When She Said I Do (34 page)

She lifted her chin and placed her hand in his. It only trembled a little bit, surely. “Why, yes, I do believe I have this dance free—but it is not a waltz.”

Ren lifted one hand carelessly and snapped his fingers, his gaze never leaving Callie’s. The spritely music segued instantly into the lyrical strains of the waltz. “It is now.”

It was a bold lord-of-the-manor gesture—not the action of a man who felt he was a horror, that he needed to apologize for existing. The transformation was indeed miraculous. The power of confidence, to be sure.

Or was it? Lady Raines’s voice echoed through Callie’s mind.
Another sort of magic entirely.

Then Ren swept her into his arms. She promptly forgot everything and everyone when he pulled her closer than was entirely proper and whirled her about the floor.

“You look beautiful when you dance,” he murmured. “Almost as beautiful as when you…” He trailed off, but the look in his eyes said it all.

Callie’s heart skidded around in giddy circles in her chest, but she managed a haughty tilt to her head. “Almost? I’ll have you know that I am attired in a genuine Lementeur original!”

“I know,” he said with a twist to his lips and a glimmer of humor in his beautiful eyes. “I’ve been informed I shall be receiving a bill long enough to paper the upstairs gallery.”

She bit her lip. “Do you mind? All the women are so happy—it’s really so generous and they’re truly grateful—”

“Hush, Callie. I do not mind it.” He twirled her so fast she was lifted from her feet. He bent his head to whisper in her ear. “Besides, I’ve decided I shall merely add it to your account. Twenty-five, perhaps thirty gowns? A pearl apiece, yes?”

Thirty pearls.

Thirty more nights in his arms, in his bed, in his life.

Callie turned her head and caught his lips with hers, a quick, hot theft. Then she drew away and smiled. “Oh, I think a Lementeur gown ought to be worth at least two pearls each. But not tonight, if you recall.”

He lifted his head and met her gaze. “I recall perfectly,” he murmured, his voice a rumble of promise.

With their gazes locked and their hearts pounding in unison, they danced out the waltz he’d commanded, whirling gracefully about the room until the musicians looked at each other, shrugged, and began the tune again from the beginning.

*   *   *

When the waltz ended at last, Ren almost couldn’t bear to allow Callie out of his embrace. Dancing with her gave him a sensation of flying. He hardly felt like a monster at all with her in his arms, in the ballroom or the bedroom—or the library! She made him believe he could truly be a man again.

But he’d danced her simply breathless. She hung on his arm, flushed and fanning herself, and quite unmistakably limping.

“Damn. Your ankle. Why did you not remind me?”

“And miss the opportunity to dance with you?”

He led her to one of the ornate little chairs that had magically appeared in his ballroom. “Sit down, Callie. I’ll find some champagne … where are all those minions of Button’s anyway?”

Callie looked up and caught at his hand. “Oh! That reminds me—we must look after Mr. Button, Ren. This isn’t London, after all. Lady Raines said the oddest thing—”

“Callie, every fellow here just found out that Button provided a gown fit for a queen to each of their wives for the price of flour-sacking. Those men have been drinking toasts to Button for the last hour!” He spotted a well turned-out servitor and beckoned urgently. Damned if the fellow didn’t spin right about and walk the other way!

“Bloody hell.” Ren patted Callie’s hand. “Stay here. I’ll fetch the damned champagne myself.”

He set off to where he was sure he’d seen another servant pouring from magnums of the stuff. It wasn’t until the crowd closed behind him that Callie’s words registered fully in his hearing.

Lady Raines said the oddest thing.

Raines? Wait—
what
?

He spun on his heel and strode back to the little chair, but Callie was gone.

Raines?

No. It couldn’t be.

For the first time, Ren took a good long look at his new staff. There, that bookish-looking fellow in spectacles, carrying champagne flutes arranged upon a tray, reminded him of someone; over to his right, a shorter man bowed two tall, blond ladies past him just as if he were letting them through a door; and that one there, standing at parade rest by the door, almost invisible in the discreet livery of Amberdell Manor.

