He leans down and says silkily in my ear, “Fix your face before you go back to the party, Lady Aubrey. There’s lipstick on your chin.”11Cassian“You’ve been quiet lately, dear. Is anything wrong?”
I look up from my lunch at Muriel. She’s finished eating, but I haven’t touched my sandwich yet. I stare down at the cheese and pickle on granary loaf and have no desire to take a bite.
“I’m fine. Just thinking about the business.”
I should be thinking about the business and whether I can afford to keep things going, but I was really thinking about a pair of bright hazel eyes clouded with confusion as Rasmussen announced to the room that I’m not Cassian Bellerose, I’m Cassian Lungren, the son of the Chairman’s Hammer who murdered the old King and Queen. If Archduke Levanter hasn’t already forbidden Lady Aubrey from coming here, he certainly will now.
Muriel fixes me with a worried look. “Is it going badly?”
So far, my only client is still paying her bills, but that’s surely going to change very soon, and then I really am sunk. I give Muriel a quick smile. “It’s fine. Just a quiet period. It was bound to happen after the revolution.”
Muriel doesn’t look like she believes me. I don’t know why I’m lying to her. I think it’s because that if I admit to her that things are going terribly, I’ll have to admit that I don’t know how to fix it. This place is all I have.
She touches the newsprint at her elbow. “The first dressage competition in twenty-seven years is being held at the palace this weekend. That will be something to see.”
“I’m not going.”
Muriel’s brows wrinkle in confusion. I’ve always wanted to see a proper dressage competition. One of the few things I know about my mother is that she was learning dressage before she died.
Before she was murdered.
Rasmussen’s triumphant face and Archduke Levanter’s horrified one flash in my mind. I want to shout. I want to flip this table over and scream with rage. Everyone knows I’m a Lungren, and it’s all going to come out again. People will talk about Aimee, wondering how any woman could have a child with a man like the Chairman’s Hammer. How she could bring herself to kiss him. Go to bed with him.
Love him.
A bitter taste burns the back of my throat. No. I won’t believe that she ever loved my father. It’s too painful to imagine, knowing he turned a gun on her. Why couldn’t he have just killed himself if he wanted to die? He stole her from me, the selfish fucking bastard.
“Cassian? Are you all right?”
I stand up quickly. Muriel doesn’t need to know how I’m feeling. She spent her years raising me when she could have married and had a family of her own. I love her, and I’m grateful to her, and it would hurt her to know how much I wish I’d had my mother instead.
“Sorry. I’ve got a lot on my mind. Let me clean this lot up and make you a cup of tea.”
I move around the kitchen, feeling her eyes on me. As I set a cup of tea down in front of Muriel, she clasps my wrist.
“I wish things had been different, too. I wish…” Her voice trembles, and she trails off. “I’m sorry, Cassian,” she whispers, her voice thin and papery. She’s said this many times over the years, when we’ve both felt my father’s presence around us. If she’s apologizing for what he did, then she needn’t bother. I’ll never forgive him.
As I step out the front door, my eyes are drawn to the stable yard. Then to the sawdust arena. There’s no sign of a crown of chestnut hair and a svelte body in tight tan pants. Maybe Levanter told her not to come to Cassian Lungren’s stables anymore. Maybe she decided not to come herself. She’s been having sex with a Lungren, and she didn’t even know it.
I march across the yard and into the stable. Aster, Onyx and Cinnamon are in their stalls, and I saddle up my pretty Arabian and take her out. I need to ride, hard and fast and far away.
Over the next few days, I don’t see Lady Aubrey. I avoid the stables and arenas and fix fence posts on the other side of the property. Muriel says she thinks she’s seen Lady Aubrey about the place, but I don’t know if it’s because she’s still riding her or if she just came to take Cinnamon away. I don’t want to know.
The morning of the dressage competition, I linger over my breakfast until half-past eight in the morning. If Cinnamon is still here, that should have given Aubrey enough time to plait Cinnamon’s mane, load her into a horse box and head for the palace grounds.