At long last, she detected a flurry of motion in the hall. Footsteps. Voices. A door opening and closing. Callie knew what those sounds meant. Sin was back.
She rose to her feet and made her way through the door adjoining their apartments with all haste. When she saw him, she wished she had not, for the evidence of what he had spent the night doing was all over his handsome, dissolute form.
He was wearing yesterday’s clothes. His hair was disheveled, his eyes bloodshot. His neck tie was missing, and his trousers were rumpled.
“Callie,” he said, scrubbing a hand over his jaw.
She did not have the capacity to exchange greetings. A rush of raw fury made her tremble. “Where were you?”
“At my club,” he said, moving toward her. “And after that, I bedded down at my friend’s house.”
She flinched away from his touch when he reached for her. “A friend’s house?”
“Yes.” His jaw hardened as his gaze searched hers. “A friend. Forgive me for not sending word. Yesterday’s news left me surprised. I am afraid I did not handle it well.”
“Were you with a paramour?” she asked, hating herself for the need to ask.
Fearing the answer and what it would mean even more.
“No.” He shook his head. “Christ, no, Callie. I drank too much bloody whisky. My friend Decker took me to his townhome to sleep it off. That is all.”
Fear had already sunk its talons into her heart. So, too, had doubt. Yesterday, he had been the one with doubts. Today, it was her turn.
She wanted to believe him. But part of her said she would be a fool if she did.
“Yesterday, I took tea with my friend, and when I returned, you all but accused me of plotting an affair with Dunlop,” she reminded him.
“Forgive me, Callie.” He raked his long, elegant fingers—those fingers that knew every inch of her skin so well—through his hair. “There is no excuse for my behavior, save that I am hopelessly flawed. I am trying to be better, for you.”
Another swift rush of outrage surged over her.
She gestured toward him, encompassing his disheveled state. “This does not look like trying, Sin. This looks like surrendering.”
“I should have come home to you last night,” he said on a sigh. “Forgive me, please.”
She was not ready to forgive him with such ease. “Why did you go? Why get yourself so thoroughly inebriated that you could not return home until the next afternoon? Imagine how you would feel, had I been gone all night without word.”
“I am an arse.” He reached for her again, capturing her hand and tangling their fingers together. “And I am sorry.”
How easy it would be to fall into his arms, into his bed. But that was what she had been doing for the last month, and look where it had landed her: she had fallen in love with a man she scarcely knew. She was carrying his child in her womb. And on the day she made the discovery, he had run off to drown himself in drink.
Benny’s words of warning returned to her, then, and the doubts she had been entertaining yesterday, all last night, and every minute of his absence, blossomed.
You scarcely even know him.
He is the last sort of man I would ever wish to see married to my beloved sister.
I wonder what else your new husband is keeping from you.
She withdrew her hand from Sin’s grasp. “I am going to pay a call to my brother and sister-in-law at Westmorland House. I do not like the manner in which we left things yesterday.”
“Of course.” He clenched his jaw, studying her. “Allow me to dress, and I will accompany you.”
“No.” She could not give in to him. Not now. She needed time to sort out her feelings. To make sense of this wretched muddle. “I will go alone.”
“Alone?” he asked, his voice grim.
“Yes. Alone.”
He inclined his head. “As you wish, Callie.”
It was not what she wished, but Callie did not bother to say it. Instead, she walked away.
“Her Grace, the Duchess of Longleigh,” Dunlop announced.
Sin scowled at the butler-in-training. From bad to worse, it would seem. His head was still aching, his mouth felt as if it had been stuffed with cotton, and no amount of tea he had consumed since his ignominious return a few hours ago could cure what ailed him.
Mostly, he was filled with self-loathing.
And now, Tilly was here.
Tempting though it was, he knew he could not send her away. If she had sought him out, there was every possibility she was in need of aid. Moreover, she had been gracious to him, agreeing to meet with Callie, when the risk to her had not been worth the reward.
“See her in,” he relented even as he knew Tilly paying him a call was the last complication he needed to add to this carriage wreck of a day.
He stood when Tilly entered, offering her a bow.
She was beautiful as ever, the drapery of her gown cleverly constructed to hide her pregnancy. Her mien was grave. She smiled, but it did not reach her eyes.
“Thank you for seeing me, Sin,” she said softly.
“Of course,” he told her easily. “For you, I always have time. What is the matter, my dear? Is it Longleigh?”
Her smile fled. “Is it not always Longleigh?”
Sin cursed. “You never should have married that bastard.”
But he did not follow the statement he had oft made to her over the years with the additional accompanying sentence. You should have married me.
Because he no longer felt that way. When he had been consumed by misery with Celeste, marriage to Tilly had certainly seemed the better option. Her husband was a detestable, heartless bastard and Sin’s wife had been a faithless, vindictive wretch. Now, however, Sin had found something deeper and far more meaningful with Callie. They were not just friends. She completed him in a way no other woman ever had or could.
If you did not bollix everything up with your stupid bloody trip to visit Decker last night, his conscience reminded him.