Ren peered harder at the fellow. Big and thick, with a thuggish air. He’d known a man like that once …

A couple danced past, blocking Ren’s view. He stepped to one side and the lady, a curvaceous, dimpled brunette, smiled apologetically at him, her brown eyes alight with curiosity behind her mask adorned with tiny blue silk flowers. The man did not turn his head but Ren found his gaze swinging back to the fellow for another look, only to find the couple had disappeared into the mass of dancers.

Something about the man’s stature …

Ren’s skin prickled. His spine tightened. He longed for eyes in the back of his head.

In his former life he would have interpreted such sensations to mean he was surrounded. But that was nonsense. Those days were over with. This feeling was merely an echo of that past alarm, brought on by being in a crowd for the first time in so long.

Wasn’t it?

*   *   *

“Mr. and Mrs. Archimedes Worthington! And … er … relations!”

Callie, who had decided to wait for her champagne—and perhaps another kiss—in the cooler air of the terrace, turned with a gasp just as her hand touched the latch of the doors leading outside.

Oh, no. Oh, blast. It couldn’t be.

It most certainly was.

As Callie’s entire family strode en masse into the ballroom, she heard avid murmurs from around her.

“Who is it?” “Is it a parade?” “Is it a circus troupe?”

Well, yes, very nearly. Add a dash of madhouse and you’re close.

They were all there, a seeming army outrageously masked and costumed, tall and small, dark and light, all so different and all so much the same—all with the unmistakable Worthington insouciance that Callie had almost allowed herself to lose—

She felt her chin lift and her spine lengthen instantly, immediately imbued with the carefree attitude of resourceful self-assurance that wafted from her family like an exotic perfume.

How could I forget?

On they came, the entire exhilarating, exhausting pack of them, coming at her with smiles and open arms and chaos and mayhem, like a hurricane of love and devastation.

My ball is ruined. I am so happy to see them. This is a disaster. They look so wonderful!

So, appropriately, she greeted them with both laughter and tears, her arms wide.

*   *   *

From across the ballroom, Ren watched as his bride disappeared into the massed madness that was apparently the entire Worthington mob—er, clan.

He couldn’t believe it. He’d had no idea there were so many Worthingtons. And by Callie’s helplessly astonished expression, they’d not been on her guest list.

Button, I truly am going to kill you.

He must be gracious to her parents, yes, and that arrogant lout, Daedalus. Although Ren had to admit to his own fault on the night they’d met—the night Dade had discovered Callie in Ren’s arms.

What must the fellow have thought? That Satan himself had arisen to violate his sister? Perhaps it was time to forgive an older brother’s protectiveness. Very well, then, he was willing to tolerate the fellow if Dade behaved himself.

But the others? Ren tried to replay the stories he’d been told. Callie had mentioned the twins, Castor and Pollux—those would be the identical brown-haired fellows in the matching lime-green waistcoats. Awful.

Sisters. There had been a few stories about sisters. Elektra and Atalanta. Really, those names! Ren saw one rather lovely flaxen-haired sister and one skinny freckled creature with a wild mop of red-gold curls that must be a sister, as well, or perhaps a pet. It sent him a glance full of murderous intent.

More brothers. Names, names … Ren thought through the classical stories. He remembered hearing about an Orion and a Lysander. One brother was a bespectacled man with lean, dark good looks and a very serious manner. Another one, similar in coloring if not quite so well groomed, lurked in silence that seemed to surround him like a bubble even his own family did not penetrate.

Ren knew enough about burning self-loathing to recognize it when he saw it. Every instinct told him that the silent man was a cannon waiting to fire.

Iris and Archimedes, along with some rawboned elder female relation, held Callie tightly and beamed happily if indiscriminately about the ballroom, indifferent to any stares of avid interest.

But … was that woman’s bodice
moving
?

*   *   *

Still breathless from all the loving compression, Callie was next swept into the embrace of a tall woman in a swirling turban that made her tower over most of the men in the room.

“Er—Aunt Clemmie?”

Something was licking Callie’s chin where her face was pressed into the woman’s bosom. Yes, definitely Clementine, Iris’s eldest sister, furry little bodice-passengers and all.

