When She Said I Do (41 page)

She held out a hand. “No. Wait. Ren … what of us? What of our … marriage?”

He smiled falsely. “Well, it is not as though we can annul it now, so I imagine we’ll carry on much as we’d planned to from the start. You’ll go back to your family and I’ll carry on with my life.”

“Your life.”

Callie felt sick inside. Even shot, even lying in the bed, alone with her pain and her laudanum haze, even worried about Attie, underneath it all she’d been happy.

Happy in her love for him, happy in the surety that he would someday soon love her back, that he needed her. That he wanted her with him … forever.

Yet, she’d only known him ill. She’d only known him broken. This man, this restless, brisk fellow … was this the man he truly was? Was this the man he’d been before? The man who had written racy letters to his old cousin? The man who’d won the Prince Regent’s regard with his bravery?

The man who had once loved someone else, someone who favored peacock-blue scarves?

Callie pressed her fingertips to her forehead, trying to force back the growing ache there, trying to force her mind to understand.

“So I am to be banished to London, to wait at Worthington House until you return?”

“Callie, I shan’t be coming home for a very long while. I think my missions will be even more long-term. I can hardly skip from identity to identity as I used to. On the other hand, my superiors believe this face might come to be an advantage. A man with scars is someone people don’t tend to question too closely. I rather suspect they don’t want to know any more than is necessary about my past.”

It all made a horrible kind of sense. He’d been very good at what he did before. At what he was. Furthermore, he’d obviously loved that life—needed the adventure, needed the danger.

More than he needed her, apparently.

What do you do when you are the one who loves more?

Do you stay, always waiting, always wondering? Always trying to earn that love, always feeling as though you’ll never quite measure up? As though you must work for every scrap of attention, every shred of affection?

Would he come to resent her if she stayed, and what would she do, here on the estate? Stay and sit and wait, like an obedient hound hoping for any scrap?

The pain was enormous. It lay upon her, crushing her sweet hopes, squeezing the life from her newborn dreams. Her Worthington pride fought the tears but, weakened by her injuries, it lost the battle against the onslaught of her emotions. Tears leaked silently, spilling into her hands, running down her wrists.

Stop.

It was no use.

“I don’t want to go,” she whispered. “Please? I want to stay with you.”

“But I am not staying. I am on my way I know not where. You can hardly follow at my heels.”

Heels, like a good dog.

She didn’t care. She had no pride. All that was left was pain. Inside and out, her body and her heart. The words spilled out. “Ren, I love you. Don’t … don’t make me go. Why can we not simply go on, like before?”

“Here? Not a bad place to die, love, but hardly a place to live.”

He’d never called her that before, love, lightly, flippantly. Without meaning, like a Cockney grocer, trying to charm her into purchasing more apples.

The very first time he says the word and he wastes it.

The agony knotted inside her, a tangle of hurt and anger and weak, needful desperation.

He gazed at her disapprovingly. “Callie, my work is important. What I do serves England. It saves lives. Surely you don’t mean to put your happiness before that?”

It was a low blow, unworthy of a man who had once considered himself fair in a fight. Yet, it didn’t matter how low he sank, as long as she left him … and lived.

She straightened painfully, reaching for him. “Please! Ren, I cannot bear it. I cannot!
Please
tell me that you don’t mean it! Tell me that you want me to stay, that you want to stay with me…”

She dashed the tears from her eyes and looked up at him. She’d once thought him terrifying, then she’d found him beautiful.

Now she knew the true meaning of terror, for he only shook his head with a frown. “Calliope, you’ll strain yourself. Let me tuck you back in. I’ll send your mother in, shall I? You’ll need help to pack anyway. I think it’s best to send you home with them tomorrow.”

So soon. So sudden.

He lifted her back to rest upon her pillows and tucked her in with considerate hands. She clung to them, wrapping her icy fingers tight, but they were not the hands she knew. Not the hands of a lover. Not the touch of a husband. Just … not unkind.

“Pack,” she said dully.

Ren ached from head to foot to see her thus.

