There were several portraits of him as a child—a boy with the same storm-grey eyes he carried into adulthood, but softer anduntouched by burden—, and Isabella took them all in, looking carefully.
Another portrait showed him around ten years old, stiff-backed and attempting to appear serious. A third depicted him at perhaps twelve, already towering above the other boys in a hunting scene, and then there was nothing beyond that age.
No portrait from his teenage years and none from his twenties. Nothing that showed the man he had become and how he had become it.
“Is there a reason, if it is not rude of me to ask,” Isabella began carefully, “that there are no portraits of His Grace beyond childhood?”
Lady Kendrick paused, her expression dimming with a soft, sorrowful shadow.
“Do you truly not know, my child?” the older woman asked quietly, her voice tinged with a sadness Isabella had never heard from her.
“I… No. What is there to know?”
Lady Kendrick inhaled slowly, her gaze drifting toward one of the portraits, the one where the young Duke stood beside his father.
“My grandson suffered greatly,” she murmured, not bothering to conceal her affection. “You know, people speak when they do not understand. They rarely take the time to learn what shaped a man.”
Isabella nodded, tracing the painted eyes of the younger duke. Eyes that, even then, held a flicker of storm behind them.
A shiver ran down her spine, though she wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was the contrast between his imposing presence and the innocence captured in the portrait. Or the unsettling truth that his eyes lingered in her thoughts far more than she cared to admit.
And even though her curiosity nudged her to ask for more, she didn’t wish to pry. When had he gotten the scars that had marred his back? Had it been in the years when portraits had not been captured of him? She wanted to know everything that there was to know about him, but Lady Kendrick shook her head, seemingly reluctant to linger on the matter.
Did those years cause them too much pain?
Lady Kendrick gently tugged her away from the portrait hall, guiding her down a narrower passageway. “This way, my dear. There is one more wing you have yet to see.”
Isabella followed, but as they walked, something tugged at her memory—the angle of the corridor, the faint smell of sawdust, the subtle groan of a certain floorboard beneath her foot.
She knew this narrow path.
And when they reached the closed door at the end, she recognized it instantly. It was the ’duke’s workplace where she’d encountered him for the first time.
“This is my grandson’s workshop. Cassian insists on keeping it locked when he’s not here,” Lady Kendrick said with a shrug. “He dislikes intrusion of any sort.”
Isabella felt heat crawl up the back of her neck, not from guilt but from some strange awareness she could not name. Returning to this part of the house felt almost like returning to thoughts she had tried to ignore, so this time, she was the one who prompted their retreat.
“Let us return to the ballroom. The Laurels will be arriving soon,” she suggested, and with a nod, Lady Kendrick led them back to the front of the mansion.
When the Laurels arrived for the second meeting, Isabella and Lady Kendrick were more than ready for them.
The ballroom was filled with bright gowns, warm laughter, and the sound of footwork practice echoing against polished floors. Yet Isabella found her mind wandering in spite of herself.
Even when demonstrating stance to a new member, even while answering one of Lady Kendrick’s enthusiastic questions, evenas the fencing instructor reviewed the basics, Isabella’s thoughts drifted.
To storm-grey eyes in a portrait, a locked door down a narrow corridor, an argument in the ballroom, and to a man she claimed not to fancy yet found far too often in the corners of her mind.
She dismissed the thoughts each time, but they returned persistently, like a sound carried on the wind.
Why?
Her mind offered her no logical answer, so she simply pressed on with the session, maintaining her composure, refusing to let her wandering mind show.
Later that day, as Everthorne House settled into its usual nighttime hush, void of the Laurels—as apparently the club’s members were now called—Cassian stood alone in his workshop, sleeves rolled, the muscles in his forearms tense from the day’s responsibilities.
He had endured a strenuous series of meetings and a handful of legal matters that clawed at his patience, so by the time he reached his sanctuary, the only place in the house where he breathed without restraint, his temper had frayed to its limit. He needed some relief.
Carpentry never failed him. Not once, not ever. It required focus, precision, and a kind of quiet immersion that forced the world away, carving all unnecessary noise into silence.
