Daizell didn’t think Cassian was a man for scenes, but his rainswept eyes were wild. This was going to be awful. ‘What is it you want to say that will change anything?’ he demanded. ‘You’re talking about apologising, but what you need to apologise for is that you were always out of my reach, and you knew that, and I didn’t. And however much you apologise for that, you’llstillbe out of my reach, and I don’t need to have that hammered home.’ His throat ached. ‘You lied to me and now I’m left loving a man who was never real, and there’s no point in you explaining why you did that to me. It won’t make things better.’
‘Oh God. Daize, did you mean that?’ Cassian took two steps forward and dropped to a knee, grabbing Daizell’s hand. ‘You still love me?’
‘We are not going to do this!’ Daizell almost shouted. ‘Doyou have any idea what it feels like—’ He’d had perfection for a handful of days, and briefly believed he could keep it, and he didn’t need to be told this mess was bad for Cassian too. ‘You were always on a lark. I understand that. You don’t need to rub it in.’
‘No. Listen.’ Cassian’s eyes were fixed on his. ‘Actuallylisten, Daizell, because you have entirely the wrong idea. I am begging you to hear me. Please.’
He didn’t want to listen. He wanted to run away, to find a blanket and shove his head under it and not have to plough through a conversation that, at best, would only make him feel worse about what he’d lost.
But he couldn’t leave the room in a borrowed gown, and the Duke of Severn was kneeling by him with what looked like real pain in his eyes.
‘All right,’ he said, with less grace than he’d have liked. ‘Go on.’
Chapter Sixteen
For someone who had begged for a hearing, Cassian didn’t start talking at once. Daizell didn’t hurry him; he didn’t want to listen. He felt miserable and harried and haunted, and Cassian had put all those feelings there.
Maybe he had something to say that would take them away. Maybe not.
Daizell pulled his hand free, because he didn’t need to be touching. Cassian took that hint, rising and pulling over the other chair so they faced each other across the table with its cut paper and scissors.
Cassian took a deep breath, visibly steeling himself. ‘All right. First, the bet. I made it with my cousin Leo as an excuse to get away without attendance and find my ring. I told you all that. What I didn’t say is that I wanted,neededto stop being Severn for a while. That’s why I made the assignation with Martin in the first place. I needed, just for a little while, not to be a duke.’
‘What’s wrong with being a duke?’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ Cassian said. ‘I don’t know about being anything else. My father died when I was six. Before that I was Harmsford, the courtesy title, and when he died, I became Severn. I haven’t been called by my first name in my life. Not that I like my name, but I have been Severn and only Severn almost since I can remember. The only people who ever played with me as a normal child weremy cousins. The whole world puts me at a distance because of my position. I have friends, of course, but as Severn. My uncle has spent two decades grooming me to be Severn, him and my valet and everyone around me, always saying Severn must do this and that, Severn is obliged, Severn may not lower himself. Severn, Severn, Severn. That’s my whole purpose in life: to fill a Severn-shaped hole. I don’t suppose I do it well, but nobody asked me if I wanted to do it at all. And it is a very luxurious, privileged hole, far better than the holes most people find themselves in. Nobody asked you if you wanted to be George Charnage’s son any more than they asked me to be Severn’s, and clearly I had the preferable lot in life. But it’s stifling all the same.’
He looked up then, as if expecting an interruption. Daizell didn’t have anything to offer. Dukedom wasn’t a problem he’d ever considered, and he was fairly sure he’d prefer it to his own troubles, but Cassian was speaking with unusual urgency, venting something he’d been holding on to for a while.
‘So, you wanted to get away?’ Daizell tried.
‘Cabined, cribb’d, confined. I needed to be not-Severn, just for a little while. That was when Martin approached me – and he didn’t know who I was, he wasn’t carefully respecting me. I had, or thought I had, one evening where I was being judged on my own merits and found satisfactory. Well, that went poorly. I felt useless, worse than useless. Held up by the scaffolding of my privilege, Leo said, and he was right, and I thought, if I don’t find a way to – to carve a space for myself, Severn is going to close in around me until all that’s left is the scaffolding. All outside and no inside. I don’t know if I’m explaining this very well, but . . . I wanted to be someone who wasn’t Severn so very much, just fora little while, to see. And then I met you, and Iwas. Oh, goodness, Daize.’ He rubbed a hand over his face. ‘You didn’t treat me as the Duke, or carefullynottreat me as the Duke, which is worse. I was Cassian with you for the first time in my life. Nobody’s ever called me that before. I never dared ask anyone to.’
