Page 47 of Historical Hotties
He didn’t even call the dog off.
He just started laughing.
Amata’s screams of rage were like music to his ears.
*
She had kickedthe maids out.
When Dacia arrived in her chambers, four of the six maids were there, cleaning part of the floor, and she had no patience for their presence at the moment. With a shriek, she threw them all out of the chamber and slammed the door, bolting it.
She needed to be alone.
The tears came. Tears of shame, tears of hurt. Shame because of Amata’s motives, hurt because Cassius had evidently spewed words of flattery to Amata, enough so the woman had come all the way to Edenthorpe to see him. Hurt because Cassius had turned those same words of flattering on her, making her feel special.
But she wasn’t.
She was angry at herself for ever believing his compliments.
Her pockets were bulging with dragonwort and she pulled it out angrily, tossing it on the table in her smaller dressing chamber. She felt like an idiot for having sought out the weed in the first place, an idiot for letting herself get swept away by Cassius’ presence and sweetness. God, the man was sweet, and she’d fallen for it.
She wondered how many other maidens had fallen for it.
A knock on the door distracted her from her thoughts.
“Go away!” she yelled.
Whoever it was hadn’t heard her because she was in another chamber, so she stepped out into the big chamber just as the caller knocked again.
“Goaway!” she boomed. “Get away from that door!”
There was no reply, only more knocking, this time continuous. Enraged, Dacia went to the door, threw the bolt, and yanked the door open.
“Stop knocking, you stupid–”
She had started yelling before she’d ever seen the caller and now she found herself looking into Cassius’ somewhat surprised face. His mouth was open in astonishment and, for a moment, neither one of them moved. Finally, he lifted his eyebrows.
“Would you care to finish that sentence?” he said.
Dacia looked at him, dumbfounded and hurt. “What?” she said, then realized what he meant. Quickly, she lowered herhead. “Nay, I will not. I thought you were one of my maids. Sometimes they can be rather insistent and annoying, and… oh, it does not matter. What do you require, Sir Cassius?”
Cassius watched her lowered head. “Require?” he repeated. “Nothing. I came to see you.”
Given what had just happened, she was understandably on the defensive. “You do not have to keep up the pretext, my lord,” she said. “Please have Amata entertain you. She is better at it than I am.”
He cleared his throat softly. “I am not sure why you think I have been keeping up a pretext,” he said. “I am an honest man, my lady. Pretexts are excuses and I do not make excuses. I came to see you because I wanted to assure you that whatever your cousin said out in the bailey was completely one-sided.”
Dacia lifted her head slightly to look at him. “She said she met you in town.”
He nodded. “She did,” he said. “We were passing through, as she said, on our way to see your grandfather. We stopped because we were tired and hungry, and there was enough free food to feed an army, so we stopped to refresh ourselves before continuing on. Lady Amata grabbed me and pulled me into a group of dancing people, so that is how I ended up dancing with her. I did not ask her, I assure you.”
Dacia lowered her head again. “She is a good dancer,” she said. “Pretty, too. I do not blame you for dancing with her.”
Cassius could see how hurt she was. It was in everything about her. It began to occur to him that only someone with an emotional investment in the situation could feel hurt, and it further occurred to him that he was rather pleased about it. It made no difference to him that Amata was sweet on him, but Dacia?
That was a completely different story.
Truth be told, he might have been just the slightest bit sweet on her, too.
