Cassian had learned something in that shed. Learned it in his bones, in his blood:people left.They forgot. They moved on. Everything was transient, and the only way to survive was to leave first.
So he had. For twelve years, he’d moved from country to country, woman to woman, never staying long enough for anyone to decide he wasn’t worth keeping. Never letting anyone close enough to abandon him.
Untilher.
And now every instinct he had was screaming at him to run. To leave before she woke up one morning and figure she’d made a mistake. Before she looked at him with that same cold disappointment his father and brother had worn and decided he was too much trouble. Before she left him the way everyone eventually did.
Better to be the one who left.
His hand curled into a fist. The logic was sound. It made perfect sense. Then why did his throat feel like it was closing? Why couldn’t he make his feet move toward the carriage?
The window to his study stayed dark. She hadn’t gotten up. Hadn’t found the letter yet. She wasn’t coming. Perhaps it was best.
Rubbing his hands of the entrails of ink, Cassian forced himself to turn. His hand found the door handle, and he stood there, gripping it hard enough that the cold metal bit into his palm.
“Your Grace?”
He didn’t turn. “Andrews.”
“Everything has been set, just as you asked. Will there be anything else?” There was something in his tone that made Cassian’s jaw clench. Disappointment, maybe. Judgment. The kind that said he knew exactly what Cassian was doing all over again, and what he thought of it.
“No—” Cassian strained, his voice coming out rough. “That’s all.”
Andrews hesitated, then murmured, “Safe travels, sir.”
The butler’s footsteps retreated. Cassian stood there for a time longer with one hand on the door and the other clutching the tails of his coat, his vision blurring at the edges.
His gaze dragged back to the window one last time. Dark. Silent.
Nothing.
He climbed into the carriage. Pulled the door shut. When the driver called back, his voice came out steadier than he anticipated.
“Portsmouth. Now.”
Slowly, Cecilia sank to the bed and pulled Cassian’s cold pillow to her chest, every muscle in her body fighting to hold herself together. She pressed her face into the linen, breathing in the fading scent of him—sandalwoodand something onlyhis—and willed herself to be strong.
Then she heard it. The crunch of carriage wheels on gravel. The jingle of harnesses. The coachman’s low call.
The sounds of him leaving.
Something inside her shattered.
A sob tore from her throat, raw and wrenching, and suddenly she couldn’t stop. All the tears she’d been holding back, all the grief she’d tried so desperately to contain over the past weeks, came flooding out in great, gasping waves. She clutched his pillow tighter, her body curling around it as if she could somehow hold onto him through the fabric.
The carriage wheels grew fainter, the sound receding down the drive, taking him farther and farther away with each passing second.
You taught me to stand up for myself. You gave me the courage to. And when it mattered most, I couldn’t do it…
“Come back,” she cried brokenly into the pillow, her voice small and pitiful. “Please come back to me…”
But there was no answer. Only silence, and the terrible finality of his absence.
She wept and wept, until exhaustion finally claimed her, pulling her under into a fitful sleep where at least, in dreams, he was still with her.
CHAPTER 30
It took Cecilia’s mother and brother another two days to visit her, and she assumed by then they must have read about Cassian’s departure. She was not ready to host either of them, but when her mother swept into the blue drawing room like a storm unleashed, Cecilia felt her chest tighten.
