“Excellent. And let down your hair,” he commanded, suddenly all business. “It is not the clothes or lack thereof that makes a woman desirable. It’s the look on the face and in the eyes. It is your essence.”
Later that day, once the session was over and she’d seen Monsieur Lamont out, she stood alone in the painting studio and studied the sketch he had remarkably almost completed. She was amazed with how he had managed to make her look alluring. She was reclining on the settee with one leg pulled up, her right foot resting by her left thigh, so that her right leg was fully and scandalously visible. She had a rather nice leg, if she did say so herself, but it was the look in her eyes that made her blush. She looked as if she had been satisfied sexually.
She started to make her way to her bedchamber but heard the dinner bell and proceeded downstairs with little hope that she’d find Callum waiting. Of course, he was not, and her disappointment stole her appetite. She found herself starting to cry, but as the first few tears fell and she was staring at the empty spot where Callum should be, irritation and determination replaced her sadness. She was going to make a family for him—for them—whether he wanted it or not. This home would not be filled with tears another day, but instead with laughter and warmth that hopefully would reach Callum, wrap around him, and make him feel safe enough to confide in her.
Callum gritted his teeth as he made his way into the house sometime around two in the morning. It had taken far more beatings than he’d anticipated to abuse his body enough that when he thought of his wife, he was not filled with the instant desire to bed her. The house was quiet, and though he took great care not to make a sound, each step up the stairs made him hiss. He was not surprised when Peter appeared out of the shadows, but hewassurprised by Peter’s angry look.
“You made her cry,” Peter accused. “By staying away, you made her cry. She sat in the dining room alone tonight, crying softly, but I heard her.”
Callum’s chest twisted. Peter’s words were like a swift jab straight to Callum’s windpipe, and suddenly he couldn’t breathe. It took him a moment to get himself under control enough to answer. “That’s unfortunate,” he said, “but you know, as well as I do, that I’m dangerous to her unless I can put my past behind me. Even if I can, I may well remain dangerous to her if the nightmares don’t cease.” There was also no certainty that once Callum told Constantine what he’d done, that she would forgive him.
After Callum sent Peter back to his chambers, he walked the rest of the way upstairs and down the hall to his bedchamber. He paused outside Constantine’s closed door, fighting against everything in him that wanted to go in, but the need to ensure she was all right won out. He opened the door very slowly, then crept into her room, finding her in a tangle of bed linens as if her sleep had been fitful. Her night rail was hiked all the way up her thighs, exposing the creamy heaven of her skin. His fingers twitched to run his hands over the slope of her long, well-shaped legs. Her head was turned so that he could see her long, dark eyelashes fanning the delicate skin under her eyes. Her chest rose with long, deep breaths, each one more precious to him than anything in this world, including his own happiness.
And that was the thought he concentrated on to make himself leave instead of going to her, lying down behind her, and pulling her into his embrace. He was supposed to be her protector, and so he would be, even when it meant he had to protect her from himself.
Four days.She had not seen Callum in four days! She tapped her foot against the hardwood floor of the drawing room, her irritation growing as the day descended to night once more. She suspected this would make the fourthnighthe did not come home, as well. She knew during the day he was with Guinevere’s and Lilias’s husbands because her friends had told her so, but she also knew their husbands always returned home each night at reasonable hours, unlike Callum, who had come home well after midnight four nights ago.
She would have been frantic that something had happened to him, except she’d caught White leaving the house after the first night Callum had not returned home, and when she’d questioned White as to where he was going, he’d accidentally let slip that he was taking a change of clothes to Callum at the Orcus Society. Upon further gentle prodding, White had told her Callum was sleeping there.
Things could not go on this way, but until she had a clue to follow, her hands were rather tied. She had considered going to confront Callum, but that would only drive him further from her. So each night she was doing what she’d promised herself she would do four nights ago when she’d cried at the supper table: she was endeavoring to fill the house with warmth and happiness instead of useless tears.
So far that had involved dancing lessons, at which both Peter and White had initially grumbled, but both of them had returned the second night with surprising eagerness. Normally they started dancing lessons promptly at eight, but Peter and White had requested they start later tonight as they had apparently offered to help in the mews. That had surprised her, given she’d not even realized they’d become acquainted with the coachman and stable master, but she had bit the inside of her cheek on questioning it and making them feel uncomfortable. But as the drawing room clock chimed and she realized it was now nine, she wondered if they were going to come for the dancing lessons at all. What could they possibly be doing in the mews at this hour?
