Chapter 27 #3
Rolling her bottom lip between her teeth once more, Ethel began playing with her necklace.
Her eyebrows knitted together as she thought it over.
After thirty seconds or so, Cassian let out a huff and rolled his eyes.
Obviously, the man was less than pleased with Ethel’s reaction so far, and, Cassian being Cassian, he was not afraid to show it.
In truth, James felt less than pleased about it, too, in some respects.
Not because he’d expected more from her, but because he hated being confronted with the reality of what most people thought about men like him.
Finally, after a bout of torturous silence, Ethel spoke.
“Yes, I’d like to remain friends as well. And I hope that you can forgive me for my slight hesitation, Cassian. Discovering that your friendship with James might have been one of the reasons, if not the main reason, that you supported me ending our engagement has been a shock.”
Cassian pursed his lips for a moment.
“I forgive you, Ethel,” he said. “And I hope that you don’t feel as though our engagement was some sort of a ruse on my part.
I really do care about you. Furthermore, I like women in the manner that men are expected to like them in our society, and I firmly believe we would have both been content in our future marriage.
” He raised his eyebrows pointedly. “Notice I said content. Not happy. James makes me happy.” Cassian lifted his shoulders, shrugging in a somewhat boyish manner.
“And I wish that I could explain to you what happened exactly with regard to that, but I can’t.
I never intended to fall in love with someone else, much less a man.
But I fell in love with James all the same.
Although . . .” His face flushed, but he otherwise seemed so impressively unrattled by everything.
“Admittedly, Ethel, I have found men attractive before, but that had been the extent of it. Until I met James.”
Face reddening even more than Cassian’s, Ethel smiled a sweet, though somewhat uncertain smile in return.
“Oh. Goodness. I see. Thank you for telling me,” she said. “It’s brave of you to speak so candidly about your . . . well, you know.”
Cassian nodded sagely, and Ethel let out a long breath.
“Well, now I know the truth about it all, I suppose,” she said. “And I have to say, I’m relieved to know that your intentions, Cassian, with regard to marrying me, were pure.”
Cassian huffed a fast laugh. “I’m not sure if that’s the word I’d use, personally.”
Gasping, Ethel covered her mouth with her hand, but then she began to laugh, too. James rolled his eyes and forcefully poked Cassian’s shin with his foot as a form of playful chastisement. Poor John Quinn, though, looked both offended by the remark and somewhat worried.
Cassian must have noticed the man’s facial expression, too.
“John, I stuffed thirty years’ worth of your salary into your pocket and secured you a spot in a lifeboat,” he said. “You’ll have to forgive me for that bit of suggestive humor.”
James was unsurprised by Cassian’s bluntness. Or his slightly haughty tone. Conceited bastard, that Cassian Penn Livingston. James couldn’t help but love him for it.
Cassian smiled a warm but maybe slightly pitying smile and continued.
“Believe it or not, I’m not a threat to you,” he said to a still-concerned-looking John.
“Even that kiss that Ethel and I shared in the lounge was barely a kiss at all. More importantly, though, I’m positive that it meant nothing, or close to nothing, to either of us.
Ethel was too busy being embarrassed and stunned, and I was in the middle of realizing that the whole concept of romantic love wasn’t a bunch of fantastical nonsense.
” Balancing the food-filled plate in his left hand, Cassian walked over to John and clapped him on the back.
“I promise, I’m completely harmless. But if it will keep you from making that horrible face, I’ll refrain from making Ethel-related remarks like that one in the future. ”
John huffed a half-laugh, cringing, and then noticeably relaxed a bit.
“Thank you, Cassian. Sorry.”
“Apology not necessary,” Cassian said. He held out the plate of food. “All right, well, before James and I inhale this, which I’m sure we will, would either of you like some of the beef or roasted potatoes that I was able to find from the kitchen?”
John replied, “I can’t speak for Ethel, but I’m plenty satiated from the many bowls of potato and carrot soup I had.”
“I am as well,” Ethel said. “Thank you for offering, though.”
Cassian nodded. He came over and sat next to James.
James set the half-finished soup aside as Cassian plucked a potato off of the plate.
Balancing the spud between his fingertips, Cassian held it out for James.
Mind still foggy from the medication, James couldn’t bring himself to protest. He leaned forward and took the potato piece with his teeth, eating it from Cassian’s hand.
Cassian let out a loud laugh as James pulled away.
“I thought you’d take it with your hand, not your mouth,” he said. “Not that I’m complaining.”
Ethel and John chuckled softly from the bed.
“Oh. Sorry.” James cringed. “It’s the medication. I can’t think properly. All I want to do is sleep.”
“I’d like it if you had some food first,” Cassian said. He picked up another piece of potato and smiled wryly as he held it out for James to eat. “You can have it like this since it seems to be your preferred way of eating right now.”
