Page 49 of Earl for the Summer
“You know the reasons I never wished to marry.”
“Because you preferred brief, meaningless liaisons with ladies who expected nothing more of you?”
Cassian winced and gripped the back of his neck. “In the past, yes, that’s what I preferred.”
“And now this young lady has altered you.”
Cassian ground his teeth and said nothing.
“Has she not?” his brother pressed.
After a curt nod, Cassian pressed his hands together, trying to put the storm inside him into words. “When I am with her, I’m different. All I want in those moments is to continue being that man every day of my life. For her. With her.”
Julian grinned and leaned closer. “Then marry her posthaste,” he whispered.
Cassian laughed, but it turned into a groan. “If only it was that bloody simple.”
“Why is it not?”
“You know why.”
Julian settled back into his chair again and crossed his arms. “Because you’re stubborn as hell?”
“That is only one of his qualities I inherited.” Cassian shot up from his chair.
“You’re not like him, Cass. I never understood why you thought you were.”
“We were apart for many years, Julian. You don’t know.” During his decade and a half in the navy, he and his brother had exchanged letters, but he’d rarely visited Hillcrest. Even during the many months when he lived ashore on half-pay, he preferred to keep away from the manor and its memories.
“And during that time you became a brutal, manipulative, destructive monster?” Julian asked in a wry tone, perfectly summing up their sire.
Of course, he hadn’t been that. But he’d been churlish, quick to anger, and he kept his finer feelings stifled under a tight control. That had eased during his years in Scotland, when he was on his own, without provocations or temptations. Loneliness had seemed a small price to pay for peace.
Now, he only seemed to know peace when he was with Daphne. Though she provoked far more than that in him. Feelings that terrified him, if he was honest. A wild desire that threatened to blaze beyond his control, a possessiveness that she’d find stifling if he gave it full reign, and a protectiveness that made him want to bludgeon men like Moreland, who dared to cause her a moment of unhappiness.
He had learned control because his emotions were too much otherwise. Though he was Julian’s twin, he’d never had his brother’s ability to treat things lightly.
“I will take your silence as agreement that you are not, in fact, our vile pater,” Julian said, sounding far too pleased with himself.
“Not him exactly, no, but he shaped me just the same.”
“As did our mother.”
Cassian arched a brow. His brother had once held as much bitterness toward their mother as their father. He felt she’d abandoned them to the earl’s abuse, but over the years he’d come to acknowledge that she herself had suffered too.
“I know you two had a special bond.” Julian gestured toward the window. “Beyond just a love for fussing over garden matters.” He squared his green gaze on Cassian. “You have her gentleness to temper his hardness. You have her patience. Her sense of loyalty.”
“You have those things too,” Cassian told him.
“If I was truly loyal, I never would have asked you to lie for me.”
Cassian shook his head. “You were smitten. I now know what it makes a man do.” He shot his brother a rueful grin.
“Do you now?” Julian’s eyes glittered with mischief. “Then, pray tell, what do you plan to do about it? You are, after all, a man of action, are you not, Captain?”
Cassian ran a hand through his hair, pacing a line from the door to the fireplace. “It’s not as straightforward as you imply.”
Julian watched him for a moment and then heaved a long sigh. “Tell her of your worries and see what she says.”
