Remorse tightened her chest. She had been so consumed by her anger and suspicion that she had not accounted for his lack of balance. She could still hear the sound of his solid body hitting the floor. He had groaned but not complained about her weight. Instead, he had made a jest about it, though it must have hurt. The pain must have been excruciating.
What do I care, anyway?
She almost believed it. Almost.
“Forgive me, husband,” she murmured as the carriage continued on its way. “But I am not the obedient wife you would have hoped to have purchased.”
The carriage picked up speed, and Stonevale shrank behind her into the dark. She should have felt the full weight of what she was doing, the foolishness, the danger, and the near certainty that her husband would be furious when he discovered she was gone.
But Kit was out there somewhere, and he was her brother. Reckless, infuriating, catastrophically poor at protecting himself from his own worst impulses, but her family, nonetheless. Whatever Cassian had forbidden, whatever rules governed this new life she had been thrust into, she could not sit in a gilded drawing room, stitching, while Kit stumbled toward a disaster she might still prevent.
She had always been the one to pull him back from the edge. She would have to do this one more time now.
She faced forward and folded her hands in her lap, and tried very hardnotto think about what her husband would say when he found her gone.
Chapter 14
“Ihave said it before, but I will say it again. You look more like a man who lost his fortune than a newlywed, Cassian,” Sebastian remarked, giving his friend a lazy smirk.
Cassian knew he had no business being at White’s. He was, technically speaking, still in the first weeks of marriage, a period during which a man was expected to be otherwise occupied. And yet here he was, in a leather chair that had absorbed the complaints of generations of aristocrats before him, with a glass of brandy that was not doing nearly enough.
The club was thick with tobacco smoke and the low murmur of men conducting the serious business of avoiding their responsibilities. It used to feel like freedom. Tonight, it felt like an escape. He was not a man who escaped. He found the change irritating.
Still, the amber liquid in his crystal glass and the games of chance around him were necessary distractions. His hip flared with pain; not surprising, given that the London air chilled his joints and iced his muscles.
But despite it all, his mind was still anchored to Juliana. The feel of her firm thighs pressing against his cock was still vivid, and if he let himself fantasize, he faintly remembered her involuntarily thrusting against him in that dangerously darkened corridor.
“The woman is insufferable,” he said, not for the first time that evening. “She likes to provoke me at every turn. She takes issue with every rule, every decision, every word out of my mouth. And when she is not doing that, she ignores me completely, which is somehow worse.”
“You married her,” Benedict observed mildly.
“Thank you, Benedict. I had forgotten.”
“Yes, you married her,” Sebastian added. “Because you wanted to. Nobody held a pistol to your head at that altar.”
“I married her to prevent her imbecile brother from selling her to the highest degenerate at The Arrangement.”
“Ah, yes, charitable Cassian,” mused Benedict, shaking his head in disbelief. “You married her because you had her brother pay his debts with her. It is hardly a path to a peaceful marriage.”
“Ah, dear Benedict. Our friend is not one to be forced into marriage. I believe he had wanted her, and he got what he wanted,” Sebastian interjected. “Have you noticed how he cannot stop talking about her? Men who do not like their wives are bored within the first week of marriage. You look like a man possessed. Have you looked at a mirror as of late?”
Cassian’s grip tightened on his cane. His hip had been punishing him since the carriage ride, the cold settling into the joint with its usual lack of mercy. He ignored it.
“Sebastian is right, Cassian. You look like hell,” Benedict explained, raising his eyes to look at him.
“What about you? Why are you not in Frostmore with your lovely wife?” Cassian barked at Benedict.
“My wife and I spend a lot of time together. Thank you for your concern. At least I am open about how I feel about you. But you, dear Cassian, must admit that you think about your wife too much.”
“Well, here is my response. She has provoked me, and this is why I am so agitated,” Cassian snapped. His right hand gripped his cane tighter, letting the pressure of his palm on the wood add to his litany of pain. “I believe that if I finally bed her, I can put this madness out of my mind. She merely offers the novelty of conquest and nothing more. Once I have scratched the itch, it will be nothing more than another passing fancy.”
“Nothing more? You married the woman.”
Cassian did not like how reasonable Benedict sounded.
Laughter burst from Sebastian at that.
“Yes, I did,” Cassian agreed with an exasperated sigh. “It is only to show her brother what I can do. Then, when I am tired of her, I can take mistresses.”