“But I did marry him, did I not?” Tilly shook her head. “I, alone, am to blame for the desperate straits in which I find myself. I had believed it would be different between us, if he finally had what he wanted. But I was wrong.”
“Has Longleigh hurt you?” Sin pressed.
It was not his business, he knew, but the worries which had first surfaced upon his visit to Haddon House with Callie returned, and they would not be silenced.
“He has not raised his hand against me, if that is what you are asking. He would not dare to cause harm to the babe,” she said. “Afterward…I cannot say. But I have not imposed upon you today to fret over what might happen. I am here seeking your help because of what has happened.”
“Come,” he said, gesturing for her to have a seat on the divan Callie had selected for his study as part of her campaign to refurbish his townhome. “Have a seat.”
“Thank you, Sin,” she whispered, her voice tremulous. “You are a great friend to me. I have missed you.”
He had a feeling this conversation was going to be long and her feet would need the rest. Sin settled himself in a chair opposite. “Tell me everything, Tilly.”
Callie emerged from her visit to Benny and Isabella feeling calmer. It had been good to spend a few, unhurried hours visiting with them. The distraction had been welcome. And it had granted her some time to realize she had been hard on Sin earlier that afternoon. After all, he had shown her he was trustworthy, had he not? The wounds left behind by his first marriage were deep, and she could not forget that.
“Where is his lordship?” she asked Dunlop upon her return, determined that she would see Sin and do her utmost to resume where they had left off earlier.
“Lord Sinclair is with the Duchess of Longleigh, in his study, my lady,” the butler-in-training announced helpfully.
The Duchess of Longleigh?
Callie’s stomach dropped.
“Thank you, Dunlop.” The words had scarcely left her lips w
hen Callie’s feet were moving.
Feeling as if she were in a dream—a nightmare—she reached the study door. It stood slightly ajar. Through the crack, she saw the duchess in her husband’s arms. Saw Sin’s hands tenderly stroking up and down her back.
Heard her husband’s beautiful, deep voice.
It was a lover’s embrace. The intimacy and familiarity were undeniable.
“I will always care for you, Tilly,” he was saying. “Whatever you need…”
Callie could not bear to hear the remainder of the words. The tentative understanding and hope she had spun, delicate as a spider’s web, was obliterated. Everything gone. In a moment. In the sight of the duchess in Sin’s arms, watching the way she clutched him, as if she would never let him go.
Dear God, it was just as she had always suspected. There were still feelings between the two of them.
Perhaps even love.
Callie fled, the sting of tears in her eyes, and ordered the carriage brought around once more. She was going back to Westmorland House.
She was going home.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I will never forget the expression on her face when realization dawned upon her, like the sun illuminating the morning sky, chasing away the shadows and darkness of night. It was in that moment, dear reader, when she realized she had never known me at all.
~from Confessions of a Sinful Earl
“She does not want to see you, Sinclair.”
The cold pronouncement of the Duke of Westmorland cut through the silence of the salon where Sin had been awaiting his wife. For the second day in a row, he had returned to Westmorland House, determined to gain an audience with Callie.
This time, he had not been turned away at the door by the disapproving butler. Mayhap because Sin had finally threatened to plant him a facer if he did not at least allow him inside the sprawling castle where his wife had chosen to hide herself. Regardless, this was not the interview he had been hoping to achieve after suffering through the longest night of his life.
Two nights in a row without her in his bed.
It had been fucking torture, and he was at fault for both.
“She is my wife,” he told his forbidding brother-in-law. “I have every right to see her and to speak with her.”
“You do not deserve an audience with her,” Westmorland snarled. “After what you have done, you are damned fortunate I do not shoot you where you stand.”
Sin returned the duke’s glare with one of his own. “As far as I am aware, murder is still a crime, Westmorland.”
“So is what you have put my sister through.” Westmorland stalked toward him, menace in his step. “First, you blackmailed her into marrying you whilst I was on my honeymoon because you are lacking even a modicum of honor. Then, she discovered she was carrying your child, and you spent all night getting soused at a depraved club. After which you promptly made love to your mistress in your study, in plain view of the servants.”
Sin’s ears went hot, but he refused to retreat. “I will own that I blackmailed her into this marriage, and that I drowned myself in whisky that night, but the Duchess of Longleigh is not my mistress, and nor was I making love to her in my study.”
When he had belatedly learned, after Tilly’s departure, that Callie had returned from her call to her brother, only to suddenly leave once more, he had instantly known what she must have seen and the conclusions she had reached. Once again, his own actions looked damning. The fault for that was his, and he would own it. But he had hastened to Westmorland House only to be denied entrance. That Callie would hide from him for an entire night and not even allow him the chance to explain felt like a betrayal.
“Why should anyone believe what you say, Sinclair?” the duke bit out. “You are a known and admitted liar.”
“All I want is the opportunity to speak with my wife,” he returned, undaunted.
“Callie does not want to speak with you,” his brother-in-law snapped. “You have done enough damage. When she is ready to see you, she will let you know.”
Sin was tired of waiting.
He wanted his wife back.