Groaning in embarrassment, James scrunched up his face.
“You’re not being very nice to me,” he complained.
“I’m feeding you out of the palm of my hand. I’m being plenty nice to you.”
“You’re humiliating me.”
Cassian rolled his eyes. “I’m being playful.”
“Where’s your sense of propriety? Ethel and John are watching this, you know.”
“It’s at the bottom of the Atlantic with my favorite lounge robe.” Cassian moved the hunk of potato closer to James’s mouth. “Open.”
Reluctantly, James complied, and Cassian fed him the food.
“There, that wasn’t so hard now, was it?” Cassian jested before popping a piece of potato into his own mouth too.
Back and forth Cassian went with feeding them both for a while.
Over on the bed, John and Ethel became engaged in a conversation, though both of them were talking so softly that James couldn’t really follow what it was about.
Instead, James concentrated on enjoying the salty pieces of starch.
He let his thoughts lazily float from one matter to the next, all of them hazy, hovering behind the thick veil of medication.
After a while, Cassian spoke again.
“Oh, I nearly forgot,” he began, feeding James another potato piece, “I had our fellow passenger from the collapsible boat send a message to your former employers. I asked that it make it to your friend Maggie and your parents as well. All of them will know that you’re safe.
Afterward, I requested that he contact the people I have working for my own estate and asked that my live-in staff be gone by the time we reach New York.
Aside from the head of my household, who will meet us with a car.
After he brings us to my home, though, he’ll leave for the summer with the rest of them.
Most will visit their families, I presume. ”
It took James a couple of seconds to pull himself out of his foggy thoughts and consider the implications of what Cassian had said.
“You’re sending them home for an entire season?” James finally managed to ask. “What about their salaries?”
“I’ll keep mailing them their base pay, obviously. I’m not that heartless. But I needed to make sure that the two of us wouldn’t be bothered by them while you recuperate. And while we figure out where you’ll live long-term as well.”
“Not in London?” James asked before another possibility flitted into his head, one that was so intensely unpleasant it made his stomach churn even while the medication was clearly still coursing through his veins.
“Or else on the Olympic. Or whatever other bloody ship the White Star Line will want to reassign me to.”
“Do you honestly think that I’ll let you continue working as a steward? After we nearly lost our lives in the middle of the ocean?” Cassian scoffed. “James, you will live with me in New York.”
Through a relieved exhale, James said, “Oh, thank God.”
Ethel spoke up. “Excuse me, Cassian, forgive me, but won’t that . . . uhm . . . won’t that invite speculation? Not that I know what’s best, of course, but I wanted to make sure that you’d considered that aspect of it.”
“I’ve considered it, Ethel, thank you,” Cassian replied, a small hint of irritation, or perhaps only exasperation, in his tone.
“In fact, James and I nearly ended our relationship over it all before our ship struck that berg.” He let out a long, slow breath.
“I’ve considered the impact that my bachelorhood will have on my reputation as well as how it might look if I’m constantly seen with the same man around the city, but I haven’t come up with a way to fix either of those things.
Perhaps I can’t fix them. Perhaps James and I will simply have to pray for the best moving forward. ”
Ethel’s eyes fell to the floor. John scooted closer to her and took her hand.
“Cassian is a smart man, Miss Ethel. He’ll be safe. He managed to make it onto the overturned collapsible out on the ocean. He’ll come up with something.”
Cassian smiled and let out a short hum-laugh.
“I like that sentiment, John. Thank you.” Cassian found James’s hand and kissed it. “You’ll live with me, James. Either in the same city or the same house. I’m confident that between the both of us, we will indeed come up with a sufficient solution.”
James smiled at him through the laudanum-induced haze, which seemed to have slowly become more pronounced, maybe because of the food. He felt so warm and peaceful, pins and needles pitter-pattering over skin, and he felt so incredibly safe and happy, too.
“I’d love that, Cassian,” James murmured sleepily. “I’ll live wherever you want me to live.” Through a light laugh mixed with a yawn, he added, “Just as long as it’s not out on the ocean.”
Cassian chuckled a bit. “It won’t be.”
He picked up another piece of potato and brought it to James’s lips.
James took it from him. He exhaled a soft, contented sigh as he chewed, closing his eyes after only a couple of seconds.
It was so Goddamned nice to be taken care of like this, even as embarrassing as it was to have Cassian feeding him in front of people.
All of a sudden, the warmth in James’s chest intensified.
Eyes still closed, James heard the faint sound of rustling, followed by the quiet clatter of a porcelain plate being set down on the hardwood floor.
And then there was even more wonderful warmth blanketing him.
And the scent of pine and musk and black pepper, faint but still so present.
And then slight pressure, as though he was being held.
“Get some sleep, James,” he heard Cassian say.
And then, James finally fell asleep.