For one brief moment, she had been certain Callum was going to kiss her. That he was finally going to drop the high wall he had built up between them and once again share the sweet affection they had known before he went to war.
Mister Green walked over and examined the damaged wall before instructing one of the footmen to arrange to have a plasterer repair the hole. Eliza turned and headed up the stairs, wiping a tear away as she went.
Her hopes were fading fast. The Callum she’d once thought she knew seemed gone forever. In his place stood a stranger. A man who cared more for his drink than he did for her.
In the privacy of her bedroom, she slumped on her bed and sighed.
“What the hell am I going to do?”
Chapter Twelve
Callum paced the floor of his room, his hands tightly fisted. The situation had been bad enough before he tried to get Eliza to intercede on his behalf; now he’d been left with nothing to drink.
“Fuck,” he moaned.
He reached the window then stopped. He was about to turn and make another journey to the far side of the room when the memory of Eliza’s face slipped into his mind. Not the expression of anger she had worn when aiming the bottle of gin at the wall, rather it was the look of hope and expectancy when he had drawn close to her. She had been waiting for him to kiss her.
It had been more than a year since that night in her room, when he had held her face in his hands as he’d placed tender kisses all over her pale perfect skin. He closed his eyes and did his best to force the memory from his mind.
Eliza had been full of worry about his departure for the impending battle. He had been proud of her. Despite the danger, she had never once begged him not to go, to set aside his duty and stay with her.
And you promised to come back to her.
His gaze settled on the door. Somewhere on the other side of it was Eliza. She would be continuing on with the task of managing Follett House all the while keeping up a brave front and hiding her disappointment.
Callum lifted his hand and held it in front of his face, at the same time releasing his fingers from their tight grip. His hand shook as tremors ran down his arm. Various physicians had told him that the nightmares and the shakes were a common side effect of the shock of battle. That a man should accept them as a badge of honor and get on with his life. One had even prescribed him a tonic.
But there was no tonic which would help with the memory of seeing a man shot through the head and having his brains splattered all over your jacket.
A knock at the door had him stuffing his trembling hands in his pocket.
“Enter,” he said.
He had assumed it would be Reid coming to reproach him once more about the way he treated Eliza; he was more than a little surprised that it was Eliza herself who stood on the threshold of his bedroom.
“May I come in?” she asked.
Callum frowned. Yet again she was invading his space. He should remind her that it was not the proper thing for an unmarried woman to be in the private room of a male who was not of her family. Then again, Eliza Follett had not been raised in the most conventional of households.
She had been exposed to the wild ways of Owen, Kendal, and Callum from an early age and she was not as naïve about the world as London society would expect her to be.
She closed the door behind her. The red flush of rage had cleared from her face, her posture less stiff.
Thank God she has calmed down.
“We need to talk,” she said.
A chill of fear touched him. It was never a good thing when a woman uttered those words. In his limited experience of the fairer sex, it rarely boded well for a man.
“I am sorry,” he said.
One of the first things his father had taught him as a young man was that getting an apology in early in the discussion with a woman was a good idea. It often helped to defuse the situation.
Eliza scowled. She probably knew that trick as well as he did.
“This is your home and I have no right to be ordering the servants about, nor questioning your authority. I have embarrassed both of us over the matter of a bottle or two of gin,” he said.
“That is not why I am here. I want to talk about us,” she replied.
Us? “I think we have both said enough on the subject. I know I have made my position clear; there is no us,” he replied.
She stepped closer and Callum’s heart began to race. Eliza looked up at him and his resolve to stay as far away from her as possible faltered.
Those brown eyes of hers held a warmth that beckoned to his tortured soul. They offered a deep pool of respite from the pain. When Eliza reached out and took a hold of his hand, he didn’t stop her. He couldn’t.
“Callum,” she murmured.
She raised his hand to her lips and slowly, one by one, placed a tender kiss on each fingertip. Callum sucked in a shuddering breath. He had left much of himself on the battlefield, but the part of him that Eliza owned was still wholly intact.
It was madness; he should have made her leave, but instead Callum slipped a hand about Eliza’s waist and pulled her roughly to him. There were tears shining in her eyes as he dipped his head and took her mouth in a searing, heated kiss.
The long, empty nights of the past year melted away as their lips and tongues melded. Callum wasn’t gentle; he worked over Eliza’s mouth, kissing her deeply. She had never been one for soft and slow, and the last thing he was going to do right now was disappoint her any further.
She grabbed a fistful of his linen shirt and held on tight. He couldn’t have broken away even if he wanted to; neither of them was going anywhere.
Eliza drew back. The sounds of their ragged breathing filled the space between them. Then it was on again: tongues tangling and lips working together in an embrace that soon had his oxygen-starved brain seeing stars.
His hand drifted lower and he cupped Eliza’s firm backside. He dragged her hard against him, not stopping even when he heard her gasp. His hard arousal pressed against her stomach. He wanted her—needed her.
