Page 57 of Ruthless, But for Her

It was evident he either would not tell her what occurred below-stairs or would not do so while she ate, so Cassia asked another question instead.

“Are your brothers as kind as you are?”

His laughter filled the chamber. A proper laugh, one that came from deep within. A laugh of pure pleasure. Cassia found herself smiling at the sound, even though she didn’t expect her question to result in laughter.

As she chewed her bread, she waited, watching him.

“Kind. I have been called many things before, but kind? Ryker and Sorren would laugh harder than I at such a description.”

“Perhaps so, but it is true.” She took a sip of ale from her mug.

He sat back, stretching his legs out in front of him, and crossing one ankle over the other. Cassia could imagine others might see him as quite intimidating. She had, at first.

But no longer.

“There is a kindness in both of them,” he finally answered. “But it would not be the description I’d use first.”

Because she imagined being forced into both Ryker and Sorren’s company again, she pressed.

“What would you call them, then?”

“Reckless,” he said immediately. “Ryker gives little thought to the consequences of his actions, especially how they might affect him in the future. We oft tell him he will get himself or us killed.”

“And Sorren?”

“Relentless.” He did not have to think about it. “Ryker will forget a slight by morning. Sorren will still be carrying it when he’s fifty.”

“I’d always wished for siblings,” Cassia said between bites. “My mother lost two babes before she passed. Somehow, I couldn’t help mourning for a brother and a sister I never had. You are lucky for it.”

Ashton cocked his head to the side, seeming to consider her words.

“Lucky,” he repeated. Surely not a new word for him, but he spoke it as if it were.

“There is a book in my father’s library that I adored. A man wrote it in a cell while he waited to be put to death, which I have always thought made him a strange authority on good fortune.” Cassia tore another piece from the loaf. “He wrote that Fortune keeps a wheel and turns it without malice, because she never promised to hold it still. Those at the top come down. Those at the bottom rise. It is not cruelty. It is only the way a wheel moves.”

“You believe in such things?”

“You do not?”

“Nay. We are masters of our fates. Every choice we make reverberates.”

“Do you not believe in God’s will, then?”

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I believe the choices we make have consequences. When faced with a choice, a man can weigh what it will cost him before he makes it. Fortune offers no such courtesy.”

He stopped there.

Cassia waited. He had not finished, but she had spent a lifetime at tables where men started a conversation, but didn’t finish it, leaving it to stand open. She understood what went unsaid.

“You are weighing something now,” she said.

Ashton did not look away.

“Aye,” he said. “I am.”

CHAPTER 35

Ashton