Chapter Fourteen
Sleep did not come easily that night.
Cassian lay awake long after the house had gone still and the fire in his grate had faded to embers. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw her. The scent of tea and rain still clung to his thoughts.
He had wanted her. God help him, he had wanted her so fiercely that for a single, dangerous instant, all the walls he’d built since Eleanor’s death had nearly collapsed. When she had stepped closer, he’d felt that wild, reckless pull he was trying so hard to resist.
And still, he had turned away.
It had been the only choice left to him. To give in would have been to lose what little control he still possessed. And yet, as he lay there, staring into the dark, he could not escape the quiet certainty that he had wounded her.
Charlotte.
She was unlike anyone he had met before.
Hers was a soul that was too proud to beg, too clever to flatter, and too alive to remain confined within the cold boundaries he had drawn for her.
He had thought this marriage of convenience would be a reprieve: duty without danger, companionship without risk.
Instead, it had become a battlefield he was losing by degrees.
By dawn, he gave up all pretence of rest.
He rose, got dressed, and went riding hard across the fields until the wind cut through the fog in his head. But even there, amid the heather and the mist, he found no peace.
As the day passed, he threw himself into the work of the estate with ferocious purpose. He rode the boundaries, met with tenants, reviewed accounts until his eyes ached… anything to keep from thinking of her.
However, it was at his club nearly a week later that the first whisper reached him.
“Tragic thing, Duskbourne’s marriage,” one gentleman murmured as Cassian passed.
“… to lose them both like that…” another whispered.
“Aye, no wonder he has gone mad.”
“They say he was never quite the same.”
“Then it is no wonder he cannot consummate the match! He has been left quite impo—”
The sentence broke off the moment he entered the room. The laughter that had filled the air seconds before stilled into polite silence. Cassian’s gaze swept over them. It was a quiet, withering glance that sent several men scurrying to their cards.
He said nothing. He did not need to. But the words had already landed.
By the time he returned to Duskbourne, the rumour had sprouted like weeds. A servant’s sidelong glance here, a faltering curtsy there. They were small things, but unmistakable. The walls of his own house seemed to hum with speculation.
He confronted the butler first.
“Mr. Tarrow,” he inquired of the man, “I should like to know who has been speaking of matters that are not their concern.”
The butler blanched. “Your Grace, I assure you—”
“Assure me of nothing,” Cassian cut in. “You know very well that I do not care for whispers within my household. If I hear another syllable of this nonsense, I will see the entire staff dismissed and replaced by those with more discretion.”
Tarrow bowed deeply, trembling. “Yes, Your Grace. It shall be seen to at once.”
Cassian turned away, fury coiled in his chest. However, it was not the clean, sharp kind he was used to, but something slower, more corrosive. It was not merely the gossip that enraged him. It was what it revealed: how deeply he cared that anyone might think Charlotte unloved and undesired.
He had thought himself above such things.
And yet, the idea that her name might be pitied, or that anyone might imagine her neglected, or, God forbid, unwanted, made his blood burn.
He had to do something about it, and the first chance he got was when he found her the next morning in the breakfast room.
She sat alone at the table, with a book open before her and an untouched tea cooling at her elbow.
When she looked up at his entrance, he saw the faintest flicker of unease cross her face, almost as if she didn’t want him there but had to endure his presence.
“Good morning, Your Grace,” she greeted him politely, but without any emotion.
He hesitated. The formal address stung more than it should have.
“Charlotte, it’s good I found you here,” he said at last.
She closed the book carefully. “You wished to speak with me?”
“I did.” He crossed the room and stopped before her, his hands clasped behind his back. It was easier to begin with control and to let precision do what gentleness could not. “It has come to my attention that certain rumours are circulating… about us.”
Her brows drew together. “Rumours?”
“Yes.” His mouth tightened, having glanced around the chamber one more time, to assure himself they were alone. “That our marriage has not been… consummated.”
For a moment, she said nothing. Then, she softly concluded, “I see.”
He caught the quick rise of colour in her cheeks and the flash of anger that followed.
“And you imagine this began within your club?” she inquired calmly.
“I imagine it began here,” he said grimly. “Servants talk. Secrets spread. And once they reach the drawing rooms of London, they acquire an ugliness all their own.”
Charlotte looked away. “So, we are to be a scandal again,” she said quietly. “How efficient of us.”
“Charlotte—”
“No, I understand.” She looked up, meeting his gaze squarely now. “You mean to say we must convince them otherwise.”
Her tone carried no mockery, only a weary sort of irony. Cassian drew a breath, forcing himself to speak plainly. “Yes. The whispers must end. They will damage you far more than me.”
Her chin lifted slightly. “You are thinking of my reputation.”
“Yes, I am thinking of yours,” he said. “And of the household. We cannot have gossip poisoning the air we live in.”
There was a pause. Then, with a steadiness that surprised him, she asked, “What do you propose?”
Cassian hesitated. The question was simple enough, yet his mind supplied only images: her hand slipping from his arm that night in the rain, her voice trembling in his study, and the disappointment in her eyes.
He forced his thoughts into order. “We must appear—” he stopped, then chose the words with care, “content and familiar. As though there was no distance between us.”
Charlotte regarded him without revealing a single thing about her own emotions. “A convincing picture of intimacy, you mean.”
“Yes.”
“In public and even here, in our own home.”
He inclined his head. “Especially here. Servants observe more than they should. Let them see us dine together, walk together, sit together in the evenings. Small gestures will suffice.”
