Blood pooled down his wrist, drip after steady drip, pulling him back to reality.
He finally tore himself away from the bench and headed toward the kitchens, leaving a faint trail of crimson behind him.
When he entered, several servants gasped.
“Your Grace, your hand!” the housekeeper cried, rushing forward. “How on earth?”
“Do not come near me,” Cassian said sharply.
“But you are bleeding?—”
“I said, do not come near me.”
The servants froze, simply staring in horror at the spectacle before them.
Cassian moved to the basin, turned on the pump, and let cold water run over the wound, the blood swirling down the drain in thin red ribbons.
One of the younger maids wrung her hands anxiously.
“Your Grace, let us fetch the physician…”
“No physicians,” he said flatly. “No fuss and no help.”
“But—”
“Out,” he snapped.
The room fell silent.
The housekeeper exchanged a nervous look with the kitchen servants, then bowed her head. “Very well, Your Grace.”
Within seconds, the kitchen emptied.
The quiet that followed pressed heavily around him. Cassian leaned his palms against the edge of the basin and bowed his head, the cut throbbing in tune with his heartbeat.
He wished, fiercely or irrationally, that physical pain alone could drown out the ache twisting through him. The ache of knowing Isabella had looked at him with tears in her eyes… the ache of pushing her away because it was the only way he knew to protect her from the chaos inside him.
He shut his eyes, the cold water still running over his hand.
He was better off alone.
He repeated the words again and again.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Will His Grace come down for supper?” Isabella asked, her voice tight with an effort toward politeness she did not feel. She stood at the foot of the dining table, every muscle in her body strung with tension, while Michael hovered before her, looking more uncomfortable than she had ever seen him.
Michael bowed faintly. “No, Your Grace. His Grace asked for supper to be sent up to his study for him.” There was pity in his tone.
Pity.
It burned beneath Isabella’s skin like a slow, humiliating flame. Her husband had turned her into someone who could be pitied.
Lady Kendrick, seated at the table, released a soft sigh that carried that same dreadful sympathy Isabella had begun to despise.
“I wish I had an excuse for his behavior,” the elderly woman murmured, shaking her head in a manner that suggested she believed Isabella might crumble at any moment.
Isabella’s smile tightened. “I am certain he’d be better suited to give those excuses, Grandma,” she replied coolly. “But since we are already at the table… let us eat.”
