keep it together.

  I am Duchess Cassandra of Lorria. I can handle some bum and his slut. I’ll get my revenge later. I just have to make it out of here and plan a perfect excuse.

  But then David said something that Cassie just couldn’t handle. He said something that had been weighing on her all her life. A stupid falsehood so personal and so painful that she simply wasn’t able to keep her mouth shut a second longer.

  “Stop this, Cassie,” he said firmly. “You’ll never be as good as Katy.”

  Cassie finally turned around and exploded.

  “Don’t talk to me about being good enough! Do you think that anybody is going to believe any of your filthy lies? I’m the duchess of Lorria! And you—you’re all nothing! Criminals, vagrants, and ex-employees! Do you think you can do this on my wedding day?”

  Cassie’s gentle, sad voice was gone. She just needed to scream. She needed to release her anger, or she’d burst into flames.

  “And you—all of you!” she continued, her throat raw from the force of her fury. All eyes were still on her in the otherwise silent room, but Cassie couldn’t even pretend that she cared at the moment. She rounded on the audience, clutching her train in white-knuckled fists. “Just standing around and letting this happen! Do none of you care about me at all? This is absolutely shameful!”

  She turned and made to push David hard when suddenly another person spoke.

  “No,” a voice began from the front of the room.

  There were no more gasps. No more frantic but hushed conversations. In fact, there was no noise at all. Everyone turned their attention to the front of the room, where Princess Katerina had stepped down from the line of bridesmaids and was now speaking directly to her cousin. Her eyes were intent and focused, and though it looked as though there might be tears in them, she stood straight and tall. Even in her hideous Lorrellian-style dress, she looked so damn . . . royal. Just what Cassie had always hated about her.

  “No, you should be ashamed, Cassie. You’ve bullied, lied to, and manipulated me and everyone around you for years. You’ve blackmailed people and planted false evidence. And now you’re going to be exposed for it. For what you truly are.”

  This isn’t fair! How did she turn from a wounded, lovesick whiner to this ice-cold bitch so fast?

  Cassie sucked in a rasping breath. She felt like she could’ve breathed white-hot fire out into the crowd with her words. She had never felt such anger in her life.

  “You. You think anyone believes you, Princess? You’re so hopelessly in love with a convict who betrayed your entire family that you ruined your best friend’s wedding! I’ve never been anything but supportive to you. I’ve held your hand as you moped and whined for five whole years, and this is how you repay me? I hope you’re happy. You disgust me.”

  Katy didn’t flinch. The crowd didn’t move. There was no noise in the venue. Not until Katy’s awful, singsong voice invaded Cassie’s ears again.

  “What support, Cass? Ignoring everything I told you, telling me how I should feel about everything, making me feel guilty for ever doubting you? You faked all of that support. You faked our entire relationship. But none of that matters now. Not anymore. What matters is that we have evidence against you. For what you did to David, and what you were still planning to do after this sham wedding.”

  Cassie sneered, a barking laugh escaping her throat. “Oh, you’d know about sham weddings, wouldn’t you, cuz?” She turned and pointedly looked at where Oliver was sitting, looking bewildered and angry, in the crowd.

  Katy flinched a bit, but she still stood resolute, ignoring the jab, and the venom just kept coming out of Cassie’s mouth. “And what plans? What evidence? The word of a bunch of lying losers and deadbeats that you probably paid off? Nice proof, Princess.”

  She paused, hoping Katy would reply. Go on. Give me more material to work with. I can talk circles around you. So keep going.

  But Katy simply looked at her, her eyes serious, her poise perfect as always, as if to say, “Go on.” The bitch. But if her cousin was giving her an opening . . .

  “I’m sure you and your hobo boyfriend think that you can ruin my day to suit your ridiculous fantasies,” Cassie continued, “but you’re wrong. And I’ll prove it to you. You and I both know that this is a hopeless case. I did nothing wrong, so your ‘evidence’ must be fabricated from thin air. Now if we could just get rid of the trash blocking the doorway, I could get back to fixing my wedding day.”

  Cassie tried to leave again, this time looking straight up at David, trying to simply intimidate him until he backed down. She fixed him with a stare that screamed, Back off, commoner. I ruined you once and I can ruin you again.

  She knew herself. Her mind raced through all the scenarios, looking for any leaks in her airtight plan. There was no way they had anything concrete. She hadn’t left a paper trail. She’d destroyed all the hard evidence of her “fixes.” She’d kept the links between herself and her hired help anonymous and private. She’d ruined, blackmailed, and paid off anyone who might speak out against her. Unless . . .

  David had been holding her gaze, blocking the doorway with his ridiculously broad chest, but as Cassie gave him her most scathing glare, his eyes simply flickered out to something behind her. And then something in her chest went icy as a different voice spoke from the crowd.

  A French voice.

