The Guardian Yields
"Your Highness, if I am expected to sit here and listen to this with any remaining composure, I must congratulate you: you are testing my patience with quite remarkable skill."
The sheer audacity of it had left him speechless — and besides, the water had already been spilled. Benjamin resolved, then and there, to shed the thin veneer of courtesy he had been wearing until now.
"I swear before God, I would sooner believe His Highness Prince Edward intends to take lifelong vows at a monastery tomorrow than believe a word of Your Highness claiming to be nervous."
"Hmph. That's a bit much."
"Spare me, then, and tell me the second point already."
At Benjamin's growl, Cassian merely shrugged and opened his mouth.
"The second point — and the more important, decisive one — is that Miss Priestley and I have already, through a proper and mutual exchange of intentions, agreed to marry on the understanding that it is a contract."
"You cannot be serious."
An astonishment beyond any power of words to describe spread across Benjamin's face.
"Am I to understand, Your Highness, that you concluded the entire conversation with that child before you ever came to see me?"
"I am ashamed to admit it, but yes."
The nerve of this bastard.
The word ashamed was mere window dressing. There was not a shred of guilt, nor the faintest sign of remorse, to be found in the man's manner. Benjamin was so flabbergasted that even a hollow laugh would not come.
"Judging by the way you speak, this was clearly not a mistake born of ignorance that your conduct ran contrary to custom."
Cassian answered the grinding retort without a moment's hesitation.
"And she is, quite unambiguously, a child under my protection!"
Benjamin could hold back no longer; his voice rose. Fury blazed in his tawny-brown eyes. In his heart he wanted nothing more than to go hunting, that very instant, for the revolver he kept hidden in a drawer — but he clenched his teeth and caged the rage that was about to burst.
"As her guardian, I cannot and will not stand by and allow this."
An invisible hammer crashed into the back of Benjamin's skull. After that instant of impact, he clenched his teeth with savage force.
"Wilhelmina Priestley, you—"
He could not bring himself to finish. Benjamin pressed a hand over his eyes. No wonder the man had looked so damned sure of himself!
Confronted with the fact that his own sister had gone to this man first and laid the whole scheme, the enraged head of the house went down like a sinking pirate ship — and this, immediately after he had raised his voice to declare himself her guardian.
A pained groan escaped him. He squeezed his eyes shut. Cassian, regarding the pitiful sight, continued in a voice as gentle as if he were coaxing a sulking child.
"There is no need to think of it as something so difficult or complicated. It would, of course, have been better to seek Your Grace's permission first, as custom requires. I simply did not wish to try Miss Priestley's temper — she being both the architect of this contract and the partner who has agreed to stand with me in it. You may as well regard it as my having decided I would rather receive Your Grace's scolding after the fact than risk displeasing her."
Whether Cassian Windstor had tossed every last scrap of etiquette to the seagulls that followed his ships at sea, Benjamin could not say — but the man stood there with a shameless face and unfurled a line of reasoning so brazen it bordered on the miraculous. Benjamin's temper was ready to burst.
And yet he could not help but concede the point. The logic this man had laid before him was a strange and insolent piece of wordplay — and at the same time, it carried a force one could not help but acknowledge.
Through a mind that felt ready to explode, Benjamin thought: suppose Cassian had, instead of this shameless display, taken a humble posture and sworn some unverifiable future — that he would lay down his life for Wilhelmina's safety, or some such. Would Benjamin have believed that promise and been satisfied?
Never.
Never in a thousand years. He would have felt, instead, a deep disgust and disappointment at the cheapness of the vow and the arrogance of the man who made it.
But this absurd confession — that he had simply not wished to offend Wilhelmina — was the last thing Benjamin had ever expected to hear from the mouth of the Slaughterer of Changhae.
In other words, it meant that this man ranked Wilhelmina's individual will and right of decision above even the authority of the Duke of Priestley.
He did not want to admit it. But those words had not only swallowed his volcanic rage like a blizzard — they had succeeded in shaking the firmly shut door of his heart.
What in God's name is this disaster.
Benjamin stared at the man before him in genuine, speechless disbelief. Cassian was smiling with a softness that might almost have passed for meekness — but to Benjamin's eyes, it was nothing more than a beast with its claws drawn in.
A thought flickered through him. Had this shameless creature worn that same slippery face in front of their Wilhelmina, letting that handsome smile drip so prettily?
No. Benjamin shook his head, trying to dislodge the idle, useless fancy that had sprung up unbidden. It was his own sister, after all, who had conceived this insane contract marriage and gone to the man of her own accord. He let out a sigh of pure exasperation and erased the image of Cassian working that polished face to stir Wilhelmina's sympathy. He was not even certain his sister possessed any sympathy to be stirred.
"Very well."
Benjamin exhaled at last, as if raising a white flag.
"I suppose living freely as a divorcée would suit that child's temperament rather better than remaining a spinster, enduring the world's contempt in deathly silence..."
The words were steeped in self-mockery, but they were, in the end, a declaration of surrender: official permission for the marriage.
"But let us be perfectly clear on this one last point."
Surrender was surrender — and as the man burdened with the thankless role of Wilhelmina Priestley's elder brother, he still had work to do.
"Whatever price is owed for the enormous role and labor Wilhelmina will have to bear in this marriage — Your Highness will pay it in full, and then some."
"Of course. I came prepared."
As if he had been waiting for precisely this, Cassian held out a thick sheaf of documents. Benjamin looked down at the file with an exceedingly complicated expression.
"Was this, too, negotiated with Wilhelmina?"
"There was no reason it shouldn't have been."
At Cassian's unruffled answer, Benjamin sighed once more. That the cunning girl had already reviewed the terms was, in some measure, a relief — but it was no excuse for letting down his guard. Benjamin grimly resolved that, as head of the house, he would examine these papers with even greater care, and wring out every additional concession he could.
The very instant he turned the first page, however, Benjamin's eyes flew wide with shock.
He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket for his pince-nez and settled them on his nose. The figures before him did not change in the slightest.
"Forgive me, Your Highness, but may I ask one question?"
"Ask whatever you like."
"Has our Wilhelmina, by any chance, gotten hold of some fatal weakness of yours — the sort upon which your very life depends?"
The sums inscribed for her maintenance allowance, a collection of mysterious special stipends, and a frankly colossal figure in alimony were of a scale that admitted of no other rational explanation. Far from extracting a larger sum as head of the house, Benjamin found himself seriously considering whether, if he possessed so much as a shred of conscience, he ought to be handing some of the money back.
"And the dowry our side is expected to pay...?"
Benjamin's mouth fell open, all dignity forgotten — so completely that he did not even notice the loosely perched pince-nez sliding down his face.
To promise this staggering sum without taking a single penny in dowry. Even to Benjamin, who was thoroughly and to the marrow of his bones on Wilhelmina's side, this was not a guarantee of compensation. It was closer to a donation of the man's entire fortune.
"Just what..."
Just what unholy thing Wilhelmina had done to this man, Benjamin very nearly asked — and then, by instinct, shut his mouth. The truth was he had not the faintest idea what she might have done. He also, quite absolutely, did not want to know.