His cock was making plans to move Eliza toward the bed when a knock at the door interrupted their passionate exchange.
“Callum, are you there?” Reid’s voice drifted in from outside in the hallway.
Shit. Nooo.
They quickly drew apart. Eliza’s eyes were large pools of worry. The last thing either of them wanted was for Reid to discover her in Callum’s bedroom.
She hurried over to the door, which led out to the balcony, and tried the handle. “Where is the key?” she whispered.
He cringed. The key was in his greatcoat, which at that very minute was downstairs in the ballroom. “I don’t have it.”
“Callum?” said Reid, once more.
Callum took a deep breath. “Yes, I won’t be a minute.”
Eliza’s gaze dropped to the bulge in his trousers and she whispered, “You had better do something about that before you open the door.”
What could be done to get himself back under control and quick? Taking Eliza by the arm, he led her over to the wardrobe and opened the door. After grabbing a long scarf, he pointed toward the back of the cupboard. “Hide in there until I have got rid of him.”
She gave him a look which told him she was about to protest, but he nodded in the direction of the bedroom door. There was nowhere else for her to go.
“Alright, but don’t take too long. I am not good with confined spaces,” she said.
Callum closed the wardrobe as far as Eliza would allow, then, after putting on his scarf and leaving it to hang low, he opened the door to Reid.
Reid barreled inside. He took one look at Callum’s attire and frowned. “Don’t tell me you are going out to buy more gin. If that is the case, then I suggest you pack your things and take them with you. Eliza should not have to deal with you being drunk during the day.”
Callum flinched. “No, I wasn’t. I thought perhaps getting out of the house would do me some good. It
would also mean that I am not under your sister’s feet,” he replied.
Reid’s demeanor immediately changed and softened. “Alright. I am sorry if that wasn’t what you had planned, but you have to understand that where Eliza is concerned, I have every right to be protective of her. I thought perhaps I needed to remind you of our conversation in the garden.”
Callum nodded. With Eliza in hearing distance, he was going to have to be careful with what he said. Why the fuck did I kiss her? I’m supposed to be ending things, not planning a bloody seduction.
If Reid had the slightest idea as to what had happened in this very room only a few minutes ago, he would lose his mind. And Callum didn’t even want to consider the bloody repercussions that would follow if Reid discovered his sister hiding in the wardrobe.
“You don’t need to remind me to stay away from your sister. I am trying to dissuade Eliza from loving me, but she can be stubborn when she sets her mind to something,” he replied.
“Try harder,” said Reid.
“If you want me to tell your sister that there is no chance of a future for the two of us and that she should look elsewhere for a husband, I will do so. If she was here right this very minute, I would say that to her face.” Callum swallowed the lump in his throat.
“I think that’s exactly what you should tell her. It would fit in nicely with my plans,” said Reid.
“What plans?” he replied.
“Never you mind.”
With his message delivered, Reid quickly turned on his heel and walked out of Callum’s bedroom, closing the door behind him.
Callum screwed up his face and steeled himself for the fallout.
The wardrobe opened and Eliza appeared. The click of the lock echoed in the still, quiet of the room as she pushed the door closed. “Well, at least Reid seems to be convinced that we are over. That is something we can use to our advantage while you are here. If he doesn’t suspect anything, he won’t be watching as carefully as he has done in the past,” she said.
The hope in her voice was heartbreaking. The expectation that the kiss they had just shared had somehow magically fixed everything. His succumbing to temptation had only made what he was about to do all that much worse.
Forgive me. This has to be done.
He sucked in a deep breath, then turned to face her. “I spoke the truth. You must marry someone else.”
She shook her head. “You don’t mean that, Callum. I know you don’t.” She wagged a finger at him. “And what about the kiss we just shared? You cannot expect me to believe that it was all a pile of bloody rubbish. I felt the passion and you did too.”
“I am sorry about the kiss. It was a foolish mistake. I wasn’t thinking. I let my primal urges overrule my sense of decency. Rest assured, it won’t happen again. I don’t love you, Eliza, and I will not marry you.” He took a deep breath, hating and regretting the words before he had even spoken them. “I ask that you return the ring I gave you.”
She gasped and staggered back a step as the blow landed. The look of shock on her face was so heartrending that it took all his self-control not to sink to his knees and immediately take it all back.
“You . . . don’t mean that,” she stammered.
He screwed his courage firmly to the sticking place and nodded. “Yes, I do. You may keep the ring box if you like as a memento of our friendship, but I expect the ring to be returned by the end of this day.” And with that, Callum gathered up the shattered remains of his heart and headed for the door.
As he marched downstairs and out into the street, the words kept repeating in his brain. I don’t want you. I don’t need you. I don’t love you.
He had finally crushed the heart of the only woman he would ever love. Nothing would make it better. The only thing that would come close to blunting the sharp edge of the pain would be a large bottle of something strong.
