He frowned as he watched White scramble off to do Constantine’s bidding without a backward glance for Callum—the traitor. “I don’t have a cook,” Callum growled, “and I fired yours.” He’d fired all the servants upon his arrival at his home before he’d raced away to stop her from wedding his cousin. The sweeping announcement to the assembled employees had been very efficient and taken less time than it took him to inhale three breaths.
She arched her eyebrows at him. “Yes, I discovered rather quickly what you’d done, so I felt no guilt in moving just as quickly to hire more servants while you were in your sickbed.” She pursed her lips. “It was not well done of you to let go of the servants that were here.”
“I want no one in this house who has not been completely loyal to me.” He mimicked her gesture of a moment ago and arched his eyebrows at her, but the simple movement made his face ache.
“I thought perhaps that was the case,” she said, her eyes now twinkling with knowledge. “Which is why I took the liberty to hunt down all the employees that you had to let go when your money was so scarce. You’ll find that all your beloved servants from your childhood—those who are still working, that is—are employed by you once more.”
He felt momentarily touched that she’d gone to such trouble and been so aware of how he might feel, but he shoved the warm feeling aside. Warm feelings for Constantine and the things she did or might do would not do either of them any good. Such feelings did not linger long enough to chase away the demons that haunted him by day and night.
“I always knew you were clever,” he said, the praise slipping before he could stop himself.
“Was that a compliment?” She cocked her head at him in that way he, unfortunately, could recall so thoroughly. He could recall everything about her thoroughly, as if she were a live painting in his mind, captured for all eternity. When he’d first arrived at the asylum, he had clung to memories of her, determined to escape and come back to her, or to survive until someone found him. But no one had come, and his escape had taken much longer than he’d ever anticipated.
“Callum?”
He shook off the memory and focused on her, trying to recall what they had been talking about. Oh, yes, the compliment that had slipped out. “I give compliments when they are due,” he replied.
Lies.He could give her ten compliments this instant, but he wouldn’t. The man who would have complimented how her deep-blue gown looked ravishing with her skin, or how her soft hair flowing over her shoulders made her look like she was made to be loved, or how her eyes beckoned him to grab her face and kiss her, had to be kept in an invisible cell because the havoc he could cause her if he spoke the words was intolerable to him.
“Nevertheless,” he said, bringing himself back to the problem at hand with great effort, “since our agreement is off, you must depart. You can live in the country, and I’ll live here.”
“No.”
“No?” He narrowed his eyes, expecting her to at least blanch, but she stared defiantly at him. Good God, he’d forgotten how very like steel her spine was, though she looked extremely breakable. He’d also forgotten how much her bold nature enticed him, and now his body flared fully awake at her show of inner strength.
“Yes,” she clipped, “I said no. You are a man of your word still, are you not? Or did you lose your honor in your time away?”
“I lost it,” he bit out, refusing to allow the memories to come.
She blanched at that and then glanced over her shoulder at Peter, who was grinning still as he looked back and forth between them. Callum glared at the boy once more. He was enjoying this little show entirely too much.
Peter’s smile slid away, and he said, “I’ll just go do whatever it is a lord’s son does.”
“What?” Callum asked, certain he’d not heard correctly.
Peter’s face fell as he looked at Constantine. “I told you he would not wish to make me an honorary son.”
Callum’s chest began to tighten, but he willed it to stop. Never had a suggestion been more right, and never had a lady been more generous, more understanding, but he could not allow himself to feel too much. It would endanger his ability to send her away from him.
“Very sensible,” he managed, aware that she was scrutinizing him. “This way I don’t have to waste time finding somewhere for him to go.”
“Precisely,” she said, staring as if she was watching for something.
He’d show nothing of the relief he felt that Peter would be staying with him. In his time with the lad in the cell, he had come to think of Peter as the son he might never have.
“I thought,” she said, perching on the edge of his bed so that her spicy scent tickled his nose, “that since you would likely treat Peter as an honorary son, you would want to settle a large sum of money on him in case anything ever happened to you.”
Peter looked very uneasy, and Callum had the overwhelming and quite annoying urge to reassure him it was true that he wanted to do just that, that he should have thought of it himself, but he said nothing. Soft emotions could not be for him now, perhaps never again. He was out for justice and protection of Constantine, and that meant he needed to be cold, hard, and calculating.
“Do I have enough money to settle a large sum on Peter?” He recalled what she’d had a year ago, but the devil only knew what his cousin had done with the money that he had temporarily claimed as his.
“Yes, you do,” she said, grinning. “It took quite a long while to sort out the legal documents once you were…once you were—”
“Declared truly dead,” he supplied. From the corner of his eye, he noted Peter slip out of the room.
She nodded. “And by then, I discovered I had a knack for running the estate. I rehired Mr. Pepperdine.”
Callum blinked in surprise. “My father’s old solicitor?”
