Callum’s nostrils flared. Yes, he was eager to see how he could fix this mess. He had raced here from Paris upon receiving news that his father was dying with the intention of making amends and begging forgiveness for the years of strife between them, but he’d been too late. And now, a mere month after burying his father, he’d lost the very land that had driven them apart.
“I suppose you could say that,” Callum replied, his temper crackling like wood on a roaring fire. His gaze fell to the glass before him and the dark liquor it held. In his mind, he saw suddenly the rich dirt falling onto the top of his father’s casket. Callum had vowed to do better as he’d watched that dirt fall. He’d vowed to make his father proud in death where he had failed to do so in life, to finally be the son, the marquess, his father had wanted him to be. He jerked a hand through his hair. How had this happened? All his father had wanted was for Callum to care about the land, and all Callum had desired was for his father to let him pursue his dreams and tell him just once that he was proud of him.
Callum clenched his hands into fists under the table as the same realization that had hit him standing over his father’s dead body a month ago, and every night since, overwhelmed him once more now. He could have pursued artandlearned the duties of being the marquess. He could have offered the compromise, but he hadn’t and neither had his father. Years of them being at odds, from Callum’s pride smarting from his father comparing him to eager Ross, land lover Ross, had made Callum angry and resentful, and his father had been angry and resentful too. Callum now understood it was because he had not embraced the things his father had to give him—the inheritance and his guidance on how to manage it and his life.
Neither of them had been willing to be the one to budge. They’d both been a pair of fools. His father had become cold and seemingly indifferent to Callum, and Callum had striven to goad him into showing reactions by indulging in a lifestyle of utter excess. But it had worn on him, and when he’d heard his father was dying, Callum had known with absolute painful clarity that he despised himself and his existence, and he wanted to make amends somehow, find a compromise someway.
“Kilgore, did you hear me?”
At the sharp question, Callum jerked his gaze up from the glass and his musings. “What?”
“I want your talents, and as I assumed you’d not willingly cooperate, given what I know of you, I needed a bargaining chip.”
Callum frowned. “My talents?”
“For getting women to part with their virtue,” Talbot said, then picked up the drink before him and downed it.
Callum had never actually seduced an innocent. It was one of the few rules he’d made for himself and actually hadn’t broken. His thorns would cut straight through the delicate outer shell of a woman not yet jaded by life. He had enough things to keep him up at night; he didn’t need to be a destroyer of innocents, as well. “I’m afraid that is not my forte.”
“Then make it so. I’ve heard enough gossip to know women fall over themselves to get in your bed.”
Oh, self-loathing was a beast. It took a bite out of his hide as he sat there and made him twitch. Talbot frowned at him. “That’s not a talent I wish to cultivate,” Callum said.
“Then you must not wish your land back, either, as doing what I ask is the only way you’ll get it.”
Callum’s hand jerked to his neck of its own volition, yanking his cravat loose, but that invisible noose that Talbot had slipped around Callum was still there, chafing his skin. “What precisely is it you wish me to do?” he asked, pitching his voice low, though no one else was in this particular corner of White’s to overhear them. Still, shame made one see eavesdroppers everywhere, he supposed. In Callum’s mind, the conversation carried.
Talbot leaned forward. “To begin with, I want you to get up, walk to the other room to the wager book with me, and then enter into a very public wager.”
Nothing about this sounded good so far, but with his father’s unentailed land at stake, what choice was there? “A wager regarding what?”
Talbot smiled slowly. “The Ice Queen. Or rather, Lady Constantine Colgate. I wish you to seduce her so that everyone knows of it—and leave her in ruin.”
Callum clenched his teeth, his conscience in an immediate battle with his desperation to win back his father’s land. It took a moment of effort, but he was finally able to loosen his teeth enough to force out words. “And if I do, I get the land returned to me?”
“Some of it. I’ll retain some in case I need other favors.”
He would enjoy killing Talbot, if only Callum were a cold-blooded killer. “Of course,” he bit out. “And why do you wish to ruin this lady?”
“She thinks herself better than me. Better than all of us, really. She repudiated me.”
The lady sounded quite intelligent to him. Talbot was an ass, always had been. Cheating on exams, disrespectful of women, bullying younger, smaller boys. Damn it all. What a pit of shite he’d dived into. Either choice would leave him more of a reprobate than he already was, and he was supposed to be reforming himself. “And if I refuse?”
“I’ll not waste a minute handing the land over to Ross, who will never give it back to you. We both know that.”
He did, but he didn’t acknowledge it to this bastard. Ross considered the unentailed land his by right after helping Callum’s father make decisions regarding it for so many years, which wasn’t entirely unfair and why Callum had allowed Ross to run Castle Stratmore. But there had been a reason Callum’s father hadn’t given Ross the land, so Callum damn sure didn’t want to do so, which he realized suited the part of him that had never forgotten the beatings Ross had given him as a young boy.
“You want to ruin the lady simply because she repudiated you?”
“Not just that. She’s also a vindictive bitch.”
Oh, nowthatheld possibility. He didn’t have to hate himself nearly as much if he was ruining someone who deserved it. He only had to hate himself marginally more than he already did if that was the case. He would meet the lady. There was no harm in that. And then he would judge for himself whether she was as nasty as Talbot claimed she was. If so, well then, he’d proceed. But if she wasn’t, he’d simply have to find another way to regain his father’s land.
Chapter Four
“How do I look?” Callum asked Valentine one sennight later as they made their way into Lady Fortenberry’s ball where he’d discovered Lady Constantine would be tonight.
“Like a man about to lose the last shreds of his humanity,” his friend grumbled, being his usual forthright self.