  “I’m prepared to testify that that woman paid me to lie about David Rosen. I can prove the wire transfers that occurred around the time I sold my story. I have texts and emails between this woman and myself.”

  Cassie turned back to the front of the room.

  Yvette. That dirty bitch.

  “This is preposterous! I won’t stand here a second longer and listen to this smear campaign against me! All I ever did was try to support the royal family! All I’ve ever done was try to rid them of the people who would harm them!”

  “Like the king and queen themselves?” David countered.

  Cassie felt her blood run cold in her veins.

  “We have evidence that shows . . .” Katy said, her firm voice hitching for the first time, “that shows that you were going to murder my parents after your wedding, so that you would be next in line for the throne.” Her voice echoed through the room.

  Finally the crowd rustled again. And after the initial sound of confusion and shock, Cassie felt the distinct sensation of having hundreds of accusatory eyes on her all at once.

  “You’re bluffing!” Cassie shouted, her throat hot from the force of her voice. “And you know how I know that? Because you’ve got nothing! This is a LIE! All of this is just dirty lies! My people know the truth!”

  Stepping back a bit from David, Cassie turned to look at the crowd around her. She expected to see sympath
y there. Or even just confusion and doubt.

  But instead she saw suspicion glittering in the eyes of the many well-dressed people. Then she saw anger.

  And she heard, in the quiet, yet another voice rising from the crowd—in fact, from the front row. “Cassandra, is this true?”

  The king of Lorria, his face pale but his mouth set firmly in a kind of rage that Cassie had never in all their years of plotting seen before. Beside him, the queen, stuffed into a formal dress more constraining than even the bridesmaids’, looked like a frog that was being boiled too fast. It would’ve been funny if it hadn’t signaled the utter ruin of everything Cassie had worked so hard to gain.

  “My King—” she began.

  And then, looking at the crowd again, she stopped. With the icy shock that had coursed through her at Yvette’s voice slowly beginning to temper her rage, she realized that she had blown her cover. She had shown exactly the type of anger and venom that she was being accused of. The tide was turning against her.

  No. She refused to go down. She could fix this. It wasn’t all ruined. She’d just need an entirely new plan, and a damn good one at that.

  Time to go.

  Without warning this time, Cassie turned back to the door and shoved David as hard as she could. Though he was big and broad, the surprise force sent him reeling away, and she was out of the room like a shot. She rushed down the steps of the venue and out into the sunny London street, hustling right past the horse-drawn carriage with its “Just Married!” signage, wrenching open the back door of the king and queen’s dark sedan and sliding in.

  Horace was driving. And he was on her payroll.

  “Get me far away from this place. The jig is up.”

  The Dutchman turned back to Cassie and grinned. “The jig is up indeed.”

  The car doors all locked at once. Cassie looked at the man’s strange smile and then jiggled the handle, raising her eyebrows in disbelief that he would treat her like this. The door was locked tight. Her heart beat loudly in her ears. She shook herself.

  “What are you doing? I need you to drive us out of London, or so help me I will throw you under the bus!”

  “Yeah, I heard you do that a lot, actually,” Horace replied with his horrible, crooked-toothed smile. “So I thought I’d get a head start on you.”

  The car rolled away from the venue and, for the first time in years, Cassie felt the strangling hand of fear.

  “Where are we going?” she said in a voice that was much smaller than it was supposed to be.

  “To the police station,” Horace replied. “You see, sweetheart, money talks. And you’ve been outbid.”

  36

  David

  David watched Cassie struggle in her long, feathered dress as she raced down the steps and got right into the car that was supposed to take her to her final destination.

  The police station. Where Horace had agreed to deliver the disgraced duchess, as well as share his own testimony against her—for a hefty fee, of course.

  David’s heart was still thudding in his throat. He couldn’t believe what had just happened. The tornado of rage and accusations that had just poured from Cassie validated everything he and Katy had feared. But he was still afraid about how people were going to respond to the plan.

  And to his presence.

  All around him, well-dressed guests were milling around and staring at each other in wide-eyed shock, some with their mouths still hanging open, others talking in surprised, hushed tones. Still, no one was leaving yet.

  Until Rufus began to squeeze past people from his pew seat, making his way over to David.

  “That was, uh . . . quite the wedding,” he said in a slightly shell-shocked but pleased tone, clapping David on the back.

  Through the craziness of it all, David finally laughed. And once the chuckles came, he couldn’t stop them. Rufus laughed, too. Soon both men looked mad, doubled over and laughing hysterically beneath the vaulted ceilings of the fancy venue, in full view of a still-horrified wedding party.

  But slowly the guests began to move away from their seats as well. David even heard a few guffaws and laughs. It really was quite comical. Like a scene out of a campy movie. The wedding looked like it had been planned extensively, down to every minute detail, and yet it had imploded spectacularly. Now what to do? There wasn’t a good protocol for this.

