Chapter 15
The leader spat on the cobblestones. His eyes moved to the silver-topped cane, then to the silk, then to Cassian’s leg, and whatever uncertainty had flickered across his face hardened into a smirk.
“Your kind don’t come down here for good reason, fancy lord,” he said. “Three of us, one of you, and a hitch in your step that tells me you can’t run far. Hand over the girl and your purse, and we’ll leave you with enough teeth to eat breakfast.”
Cassian smiled thinly, knowing full well what look unsettled men on the battlefield. Fog swirled around his legs. It looked either like a phantom was rising from the filthy mud or like his legs were gaining power.
“Ah, is that what this is all about? You think you can take anything from a man with a hitch in his step? Do you know that this hitch can be an advantage?” he asked calmly. “Well, it certainly means I am not inclined to chase you, but it also means you cannot run.”
“Cassian.” Juliana’s fingers dug into his arm, her voice low and urgent. “Please, let us just go.”
He covered her hand with his. Then he stepped forward.
It was too late; the Duke was already incensed. Nobody talked to him the way the thug did. He knew it was unwise, but he had to do something about it.
It was not the mockery of his leg that decided it. He had endured far worse from far better men without flinching, but the way the man’s gaze dragged over Juliana. It was almost as if the thug thought he had a right to her, which was far from the truth.
These men would not breathe near his wife.
“Step behind me,” he said quietly, expecting a protest from his headstrong wife. None came. “It is one thing to insult my leg, but I cannot stand them looking at you as if they had a chance of spiriting you away.”
When no protest came, he turned to face the three men.
They came at once, which he had expected.
There was a blade in the leader’s hand, which he had also expected.
What they had not expected, clearly, was that a man with a hitch in his step might have spent five years on the Continent learning precisely how to use that particular disadvantage to his favor.
He shifted his weight and brought the cane up in a short, savage arc. The silver head caught the leader beneath the chin with a crack that rang off the alley walls like a pistol shot, and the man fell hard in the filth, the blade clattering away into the dark.
Cassian did not wait to watch him fall.
The second lunged. He turned into the blow, taking it across his shoulder rather than his jaw, and drove the blunt tip of the cane into the man’s middle with enough force to fold him in half.
The third made his move. Cassian caught his wrist, twisted sharply, and put his elbow into the man’s chest. Something cracked.
The thug went down with a sound that was more surprise than pain.
The alley went quiet.
All three lay in the mud at various stages of ruin. The fog drifted over them, indifferent. Somewhere distant, a horse whinnied.
His hip was a white-hot agony. He set his jaw and ignored it entirely.
He pressed the cane across the leader’s throat, not hard enough to crush, but hard enough to make his meaning plain.
“Do not judge a man by his gait,” he said pleasantly.
“And do not threaten to take another’s wife.
You may thank whatever gods you keep that I am in a considerable hurry tonight.
” He pressed down just slightly. “If I see your faces anywhere near my wife again, I shall make sure you are left without eyes.”
He did not wait for an answer. He straightened, turned, and held out his hand to Juliana.
She took it without a word. That, more than anything, told him how badly shaken she was.
He stopped at the Stonevale carriage and looked up at the coachman, who had the good grace to look like a man contemplating the poor choices that had delivered him to this particular moment.
“No matter what she pays you,” Cassian said, with a quiet manner that was more unsettling than shouting. “No matter how she asks, no matter what she tells you. You do not bring the Duchess out at night without my knowledge. Are we understood?”
“Y-yes, Your Grace. Forgive me, Your Grace, Her Grace said it was most urgent and I could not—”
“Ride ahead.”
He handed Juliana up into his own carriage and climbed in after her. The door shut behind them. He did not slam it, though it required considerably more restraint than he currently had to spare.
Cassian watched his wife from across the carriage, pressing his lips together.
He thought tonight would unfold quite differently, with him arriving home to tease her.
To finally bed her. He had not imagined he would spend the evening watching his wife sprint through a rookery with three men at her heels.
His leg throbbed painfully, but he would not cry out. Not in front of her. Not in front of anybody.
“I am so sorry,” Juliana finally spoke, her voice ragged. Her face, illuminated by gas lamps, looked hauntingly beautiful. She did not sound like the feisty minx she was. She sounded broken, and he did not like it.
“You are going to tell me,” he said at last, his voice very quiet. “Exactly what you were doing in that part of the city tonight.”
