Page 17 of Teach a Rogue New Tricks
“Because,” came Hughes’s muffled reply, “you’ll send me to wait in the kitchen for it in a few minutes. I’ve got work to do up here, my lord.”
Cass prepared a pen, feeling the light drain from him as he opened his mind up to his past. He felt the itch to shock coming on, the one Lola told him to conquer. He would not conquer it today.
Miss C,
The question is not will I send another of my failings, but which one. I have too many to recount. My mother despairs of the whoring, my father the drinking, and my brother the gambling. But I suppose I could relate the time I sabotaged my own estate. Graceling Hall is always entailed to the firstborn son instead of to the current earl. It’s sort of a practice estate before the earl turns up his toes and the heir inherits all. I took it into my head to run it into the ground. I fired everyone, halted all work, and let it rot. On purpose.
And why? I hear you asking. Because my brother’s estate was doing so well. The one my father gave him, not the one that came to him naturally upon his own father’s death. I had thought that particular house would go to me. I knew—thought I knew—that my family expected me to ruin the place, expected me to struggle where Bax excelled, and so handed it off to the brother most likely to keep it alive.
So why not live up to their expectations? Or down, as the case may be.
All those people… thrown out of work. Generations of upkeep on a well-running estate… destroyed.
What lectures do you have for that, Miss C?
—A
Cass eyed the note with trepidation, drumming his fingers on the table. It was a horrid thing—his purposeful ruination of Graceling—one of his top three sins. He’d tried his best in the last months to atone for it, to build it back up. It’s how he’d met Nathan and Lola. He should mention that.
No. She’d not asked for his current good deeds, only for his misdeeds.
He snatched the note up, muscles bunched to crumple it into a tiny ball and toss it into the fire. She’d not lecture him when she read it. She’d run. And he didn’t want her to run. The rake inside ordered him to burn it, to hide his worst sins. But the part of him that wanted to be better held on tight, gripping the paper as if holding tight to life itself. She’d asked him to take this seriously. And since only one other of his sins—his treatment of his sister-in-law—ranked higher, this paper, the ink scrawled across it, was as serious as death.
He didn’t burn the note. He folded it. “Hughes!”
The valet lumbered out of the dressing room and grunted.
“It’s ready.”
But Cass was not.
* * *
Ada smoothed the note with large loopy scrawl flat on the cool dark desk. The note ended so defiantly, almost flippantly. Like when one of the twins was aware what he’d done was wrong but couldn’t quite bring himself to face it.
She did not doubt Lord Albee knew what he’d done was wrong. He knew it all too well, and she now understood his sudden postures of sorrow, the fleeting glimpses of disgust she’d seen in his eyes. The disgust was for himself. The sorrow was for those he’d hurt.
She tore a sheet of paper out of the drawer and slapped it on top of his note then dipped her pen in the inkwell. But she paused, not quite ready to curl ink across the page, not quite sure what ideas to put inside that ink.
A scathing lecture? Sympathy? More questions? All of that and more? She set the nib down.
* * *
Cass opened this letter in private, peeking into the quiet dressing room in case Hughes was spying on him. Maybe the man was asleep. He deserved a nap. Cass heaved in a breath and, with trembling fingers, opened the letter. He scanned its lines. It fairly howled at him, the writing faster, more slanted and messier than before. It did not bother with a salutation.
You uncaring brute! People depend upon you! How could you! A man like you, born into such privilege! Graceling Hall. It sounds lovely, anyway, no thanks to your machinations.
He slammed his eyes shut just one paragraph into the epistle. Shame curled through him. Not a new feeling at all. In fact, he and it were fairly well acquainted. But it burned hotter than ever now. He itched to ball her note up and toss it into the fire. He clawed his fingers into the armchair and continued reading instead.
That’s what you expect me to say, isn’t it? It’s what you want me to yell at you. Does hearing confirmation of your delinquency make you feel better? I would guess it does not.
When one of the children is guilt-ridden, as you are, I find myself in a delicate situation. The crime must be punished, but the perpetrator is doing such a fine job of punishing themselves, nothing I could add to the punishment would improve it.
What else are you punishing yourself for? Perhaps you should tell me about the whoring next.
—AC
He ignored the letter’s final request and reread its first paragraph. He had to because the rest of the letter cut deeper than the first. The first, the scathing lecture, he deserved. The rest, glowing with kindness, patience, pity, and a kind offorgiveness, he did not.