Chapter Thirteen
Eliza stood in Callum’s bedroom and waited for him to return. This wasn’t the first fight they had shared over the years. She had long lost count of the number. Theirs had always been a passionate and fiery romance. Harsh words had been exchanged enough times for her to now accept that this was the way of their love.
They fought. Days, sometimes weeks of silence would follow, but every time they would find their way back to one another. She had somehow even managed to convince herself that the past year was just another one of those breaks in their relationship, albeit a very long one.
After a good ten minutes, she finally left Callum’s bedroom and sought solace in her own. She paced up and down, all the while trying to convince herself that this latest falling out was no different to all those previous fights. But unlike those other times, she couldn’t make the thought stick.
This latest development was something new, something unknown; and it filled her with dread.
Callum had openly declared to both her and Reid that he had no intention of marrying her. In all the years that they had been dancing around the subject of their secret romance and plans for the future, Callum had never once said he didn’t love her.
She took the crystal box out of the drawer and retrieved the promise ring, holding it in the palm of her hand.
She closed her eyes, the memory of Callum’s words the night he gave her the ring still fresh in her mind. “I love you Eliza. I promise you that if I make it safely home, I will talk to Reid. You and I shall be married.”
She curled her hand closed over the ring, the solid form of it digging into her palm. This was no mere trinket; it was a Sharp family heirloom. A ring that would only be given to a young woman with the expectation of her becoming a member of that family.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” she muttered.
She had said that to herself more than once over the past few months, but until now she had never had any tangible reason to doubt that he still wanted her. She had her suspicions; a year was a long time. And she wasn’t stupid. But through it all she had still clung onto hope—hope that Callum had finally crushed. He didn’t love her, didn’t want her.
Her bottom lip quivered, and she wiped away a tear. A second tear soon fell and was joined by others. She screwed her eyes shut, but nothing would stem the flow.
“You have been a stubborn fool, Eliza Follett.”
She put the ring back in the box and closed it; finally, reluctantly, she was going to have to accept that she had wasted a year of her life waiting for Callum. That he would never be hers.
She made a silent promise to herself. In the future, if a man ever thought to bring up the subject of asking her to marry him, he would be wise to do so with a wedding ring in one hand and a marriage license in the other.
Callum liked this particular level of being drunk. He had no sense of feeling, but he could still manage to play his music. He was in the perfect frame of mind for another of Kendal’s tedious afternoon rehearsal sessions. As far as Callum was concerned, the two hours of drinking at a nearby tavern were hours well spent.
Back in his bedroom, he lay on his bed and closed his eyes. Between now and when one of the servants came to rouse him, he intended to get a couple of hours of gin-induced slumber.
A knock at the door had him cracking one eye open and squinting to focus on the clock which sat on the bedroom mantelpiece.
“No fucking way. It has not even been an hour,” he muttered.
A second knock told him he was not going to be allowed to go back to sleep. He sat up slowly, waiting until his head had stopped spinning long enough for him to see straight.
“Come,” he bellowed.
Whoever you are, you had better not have plans to linger. I am in no mood for social calls.
When the door didn’t open, he shuffled over and took hold of the handle. In the hallway stood a footman holding a small crystal box. He bowed, then offered the box to Callum. “Lady Eliza Follett asked me to deliver this to you as soon as you returned,” he said.
Callum stared at the box. It was stra
ngely familiar, but he couldn’t quite place where he had seen it before.
“Was there a message, or a card?” he asked.
The footman shook his head. “I did ask, but apparently the contents of the box are part of the message. Lady Eliza said you would understand.”
Callum took the box and dismissed the footman. Inside the crystal box there was something small wrapped up in a pale blue silk handkerchief. He lifted the corner of the handkerchief and a small ring fell out. The sound of it clattering as it hit the floor echoed the disappointment in his heart.
It was the promise ring. A token of his love. Eliza had done as he’d asked and returned it.
With great effort, he bent and picked up the ring before putting it back into the handkerchief. He flipped the lid of the crystal box closed and stared at it for a moment. The temptation to throw it at the fireplace and watch it smash to a thousand pieces was strong, but he managed to control his temper. The box and its precious contents were placed carefully into the top of his tallboy.
Tomorrow morning, he would take it back to his family home and lock it away in his private safe. The way his life was currently headed, he didn’t anticipate having any use for it in the foreseeable future. No woman in her right mind would consider marrying a drug-addled mess such as himself. Anyone could see that he was not husband material.
The deed was done. He and Eliza were no longer.
Chapter Fourteen
Sir Thomas was waiting in his usual place when Callum arrived for their catchup; what was not usual, however, was the fact that he was not alone. The sight of both his parents seated on the sofa in the drawing room made Callum pause as he stepped through the door. His gaze fixed on the tightly clasped hands of his mother. A sense of dread slithered into his mind.
“Callum, darling, lovely to see you this morning,” said Lady Sharp. A tight smile was on her lips. She sat stiffly on the chair, and Callum sensed she was barely holding herself together. She didn’t rise to greet him.
Callum: Regency Rockstars Page 7