  As people began to stream out, David wondered what they were thinking. Were they already convinced of Cassie’s guilt? Did they still think David was the cretin they had been convinced he was? Were they embarrassed or ashamed or amused by the confrontation that had happened before them?

  It was hard to tell. People walked by and talked amongst themselves, and, honestly, it looked like any group of incredibly distinguished and moneyed people leaving a wedding. But nobody had called the cops—that he knew of—so that was something.

  Maybe deep down they’d all known that something was afoot with Cassie. Or maybe royal scandals were just to be expected. Who knew?

  But there was a certain person walking toward him. The person whom David was most excited to see—even in the ridiculous lacey mummy costume she appeared to be wearing.

  “That was . . . a lot,” Katy breathed out as she strolled up to David.

  David simply nodded. Katy looked resolute, and her voice was light, but there was a tinge of high color in her cheeks and around her eyes that betrayed how much this confrontation had cost her.

  “How are you? Are you okay?” David asked her, his voice heavy with concern.

  Katy nodded, breathing out deeply. “I think it’ll take a while to work through all of that. But . . . yeah. I feel surprisingly okay.”

  David smiled softly, and slowly, cautiously, Katy returned the gesture.

  Not that he felt entirely secure yet.

  Katy seemed to share his reservations. “Do you think it worked?” she asked.

  David smiled at her, at their shared mind, momentarily forgetting where they were and what they were doing, before he managed to gather the wits to respond. “Oh. Well, if they aren’t convinced yet, they will be. Once Cassie gets down to the police station and is confronted with the evidence about the wire transfers, the emails, and the fake tabloid photos.”

  “And,” Katy added, eyeing someone to the side of David, “the damning testimonies.”

  David felt the back of his neck grow cold. He already knew who was standing there, though he desperately wished that she wasn’t.

  Even if she had helped substantially.

  “Hello, David,” Yvette said.

  David turned to see his lying, scheming ex-girlfriend standing beside him. She must’ve approached undetected with the rest of the crowd. She was standing tall and svelte in a dark formal gown. Her hair was braided down one shoulder.

  But David couldn’t have found her less attractive if he tried.

  Yvette had played a huge part in his downfall, selling fabricated stories of a tryst with him after he’d in fact turned down her advances. Her jealousy and bitterness had driven a terrible wedge between David and the woman he was truly meant to love. Her betrayal had brought out horrible thoughts of rage and vengeance in David that he’d had to strive to work through.

  And yet, she had offered them some of their best hard evidence against Cassie. She’d responded to Mia, and then to Katy, with remorse and a desire to atone, eventually agreeing not just to testify against Cassie, but to provide full access to her computer records from five years ago. And she’d showed up in London in the nick of time, taking a red-eye flight from Paris at the last minute.

  And so David breathed out and tried his best to let it all go. “Hello, Yvette.”

  David had worried about having Katy and Yvette in such close proximity. He worried it would make Katy uncomfortable or bring out the worst in Yvette again. But instead, he was surprised to feel Katy’s arm wrap around his own as she moved to stand beside him. Suddenly, David felt like they were a united front. It was Katy and David against th
e world, against anyone else who would try to separate them again.

  And then he no longer had any worry at all.

  “Thank you for your help, Yvette,” Katy said with a blank tone. But she did manage a polite smile, the smile David recognized her as her dignitary smile.

  Yvette nodded, looking between David and Katy. There was a strange look on her face, like some mixture of regret and jealousy. But when she spoke, her voice was kind. “You two make an attractive couple.”

  David opened his mouth to speak, but he didn’t get the chance.

  “We know,” Katy replied. She squeezed David’s arm, and David struggled to suppress a humongous grin.

  Yvette inhaled, nodded curtly, and then walked away. When she was gone, and as the last of the would-be revelers streamed past, David rounded on Katy, grabbed her by her dainty waist, and swept her up right off the ground.

  “David!” Katy giggled.

  David spun her around in a circle, holding her close as she grinned, and finally set her back on her feet, leaning close. “Katy, I . . .”

  But Katy’s eyes suddenly looked pained; she kept her arm on his but stepped back from him, almost instinctively. She was looking to his side, at some new distraction. David sighed and turned to look in the same direction.

  Isn’t the hard part done? I just want to enjoy some alone time with Katy now. Without the shadow of a scandal hanging over us. Without interference from interested parties. For maybe the first time ever.

  But upon seeing what Katy had focused on, he realized that not all of the hard parts were done. Not yet. Not for Katy.

  “Katerina,” the queen of Lorria had started tearfully, before stopping and covering her hand with her mouth. She seemed too overcome with emotion to speak. She leaned on the king, who looked in slightly better shape, save for the intensely sour, resigned look forming his face into a mask of its normal self.