“No,” Constantine replied, not drawing her gaze from the window and passing scenery of Mayfair as the carriage made its way to the church where she would be wedding Ross Fergussoune.
Her mother started prattling on about the weather, the church, how happy she was that Constantine would be wed to Ross, whom she deemed so much more respectable and reliable than his cousin. At that slight against Callum’s character, true or not, Constantine purposely ignored her mother and turned her mind to the past. It was the last time she was going to allow herself to do so. She’d sworn it. Once she was married today, she would put away all her memories of Callum.
She hadn’t even known Callum had a cousin until Ross had shown up on the night of their wedding, urging him to go to Scotland immediately as there was an emergency at Callum’s estate there, which Ross oversaw in Callum’s stead. She smoothed a hand over the white silk of her wedding gown, wishing suddenly she had not worn white as Callum’s voice, low and smooth, and the words he’d said to her the night they’d first met six years earlier filled her mind.
I have never cared for the color white until tonight. I thought it bland, unimaginative, but seeing you in white…He had paused and stared at her for so long that she had found herself holding her breath and leaning toward the man she knew of only by his roguish reputation. I see now that white is the color of promise, a blank canvas to start over with. You make white ravishing. You warm it.
Well, she’d been quite dumbstruck and dazzled at that compliment.
She stared out at the stark winter scene as it drifted by, feeling the pulse at the hollow of her neck quicken as only Callum had ever made it do. He had been the first and only man she’d ever loved. He’d been her seducer many years ago, though he had never fully finished the seduction. Oh, they’d come close. Scandalously, searingly close. The memory of it still set an ache between her thighs. But it hardly mattered in the end that her virtue had remained intact.
Thetonhad still whispered viciously over her mere acquaintance with him, and they had not even known the half of it! Her reputation had come into question. But before the gossip had started, before it had all been ruined, in the time and space between hope and devastation, she’d impulsively gone to see him in his painting studio at his invitation. She’d fallen in love with him that day and all the secret-meeting days that followed which were filled with conversation and caresses and kisses.
Looking back, she understood that she’d never truly known the enigma who was the man. She’d initially thought him a rogue when they’d met. Then she’d allowed herself to believe he was so much more. He’d made her feel beautiful and seen and alive, as no one ever had. So when he had admitted that he had intentionally sought her out to seduce her because he’d accepted a wicked wager to win back the land he’d lost in a drunken game of cards… Well, she had believed him when he’d told her he had fallen under her spell. She had thought him a changed man, a man who truly cared for her. How silly she had been.
Or perhaps not so silly. He’d been very smooth, asking to court her mere sennights after they’d met, and she’d been thrilled, lost to his charms by then. She’d insisted he could come to her house that very next night. She could even recall excitedly telling him she would get her mother to add his name to the dinner party her mother was hosting. She cringed at the memory. How he must have laughed at her on the inside. Of course, he had not shown up at her home that next night for supper, nor simply to speak to her mother. Just as her father had never returned home for supper, or birthdays, or to break his fast, or to sleep.
And fool that she was, she had been certain Callum had a reason, that he did love her, that there was longing in his eyes when he looked at her. She had made him into a complex man of honor for admitting his past sins, and she could not think all those hours together in conversation with slivers of secrets revealed had truly been to seduce her, that the very revelation itself was part of the seduction.
But eventually, she had seen him again by chance, and he had been so cold and distant. He had finally told her, in no uncertain terms, that all their time together had been for him to win back his unentailed land and fortune from that swine Pierce Talbot, and when it became apparent that Talbot would not keep his word, well, Callum had no use for her. He did not really want to court her. A stinging blow to be sure, which had surprised her since she was so used to rejection. Her father had not even wanted her love. He’d preferred his mistress’s beautiful daughter, whom he called hisrealdaughter, to Constantine.
The carriage rattled down the road as the memories rattled in Constantine’s head. No, she’d never known Callum. She’d thought him a rogue, then honorable, then a rogue again, and then he’d defied that label once more by becoming a staunch defender of her reputation when rumors of her ruination by his hands started to swirl. She knew for a fact he’d fought several duels in the name of her honor, but he had never come to her and offered the one thing that would silence all the wagging tongues—marriage. And that had cut like a deep, jagged knife straight into her heart.
Yet, the heart was a funny organ. It had held hope that her mind had convinced her was no longer there. Except, when she had heard—over a year ago now—that Callum had been wounded, possibly mortally, her heart had sent her rushing to his home, to his bedside, to him. As she had looked around his estate, which was in disrepair and void of any servants, her heart had ached for him, for her, for what she had once thought they might have—love, friendship, children—and she’d blurted that rash bargain. If he would give her the child she so desperately wanted, she would use her fortune to put his estates back to rights. And he’d accepted.
