Page 29 of Ruthless, But for Her

Did she wish to remain?

Truth was, she did not. Cassia would spend enough time alone in a bedchamber with her stories over the coming months.

No sound came from her lips, the admission of wanting to be in his company instead of stuck in her mouth.

Cassia nodded instead, doing as he bid and locking the door after him.

Then she turned, leaning against the door and closing her eyes.

Foolish girl, Nell would have said.

But Nell was on the road to Grantchester with Cassia’s favorite book, and there was no one in this place who would say it.

CHAPTER 17

Ashton

“We're going for a walk.”

He made the announcement as he and Lady Cassia passed the hall. As usual, this time of day, there were no clients. By now, all of the women were awake in various states of dress, milling about. Some would've gone to the docks. Others, including a particularly cheeky French woman, Odile, along with Margot and two others, sat on the bench near the hearth, staring at them.

Normally, he would've continued straight out the door, but a thought had just occurred to him. “Wait here,” he said.

Cassia watched him as she always did, her expression a mixture of confusion and something else he didn't dare try to identify.

“As long as she remains here, everyone uses the outside stairwell,” he said to the women.

Margot looked on without judgment. There was a time not so long ago that she made every decision. But as the years passed, slowly, he and his brothers had begun to do so as well. Ashton wasn't sure precisely when the balance of power between them had evened out.

Of course, Ryker and Sorren didn’t see it that way. To them, Margot was a mother, in every way but by birth.

But she gave the girls of the Daisy something Ashton had never received from her. The truth.

“But what about Sorren's rule?” Odile said. “Never after dusk.”

“Sorren's rule governs every night but this one.”

She held his gaze a moment, then decided better of pressing him, and looked away first.

The outside stair had never been for the girls' comfort. Margot had built it in from the start, a second way up for men who paid well enough to never be seen crossing the hall. Guests like a warden's man. A crown official. A husband. They came and went by the cold stair and no one in Mere's End the wiser for it.

Tonight, it would keep Lady Cassia's presence just as unseen.

“Taking your duties seriously, I see?” Ryker said from the doorway. He leaned against it, arms crossed, trying to look as if he cared little about anything.

A fact which was closer to the truth than any of them would like to admit. Someday, it would see him killed.

“She won't remain here for long.” It was the only consolation he offered, knowing full well Lady Cassia could hear him from her vantage point behind them in the passage.

All of the girls looked to Margot—an annoying habit each and every one of them picked up at some point.

To her credit, instead of nodding, his mother simply looked at Ashton in silent acknowledgment that the decision was his.

Odile frowned, a pretty pout, her lips as soft to touch as they were to look upon. Those lips made her as much coin as any of them...except Margot.

Of course, these days, very few men were given the opportunity to touch the owner of the Daisy.

Ashton rejoined the lady, leaving the same way they had come. But this time, they walked away from the village and toward the northern bluffs.