Page 89 of Historical Hotties
The duke was watching Dacia carefully. “Because it needed to be done and it was best that Dacia do it,” he said without remorse. But his next words were directed at Dacia. “What do you intend to do now?”
Dacia was pale and shaking. Slowly, she looked over at him. “What do you mean?”
“Just that,” the duke said. “Amata’s confession has made you blameless, child. The priests know it, the village knows it. Everyone knows it, but I wish you had let me settle this matter sooner. This dragged out far longer than it should have.”
Dacia shook her head. “How, Grandfather?” she said. “There was nothing you could have done. The priests were going to believe what they believed, as were the villagers, and anything you did would have simply made it look as if you were defending your guilty granddaughter. The only resolution to this had to come from Amata and, quite honestly, I am shocked that she confessed. She has never accepted blame for anything.”
The duke grunted. “Her father forced her,” he said. “Hugh is a good man, Dacia. You must not hate him for his daughter’s crimes.”
Dacia looked away. “He let her get away with it,” she said. “He knew what she was doing and he had for years, yet he did nothing and he said nothing. He is not innocent in mytorment, Grandfather, and he knows it. Mayhap I will forgive him someday, but not now.”
“You are holding a grudge, child.”
“Of course I am!” she practically shouted. “Because of Amata, I have lost something that was more important to me than anything on earth. I’ve lost my moon and my sun. How can I forgive or forget that?”
The duke sighed faintly. “You should have never sent him away to begin with,” he muttered. “Cassius wanted to help you and you would not let him.”
Dacia shot out of her chair. “I could not let him be tainted by those lies,” she fired back. “I was the target and he would have been damaged simply by his association with me, and I could not stomach that. I loved him enough to let him go.”
“You sent away a man who wanted to protect you.”
They hadn’t really spoken of this subject since it happened, mostly because Dacia refused to. In fact, she still wouldn’t be talking about it had Amata’s appearance not forced her hand. To think of it tore her guts to shreds. To imagine Cassius’ face brought her heartbreak that shattered into a million pieces of pain. She’d never experienced anything like it but she would always believe, until the end of all things, that she had done the right thing for him.
Her grandfather simply didn’t understand.
“He could not have protected me,” she finally said. “This was something I had to face alone, Grandfather. If you cannot understand that, I cannot explain it to you any better.”
“Would you have lethimface a situation like this alone?”
Her first reaction was to voice her support for Cassius in any given situation, but she shut her mouth. It would open an entirely new world of argument and she didn’t have the strength. She didn’t want to face the possibility that she might have been wrong.
At the moment, she didn’t want to face anything.
She was so very weary.
“We shall never know,” she said quietly. “I am going to rest now. It has been a trying day.”
The duke and Darian watched her go, hearing her footfalls fade away as she mounted the stairs. The duke sat back in his chair, sighing heavily at the apex of a most eventful day.
“Do you know where Cassius is, Darian?”
Darian looked at him. He could have easily lied to the man, anything to keep Cassius away from Dacia and preserve what little hope there was still for him to marry her. But after seeing what her heartbreak had reduced her to, he couldn’t bring himself to make it worse.
Certainly, Dacia would heal. Broken hearts always did, eventually. But even he had to admit that there had been something very special between Dacia and Cassius. Just because he couldn’t have her didn’t mean he wished her heartbreak equal to his own. It occurred to him that he had to do to Dacia what she had done to Cassius–
He had to let her go.
He loved her enough to do that.
“Du Bois sent me a missive a few days ago that said they were at a tavern in Pontefract,” he said. “They were heading north to Castle Questing, but Cassius apparently hasn’t been able to move out of Yorkshire. According to du Bois, they are in a place called the Blood and Barrel.”
The duke mulled over the information. He finally shook his head. “I think she is making a terrible mistake,” he said. “She is letting Cassius slip through her fingers. I never agreed with her sending him away to begin with, but now… now that Amata has confessed her sins, there is no reason for Cassius not to return.”
“Do you want me to send him word?”
Doncaster nodded. “Aye,” he said. “But do not tell Dacia. If you do, she’ll have time to be furious with us. But if she knows nothing and suddenly opens her door one day to find Cassius standing there, she’ll thank us.”
Darian nodded. “It may be more complicated than that, but at least she may speak to him. She wouldn’t before he left, you know.”
