“I would think very carefully before you say any more, Oxford,” Ralston said through gritted teeth.
“But why would I do that?” Callie noticed the baron sway with the words, and she couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps he were foxed. “I’ve got nothing to lose, you see. I’ve already lost, haven’t I?”
At that moment, Mariana and Benedick stumbled out onto the balcony, interrupting the conversation. “Callie,” Mariana said breathlessly. “You should come with me.”
Callie’s eyes widened. “Why? What has happened?”
Mariana met Ralston’s eyes with a scathing, imperious look. “Nothing yet, thankfully.” Turning back to her sister, she repeated, “You must come with me. Now.”
Callie shook her head, backing up until she could feel Ralston’s nearness. Taking in Oxford’s smirking grin, Mariana’s pleading gaze, and Benedick’s stoic one, she turned to Ralston. “Gabriel?” she asked, confusion and uncertainty in the single word.
“Callie. Go with Mariana,” Benedick interrupted.
Callie turned on her brother. “I will not. I will not leave before someone tells me precisely what is happening.” Shifting her gaze to Mariana, she said, “Mari?”
Mariana sighed. “It is being said that Oxford and Ralston placed a wager upon you.”
The idea was so preposterous that Callie laughed. “What kind of wager?”
“They are saying inside that Ralston bet Oxford that he could not win your hand.” Benedick’s eyes did not leave Ralston—his loathing barely contained. “And, when he discovered that Oxford was close to winning you—he took you for himself.”
“They’re saying that you’ve been compromised, Callie, and that is why Ralston…” Mariana trailed off.
Callie laughed again. “How very dramatic. Can you imagine?” She turned her smiling eyes on Ralston, expecting him to share in her amusement. In the face of his hard, unmoving expression, however, truth dawned. “Oh.” She looked to smug Oxford. “Oh.”
“Poor girl. You thought he actually wanted you,” he said with a smirk.
“Stop, Oxford.” Ralston’s words were ice-cold.
Callie turned on him. “You made a wager? On me?”
“Indeed he did,” Oxford said with a boastful tone, as though he was happy to be in the thick of the moment that would forever change her life. “He bet me that you wouldn’t marry me. And when it looked like I might win, he doubled the wager and courted you to ensure that he’d win. I suspect that it didn’t hurt that aligning himself to your family would also guarantee his sister a sound place in society.”
Callie did not remove her gaze from Ralston. “Is it true? Did you wager on me?”
There was a beat as Ralston searched for the right answer. And, in that moment, Callie knew.
Ralston took a step toward her, and she backed away, Mariana placing a reassuring hand at the small of her back as he said, almost desperately, “It wasn’t like that.”
“How much?”
“Callie.” Mariana whispered, trying to avoid a scene, but Callie held up a hand to stay her words.
“How much, my lord?”
He looked away. “Two thousand pounds.”
Callie felt as though the breath had been knocked out of her.
“When?” she whispered.
“Callie—”
“When?” She repeated, louder.
“The afternoon of your sister’s betrothal ball.”
Callie’s face fell. “The day you asked me to dance.”
His eyes widened as he registered the timeline. “Callie—”
“No.” She shook her head. “And when did you double it?”
When he did not answer, she turned to Oxford. “When did he double it?”
Oxford wavered. “Tuesday.”
The morning he proposed. He’d still thought of her as nothing more than a wager only a short time ago.
“I should have known,” she whispered, the sound so sad, so raw, that Ralston thought his heart would break. “I should have known you didn’t really…you couldn’t really…” She trailed off. She took a deep breath before she looked up at him, her enormous brown eyes glistening with unshed tears, and said, “I would have helped you with Juliana anyway. I would have done anything you asked of me.”
The truth of her past unwavering devotion overwhelmed her, and a single tear tracked down her cheek before she wiped it away in irritation. She could barely hear the sounds of the ball beyond for the blood pounding in her ears as a wave of familiar insecurity crashed over her.
She had been so very very stupid.