The carriage hit a bump in the road, jostling her mother into her and another memory into Constantine’s mind.
Beaten beyond recognition. That’s how Ross had told her he’d found Callum after two tireless months of searching for him. She could never thank Ross enough for all he had done after his carriage had been overcome by bandits. Ross had tried to save Callum when they’d taken him and he had gotten shot for his efforts. Of course, they all knew now Callum had owed debts to the men who had taken him that night on the road out of London.
She could still recall the shock she’d felt when Ross had come to her late one evening after searching all day for his cousin once more. Her skin prickled with the memory now. It had numbed her all the way through, but she’d managed to ask, “How do you know it’s him if he’s beaten so badly?”
Ross had given her a pitying look and pressed Callum’s crest ring into her hand. Then he’d motioned at a pile of clothes, folded neatly on the desktop in Callum’s study that she had not noticed when the butler had announced that Mr. Ross Fergussoune was there to see her.
Clothes and a ring. That’s all she had left of the man she had loved desperately, hated thoroughly, and then wed foolishly.
The carriage rattled to a halt in front of St. Stephen’s Church, and Constantine blinked, then frowned at the crowd. She had not wanted a large wedding, but Ross had insisted. He’d said he wanted her to have the respect she deserved as the new marchioness, as his wife. She still could not truly think of him as the marquess, but he was. He was Kilgore now, if only legally. In actuality, Ross was like a half-waning moon to the glorious full moon that Callum had been. But though Ross would never make her feel as alive as Callum had, he was kind and dependable and would make a good father. And he was persistent. He’d persisted doggedly in befriending her, and then he had persisted, just as single-mindedly, in courting her.
Even when she had told him that Callum had perhaps permanently broken her heart, Ross had told her that his had been broken by a woman in his past, as well, and that was why the two of them now made a perfect couple. They would wed for companionship and a child. The possibility of a child was what had convinced her. She didn’t desire the man who was to be her husband, but she longed for a child to love as she had never been loved—unconditionally. Her mother had a million conditions, and her father had only been disappointed in her.
She stared at the crowd making its way into the church, and irritation blossomed. She was quite sure she could count on her fingers the number of people among the hundreds in attendance who were actually her friends and there to wish her well. The rest were here to gossip. As the carriage door opened and the coachman handed her down, she thought one last time of Callum and how he had looked at her on their wedding day. It had been just them and the Duke and Duchess of Greybourne as witnesses. Her mother had not even attended, as she’d vowed Constantine would rue the day she wed “a man like Kilgore.”
But the wedding, despite it being a marriage of convenience, had filled her with inexplicable hope and anticipation.
She made her way from the carriage and to the church doors. The music struck up, and she pasted a smile on her face and proceeded down the long aisle, trying not to feel so doubtful about what she was doing. Heads swiveled toward her, and she smiled so wide her cheeks ached.
Doubts began to besiege her, and her footsteps faltered three rows from Ross. Sandy-blond eyebrows dipped into a deep frown over his green eyes. He was a very handsome man in his own right, all lightness to Callum’s dark looks, and she should have been attracted to Ross.
I’ll never again know a love that makes me feel as if I shall burst.
She clenched her teeth against the thought. She would know that love for her child. She could live without feeling the sort of ridiculous love that made one a fool, the sort of love that hurt. She’d been hurt and foolish enough for a hundred lifetimes.
Ross motioned to her, and she forced herself to keep moving. The time for doubts had passed. It was her wedding day. She had agreed to this, and she would go forth with it and gain the child she had always wanted. She was trembling horribly when Ross took her hand and squeezed it. He leaned toward her, whispering in her ear, “You look like a perfect marchioness.”
It should have made her feel better, but instead it infuriated her. She had to bite her tongue on the sharp rejoinder that no one was perfect. Her mother had wanted her to be as perfect in demeanor as possible, since her talents and looks did not compare to the daughter of her father’s mistress. Her mother took Constantine’s faults as if Constantine had failed her personally by not being born beautiful, by not being so interesting that she could have made her father stay at home instead of always leaving them for his other family.
She shoved the thoughts away and widened her smile, but it faltered as more of Callum’s words to her on their wedding day filled her head:You look like the most perfect picture I long to paint. You’re ravishing.
Why had he said such a lovely thing when he’d only wed her for her fortune? She would never know. The thing to do was focus on the here and now, which she did rather well up until the vicar asked if any man had any impediments to declare or allege that would hinder her and Ross from wedding.