But alive. Away from him, she would live. Away from him, she would regain her vibrant Callie-ness.

Away from him, but alive.

So he made sure of it. He reached into his weskit pocket to offer her his handkerchief. Something dropped from the carefully folded linen, landing on the coverlet nearly in her lap.

When he was sure her gaze had fixed upon the small gold circle, mounted with a sapphire surrounded by emeralds, he made a wild snatch for the ring. Looking away from her, he tucked it back into his pocket with an appearance of studied nonchalance.

He knew she’d found the ring, along with the medal, long ago. He knew the way her mind worked, how she put clues together. He knew she would have imagined the woman who’d been meant to have the ring.

By the devastated depths of her hazel eyes, he knew he’d accomplished another mission. The life had fled her eyes, her sweet face. Even her body seemed slack and dull.

Drive in another blade?
Why do if you can overdo?
He cleared his throat, making his voice persuasive. “I suppose I have enough pull with the government to have the church grant you a divorce, if that makes you happier.”

“Divorce.” She blinked down at her hands, limp and shaking in her lap. “I don’t…”

“Well, as you wish. Write to Henry if you change your mind. I’ll be checking in with him every six months or so.”

“Yes. All right.” She looked away then. “I’m tired. I think I’d like to rest now.”

“Good idea. You may pack this evening.” Finally he weakened. “Would you like for me to open the window again?”

She closed her eyes. “No, thank you,” she whispered. “There is nothing out there I wish to see … now.”

Chapter 37

The next morning, the Worthingtons prepared to depart forever. Callie tolerated her mother’s fluttering and Attie’s lack of concentration only because Elektra devoted herself to the preservation and packing of Callie’s Lementeur collection.

Callie had nothing to do but rest and watch. Then Attie found the folio of botanical drawings in Callie’s drawer.

“What is this?” She peered closely at the genus and species penciled below each specimen. “Are any of these poisonous?”

“Attie, don’t poke through everything!” Elektra scolded. She took it from Attie and absently handed it to Callie.

Callie gazed at the leather-bound folio. “Don’t bother packing this. I won’t be needing it.” It wasn’t likely she would ever have time for such things again … even if she could someday bear to open the parcel full of painful memory. She didn’t want to take this place with her … these hills, these flowers, these beautiful days and wildly exciting nights …

Quickly shutting the folio, she slid it away from her across the counterpane. No. When she shut the door of Amberdell behind her, she wanted no reminders packed with her.

Elektra gathered up what she could carry, directed the twins to lug down what she couldn’t—for she was taking every stitch of clothing Mr. Button had provided. Elektra was beyond thrilled to have a Lementeur original and what couldn’t be made to fit could be sold for enough coin to keep the household going for many months.

She’d earned every bit of it, in the end, Callie thought with weary resignation.

Her hopes of making a swift and private exit were of course foiled by the usual madness involved in getting the Worthington clan on the road. Attie’s bonnet could not be found, then Iris wandered away, only to be found speaking cordially to one of the portraits in the gallery. When Callie, leaning weakly on Lysander, her nerves worn to shaking by her need to be far, far away, watched as Dade wedged her mother between her sisters in the family’s shabby carriage, she turned around to discover that Ren had decided to see her off after all.

Bloody hell. There he stood, just as she’d longed to see him, bareheaded in the sunlight, the scars on his face visible yet made less important by the new dignity in his bearing. The man before her was no lurking gargoyle. He was a hero, a knight, the true master of his house, not its inmate.

With all her heart, she wished him to remain so. Truly.

Ren knew that he was dooming himself, sending away this last chance at happiness. He approached her, not shying from the devastation in her eyes.

“You’ve forgotten something.” He held up the strand of pearls she’d strung a few days earlier.

She flinched but then bent her head, allowing him to fasten it around her neck. If his fingers lingered slightly, drifting through the curling strands of hair at the back of her neck, it was only because he fought the urge to drag her back into the house and lock out the world forever.

She did not seem to notice the crack in his façade. She scarcely looked at him at all.

