Page 36 of Dare to be Wicked

Jules looked vaguely horrified but drew in a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “Oh, Lord. Well, I suppose I must do something about it then. I am your brother, after all.”

“Younger brother,” she sniffed. “Doesn’t count.”

“Of course it does!” he retorted. “Brothers look out for their sisters, no matter if they are older or younger. It’s one of those unwritten rule thingies. They… well, they just do. So, tell me who I need hit. I assume there’s a fellow somewhere at the heart of it?”

“Somewhere,” she agreed.

“Oh!” he said, obviously not having expected that answer. “Oh. Well. Right, then. Tell me who the blackguard is, and I’ll pound him.”

“Can’t.”

Rather to her surprise, she gave the matter some thought, though. Well, not the pounding bit—Cassius had done nothing wrong—but perhaps telling her brother about her unhappiness and this dreadful situation. That she would ever consider confiding in Jules rather than Eliza was just laughable, until she considered why she couldn’t confide in Eliza.

There went the urge to laugh.

“Is this why you didn’t come last night?” Jules asked, once more reminding her he wasn’t quite so dim as she liked to make out.

She nodded. There was a short silence.

“You spoke to him, didn’t you? Last night.”

Lottie turned her head in surprise and, as Jules’s green eyes met hers, she discovered she couldn’t hide her blush.

“Bloody hell, Lottie!” he exclaimed in obvious shock. “You did? How the devil—”

Lottie held her breath, realising too late that her brother wasn’t the least bit dim and it would only take him a short while to figure things out.

“The bastard!” he exclaimed, scrambling up and heading for the ladder.

“Jules! Jules, no… no! You don’t understand….”

“I understand plenty,” he muttered, leaping from halfway down the ladder to the floor.

Lottie was still struggling to wrestle with her heavy skirts and a ridiculous number of petticoats. Getting up the blasted ladder had been nigh on impossible and very unladylike, getting down was looking even more awkward.

“Cassius has broken Eliza’s heart and now he’s dallying with you, and I’m going to damn well kill him.”

Lottie watched in horror as Jules stalked from the barn. She yelled after him, telling him he’d got it wrong, that he was a pigheaded idiot, and a dozen other insults… all of which had no effect whatsoever.

Oh, good heavens. What on earth had she done?

Cassius fixed his eyes on the blank canvas before him and tried not to allow his gaze to travel to the corner of the room. Stacked behind canvases and tied in a leather carrying portfolio were the drawings of Lottie. He wished there were somewhere safer for him to put them, but he could not take them to the house where curious maids might peek at his work. None of the staff were allowed in here to clean, and none of his friends or family would poke about without permission. His fingers itched with the desire to get them out, to use them to create a painting of the woman he was now certain would be his muse until the day he died.

She did things to him. Odd, marvellous things that he could not account for. Her laughter made his heart trip about and her smile lit him up with happiness. Now that he reflected on the life he’d lived before he’d gone away, he remembered dozens of occasions when she had made him laugh so hard he could hardly breathe, when she had persuaded him and Eliza to let her join them and then talked them into some silly escapade that had ended with one or all of them getting scolded and having not a single regret about it. Being with her was like being swept up in a wave and tumbled about. It left one giddy and disorientated, and damned glad about it.

Why, then, had he been so certain Eliza was the one he ought to marry? Because he’d been happy, happier than he’d realised in their company. Eliza was wonderful, her company soothing, and she was his friend. Everyone knew Eliza would be the perfect wife. She had received dozens of offers already, none of which she’d even considered for a moment… because of him. She was flawless, the kind of girl titled men would give their right arm to marry, and she’d been his for the taking. He’d just assumed their friendship would grow into love. They’d both been too young to understand the kind of magnetic attraction possible between two people, the kind they did not have.

Yet it had not been Eliza, though she was his dearest friend and confidant, the one he told of his hopes and dreams, with whom he had fallen in love. Whatever the reason, there was no denying the truth of it. He had made an error of judgement, a bad one, and now he was hurting two of the people he cared about most in the world and it was making him wretched.

“So, this is where you’re skulking, is it?”

Cassius turned to see their brother Jules in the doorway. He turned with a smile despite his despondency as he liked Jules very much. The devil-may-care attitude hid a good heart, and a fellow who took things a deal more seriously than people might have thought. Cassius stood to greet him and then paused as he saw the furious glint in his eyes.

“Jules,” he said, feeling his heart pick up as the tension in the room became palpable.

“I didn’t break your nose when you broke things off with Eliza because I understood that two years apart had changed your feelings. I knew you’d never made a formal offer, and I felt certain you’d never hurt my sister on purpose,” Jules said, walking into the room and inspecting some items arranged on a table by the door. It was a mess of paint-stained rags and brushes and empty pots, and things that had taken Cassius’s eye: a badger’s skull, a large yellow vase he’d liberated from the house, a broken mirror. Jules trailed his hand over a few things, picking up the skull and inspecting it. He tossed it back to the table and looked back at Cassius. “You’d not do that, would you, Cass? Mess about with my sisters? You’d not make them fall in love with you and then break their hearts?”

“No,” Cassius said, with a sick sensation roiling in his stomach as he knew that was exactly what he had done, what he was doing. No, he had not meant to do it. He would have cut out his heart before hurting either of them, but….