Page 75 of Teach a Rogue New Tricks
“You can’t know I seduced her. And… I offered marriage after.”
Bax fell backward into his chair, a rock careening off a cliff. The chair creaked under the sudden onslaught of weight. “You… marriage… Miss Cav—” He sputtered, his face coloring with flecks of red.
Before, Cass would have pointed it out and made some quip about being the cleverer, handsomer brother, but he bit his tongue now. He must have learned a lesson or two in the last year.
Bax’s sputtering stopped. He stared at his desk for several moments, his finger tap, tap, tapping on the arm of the chair, then he lifted his gaze to Cass. It sliced sharp with curiosity. “How did she answer?”
Cass sat gingerly in a chair across the desk from his brother. A single rash movement might cause an explosion. “Ah, in the negative.”
“Were you serious in your proposal?”
“Entirely.”
“Do you think yourself deserving of her?”
Cass flinched. He’d been ready for a cannon volley of questions from his older brother, but that one hurt, hit the target dead center. “Not at all.”
All the breath left Bax at once, and he sat before Cass deflated. His brother closed his eyes, and his eyelids flickered, as if they searched the darkness of Bax’s skull for answers. Or more questions. Bax always kept a look out for new questions, the right questions. Cass used to hate it. Now the right question might work in his favor. Or not.
Bax’s eyes popped open. He stood and strode around the desk.
Cass rose to meet him, his heart pounding in his chest. He remembered the pain of his brother’s fist on his jaw. He’d deserved it then. He would deserve it now. He kept his eyes open to confront the punishment head-on, to accept it fully as right and proper, his penance.
It never came.
Bax stood so close he could grab Cass’s cravat and strangle him if he so desired. His eyes blazed revenge, but his body spoke of restraint.
The restraint gave Cass hope. “I’m not here to ask your forgiveness.”
“Why are you here then?”
“A second chance. I’m sorry for what I did. You cannot know how much so. I was… I was wrong about everything, driven by jealousy, by slights that I imagined but never truly happened. I never wanted to hurt her. I was bored out of my mind. Thought myself a useless fellow. I just wanted to win at a game I always lost at.”
“What game?”
“Love.” He barked the word to get it out. Otherwise it would not come. “You won Father’s… love”—again, so difficult to utter such a simple word—“I thought, and our mother’s. People you weren’t even aware of”—he swallowed, but the word would push up and out—“loved every detail about you. Sure, they thought you odd. Because you are.” Cass really shouldn’t have said that. A serious moment such as this should reverberate with sincerity, not barbs.
Bax’s eyes narrowed.
“But everyone respects you. How could I ever compare? I didn’t realize… I didn’t see… But I do now. You can’t receive”—his tongue pushed against the roof of his mouth, still reluctant—“love unless you give it first.”
Love. He’d said the word four times in short succession, and each time it wriggled awkward on his tongue, difficult to say without cringing. Last night he’d not been able to say it at all. He’d replaced it with a different one—need. True. But somehow not as true as the other.
Bax shoved his hands through his hair. Cass knew that movement. Familiar because he often did it himself. With Bax’s dark hair, height, and nearly black eyes, looking at him often felt like looking in a mirror. The mirror did not reflect Cass as he was, though. It reflected a better man, the man Cass wanted, and failed, to be.
But Cass had promised Ada, and himself to move beyond the past. He would not look to Bax for a reflection any longer.
“Nice words, Cass,” Bax said. “Lovely, in fact. How can I know they are truth?”
“You can’t, I supposed. You’d have to trust me. And after everything I’ve done, why would you? I only ask for the chance to prove myself to you. Don’t send me away.”
“I gave you chance after chance. I tried to help you again and again. You rejected all attempts. You rejected me. You hurt my wife.”
The door creaked open. Willow’s head appeared. “I’m not hurt. Just for the record. Perfectly hale and hearty. Not even nightmares as mementos of the event.”
Bax glared at her. “You were eavesdropping.”
Willow strolled further into the room. “I was. And you cannot be angry at me for it. You were discussing me, after all, and an event that would never have happened had I known my mind better.”
