He drew the line, however, at Hawthorne selling his own sister to pay off his debts. Juliana Hawthorne might be impolite, reckless, and all sorts of aggravating, but she did not deserve the treatment that her brother—her own flesh and blood—was willing to subject her to.
“You do not deserve half the devotion your family has shown you,” Cassian growled at him. “The sooner your sister’s eyes are opened to the truth, the better.”
“So this is your ploy, then?” Hawthorne demanded. “You wish to strip me of everything I have left.”
Cassian smiled coldly at him. “You think too highly of me if you think I have the time and effort to spare in meddling with your affairs. Not when you are already doing a fine enough job of ruining your own life.”
“You bastard!”
“Your sister was far better and more creative in hurling insults at my head,” he smirked. “Perhaps, ifshehad been born male, then the entire Hawthorne line would not have sunk to such depths.”
Hawthorne looked at him in mild shock. “You actuallylikeher.”
Cassian stiffened. Did he really like the vexing minx? Almost as much as one would appreciate a hangnail, perhaps, if hangnails were possessed of such lush curves and a mouth that was made for kissing and other such sinful pleasures.
Damn it.
He had only meant to kiss her when he heard her brother idiotically calling her name and inviting scandal upon them all before Cassian could even taste those succulent lips. He had not meant to crush her lips to his, to delve and taste the sweetnessthat lay in their depths. He had not meant to press his hardness against those delectable curves and delight in how well she seemed to fit into him.
And he most certainly had not meant to find it so enjoyable to the point of clouding his judgment.
“I will be calling upon you and your sister tomorrow,” Cassian told him. “Do take care to make certain that you are in the proper frame of mind to accept my proposal.”
“Ha! That is, if she will haveyou.”
Cassian smirked at him.
“I have my own ways of persuading the young lady, so you need not concern yourself on that account.”
Without waiting for Hawthorne to sputter more expletives his way, he walked back to the ballroom.
For once, the pain in his leg did not seem as awful as it usually was.
Chapter 9
“Oh dear, do try to smile a little bit more. It simply would not do for the bride to wear such a glum countenance. One would think you have been sentenced to the gallows instead of holy matrimony!”
Juliana pressed her lips into a grim smile that only made Grandmama throw her hands up in frustration. The archbishop had droned on and on about the sanctity of marriage. Her wedding attire had weighed so heavily on her that she felt as if she was about to keel over in the middle of the ceremony. Worse, she could hardly think beyond the searing kiss that her new husband had laid on her the moment the archbishop declared, “You may kiss the bride!”
“I am of the firm belief that not all marriages are happy occasions, Grandmama,” she said firmly. “Some of them happen because we have very little choice in the matter.”
“Oh, pish posh!” her grandmama huffed. “What do you have to be so dissatisfied about? You have managed to become a duchess—aduchess, Juliana! Now, we can be freed of this rather embarrassing predicament, and—”
“The same predicament we landed in because of Kit and his profligacy?”
Her Grandmama colored a little at the vehemence in her words. Juliana had always managed to restrain herself, especially with her grandmama, but all good things—and her patience—were bound to come to an end.
“It was Kit who landed us in dire straits,” she reminded her grandmama. “And even then, he used me to go on these little ‘errands’ of his that have put my reputation and personal safety at risk. Now, he has sold me to the highest bidder as if I were nothing more than an object.”
“It is the role of a woman to endure—”
“Well, I am done enduring for Kit and this family,” Juliana snapped. “If he is so capable, then perhaps he might be able to take on some of the family burdens for once in his spoiled, entitled existence.”
“Brava, my dear! I expected nothing less from the new Duchess of Stonevale!”
Juliana turned around in shock, her cheeks heating up when she realized that she had not been so discreet in airing their family’s dirty linen in such a public place.
And to be heard by no one other than her new husband’s grandmother, at that. If only by some divine intervention, the ground would open up and swallow her whole. She would be very grateful for it.