“And if small gestures do not?”
His gaze met hers. The question hung between them, charged with meaning.
“Then we shall do what is necessary,” he said quietly.
“Very well,” she concluded after a moment. “If we are to play the part, we must do it convincingly.”
Cassian almost smiled, but he managed to resist the urge. “You sound almost eager.”
“I am practical,” she replied with a composed shrug. “If society insists upon peering through the windows of our marriage, then let them see what they expect.”
He admired her for the steadiness with which she said it. He could see the calm poise that masked what must surely cost her to discuss so openly.
“Then we are agreed,” he said.
“Yes,” she murmured. “Agreed.”
***
At first, it felt like theatre.
Cassian had endured such performances before, but this was the hardest of them all.
He was unable to escape the polished civility of Parliament or the intricate falsehoods of London society, but this was something different.
This was intimate deception, staged not before strangers, but beneath the roof that was meant to be his sanctuary.
Their new arrangement began that evening.
When he entered the dining room, Charlotte was already seated. Two places were laid side by side, rather than across from one another, as had been their unspoken custom since their wedding. The servants had done as instructed. Every detail of the setting suggested domestic harmony.
Cassian took his seat beside her. The distance between them was narrow enough that he could sense the faint warmth of her arm through the fine fabric of her sleeve.
“Good evening,” she said, with as much composure as she could manage, but he could see her fingers twisted once in her napkin before she stilled them.
“Good evening,” he replied.
They spoke, at first, of harmless things, while the diner was being served.
“The west fields seem improved since the new rotation,” Charlotte remarked, her voice even, her eyes fixed on her plate.
“Indeed,” Cassian replied. “The tenants at Greythorne reported a larger yield this quarter. I mean to visit them next week.”
“Without Mr. Harrow?”
He glanced at her. “Gideon has business in London. I can manage a field inspection without supervision.”
Her lips curved faintly. “You might even enjoy it.”
He almost smiled. “Doubtful.”
A brief silence fell while the footman poured the claret. Charlotte reached for her glass at the same instant he did. Their fingers brushed in what was just a whisper of contact, but it was enough to still the air between them.
“Forgive me,” she murmured.
“There’s nothing to forgive,” he said quickly. His tone was composed, but his pulse betrayed him.
It was absurd, he told himself. Such a simple gesture, meaningless even.
And yet, as the meal continued, every small proximity seemed suddenly magnified.
When the servants were near, she smiled more easily, and her tone sounded warmer.
Again, as she reached for the salt, her sleeve brushed his wrist, light as breath.
He could not have said whether she did it by accident or design.
Later, as they stood together in the drawing room for the servants’ benefit, Charlotte lifted a book from the table and made some idle remark about the author.
He leaned closer to answer and caught the faint tremor of her breath.
She turned slightly toward him, her eyes meeting his.
The distance between them vanished for a heartbeat.
Then, it was time for the big finale.
By the time the clock struck midnight, she was there, in his bed chamber, a pale figure in candlelight.
Her maid had drawn back the curtains and banked the fire, leaving the room cast in a dim, amber glow.
Cassian had dismissed his valet early and was sitting by the hearth with a book open but unread in his lap.
“Will this arrangement suit you, Your Grace?” she asked lightly, though he detected the faint tremor beneath her composure.
“It will suffice,” he said. His tone was deliberately neutral, though the sound of his voice grated even on himself.
When she slipped beneath the coverlet, she looked impossibly good in his bed. He extinguished the lamp and lay beside her, but the space between them felt narrow and insufficient. The bed, once so cavernous, now felt intolerably small.
Her warmth radiated through the few inches that separated them, and with it came the faintest trace of lavender and clean linen, the scent that seemed, of late, to haunt him everywhere.
Cassian lay rigid, staring into the darkness.
Charlotte exhaled softly beside him. Then, in the restless turning of half-sleep, she shifted.
Her back brushed his arm, and it was enough to send a shock through him.
Every nerve in his body flared to life. He gritted his teeth, forcing stillness.
His mind supplied a dozen reasons to move, but his body betrayed him.
He stayed.
And so he lay there, not sleeping, not daring to move, with the scent of her hair in the dark and the sound of her breathing threading through every thought until dawn.
When the light finally broke through the curtains, he felt as though he had not closed his eyes all night.
A soft knock sounded at the door, followed by the familiar voice of his valet. “Your Grace?”
Before either of them could reply, the door opened. The valet froze, his eyes widening.
Charlotte stirred beside him, like a well-rested cat. “Good morning,” she said. “You may leave the tray on the table.”
Cassian pushed himself up on one elbow, feigning indifference though his heart pounded absurdly fast. He caught the flash of astonishment and triumph in the valet’s expression before he bowed and retreated.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. Then Charlotte swung her legs out of bed, reaching for her robe.
“Well,” she said lightly, “I daresay that will do for appearances.”
Cassian forced a faint smile. “It would seem so.”
But as he watched her knot the sash of her robe, her face turned slightly away, he felt an odd, hollow ache. She did not look at him again.
All that morning, through breakfast and the day’s appointments, she was polite but distant. It was that cool civility which stung far more than anger.
He told himself it was nothing. That her composure was a shield, as his was. Yet some part of him knew better.
Perhaps she still resented him for turning her away that night in his study. Or perhaps she felt trapped in this playacting, forced into intimacy without affection.
Whatever the reason, he could feel her slipping from him, and the irony struck deep.
He had drawn every boundary, built every wall.
And now, when she stood just within reach, he was the one left wanting.