Cassian did not register any of it.
He stood in the middle of the library until the corridor was empty. He waited until the two ladies had gone, and Mrs. Pendleton had gone to fetch Alice’s maid from the southcorridor, and Victor was alone in the doorway with that civil smile still on his face.
Then he crossed the room.
He closed the door very quietly, turned the key in the lock, then set the key on the small console table by the door, the way he had set down the key in the gallery an hour ago.
He turned around. “Victor.”
“Cassian.”
“You said that in front of the whole house.”
“I said what was true, Cassian. You have been saying it yourself for fifteen years. I was not mistaken on the matter.”
“You were not mistaken. You were not, however, speaking in private. You were speaking very deliberately in front of my sister, my housekeeper, and two ladies whose names I have not yet committed to memory. You were speaking very deliberately in front of my bride.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Victor smiled. It was the same smile he had worn all evening. It was, Cassian understood with a slow clarity he had not quite allowed himself for twenty years, the smile Victor had been wearing around him for twenty years.
Victor had never been his friend.
The lamp on the console table guttered slightly in a draft from the corridor.
“Because you will never change your mind on the matter.”
“You are certain?” Cassian asked.
“I am certain. I have known you for twenty years. I knew you when you were ten. I knew you when your brother died, I knew you when your father burned your paintings, and I knew you when you inherited the title at eighteen. You cannot change.
“You have not, in twenty years, changed. A sweet little wife who is good to bed cannot change you, Cassian, because you are not the sort of man a woman changes. You are the sort of man who decides a thing and then becomes the thing. You have been deciding to be your father since you were fourteen. You will not stop now.”
“Victor.”
“You have lain with better-looking women, Cassian. I was there for several of them. You have lain with a great many better-looking women, and you did not in any of those cases decide to change your mind. You will not do it now.”
Cassian looked at him. Until this moment, he had prepared to forgive a great many things. But not anymore.
He hit him.
He hit him with the clean efficiency he had been hitting Richard with that afternoon—with his right hand on the corner of his jaw where the bone meets the skull.
Victor, having not been expecting it, stumbled back against the doorframe and slid in a surprised heap to the floor.
Cassian stood over him. “Victor.”
“Cassian—”
“You are leaving Langton tonight. You will be on the road within the hour. Mrs. Pendleton will pack your trunk. You are no longer my guest. You are no longer my friend. You will not set foot in any house of mine for the rest of your life. You will never speak Lady Alice’s name ever again. Is that understood?”
“Cassian—”
“Is that understood, Victor?”
“Yes.”