Her brothers helped her into the second carriage, supplied by Amberdell, where she would ride behind with Dade whilst tucked into a nest of cushions, free of the strain of her family’s antics.

As the carriages pulled out of the drive, the rickety Worthington conveyance first, followed by the better-sprung vehicle, silence once more descended upon Amberdell.

*   *   *

Ren went back into his house, his beautiful, homey, comfortable, empty manor … and he could not bear it.

He found himself wandering the halls. He stood in the center of the empty ballroom, which still reeked of smoke and disaster, and listened to the faint tinkling of the crystalline chandeliers swaying above him.

He walked through the dining room, trailing his fingertips along the great table, recalling the bouncing of dozens of pearls on the polished surface.

He stood before the fire in the library, gazing at the crossed swords displayed above it.

And finally, he opened the door to Callie’s bedchamber. He closed his eyes and breathed, still able to detect the faint bouquet of rosemary and girl and wildflowers. He walked around her bed, gazing at the pillow that still contained the impression of her head.

His foot struck something. Looking down, he bent to retrieve the leather folio that lay discarded there. Unwinding the string closure, he opened it upon a riot of Cotswold springtime.

She’d left it. Forgotten? He knew her better than that. Like a creature gnawing off a limb to escape a trap, she had been forced to leave a piece of herself behind.

He closed the folio carefully and rewound the closure. Then he reverently placed the folio upon her dressing table and left the room.

As he descended the stairs, his steps quickened. By the time he’d reached the front entrance, he was running.

Running from the empty spaces where Callie was not.

*   *   *

On the journey, Dade watched Callie, regretting his selfishness now. She lay pale and wan upon her nest of cushions, a shell of her former brisk self.

Callie of the tidying hands and the managing ways. He’d never realized she possessed such a romantic heart, a heart to be so thoroughly broken by a stranger in less than a fortnight.

He wondered if he’d ever really known his sister at all.

They rode in silence broken only by the creaking of the slow-rolling cartwheels and the faint gasps of pain Callie could not suppress when a pothole was found in the road.

The family had long since disappeared in the road ahead, not even a wisp of dust in the air to mark their passing.

The pace was unbearably slow, yet Callie felt panicked, unsteady, as if they raced away … away from Ren.

She felt as though an ever-tightening strand of some kind bound her to Amberdell, to him, and with every revolution of the carriage wheels, that strand became more attenuated, until it was no stronger than a thought, no more permanent than a memory. She fought for breath against the ache in her body, against the ever-tightening bands of heartbreak that threatened to cut off her air entirely …

Callie became aware that Dade was speaking … something about “… glad to have you take Ellie’s spending in hand.”

“I am not your housekeeper, Dade.” She said it without rancor … as if, in fact, it was something she had just realized herself. She looked at him.

Dade frowned at her. “I know you aren’t. You could have a house of your own. You’re Mrs. Porter now—”

“Lady Porter, in fact.” Good God, was that pride in her tone? Still, in the end, was she proud to be his distant and rejected wife?

“Well.” Dade shifted uncomfortably. “According to him—”

She shot him a look that completely lacked patience. “It isn’t some tale he made up. I found the documents, the honors, the medals, the letter of knighthood from the Prince Regent.”
Signed “Geo.”
“He has too many memories bound up in it, that’s all.”

Dade’s gaze widened. “Then the scars—”

“Every one earned in service to the Crown.”

Dade pursed his lips and nodded. “The war. I should have realized…”

“You didn’t want to.” Callie looked out the window. “You wanted to paint him a beast for compromising me, for staining
your
honor.” Uttering a dark laugh, she shook her head. “I think it’s high time you realized that I wasn’t precisely fighting him off.”

Dade looked away. “You’re my sister. I am responsible for you.”

“Actually, since he was my eldest male relative on the premises, I think Papa was the one responsible for me.”

Dade didn’t quite roll his eyes. Quite. “Well, but…”

Callie hadn’t the will or desire to be patient with Dade’s bigotry any longer. “You weren’t interested in him at all, other than to wave a pistol at him. You knew nothing at all about the man behind the scars.”