Page 38 of Dare to be Wicked

“Hell and damnation, Cass,” he muttered in disgust. “And now I’ve been dragged into it, too.”

“Been dragged into what? What on earth is going on here?”

Both men jolted as the feminine voice called them to account. They exchanged a panicked glance before doing their best to straighten themselves, for what good it did them. They turned and met Eliza’s suspicious gaze.

“Have… Have you been fighting?” she asked, staring at them in outrage.

“Only a little,” Jules said, sullen as a boy as he regarded his older sister, who was looking at him as if she intended to send him to bed with no supper.

“What on earth about?” she demanded, her astonished gaze darting from one to the other and back again.

Ah, now there was a tricky question to answer.

“Well?” Eliza folded her arms, glaring at them both.

“Art,” Cassius said, as it was the only thing he could think of and about the only subject he ever got riled up about enough to lose his temper. “Jules said a lot of idiotic guff to wind me up and I reacted rather foolishly. Silly of us. All over now. No harm done.”

He did not dare look at Jules.

“It was foolish of you,” Jules retorted, a sarcastic edge to the comment that promised retribution in one form or another in the near future. “I was only ragging you. There was no need for you to act like a blasted caveman, now, was there?”

Cassius gritted his teeth.

“I apologise, Jules,” he said, knowing he owed the devil that much, no matter how annoying he was. “I behaved badly, but I will put things to rights. You have my word.”

Though, how the hell he was supposed to do that, he really had no idea.

Jules made a disgruntled sound but seemed to accept his apology.

“See that you do,” he muttered, and stalked away.

Cassius swallowed as Eliza turned her attention back to him. She gave him a penetrating stare, direct enough that he felt she could see right through him.

“I didn’t know you at all, did I?” she said, her voice full of sorrow.

“Yes, you did, Eliza. Better than anyone. We were just too young to realise we wouldn’t suit. We want different things.”

Eliza nodded, staring out over the dark water of the lake. “You want to travel, to see the world. I always knew that but… I suppose I thought it was a boyish whim, that you would grow out of it. That’s not it though, is it?”

Cassius shook his head. “No.”

“You never said.”

“You always seemed to know what was right, Eliza, and I was excited by all the plans you made for us. I know you are capable of great things and I looked forward to playing my part. You were always so certain of everything when I was unsure, I believed in your vision of the future, of the better world you want to make, but I’m a man now, not a boy. I know what I want and this…” He swept a hand at the bucolic landscape about them. “This isn’t it. At least, it isn’t yet. Perhaps one day it will be. I hope it will, but not, I think, for some time.”

“I could not live like that, always on the move.”

“I know.”

They were silent for a long moment and Cassius felt the chasm between them like a physical weight, an ache in his soul.

“I miss you, Eliza. There is so much I wish I could say to you. I want to explain everything and talk it though and listen to your sensible advice but…”

“But…” she said sadly.

“Will you ever forgive me?”

She smiled at that, a crooked, sorrowful quirk of her lips. “Yes, but my pride has taken a blow, Cass. You must wait for the bruises to fade.”