Chapter 10
“You are glaring at the soup as though it has personally offended you.”
Juliana did not look up from her bowl.
“It is not the soup I find offensive, Your Grace.”
Cassian sat opposite her at the long dining table, the candlelight gilding the hard lines of his face.
His coat had been discarded, his cravat loosened just enough to suggest comfort.
He appeared utterly composed, as if binding himself to her had required no more effort than signing a ledger, and she hated that, even now, he was devastatingly handsome.
“And what, pray tell, is offensive?” he asked mildly.
The mildness was aggravating her. So was the way he rested one elbow on the arm of his chair, his fingers loosely curled around the stem of his wine glass.
Not a single line in his posture suggested agitation.
He might have been entertaining a guest of no particular consequence rather than dining with the woman he had bought.
Juliana let the silence stretch until it grew taut.
“You. This performance,” she said at last.
A quick, piercing flicker crossed his gaze.
“And what is that supposed to mean, my dearest wife?”
For the past five days, they had perfected the art of avoidance.
Breakfasts were taken at opposite ends of the morning room under the pretense of correspondence.
Luncheons were missed entirely. At dinner, they sat across from one another at the long table, exchanging nothing more than the barest courtesies while the servants moved silently between them. Juliana could not take it any longer.
“This… careful civility,” she continued, finally lifting her eyes to his. “It feels less like marriage and more like a negotiation that refuses to conclude.”
His lips curved faintly.
“You would prefer we dispense with civility, then?”
“I would prefer honesty.”
She had not meant to sound so raw. But five days at Stonevale had stripped her of whatever fragile composure she had managed to carry from London.
“You are unhappy,” Cassian observed.
“Are you surprised?”
“No.”
That answer unsettled her more than any denial would have.
She set down her spoon. The porcelain clicked softly against the tableware, far too delicate a sound for the weight pressing between them.
“We both know that you married me to spite my brother, so there is no reason for me to expect—”
“I married you to prevent your worthless brother from delivering you to a worse fate.”
She laughed softly.
“That is a convenient distinction.”
“It is a truthful one.”
“And yet,” she leaned forward slightly. “You still paid him money in exchange for me.”
His jaw tightened.
“I would have paid twice that sum to ensure you did not spend a single hour in that man’s company.”
The words fell harder than she expected.
The candlelight flickered between them. Somewhere down the corridor, a door closed quietly. The house breathed around them, vast and watchful.
“You say that you did all that to protect me,” she said, her voice lowering. “But I have not felt protected or safe since I crossed this threshold.”
He went still.
“What have you felt?”
Juliana drew in a slow breath, steadying herself before she allowed the truth to take shape.
“I have felt…” she began carefully. “I have felt as though I have been lifted out of one life and placed into another without ever being asked what I wanted. Stonevale is magnificent, I do not deny it, but I did not come here by choice.”
His gaze sharpened.
“You believe I confine you?”
“I believe,” she replied, her fingers tightening against the polished wood of the table.
“That I am not allowed to make any decisions for myself. You forbid me from speaking of my brother. You decide where I may go and which parts of this house are off-limits to me. You might think that you did all that for my protection, but it feels dangerously close to possession.”
The last word lingered in the air between them.
“I was not free at Hawthorne House,” she continued, more quietly now, though no less fiercely. “But at least the burdens there were mine to carry. They were my family’s. Here, I am not really sure what is expected of me.”
Cassian rose slowly.
The movement was fluid but not effortless. Juliana noticed the slight shift of his weight, the almost imperceptible brace of his hand against the back of the chair, before he straightened fully.
He crossed toward the hearth.
“You resent that I intervened,” he said at last.
“I resent that I was forced into a position where intervention was necessary.”
“And yet,” his voice darkened slightly. “When I offered marriage, you did not refuse. When I kissed you, you did not push me back.”
She rose. For a fleeting, treacherous moment, she was no longer in the dining room but beneath the torchlit arches of Lady Hampton’s gardens—his hand firm at her neck, his mouth claiming hers without hesitation.
The memory struck with such force that her pulse stumbled, heat flooding her limbs as if his touch had been renewed rather than recalled.
