Page 18 of Bred By the Duke

“That's enough,” I say. “She is a guest in my home, and you will speak to her the way you'd speak to me. If you can't manage that today, you can manage it by tonight, because there are a hundred and fifty people arriving tomorrow to celebrate Cassia and Theo, not me and some stranger you’re trying to set me up with.” I move so that I am standing beside Rochelle, and I stay there. “Whatever you say next, you're going to have to live beside it for a very long time.”

My mother looks at the two of us together at her table.

Cassia is also looking between me and Rochelle, her mouth hanging open.

Then she gathers herself, stands from the table and walks from the room.

My mother raises an eyebrow, throws up her hands in surrender, and follows Cassia.

Chapter Nine

Rochelle

The coffee pot is still in my hand when the door shuts behind them. I set it down on the trivet with both hands and frown into my cup.

Theo, who has said perhaps forty words to me in the two years I've known him, clears his throat. “For what it's worth, I think you're the only reason there's going to be a wedding.”

“There was always going to be a wedding,” I tell him. “You'd just have had it without any chairs.”

Honora snorts.

Peregrine finishes his toast and claps his hands together to shake off the crumbs. “Yes. Well. Is nobody coming to see these puppies?”

***

The registrar calls at ten and I confirm that he has the vows, and that the ceremony is on the grounds not at the chapel. He asks me if I’m certain that’s what the bride and groom want, and I assure him, for the gazillionth time, it is.

Lucas finds me in the morning room a little before noon. He shuts the door and says my name in the voice he used on the laundry floor last night. I don’t know why that feels like it was already a hundred years ago.

“I'm going to speak to her,” he says.

“You already did.” I don't look up from the file. “You did it beautifully. You stood next to me and you said loud and clear that you choose me. It meant a lot.”

He nods. “I do choose you, but I’m worried of what that means for you.”

I shrug. “It means we take whatever gets thrown at us together, side by side.” I look at the time. “I need to find Cassia,” I say. “Do you think she has had long enough to process?”

“Only one way to find out.” He drops a kiss on my forehead. “She'll be at the lake.”

The path down to the lake goes through the beeches and comes out where the ground flattens and the reeds start. The bench is on the west side, facing the water, and it's been there since two months after their father died. Somebody keeps the grass cut back around the legs of it. The little brass plate on the top rail has her father's name on it, and I know for a fact that Cassia chose the wording herself.

She's sitting in the middle of it with her arms folded, looking out of the water like she is waiting for it to tell her something.

I sit down beside her.

“Why?” she barks.

I take a breath. “Which why?”

“Any of them. Pick one.”

A moorhen makes a great deal of noise from somewhere in the reeds. I consider one of the many ways I’ve thought of telling her, then I decide to just start from the beginning.

“He kissed me in the library four years ago,” I say. “The night after Christmas. It lasted about six seconds and then he stopped and walked out and passed me the toast rack the next morning like it hadn't happened.”

Cassia turns her head slowly. “The Christmas with the goose?”

I nod solemnly and suppress the smile that’s trying to spread at the memory. “The Christmas with the goose.”