When She Said I Do (7 page)

Dade shook his head as if shaking off his parents’ delusions. “I cannot believe she knew what she was doing.”

“She knew precisely what she was doing. The only logical conclusion is that she acted to save you.”

That was Orion. Attie wiggled a bit in anticipation. Rion, who was in reality a genius, not just someone who thought he was a genius, like Papa, hardly ever spoke up in family discussions. In fact, unless he was lecturing on one of his scientific papers to the Babcock Scholars, he rarely spoke at all.

Dade turned to Rion in surprise. “Save me? From what?”

Rion put down the massive tome he was reading and pushed his spectacles up his nose to better regard Dade through them. Attie suspected that he didn’t really need his vision corrected. It was only that he was so very attractive—in a darkly sinister way—that he felt he would not be taken seriously if he didn’t wear the useless bits of wire and glass.

“Save you from yourself, of course.” Rion shook his head at Dade’s obtuseness. “The result of your ill-considered heroics would have been your own hanging on the charge of murder.”

Attie’s eyes widened. Oh. Oh, no. Callie would do it, too. Callie put everyone else first. She always had. The whole family knew it and accepted it as simply being Callie’s lot.

Elektra smoothed her skirts primly. “I would like to know what Callie thought she was up to in the first place. I mean, we’re not truly swallowing this oops-I-accidently-ruined-myself story, are we?”

All heads swung toward her. Attie shrank down into her shoulders. Ellie could be a right cow sometimes.

At her family’s scowls, Elektra raised her chin. “Well, what was she doing wandering around a strange house in her shift, I ask you?”

Iris relaxed and waved a dismissive hand. “Oh, that! I imagine she was communing with the souls of the past and forgot she was in her underthings. That can happen, you know.”

Ellie grimaced. “To some of us more than others,” she muttered.

Archie took his wife’s hand and smiled. “And didn’t you look like a drunken sailor’s dream?”

Dade glared at their mooning parents. “She wasn’t communing with the spirits! She’d almost drowned, Ellie. Her things were drying by the fire and her
chaperones
fell asleep.”

Iris nodded helpfully. “Oh, yes. Archie and I drank our brandies and went straight out. I suppose the brandy didn’t help Callie at all.”

“I knew it.” Ellie narrowed her eyes. “She was in her cups! Drunk and consorting with strange men!”

Cas and Poll shook their heads.

“Drunk and consorting, yes—”

“But with a single strange man—”

“Not a platoon or anything.”

“Not that we know of, anyway.”

They turned as one to look at Dade.

“Was there a platoon?”

“You didn’t say. Details, man—”

“Details!”

Another time, Attie would have giggled at the way the twins made Dade twitch. Now, however, she simply scowled and worried about Callie.

If Ellie was right—which thought alone was alarming—and Callie had gotten herself in trouble with a stranger, why, that stranger could be any sort of rotter! Dade certainly seemed to think so, and he’d actually met the man.

Mr. Porter, who had formerly inhabited a rather swashbuckling fantasy form in Attie’s imagination, shrank and deformed into a monstrous hulk, a creature who assaulted innocent drunken maidens wandering about in their unmentionables!

“I’ve given you all the details!” Dade was nearly shouting now.

“Temper, temper, son,” Archie said mildly. “The lads were simply trying to help.”

“There’s nothing they can do. There’s nothing any of us can do to save her now.”

“That’s not strictly true.” That was Orion again. Attie craned her neck to see her third-eldest brother.

Orion was leaning back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. The other Worthingtons assumed a respectful silence, even the twins, for this was Orion’s thinking pose. Many outstanding and dangerous moments had come from such a pose. Not all had involved fire, flood, or famine, either, despite the rumors.

Orion went on distractedly, as if he were speaking to himself. “The marriage will likely have been consummated by now, so annulment will be of no use…”

“Callie refused, anyway,” muttered Dade.

Orion blinked. “So, logically, there are two more possible solutions. Divorce—”

Ellie started. “No! Absolutely not! If there is a divorce in the family, I will never make a decent match!” When most of the brothers scowled at her, Ellie shrank a little. “Well, neither will Attie! And Callie would never want that!”