Her lips tingled, and she had to steady herself against the table to keep from betraying how deeply the recollection unsettled her.
“I… It all happened in front of witnesses, Your Grace. Pray tell me how I was to refuse without inviting ruin?”
His eyes darkened, as if he knew precisely where her thoughts had wandered.
“Ruin was already upon you.”
The argument might have ended there, but the tension between them had been tightening for days, and tonight it snapped.
“You speak of ruin,” she continued, stepping closer despite herself.
“But you do not know what it is to watch your household shrink month by month. To dismiss servants you have known since childhood because you cannot afford to keep them. To sit at a table and wonder how long the pantry will last. To pretend everything is fine while creditors circle. That is ruin, Your Grace.”
His eyes flashed.
“And you do not know what it is to be reminded daily that one misstep nearly cost you everything.”
Her breath caught.
“What misstep?”
“That is not a matter that concerns you.”
She straightened.
“I am your wife. If it affects the way you rule this house, if it affects the way you treat me, then it concerns me whether you like it or not.”
His gaze hardened.
“It concerns you only to the extent that it shapes my judgment,” he replied. “You are not required to dissect my past in order to live here.”
“And I am required to accept your decisions without question?”
“You are required to trust that they are made with reason.”
She gave a short, humorless breath.
“I can respect reason,” she said. “But you ask for obedience without offering explanation, and that I will not give. I will not beg,” she replied, her voice tightening. “If this marriage is to work, it will not be because I asked for your approval.”
He held her gaze for a moment longer than necessary. Then his eyes dropped—briefly, deliberately—to her mouth.
“And if I wanted more than your approval?” he asked.
Her heart betrayed her at once, pounding against her ribs.
“I will not be managed,” she said, though her voice lacked the sharpness she had intended, softening despite herself beneath his scrutiny.
“And I will not be opposed merely for the pleasure of defiance,” he returned, stepping closer, not enough to touch, but enough that the distance between them no longer felt neutral.
“You mistake me,” she replied, forcing steadiness into her tone even as warmth crept treacherously up her throat. “I do not contradict you for sport. I do so because I refuse to vanish into whatever shape you find most convenient.”
He reached for her then, not violently, not even roughly, but with unmistakable intent, his fingers closing around her wrist as though to anchor her in place.
“Vanish?” he repeated, his voice lower now, closer. “You believe I brought you here to diminish you?”
She attempted to withdraw her hand, but his grip held firm.
“You brought me here because I suited your purposes,” she said, lifting her chin even as her traitorous heartbeat thudded beneath his thumb. “Because I was a means for you to spite Kit.”
His fingers tightened just enough to make the contact undeniable.
“I brought you here because I would not see you bartered like coin,” he said, and there was something sharper beneath the words, something that bordered on anger. “Because I would not allow you to be reduced to a transaction.”
“And yet you forbid me from speaking of my brother,” she countered, her breath uneven now for reasons she refused to examine. “You cannot erase him. He is my blood.”
“And you,” he answered, his voice dropping to something quieter but no less forceful. “Are now mine.”
Heat surged into her cheeks, not solely from indignation.
“Yours?” she echoed, though the single word emerged softer than she would have preferred.
“Yes.”
His thumb shifted almost imperceptibly against the inside of her wrist, where her pulse betrayed her with humiliating clarity.
“You are my wife,” he continued, his gaze unwavering as it held hers. “Not a pawn in some petty feud, not a means to wound your brother, and certainly not a woman I intend to diminish. You are mine, and I do not take what is mine lightly.”
“And if I do not wish to belong to anyone?”
“Then you should not have married a duke.”
The sharpness returned. But it was strained now.
She yanked her wrist free.
“And you should not have married a Hawthorne.”
They stood facing each other, the space between them tight with tension. Whatever fragile understanding they had started to build disappeared under their pride and old grudges. He did not try to reach out to her again.
That night, Juliana lay awake long after the house had fallen silent. And when sleep finally claimed her, it was not the scandal at the ball nor her brother’s betrayal that lingered in her thoughts.
It was the memory of his hand around her wrist.