Juliana said nothing for a moment. Her hands were folded in her lap, not quite steady.
“I… I went to find Kit,” she said. “Grandmama told me he had been gone for days. That strange men had been coming to the house at odd hours asking for him.” She kept her eyes on her hands.
“I knew the places he frequented. I thought if I could find him, I could… I do not know. Warn him. Bring him home. Something.” A pause. “He was there.”
“And?”
She was quiet for a moment, telling him everything even before she spoke.
“He pretended that he did not know me.” The words came out pained. “I walked toward him, and he looked me in the eye and told the men at his table he had never seen me before in his life.”
The carriage swayed gently. Outside, London slid past in the fog.
“He was frightened,” she said, and it was not quite a defense, more a fact she was turning over because she did not know what else to do with it. “He did not mean—”
“Are you sure about that? What did he do to help you, Juliana? He let those men run after you to do God knows what. I could have been home or elsewhere, but the carriage somehow passed this way, a place I often avoid or ignore. What do you think would have happened if I were not there?” he demanded.
“It looks to me like he used you as bait, offering his own flesh and blood so he could save his hide.”
“He is my brother,” she said. The tears did not fall. She would not let them. “He is reckless and foolish, and he does not think. But he is my family. I cannot simply—”
“I could have been elsewhere, Juliana! Do you truly think Kit would have saved you? Do you realize what those men would have done to you? Do you think they would politely let you go?”
She was shaking her head the whole time. Even distress could not fully mar her features, even as she leaned away from him. He closed the distance even as she moved backward.
“Your brother would have let those men destroy you. All he thought about was saving himself. He is a coward, and this is what he always does.”
She shivered, perhaps thinking the same thoughts that were unraveling in his head.
“He… he was scared,” Juliana said, flinching as if he had raised his hand to strike her. He wanted to tell her that he would never do anything like that, but he supposed his words hurt more than a slap would. She knew her brother was a coward. She might not be prepared to say so, but he would.
“He is a coward,” he roared. “I set those rules for a reason. You thought I was merely being a tyrant, abusing my power. But I have come to know your brother a little too well. I know what can happen to women who wander in these places. You have been reckless. Irresponsible.”
Cassian reached out, his gloved hand holding her chin. She was looking somewhere to her right, tears forming in her eyes. He gently nudged her chin so that she would look at him.
“I… I am sorry,” she whispered, her eyes looking at him.
In that moment, there was no defiance in them.
She had been shaken. Badly. However, he also wanted her to see just how grave her mistake was.
This was not the time to coddle her, even if it pained him that she had just apologized to him a second time in a matter of minutes.
“I hope you know now that what I asked of you was for your own good, not mine,” he said, relenting a little. “I do not want what happened to my sister to happen to you.”
Damn it.
Her eyes widened at that. He realized the slip of his tongue. He did not mean to mention his sister. Juliana should not know, at least not yet.
He released her and sat back.
“Cassian—”
“I think we have nothing more to discuss,” he said quietly.
She closed her mouth. She looked at him for a moment longer, and he looked back, and something passed between them that had no name yet, though he suspected it would have one before very long.
Outside, the fog was thinning. The Stonevale gates appeared in the darkness, and the long, familiar drive stretched ahead of them. The carriage slowed.
“Cassian, I have been reckless. I was just worried about Kit. He may be older than me, but he does not think clearly,” she explained.
“But that was what you were doing earlier. Not thinking clearly. You have shown that is what Hawthornes do. Consider this carefully, Juliana. Your brother is a lost cause. I will have to punish you if you ever defy me again. Let us hope that this is the last time you do it,” he warned.
Her old defiance sparked within her, but the evening’s events had dampened it. He did not like it.
When the carriage finally drew to a stop, it was she who broke the silence, not with the question he had been expecting, but with something simpler and, somehow, considerably harder to answer.
“Are you in pain?” she asked, glancing down at his leg. “From the fight.”
“I am perfectly well,” he said.
She held his gaze with an expression that told him she knew a lie when she heard one, had heard rather a lot of them in her life, and was choosing, this once, not to argue the point.
She descended from the carriage and walked ahead of him into the house. He watched her go. His leg throbbed. Somewhere in the vicinity of his chest, something shifted, very slightly, like a lock that had not yet opened but had begun, at last, to consider it.