Orion hadn’t so much as glanced Ellie’s way during the interruption. “Or the last possibility—” He sat up and gazed benignly at them all. “Widowhood.”

“Ooh.” Iris brightened. “I could wear black. I look positively ethereal in black! And Callie would make a lovely widow, wouldn’t she, dearest?”

Archie beamed. “Stunning!”

The twins stood as one.

“So, we’re all in—”

“For a spot of murder?”

“What shall it be? Poison?”

“Too girlish. Not enough blood.”

“True, true. I see your point.”

“A carriage accident?”

“Hmm. Might harm the horses.”

“We can’t have that. No, indeed—”

“There will be no murder!” Dade stood in the center of the room and pointed them all out in turn, one sibling for each word. He didn’t see Attie, who had been still as a stone during the twins’ dialogue.

Poison.

Heavens to Betsy … what an interesting idea.

Chapter 6

Callie woke early. Outside the tall windows of her bedchamber, the Cotswolds countryside was still dark, as the spring days had not lengthened enough to match her sleep patterns. Curling into a tight ball beneath the heavy coverlet, she tucked her clasped hands beneath her chin and breathed into the silent darkness.

Married.

Married to a strange man.

A flash of the night before crossed her thoughts and half-embarrassed, half-aroused heat washed over her body. A very, very strange man.

Callie had lived among strange people all her life. Her mother, Iris, who was no slouch in the realm of eccentricity, had two sisters, both odder than herself. Auntie Poppy cleaned everything she touched thrice. Every time she touched it. Auntie Clementine was prone to collecting small yapping dogs, which she sometimes carried in the drooping bodices of her gowns. Poppy expressed great disgust every time Clemmie kissed them on the mouth.

Therefore, strange was not so strange, not for Callie. However, nowhere in the crowded, cheerful penury that passed for existence in the Worthington household did dwell such darkness as flowed through every corner of this luxurious manor.

Realizing that there was no point in hiding away from her abrupt change in destiny—for cowering in bed changed nothing and never would—Callie threw back the covers and swung her feet to the icy floor. Was her husband a miser, to keep the place so cold? Or perhaps a spartan, who did not feel the chill the way she did?

Well, that simply wouldn’t do. She’d always hated being cold.

Questions about Mr. Porter filled her mind: questions about his present, his past, and his intentions. She would prefer that answers took their place, answers that were not to be had in the safety of her bedchamber.

With a bit of luck, she managed to find a single glowing coal in the hearth with which to light her candle. She roamed the room, lighting every wax stub she could find. Light turned her bedchamber from a black cavern to a surprisingly graceful room. The lady’s chamber, obvious by the look of the pretty spindled chairs and the delicately inlaid vanity. The room where she’d met her … husband.

The jewel casket was gone from its place on the vanity. Callie turned away, refusing to dwell on that fateful night and its alarming revelations.

Shaking her head at the crockery pitcher sitting dry and useless on her washstand, she dressed without bathing. Pinning her hair up in a tight bun, donning the more workaday gown of the two salvaged from the river—for clearly she was going to have to do for herself in this servantless hall—she prepared herself for her new life.

The richly carved oak door of her bedchamber had kept out her destiny for the night. Taking the largest of her candlesticks, she put her hand on the latch and pressed. Time to face her future.

Nearly an hour later, she had to conclude that her future had gone out for the day. Mr. Porter was nowhere to be found, not even in the farthest reaches of the manor. He must have left before the dawn that now stretched rosy fingers across the eastern sky.

Odd. He hadn’t seemed the out-and-about sort.

Frustrated that her hard-won bravery had come to nothing and relieved, as well, she decided that the first order of her solitary day would be to supply her own needs. Water could be had in the kitchens. And food. She’d seen that the larder was fully equipped on her first pass of exploration that fateful night.

On closer inspection, she noted the signs of past random rummaging through the hung meats and cheeses. Frowning, she couldn’t decide if such disregard for conventional household help was admirable or pathetic. Apparently Mr. Porter was prone to feeding himself rough-hewn chunks of this and that. In response, she carved herself thin, delicate slices. She also left a tray of them, attractively arranged, for Mr. Porter’s next foray.

