Page 62 of My Duke, The Stranger
He turned to see her coming, but there was no anger there. Rather, he looked broken, utterly helpless, like a boy who waslost and did not know the way home. Their eyes met, and he let her see his pain, then he went back to staring at the portrait.
“My memories…” His voice cracked. “They’re starting to return.”
“Oh?” She walked towards him, careful not to get too close. “Anything important?”
“Some of them,” he said, still watching the portrait. “I remember my mother. She was…” He smiled softly, but there was no joy in it. “She was not a confident or warm woman, but she was not cruel. She loved my brother and me, I think, even if she was afraid to show it.”
“Why would she be afraid?”
“My father,” he said next, his tone hardening. “You think I am a tyrant?” He laughed bitterly. “It had to have been learned from somewhere. My memories are still sparse, like waking up from a dream that is more of a feeling than anything else. But I know now that he was the reason why I am this way.” He scoffed. “Strange that, as I know I hated him. As a boy, I promised that I would never turn out like him.”
She was about to tell him that he had not turned out that way, but she held her tongue. Such points had been made already, and she knew they would fall on deaf ears.
“And your brother?” she asked instead, taking another step closer, less than five feet away. “What of him?”
A warm smile found Cassian’s face. “He was my best friend, even though he was much younger than me. With a father like ours, Julien looked up to me, and I loved that he did. I wish I could remember more than I do, but what I recall is…” His brow furrowed as he worked to remember. “Laughter. I remember how we used to laugh and play and simply live as if we owned the world and nothing could hurt us.”
He spoke of happy memories, but there was hurt in his voice. It cracked often, and Isolde knew that his story was far from finished.
“Mostly, I remember the day he died…” The smile fell, and he focused on the portrait with burning intensity. “I told you already that it was an accident, yes? Mr. Pemberton told me this on the first day.”
“You did…” Another step closer.
“That is a lie,” he said darkly. “It turns out that I was the cause. I took him riding when I ought to have known better. A storm…” He winced. “We were caught in it. I do not know why I let him ride on his own, but I… probably did it to spite my father.” He sneered. “Either way, the storm was too much, and he was thrown from his horse.”
“Oh, Cassian…”
“He died because of me.”
“No,” she said with bite. “Do not say such things.”
“Why not?” Still, he looked at the portrait, his gaze fixed on his younger brother. “It is true. Had I done my duty, he would be alive and I…” He took a deep breath. “Perhaps my life might have been vastly different.”
Isolde knew what she needed to do. Cassian was hurting. He needed someone to hold him and tell him that this tragedy was not his fault. He needed to be shown that he wasn’t alone in this world.
But Isolde glanced at his hand, one she wanted to take so badly, and hesitated. Cassian needed comfort, but from someone he trusted, and she did not know if that was her.
“I know now why I am the way that I am,” he continued, his voice so low that she hardly heard it. “Growing up, I was so determined not to turn into my father. And with Julien, the light his life shone on me, it might have been possible. But when he died, that light went out, and I changed…”
“But you changed back,” she said just as softly. “Mr. Pemberton told me that you used to be…” She smiled and laughed gently. “That you were once happy and carefree. Just as you are now. Does that not prove who you really are?”
“And what if I don’t want to be that way?”
“Cassian…” She blinked. “Why would you say that?”
Finally, he turned to look at her, and she gasped when she saw his red eyes, the tears in them, and the abject horror and misery that he clung to like it was a raft in a storm. She had seen him angry. She had seen him upset. But this was something else entirely.
“The reason I was so…” He shook his head. “… happy after my accident. Why I was able to laugh and joke as I did was because I couldn’t remember my past. It wasn’t about who I was, but why I was that way in the first place. When there is no tragedy in your life, there is no reason to cut off the world and those you should care about. There is no reason to use fear to push people away.”
“And now?” she asked him. “Now that you remember?”
“Is it so wrong that I want to return to who I was?” He looked pleadingly at her. “If I can… if I can be that man, if I do not care for anyone but myself, then nothing can hurt me. That is who I must be.”
“But that is not you.”
“It will be,” he said as if he needed to believe it. “It is not about who I really am, Isolde. It is about who I must be to keep myself from hurting. I killed my brother…”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
