He released her and sat back.
“Cassian—”
“I think we have nothing more to discuss,” he said quietly.
She closed her mouth. She looked at him for a moment longer, and he looked back, and something passed between them that had no name yet, though he suspected it would have one before very long.
Outside, the fog was thinning. The Stonevale gates appeared in the darkness, and the long, familiar drive stretched ahead of them. The carriage slowed.
“Cassian, I have been reckless. I was just worried about Kit. He may be older than me, but he does not think clearly,” she explained.
“But that was what you were doing earlier. Not thinking clearly. You have shown that is what Hawthornes do. Consider this carefully, Juliana. Your brother is a lost cause. I will have to punish you if you ever defy me again. Let us hope that this is the last time you do it,” he warned.
Her old defiance sparked within her, but the evening’s events had dampened it. He did not like it.
When the carriage finally drew to a stop, it was she who broke the silence, not with the question he had been expecting, but with something simpler and, somehow, considerably harder toanswer.
“Are you in pain?” she asked, glancing down at his leg. “From the fight.”
“I am perfectly well,” he said.
She held his gaze with an expression that told him she knew a lie when she heard one, had heard rather a lot of them in her life, and was choosing, this once, not to argue the point.
She descended from the carriage and walked ahead of him into the house. He watched her go. His leg throbbed. Somewhere in the vicinity of his chest, something shifted, very slightly, like a lock that had not yet opened but had begun, at last, to consider it.
Chapter 16
“Iam going to teach you to shoot today.”
Juliana looked up from her toast. “I beg your pardon?”
“A pistol,” he said. “Every woman ought to know how to use one, particularly a woman with your penchant for finding trouble.”
She ought to have been irritated by that. To her mild surprise, she found that she was not.
He had been different since that night in London. The sharp edges had been filed down somewhat, and in their place was something she did not quite have a word for. Consideration, perhaps. A deliberate, almost cautious courtesy that told her he knew he had been harsh and, in his own fashion, was attempting to make amends.
She had decided to accept the olive branch. It seemed the sensible thing to do.
The morning was crisp and bright, the meadow behind the estate still damp from an earlier frost, the air carrying that particular smell of cold earth and pine that she had come to associatewith Stonevale. She stood at the makeshift mark he had set up against an old oak post, the pistol heavy and foreign in her hand, while Cassian stood at a distance, an imposing figure in a dark coat, juxtaposed against the meadow’s more cheerful green. He looked like a shadow materialized.
“Lower your shoulders. Yes, like that,” he instructed, his voice a steady anchor amid what was otherwise a completely new challenge. “Focus on your aim. We do not want stray bullets piercing the clouds and falling onto innocent branches. Think of the weapon as an expression of your intent. You cannot have a shaky intent, or else the bullet would waver from its target.”
She adjusted her shoulders as instructed, feeling a creak in her back. She had not slept well last night, and this morning she was so jittery she had to get up early. That was how her husband caught her and led her outside after a quick breakfast.
“I do not need this, Your Grace. I am not leaving the estate without you or another companion ever again,” she promised wearily. The memory of the confrontation in the dark alleyway was still far too vivid.
“Do not make promises you cannot keep,” he said, his tone teasing, but his eyes were serious. “Besides, the world will remain dangerous even if you keep your promise to be a good girl. You must know how to defend yourself in any situation. Your brother has less-than-honorable ties.”
Cassian called her a good girl, something she was not, or at least one that she did not want to become in this too rough world. She should be annoyed, but it did something else to her insides.
They might even have been friends, she thought, if she did not have quite so many reasons to resent him.
“Your wrist is limp,” he said.
She stiffened. “I am aware.”
“Then correct it.”