Humming, she carried her meal into the baking kitchen. Great ovens covered nearly the whole of one wall, ready to cook for dozens of staff and household and visitors. In the growing light through the large glazed windows, they looked dusty and desolate to Callie—simply crying out to be used, to be required, to be needed.

Well, then, so be it. Stuffing the wood box of one of the giant beasts took most of the logs she found outside in the kitchen yard. Lighting it was no problem, for the wood was old and very dry. Soon the roaring flames warmed the kitchen, turning the sad, desolate room into a cheery haven.

Eggs were to be had in the henhouse that resided out beyond a long-neglected kitchen garden, where it appeared that someone was lackadaisically tending a sparse flock. To be sure the eggs were recently laid, Callie sank her finds in a bowl of water. The ones that floated she discarded. The ones remaining, she beat into a rich batter with butter found in the larder and flour and sugar from the vast cavern of a pantry. Without a yeast starter, she could not make bread.

“Let them eat cake,” she murmured to herself with a smile. Soon the kitchen wing was redolent with the sugary, light smell of sweets baking within.

While the cake baked, she heated several pails of water on top of the stove. She found the copper bathing tubs stacked in a storeroom not far away and managed to wrest the smallest one down the hall. Grinning at the horrendous screeching sound of metal on the stone floor, she did her best to be as loud as possible in the matter. Something needed to fill this hollow shell of a house.

By the time she’d wrangled the thing into the overly warm kitchen, she was rather warm herself. Pushing her falling hair back with one damp wrist, she promised herself the soak of a lifetime. All she lacked was some sweet-smelling soap or bath salts.

Soap eluded her search. It must be kept somewhere else in the house, someplace that made sense to the staff of thirty that ought to be here. Asking thin air worked not at all.

Terrible place. No staff, no occupants. Not even a decent ghost about!

Callie satisfied herself with filling a small bowl with a handful of salt and dried herbs. Rosemary and mint scrubbed as well as anything. Just in case, she peered carefully up and down the hall of the kitchen wing before she stripped off her dress and underthings.

Gasping at the heat as she slid into the water, she exhaled in a moan of exquisite pleasure as she sank up to her chin.

Although she adored being clean, bathing was always a challenge in the Worthington household. One did with lukewarm water so as not to tax the elderly staff. Baths were usually brief due to constant interruptions by her sisters and sometimes canceled altogether due to abrupt spikes in the usual level of chaos. Callie would be called out dripping and fuming to put out fires—sometimes literal fires, in fact. Orion’s recent experiments tended toward the combustible and Atalanta’s fascination with flame had kept them all on edge in her early years.

So was it any wonder that she now soaked until her skin turned red and her fingers pruned? The cakes cooling on their racks filled the air with sweetness and the herbs in her bath lent a spicy undertone. The quiet reverberated in her ears until she dunked her head to escape the exquisite disturbance it caused in her chest. Silence such as she had only dreamed of, peace so deep she felt as if she were the only survivor of the human race—should it not be pleasurable? Yet she found it unsettling. It seemed a tense sort of silence, as if the entire house held its breath, waiting … waiting for what?

Rising from the water, she shook off that silly fancy as she shook back her dripping hair. Using the coarse cleanser she’d created, she lifted one leg onto the side of the tub and began to bathe.

The scrubbing salt did a marvelous job and the herbs left a delicious tingle on her skin. The only disadvantage to her solitary luxury was that she had no housemaid or sister to scrub her back. Twisting, she reached as far as possible but there was still that one spot between her shoulder blades—

A large male hand, with muscled forearm exposed by a rolled-up sleeve, reached past her to delve into the bowl of salt and herbs. Callie squeaked in alarm, quickly curling up around her nudity, then froze as that hand began to move in slow gentle circles over her back, smoothing the gritty scrub into her skin.

Swallowing the sudden dryness in her mouth, she cleared her throat. “Mr. Porter, I am quite capable of—”

“Hold out your hand.”

She obeyed unthinkingly, her thoughts still consumed by the large warm hand moving over her naked skin. Into her wet palm dropped a single pearl. Ah. The terms. Callie slowly closed her hand over the pearl, then closed her eyes and dropped her chin to her chest. Permission granted.