He wanted the woman he loved. It had taken her leaving him to force the realization that he was not just falling in love with Callie. He had fallen a long bloody time ago. Perhaps even the moment she had smashed that worthless piece of pottery over his head back at Helston Hall. When she had demonstrated all her stubborn fire and fearlessness. He could not choose the exact second the balance had shifted. Nor how it had happened. All he did know was that he loved her. And like the sun rising each morning, that love was constant and true.
“I am not leaving until I see her,” he countered evenly.
Westmorland raised a brow. “Then I suggest you enjoy bedding down on the carpets like the mongrel you are.”
His brother-in-law did not like him. Whilst Sin was pleased Callie’s brother was so loyal and protective, he would have preferred a bit less unadulterated hatred being directed toward him. He could admit it was not entirely undeserved.
“All I want is to see her, speak with her, and to give her some things that belong to her,” he said simply, unwavering.
“I will see him, Benny.”
Callie’s voice cut through the thick mutual enmity inhabiting the salon. Sin turned to find her standing on the threshold. A jolt of awareness went through him when their stares met and held. He wanted to run to her, to take her in his arms, to beg her never to leave him alone for another night again.
But he remained where he was, tempering himself. The manuscript in his hands rendered such an action impossible anyway.
Instead, he bowed. “Callie.”
My love. My beautiful, stubborn, delicious woman.
“You do not have to see him,” Westmorland addressed his sister. “If you are not comfortable with this, Callie, I will send him on his way.”
“No.” She shook her head, her gaze still lingering upon Sin. “Thank you, Benny, but I want to speak with my husband. Alone.”
“I am not sure that is wise,” the duke countered, his voice stern.
“What do you think I am going to do to her, Westmorland?” he demanded, nettled.
“Please, Benny,” Callie said, her voice gentling. “I promise you, I will be fine.”
Westmorland sent Sin a vicious glare. “If you hurt her in any fashion, I will break off both your arms and beat you with them. And then I will cut off your ballocks and stuff them down your throat.”
“Gruesome bastard, aren’t you?” Sin muttered.
His brother-in-law merely raised a brow. “Try me, Sinclair.”
“Benny,” Callie said pointedly.
Thankfully, the duke at long last took his leave, but not before sending one more threatening glance in Sin’s direction. When he was gone, Sin and Callie stood alone, facing each other.
“How are you feeling today?” he asked on a rush. “Any dizziness? You have not swooned again, have you? Perhaps we ought to sit. Are you too warm? Too cool? Have you eaten enough?”
As the last question fled him, he understood how foolish he sounded. But it could not be helped.
“I am as well as can be expected,” she answered, her voice taut. Controlled. Distinctly unlike his fiery countess. “And I do not need to sit. I am perfectly capable of standing. I am not so fragile.”
He nodded, drinking in the sight of her. She was bloody ravishing. Her dark eyes were doing the same to him, he realized. But her expression remained guarded. They were eying each other like two prize-fighters attempting to determine which of them would land the first blow.
“You look well,” he observed, deciding it would be him. “Indeed, you look better than well. You are so damned beautiful, it hurts to look at you.”
Her cheeks went pink. She caught her berry-red lower lip in her teeth. “Thank you. I could say the same of you.”
He did not believe that for a moment. He looked like a man who had scarcely slept the night before. Who had paced
the freshly replaced Axminster in his chamber, searching his mind for ways he could make amends with the woman he loved.
He itched to touch her, but there was still the matter of the manuscript in his hands. He thrust it toward her. “This is for you.”
She took it from him, their fingers brushing in the exchange, and Sin felt the shock of that touch—so simple—so innocent—in an electric pulse that shot up his elbow and landed in an ache in his ballocks.
Callie glanced down at the manuscript. “This is the last installment of Confessions of a Sinful Earl,” she noted, sounding surprised.
He nodded. “It is. Your former publisher returned it to me, at my request. But I want you to have it.”
Her brow furrowed. “Why?”
“Because it is yours.”
She gazed back up at him. “But why now?”
“It was wrong of me to keep it from you, just as it was wrong of me to get sotted at my club and spend the night at Decker’s townhome.” He paused, struggling for his words. Everything he had rehearsed on the carriage ride here dissipated in the wake of her glorious presence. “It was also wrong of me to abduct you. Wrong of me to blackmail you into becoming my wife. Hell, Callie, I have committed a great deal of wrongs in my life. But one I swear I have not committed against you—and never would, for that matter—is adultery. Whatever you think you saw between myself and the Duchess of Longleigh was purely friendship. Nothing more.”
“You were embracing her,” Callie said. “Holding her in your arms as if she were made of finest porcelain. Telling her you would always care for her and be there in whatever she needs. And this, after you were so protective of her. After you revealed to me that she had once been your mistress, and lest we forget, you had just spent the night carousing. Tell me, Sin, what was I to think?”
“You were to think that I spoke vows and intend to uphold them,” he countered.
“For how long?” she asked bitterly. “You were more than clear with your expectations. You told me you would bed me until I provided you with an heir, and then we could live our lives separately, however we wished. As soon as I was pregnant, you were gone all night long, and then I caught you in the arms of the duchess, making promises to her.”
Lady Ruthless (Notorious Ladies of London Book 1) Page 26