Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Isabella had not known what to make of the host and his request for a dance. She’d genuinely thought he was just seeing if he could draw emotion from the duke, but when he approached her with a smile and his outstretched hand, she knew she had no choice but to commit.
“You seem startled, My Lady,” the Marquess pointed out, a smile hiding behind his words.
The orchestra played an easy waltz that allowed the couples to talk while dancing, creating an intimate atmosphere that eased her nerves.
“I am anything but startled, My Lord.” She countered with an easy smile of her own. Talking to men in social settings was something that had been drilled into her by tutors and governesses alike. It was speaking to the duke, however, that posed an issue for her.
“Then that gladdens me. You may not know, but you are quite famous in these parts, so it is an honor to dance with you.” The marquess offered her yet another compliment.
“I am hardly famous, My Lord.” Isabella continued to smile as he spun her under his arm and pulled her back in. When all was said and done, the man was a fair dancer despite his rakish flirting.
Tristan smiled knowingly at her. “Believe me, you are. If your name doesn’t come up in relation to the Laurel club, it comes up from a certain friend of mine wondering what he should do with you.” The corner of his mouth hooked into a teasing smile as he inclined his head with a knowing look.
The revelation sent shockwaves through Isabella, and a pulsing knot within her demanded to know more, but she held her tongue while her cheeks grew hot.
Glancing over his shoulder, she spotted the duke from across the room.
He stood exactly where she had left him, yet he now wore an angry scowl as he watched them dance.
“How long have you been friends with him?” Isabella asked, a brow raised in an attempt to divert the marquess’s attention elsewhere.
“Well, we were childhood friends before…” he paused, “the tragedy that befell his family. When he returned, we became joined at the hip.” His smile was stiffer than before as he let go of her waist and twirled, joining her again at her side as the couples eased the waltz into its final stages.
Isabella was nodding, but her focus was on the words before the tragedy that befell his family. She wanted to know more about it and about him. Did the ‘before’ have something to do with the scars on his back?
“If you don’t mind my asking, what was he like as a child?” She ventured a personal question.
The Marquess chuckled deeply. “I would say that the only similarity between him then and now would be his kind heart because I never recalled him having such a deadly look in his eyes,” the Marquess said, motioning behind her with a raise of his brows.
Confused, Isabella turned, following the marquess’s gaze, only to meet the duke’s cold and hard gaze boring a hole into the back of her head. His scowl had slipped into a scornful glare of disdain.
Her heartbeat quickened instantly, and startled, she pulled away from the marquess as if she had done something wrong.
“My Lady?” He stopped dancing, looking at her with a confused frown.
The orchestra stopped playing, signaling the end of the song as the guests erupted into applause.
Just in time.
Isabella breathed a sigh of relief as she curtsied. It would have caused a scene if anyone had noticed her abrupt halt. “Forgive me, My Lord, but if you would excuse me, I must get back to my family. Thank you for the lovely dance,” she apologized before turning without a response and leaving.
Moments later, Isabella found sanctuary near Christine, her bosom rising with the faint exertion of having escaped both the Duke and the Marquess with her composure intact.
Christine studied her with knowing eyes. “You disappeared quickly from your company,” she remarked.
“The Marquess is very talkative,” Isabella muttered, yet her eyes sought the duke who had turned away from her and was now talking to his friend once again.
What had the Marquess meant when he had said that the Duke wondered what to do with her?
“And the Duke?” Christine asked delicately, drawing Isabella’s thoughts back to her presence.
Isabella blinked. “He is an insufferable grump.” She lifted her chin.
Christine bit back a smile. However, Isabella kept her gaze fixed far across the ballroom where Cassian stood surrounded by a small circle of gentlemen. He appeared aloof, unreadable, visibly irritated. She refused to admit, even to herself, how often her eyes strayed toward him.
The event continued, and Isabella managed to avoid Cassian for the rest of the evening, especially after he unexpectedly left early, striding out with a stiffness that made her wonder whether she had caused it.
She hoped she had not, but she feared she had.
Days later, Isabella arrived with little Ellie at the Everthorne townhouse as a model for garment making for the Laurels, and the Laurels welcomed her with immediate affection.
“Oh, what a precious little lady,” one whispered.
