Page 26 of Dare to be Wicked

Demarteau dragged his gaze from Eliza to Cassius and inclined his head.

“Quite right, Cassius. Forgive me.” He turned back to Eliza, his face unreadable. “Mille excuses. Forgive me, my lady, my manners are not fit for your company. I shall remove myself from it.”

He got up and left, and Cassius turned back to Eliza to see her cheeks were blazing and her eyes glittering, but her chin was up, her back straight as she watched him stride away.

“Eliza,” he began, but Louis César had reached for her hand.

“Forgive him, Eliza,” he said softly. “I do not know why he acts so, but my brother has not been himself of late. I will speak to him.”

“There’s really no need to trouble yourself. I shall disregard it,” Eliza said, waving the whole incident away as if it were nothing, though her voice was not entirely steady.

“Nonetheless,” Louis said, and got to his feet, following his brother towards the path that led to the castle.

“Well,” Vivien said, her eyes alight with mischief as she looked at Lottie. “That was enlightening.”

“Diverting, certainly,” Eliza said, with a brittle tone Cassius did not recognise as belonging to his friend. “I think I shall stretch my legs. I need to work up an appetite before I do justice to this splendid picnic.”

She got to her feet, brushing down her skirts, and Cassius knew he must speak to her, at the very least to ensure she was not too upset by Nic’s odd behaviour. Louis César was right, the man was not himself.

“I’ll come with you,” he said, relieved when Eliza gave him a grateful smile and nodded.

“Thank you, Cassius, I should like that.”

Eliza hardly knew what she felt as she walked beside the moat, doing a circuit of the castle to calm her jittering heart. The nerve of the man! He did not speak a blasted word to her and when he finally opened his mouth he… he…. Well, she hardly knew how to describe it. For it had not just been his words–which seemed to demand she reveal that she was not the nice, well-mannered lady everyone knew her to be, but some kind of she-devil beneath the civilised exterior–it had been the look he gave her, the sensation of being the entire focus of those dark, dark eyes, and the ferocity of his attention. It was like being cornered by something wild and beautiful, afraid the wrong move might see you bloody with a savage bite, but not wanting to turn away from a creature so rare and powerful. She wondered now if she had been correct to react with such hauteur and anger, if indeed he had been deliberately intent on provoking and embarrassing her, or if there had been a serious question there. If so, her honest answer was that she did not know. She had become uncertain of who she was and what she wanted. For so long she had believed it had been Cassius and a life with him, her dearest friend. Now, though, Cassius was avoiding her, and Mr Demarteau made her wonder….

“Are you well, Eliza?”

Eliza forced her thoughts from the aggravating Mr Demarteau to the man beside her. She looked up at the handsome face of her dearest friend, the man she thought she had loved above all others and gave a sigh of relief. She did love him. Cassius was kind and familiar and he would never provoke her or ask such unnerving questions.

“I am all the better for your company,” she said, slipping her arm through his. It was so reminiscent of their lives before he’d gone away that she felt a swell of nostalgia. “Isn’t this lovely? Just like old times.”

He did not answer, and she glanced up at him.

“Yes,” he said hurriedly, smiling. “Very much like old times.”

Eliza frowned, disquiet niggling at her. He did not seem entirely at ease in her company and, now that her temper was settling, she remembered he had been avoiding her. Honestly, she felt as if everyone knew something she did not. What with Vivien and Lottie sharing conspiratorial glances, Mr Demarteau’s strange behaviour, and Cassius avoiding her, she was getting a tad paranoid. All at once her legendary patience deserted her and she turned to face Cassius.

“Tell me,” she said, wondering why her heart was thudding so wildly.

“Tell you what?” he asked, such alarm in his eyes she wondered what she might discover.

“Well, why don’t we start with why you have been avoiding me? I have a dozen letters all professing how eager you were to see me and tell me of everything you’ve done, and you’ve barely spoken a dozen words to me since you got home. For a man who implied he would ask me to marry him when he returned from his travels, that would seem a little odd, do you not think?”

There, she’d said it. She stared at him, waiting for him to give her some perfectly reasonable explanation and deny that there was a problem at all. Cassius would tell her nothing had changed, and she could get engaged to him and forget about this unsettling, bothersome feeling that she was living someone else’s life.

“I….” he began and then cleared his throat. He reached for her hands, clasping them in his own. “Eliza, I’ve behaved badly and I must beg your forgiveness, only… only, you truly are my dearest friend in the world, and I cannot bear the thought of hurting you, and so… and so I have been a coward, and—”

“You don’t wish to marry me.”

Eliza stared at him in shock as she saw the truth in his eyes, heard what he was clumsily trying to tell her. He didn’t want her. He’d gone away and fallen out of love with her and not been able to face telling her the truth.

She drew in a sharp breath, remembering her father’s words, remembering comments other people had made, and the truth made humiliation burn down her neck.

“Everyone knows, don’t they?” she said, suddenly finding her corset was too tightly laced. She pressed a hand to her ribcage, still able to feel her heart careening about beneath the busk and several layers of fabric. “Everyone but me.”

“No, Eliza,” he protested, shaking his head. “That’s not true.”

“Do your parents know?” she demanded.