CHAPTER THREE: THE STUDY
1104 Words
Isolde found the note pinned to the study door.
Same handwriting. Same ink as the last time. The same command disguised in courtesy, though she could taste the sharpness underneath. It felt like a warning dressed up as a request.
You are not to enter this room after dark.
You are not to wait outside it, either.
– C.V.
She stood there, her hand resting on the brass lion’s head doorknob. It was still cold from the evening air. Not even turned yet. But somehow, just touching it felt like crossing a line.
Rules. Again.
And wasn’t it strange—how the rules made her want to misbehave? Like tugging at a loose thread in a tightly woven tapestry. Pull too hard, and the whole thing might unravel.
Maybe that was what she wanted. To unravel something. Him, maybe. Or herself.
She let her hand drop.
That evening, supper was a quiet affair.
Lord Cassian did not dine with her. Again. She was beginning to lose count of the number of evenings she spent staring at a slowly cooling bowl of stew. Alone in a vast, silent dining hall that once hosted noblemen and foreign dignitaries.
Now it held only her, the ticking of an old clock, and the stubborn ache in her chest.
The servants had already cleared away the silverware with mechanical efficiency. The bread sat uneaten. She’d tried. Truly. But her appetite had gone the way of everything else that made sense in her life.
Cassian's absence was becoming a presence in itself.
Worse than the ghost of her father. More unsettling than the thunder that rolled over the hills at night.
He was just a man. A proud one, perhaps. A tormented one, definitely. But still flesh and blood. Still breathing in the same house as her.
And yet, he’d turned the entire west wing into a no-man’s land. His study? Sacred. Forbidden. A boundary she wasn’t supposed to cross. A door she wasn’t to approach.
So, naturally, she couldn’t stop thinking about it.
By midnight, she gave in.
The hallway leading to the study was cloaked in velvet dark. Moonlight slipped through the narrow windows like whispered secrets. Even the portraits on the walls looked more alive in the shadows—watchful, disapproving.
She walked in silence, barefoot, her nightdress tucked close around her. The candelabras along the wall had long been extinguished. Her fingers brushed the edge of a tapestry as she passed, grounding herself.
She reached the study door again. The lion knocker gleamed faintly in the dark.
Her hand hovered.
Don’t, something inside her whispered.
Do it, something deeper said.
She pressed her palm against the wood. Warm. Almost like someone was still inside. Her ear tilted slightly forward, listening. Nothing.
And then—
“Isolde.”
Her name cracked through the silence like thunder.
She jumped, twisting around.
He stood behind her. Shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows. Waistcoat undone. Hair slightly mussed like he’d run his fingers through it one too many times. Shadows clung to him, but he didn’t need the light to look powerful.
A storm wearing a man’s face.
“I wasn’t going to go in,” she said quickly, too quickly. A lie that wouldn’t fool either of them.
He didn’t move. Just stared at her, jaw tight. “You disobeyed me.”
“It was a note,” she replied, chin lifting. “Not a lock.”
A flicker in his expression—something like disbelief, or maybe amusement. But it was gone too fast.
“You think this is clever? Teasing me like a girl in a ballroom?”
She tilted her head slightly, her mouth quirking.
“I’ve never been to a proper ballroom.”
“I wonder why,” he muttered.
That one landed. Low, and petty.
Still, she smirked. “Would you like me more if I had?”
He stepped in closer, enough that the air between them thickened.
“I don’t like you, Isolde.”
Her heart thudded.
“Liar.”
Cassian’s hand braced on the door beside her head. Not touching her. But too close for comfort.
“I knew your father before you were born,” he said, voice steady but tight. “I changed your nappies when the maids weren’t looking. I taught you to fish, to ride, to swear. I am not—not—the man you think you want.”
She didn’t back down. Not this time.
“Then stop looking at me like you are.”
The silence stretched. But it wasn’t silence at all. It was full of breath and ache and something that wanted out.
His eyes dropped to her mouth.
Just once.
Then he pulled back, like someone retreating from the edge of a cliff. Like he’d nearly leapt and remembered he didn’t have wings.
“Go to bed, Isolde,” he said, his voice brittle. “Before I forget who I am.”
She went.
But sleep didn’t come easy.
Isolde climbed the stairs with her heart still thudding, her slippered feet quiet on the runner. Each step felt like walking away from something forbidden, something burning just behind her. But the fire wasn't out. It lived in her chest now.
She reached her bedchamber and closed the door gently, as if any sudden movement would bring him charging up the stairs after her.
He wouldn’t.
Cassian Vale was all restraint and unflinching control. Until tonight. Until his voice cracked like a fraying seam. Until his hand, braced above her head, trembled just enough for her to see it.
And yet he hadn’t touched her.
Not really.
Not like she wanted him to.
Isolde exhaled sharply and threw herself onto the bed, arms flung wide like a girl trying to drown in silk sheets. She hated the way her body responded to him. The way her lips tingled even now, just from the memory of his gaze dipping to her mouth.
She rolled onto her stomach and bit the pillow.
God, she was pathetic.
Falling for a man nearly twice her age, who thought of her as a nuisance. A child. A mistake.
But he was wrong.
She wasn’t a child. Not anymore.
And Cassian, no matter how hard he tried, wasn’t untouched by her. He was flinching. Cracking. She saw it in his eyes tonight—the flicker of something dangerously close to want.
She wasn’t imagining it.
Was she?
Her thoughts tangled with the memory of his words—I am not the man you think you want.
But he didn’t say he didn’t want her.
He never said that.
- Writer