“There, there, girl. We’ll get you out of this mess if it’s the last thing we do. Married? Fah!
Men!
”

Callie sighed.
Worthingtons.

*   *   *

Ren could not reach Callie, swarmed as she was. Yet, there was an empty space around him, he realized suddenly. Not just in the ballroom, but in the world itself. It was that space that for most was filled with family. He could see it in the way they surrounded her, a circle of loving arms, a fortress of trust and faith and need.

He’d had it as a boy. It had been a small circle, true, but his parents and his elder cousin John had been a family.

That is not the only place you had it.

Yes, he’d thought he’d found it with the Liars, with that motley band of thieves and gentlemen spies.

Of course, in the end he’d been quite mistaken, hadn’t he? Watching her now, her face alight with love for her demented clan, something cold went through him.

Was he wrong about finding it with Callie, as well? Would she break his heart now that he had let her hold it in her hand?

He fought the impulse to turn away, to stride from the room and the possibilities. His parents had left him, his mother in an accident and his father quite willingly when he followed her that night, the vial of laudanum standing empty by the bedside, the single-line note scrawled on a crumpled page.
I cannot live without her.

He’d thought his father a coward then.

And who’s been hiding in a cave?

Ren let out a bark of self-deprecating laughter and strode toward the tight knot of Callie’s family. If he wanted her he was obviously going to have to fetch her himself. He need not have worried. The Worthingtons parted before him with wide eyes.

Ah, yes. For a moment Ren had forgotten about the exposed portion of his face.
Hello, monster. Welcome to the family.

Chapter 29

“Ahem.”

Never had the mere clearing of a throat implied so much irritation. Callie unwrapped Aunt Clemmie’s long arms and turned to smile tentatively at Ren. She saw Betrice and Henry trailing behind him, their eyes alight with curiosity.

“My family came to the ball!” she said brightly. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

Ren gazed back at her for a long moment. Callie smiled harder.
Be good. Be a nice hermit and say pretty things to my family.

His silence continued a beat too long. Whispers began to breed in the ballroom. Callie bared more teeth. The sharp ones. Her toe began to tap.

Her brothers stepped back warily.

Ren, the idiot, held his ground. His shadowed gaze ran over the boys and her sisters, lingered on Aunt Clemmie and the small furry snouts poking out of her neckline, then passed over her parents and came back to meet hers.

Be nice. Please?

Ren deflated before her eyes. He closed his eyes wearily for a moment, then stepped forward and snapped a very formal bow. “Mr. Worthington. Mrs. Worthington. What a pleasant surprise. We are delighted that you traveled so far to join us this evening. Might I beg introduction to the rest of the family?”

His words were very pretty. If his tone was a bit flat, at least it was not harsh.

He continued to behave very well, even prompting some nice manners from Dade, who was ever the competitive sort. The rest of the boys did not embarrass her … much … and of course Elektra’s public etiquette was always pinpoint.

Then Atalanta was presented to Ren. Callie knew she wasn’t the only one of the Worthingtons holding her breath. One never knew what Attie would do.
Ought I to worry?

However, little Attie, clad in a sweet pink gown that used to be Elektra’s, topped with a flowered mask cleverly constructed of papier-mâché, curtsied with gangly competence and murmured the usual nonsense with an entire lack of expression. Hmm. The one thing Attie was incapable of was dullness.
I rather think I ought to worry.

Then Callie noticed that the twins had quietly slipped away. Oh, no. The twins quiet were the twins lethal.

Fortunately, they reemerged almost immediately, coming back into the ballroom through the double doors on the terrace. They moved slowly, bent almost double over wooden yokes, towing something behind them.

Whatever it was sat upon a two-wheeled cart and was draped in canvas. From the ten-foot height Callie surmised that her brothers were not exaggerating the weight of it as they strained at the yokes.

She felt Ren come up behind her. His hand snaked about her waist. The embrace was ever so slightly too tight.

“Callie…”

Closing her eyes and reaching deep for strength, Callie turned into his arm and went on tiptoe. “Please, darling, let me handle them.”

She felt the depth of his sigh.