‘What? Why not?’
‘Because—’ Cassian’s mouth moved, then he picked up the paper on the table. Daizell had cut the caricature in one piece without any further snipping, so the surrounding excess paper might have formed a hollow cut except for the one long snip for access. Cassian put that sheet down so the wood of the table formed the magistrate’s profile. ‘Look. This is Severn, or at least, something that makes a Severn-shape. And this is Cassian.’ He put down the inside cut, the solid image, next to the other piece. ‘One is the opposite of the other, and I don’t know how to be both at once. I’ve always tried to be Severn as well as I could but that didn’t allow any space for Cassian, because – well, I’ve seen you make a hollow cut. When you do it properly, you start by destroying the inside part of the paper, don’t you? You pierce a hole in the inside and cut it all away bit by bit, to make the perfect unsullied outside shape.’
‘Cass—’
‘Only, you don’t have to.’ Cassian sounded urgent, almost feverish. ‘You showed me that. I want to be . . .’ He gestured at the hollow cut on the table, with its surrounding paper cut just once, otherwise intact. ‘It isn’t quite perfect, it’s a little bit damaged, but it’s almost right. There’s an outside and an inside and they both work, and that’s what you gave me. When you saw me, and listened to me, and expected me to do a good job of things. You didn’t have any Severn-shapeat all, you just saw Cassian, and I didn’t want to change that. I couldn’t bear to lose it, and if I’d told you, I would have. And, as you pointed out, all I was thinking about there was myself. It was selfish and deceptive and unfair to you. I know that. But I liked who I was with you. Who you were, and who I was, and what we had together. I liked it so much, and – and every day we had together helped make Cassian into a real person.’
‘You are a real person.’
‘Cassian wasn’t. He didn’t even have a name.’ Cassian swallowed. ‘And then I was, and I could be, because of you, and if I’d told you the truth that would have ruined it.’ He tried a smile. ‘My uncle likes to say, if the truth shames you, the fault lies with you, not with the truth.’
Daizell wasn’t so sure of that. There were lots of things one could be ashamed of that weren’t one’s fault. ‘You can’t help being a duke.’
‘But my silence was for my benefit, at your expense. And that was dreadful of me for all sorts of reasons – cowardly and dishonest, but also ungrateful. Because you’re wonderful, Daize.’ His rainswept eyes were wide and intent. ‘I don’t think you know how wonderful you are. How much you care, how kind you are, how ridiculously tolerant and loving and practical and ingenious, and accepting.That most of all. I’ve never in my life been myself as I have been with you. And you didn’t do all that because I’m Severn; you did it because you’re Daizell. So wonderfully, perfectly Daizell. And I wished I could just travel with you forever and keep you company and see if I could make you as happy as you make me.’
‘But you couldn’t,’ Daizell said, voice thick. ‘Because you are Severn, and you always had to go home.’
‘Yes,’ Cassian said. ‘And also no. Because you found out, and I went to see my cousins, and they were saying – oh, things about what Severn could do and who he could associate with, as usual, and I realised that I can’t have two separate lives.’
Daizell set his jaw. ‘Is that not what I said at the beginning?’
‘No. Because the point is, I need to be . . .’ He moved the inside cut, dropping it into the empty outline, filling the gap. ‘Not Severn with Cassian as a guilty secret, and not Cassian playing a game of pretend that he isn’t Severn. Cassian must be Severn, but Severn has to be Cassianas well, for purpose and humanity and living. I realise I’m talking about myself in the third person as though I’m Julius Caesar, but do you see? I want a whole life. I want you in it, as my friend, my lover, my Daizell. Asyourself.Because I could be myself with you and I think – I thought – you could be happy with me and I want you to be happy more than I can say. I know I didn’t behave that way—’
‘You did,’ Daizell said. ‘Except at the end, you did.’
