#cassie1

Today, however, Dean was thankful for the commotion of her class. It allowed him to slip through the front door undetected, Little Mix covering the sound of the door clipping shut as bodies tossed and turned in the air, as Cassie laid a gentle hand on a girl’s back, silently correcting her posture.

Dean had seen Cassie recently, but only in flashes of pink gym shorts and bouncing ponytails as she ran from the room faster than the bloody Flash. It did make him feel a bit shit, really. He hadn’t meant to upset the poor girl quite this much, and from what Scotty had said, and from the sound of Little Mix’s angriest man hating anthems playing, he’d really done a number on her.

As the class began to wind down and kids scurried to grab their bags, Dean seized his moment to approach Cassie. She had her back to him, bent at the waist, fussing with something or other. Dean tried his hardest to stare at the back of her head. It wouldn’t do him much good to get caught perving over a girl who currently hated his guts.

Clearing his throat, Dean tried to make his voice sound as un-threatening and cheerful as possible. In other words, he was doing his best Cassie impression.

“Oi, oi, savaloy.”

They were married quickly and she was soon whisked away to be Lady Blackmoor. The moors became her home and the power she had made her feel more secure and happy then she could recall ever being before. There was a freedom for her on the moors, and her husband hadn’t been bothered by her more relaxed state. He’d been so blinded by his love for her, he wasn’t interested in seeing much beyond that. Years passed and Katherine prayed for a son to solidify her place, but both children she gave birth to had been girls, and both had been buried on the moors a few days after their birth.

A year ago, Samuel had suffered from apoplexy after a day spent riding. The fit had left him unable to speak or walk. The most he could do was drag himself by his one good arm, which he often tried defiantly to do, despite his wife and nurse urging him to stay in bed. After nearly six months of suffering, Lord Blackmoor died, without an heir. Katherine’s black veil had obscured her face as they’d laid his body in the ground, hiding the hot, angry tears that had slid down her porcelain cheeks. She didn’t so much cry for the kind man who she’d lost, but for the life she had loved. It had been a taste of something she had craved for as long as she could remember. Within six months, as soon as the deepest period of her mourning ended, a distant cousin with claim to the home had come riding in with his own wife and children.

Katherine looked behind her at her childhood home. She’d gotten some invitations from friends to come and visit, but she knew that her young face and black widow’s dress was requested as more of an oddity than anything else. So she would stay here, and wait until she could remarry and restart her quest for any kind of freedom she could attain. There was the sound of hooves on the grass and the soft whinny of a horse approaching. Katherine looked up from her book and offered a smooth, placid smile that betrayed nothing and offered everything. “Good morning.”

     When the planning process had started, Marissa had been adamant about an evening wedding. She could see it in her head - they walk down the aisle at twilight, the officiant would order them to "kiss the bride" just as the sun went down, and then they'd overdo it on expensive champagne and dance the night away. It was perfect. What she'd never taken into account, though, was the stress and anxiety of waiting all day long for the damn thing to happen.

    Between her mother and sisters and aunts trailing her for hours - each chiming in with their own last minute advice about how to make the ceremony perfect, sitting in hair and makeup for what felt like days, and dealing with every little crisis the wedding planner ran by her, Marissa was exhausted by lunch. And to make matters worse, she'd been very insistent on one particular tradition: that it was bad luck to see the bride before the wedding.