“She is lovely, utterly angelic,” another added.
Ellie blushed beneath the attention, her blue eyes sparkling.
“When I grow older,” she declared, “I wish to be a Laurel, too.”
Lady Kendrick clapped in delight. “And we shall await you eagerly, my little dear.”
The Laurels went into their garment-making with the help of a professional modiste Lady Kendrick had sourced.
“A dress is a statement,” the exotic lady with her thick accent began, then she paused, smirking slightly as she met the eyes of the ladies present.
“I believe you all would know that better than I,” she teased, and the group laughed.
“Though it seems easy, it never is. The art of garment making is sacred, and you will learn why.”
The moments that followed went by with different fabrics of multiple colors and textures flying about the ballroom, each lady pulling little Ellie toward them to get her exact measurements as demonstrated by the professional. Afterwards, poetry began.
Soon, the room was filled with soft recitations, quills scratching, and occasional laughter. Isabella became so engrossed in her own stanza that it took several minutes before she realized something was wrong.
Eerily wrong.
Ellie’s soft snickers and playful comments were gone.
Isabella froze. She turned once, twice, looking around the spacious ballroom for her sister, but she was nowhere to be found.
The ladies continued in peaceful oblivion as they discussed the dresses or put their full attention into the poems.
Isabella rose immediately, scanning the room again with growing panic when she didn’t find Ellie. She moved to Lady Evelyn, a lady two years younger than she, who was reading her poem intently, tapping slightly on her arm.
“Forgive my interruption, but have you seen my little sister?”
Lady Evelyn shook her head and looked around, her lips pursed. “She was just here a moment ago. I believe I saw her from the corner of my eyes.”
Isabella sighed, catching the attention of Lady Kendrick.
“Are you all right, my dear Isabella?”
She shook her head. “I can’t seem to find my sister,” she said, and panicked gasps filled the room.
“But there’s no need to worry. I shall go in search of her myself. She couldn’t have gone far. You may all carry on with your lovely poetry,” she assured them.
Then she excused herself at once, her breath tightening as she hurried through the ballroom doors in search of her sister, her heart pounding wildly in her throat.
The afternoon had settled into the quiet lull that followed a long ride, the kind that left Cassian’s muscles loose beneath his coat and his breath still faintly clouded from the cool air.
He handed his horse to a stable hand and made his way toward the rear of his home, intending only to pick up a few instruments before retreating to his workshop.
Yet as he crossed the gravel path behind the house, a sound pierced the stillness. It was sharp, high, and echoing from somewhere near the overgrown section of the gardens toward the abandoned greenhouse his father once used. A structure that now stood half-forgotten, shrouded in vines and neglect.
Cassian froze at the sound, then he began moving.
He cut across the lawn, boots sliding on patches of fallen leaves, his cloak whipping behind him as he sprinted toward the broken greenhouse door. The glass panels rattled in the wind, some cracked, some missing entirely.
A small form huddled within, trembling as Cassian ducked inside.
Trapped behind a fallen strip of rotted wood and old iron, her tiny hands pressed against her chest, tears streaming down her cheeks, was a little girl. She looked no older than ten. Her curls clung to her damp cheeks, and her entire body shook with fright.
Cassian knelt at once, lifting the debris with a single heave of his arm and tossing it aside. The old metal practically crumbled along with the rotten wood as it hit an old stack of pots that shattered on impact.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, his voice sharper than intended only because his pulse had yet to slow.
The girl didn’t answer. Her lips trembled, her breath hitching in shallow gasps. Tears clung to her lashes, spilling freely.
“Little miss,” he tried again, softer this time, lowering himself to eye level, “how did you get here? What is your name?” His face fell into a soft smile that was rarely seen by anyone in the past few years of his life.
He hated how helpless she looked and how quickly his heart tightened at her sobs. He had thought that he had done away with his softer side long ago, yet it seemed as if he had been wrong. A few remnants still remained.
He extended a hand but halted just inches from her arm, unwilling to startle her further.
“You must tell me if something hurts. Does your ankle—” His fingers hovered lightly near the hem of her stocking. “Does it hurt when I do this?” He applied the slightest amount of pressure to her ankle with the pads of his fingers.