And then, as if her thoughts of them had conjured them, Peter and White appeared in the doorway, all smiles.
“Are we continuing our lessons with the Gallopade?” Peter asked as they entered the drawing room.
Constantine nodded. As the dance involved simple moves, she’d thought it a good place to start their lessons. Both Peter and White had nearly mastered it, and that was important to make them feel successful, as well as let them have fun. To her utter astonishment the first night, White had proven to be a very good pianoforte player, too. He’d told her he had learned as a child, and it was just there in the memory of his fingers.
She frowned as she studied them both. They looked suspiciously clean if they had been working in the mews. “Are you certain the two of you were in the mews?”
Peter and White exchanged a rather obvious guilty look, but they both nodded, Peter walking toward her and White taking a seat at the pianoforte. “I’ll play first,” he said.
She opened her mouth to question them further, but before she could get a word out, White launched into a melody and Peter grasped her around the waist and eagerly started the steps of the dance.Later.She would question them later, she decided, shuffling to the left in a bustle of excitement. Peter twirled her once, twice, three times, and then they missed a step, nearly crashed, and recovered rather supremely only to burst into raucous laughter that had them both doubling over and grabbing at their sides.
“How is she?” Callum demanded of his footman, Jenkins, who opened the door of Callum’s townhome even as Callum had been doing so himself.
“Do you mean Lady Kilgore?” Jenkins asked, sounding so confused that Callum paused at the foot of the stairs he’d been about to race up. In the moment of stillness, laughter drifted to him from the direction of the drawing room.
He frowned. “Is that Lady Kilgore I hear?” Callum asked, his body seeming to know instinctively by the way it was hardening at the mere sound of her voice. When the footman nodded, Callum felt his frown deepen. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m afraid I don’t, either, my lord,” the footman said, his voice apologetic.
Callum brought the missive that he’d received not long ago at the Orcus Society up between them. “You sent me a message to come home immediately. That Lady Kilgore had taken a fall down the stairs.” Callum’s heart still felt as if it was lodged in his throat from reading the message. In the time he’d raced here from the cellar of the Orcus Society, where he’d been fighting in the ring to try to beat the gnawing need to see her and touch her out of him, he felt he’d aged a thousand years with worry.
“I assure you, Lord Kilgore, I sent you no such message, and Lady Kilgore has taken no fall.”
“Then who?” Callum demanded, the laughter from the direction of the drawing room growing louder, and the need to see Constantine felt nearly uncontrollable. He’d stayed away the last three nights, knowing that if he saw her, it might have been too hard to resist touching her, and if he touched her, he would be lost. She was all he craved now. His desire for opium had been nothing compared with his desire for her.
“I don’t know,” Jenkins said, shaking his head. Then he paused midmotion and frowned. “I did find Peter in my room earlier today. It’s where I keep my parchment for writing messages. And I did see Peter and White leave the house earlier this evening and return not long ago. But why—”
Callum waved the man to silence. He already knew why, and it made him happy and angry at the same time. Peter and White had written to him, deceived him, for her. Whether at her request or not, he could not say for certain, but he could not imagine her conjuring up such a plan. Peter, on the other hand, he could well imagine crafting such a harebrained scheme, and Peter had a way of persuading White to go along with him. Callum had seen it at the asylum when Peter and White would pull simple tricks on the guards.
“I believe I know why,” Callum said, looking to his left in the direction of the laughter. He should leave. He should depart immediately, return to the Orcus Society, climb back into the ring, finish battering his body, and then end the night with several rounds of stiff drinks with Beckford, as Callum had done for the last several nights. It had taken all the will he’d possessed to stay away, and now that he was here, now that he could hear her merriment, literally feel her presence and joy in his home, it was as if there were some invisible binds around him tugging him to her.
He had moved toward the drawing room before he knew what he was doing.One look.That’s all he would take. One glance at her face, and then he would leave. He knew she was fine, and yet, the missive had settled fear in his heart and his gut for her. Light streamed out from the drawing room door as he drew near, and her laughter, as well as Peter’s and White’s, mingled with the notes of the pianoforte. He crept toward the cracked door, his hunger to see her growing to a proportion that robbed him of his ability to breathe properly, and then he peered in.
A rush of longing swept through him as he drank her in. Her gown was white but fit close to her chest and showed the tiniest expanse of skin. That sliver of her flesh almost drove him to his knees with wanting. He clenched his teeth and fisted his hands as he watched her long hair flutter as Peter twirled her, and her beautiful eyes danced with happiness. He wanted to go to her. He wanted to touch her. To love her. To—