How many times had she told herself that Ralston was not for her? That she was too plain, too plump, too inexperienced and uninteresting to capture his interest? How many times had she been warned? By her family, her friends, his mistress, for God’s sake. And yet she had allowed herself to believe that the fantasy could be real. That, one day, the world had tilted just so on its axis and Ralston had fallen for her. And here he was…wagering on her future. Playing with her emotions and her love as though she were a toy to be used, then cast aside.
And she felt so very cast aside.
It was so easy to believe that she meant so little to him. So tempting to fall back into the comfortable invisibility that came with being a passive wallflower whom so few people really noticed.
And that was what hurt the most.
Pulling herself up to her full height and squaring her shoulders before she spoke, emotion gone from her voice. “You really have won, my lord. For, not only am I not marrying Lord Oxford, I am not marrying you, either. I release you from our betrothal. You are free to resume your life of self-indulgence and profligacy.”
He opened his mouth to speak, to stay her, to explain everything—his silly pride, his ridiculous, irrational anger in the face of the idiot Oxford—but she cut him off before he could speak. “I only ask that you stay as far away from me as possible.”
And then she was gone, pushing past Benedick and Oxford into the ballroom beyond, Mariana following closely behind.
Ralston moved to follow, twin bursts of uncertainty and pride coursing through him at her newfound strength, at her powerful confidence, at her unwillingness to compromise her desires. He wanted to capture her and tell her the whole truth—that he didn’t care about Juliana’s coming out or about his family’s reputation or about anything else.
“Leave her.” The words, hard and unfeeling, came from the Earl of Allendale, who had placed himself between Ralston and the entrance to the ballroom the moment his sister had escaped.
“I never wanted to hurt her. The wager means nothing. I don’t need the money, Allendale. You know that.”
“I do know that. And I don’t fully understand what possessed you to continue with this ridiculous game.” Allendale remained unmoving, daring Ralston to come at him. “Nevertheless, you have hurt her. And if you go near her again, I shall trounce you. As it is, we shall have a beast of a time dealing with a broken engagement.”
“The engagement is not broken.” Ralston’s voice was steel.
“You should let it go, Ralston. She is not worth it,” Oxford said cheerfully.
Ralston turned to face the all-but-forgotten dandy who had single-handedly destroyed the best thing in his life, and said, “What did you say?”
“I said she’s not worth it,” Oxford pressed on, oblivious to the hardened planes of Ralston’s face—to the harsh stiffening of his body. “Certainly, the best thing about spinsters is that they’re eager for a toss, but you can’t really mean to tell me you need to resort to one as plain and uninspiring as that one. Although, it did appear that she was more than willing to lift her skirts for you…and I suppose that is something.”
Benedick stiffened, and fury, hot and quick, coursed through Ralston at the words, so demeaning and unpleasant, directed at the woman he planned to make his wife. Because there was absolutely no question that Callie was going to be his wife.
Drunk or no, Oxford
would pay for his words.
Reaching out, Ralston grabbed Oxford by the lapels of his topcoat and slammed him against the stone wall that marked one edge of the balcony. The force of the blow took the breath out of the baron, and, gasping for air, he slumped to the ground, clutching his chest.
Ralston looked down his long, elegant nose at the vile creature at his feet, and said, “You just impugned the honor of my future marchioness. Choose your seconds. I will see you at dawn.”
Leaving Oxford sputtering on the ground, Ralston spun on one elegant heel to face Benedick. “When I am done with him, I am coming for your sister. And, if you intend to keep me from her, you had better have an army at your side.”
Twenty-four
Callie brushed aside her tears as she sat curled on the window seat in her bedchamber, considering the events of the evening.
How could she go on without him? And, at the same time, how could she go on knowing that every moment of their time together had meant so little to him—designed only to win him a wager and launch his sister into society.
It couldn’t be possible. Every ounce of her rejected the thought that he would have used her so callously.
And yet, he hadn’t denied it.
And why should she not believe it? The Marquess of Ralston—inveterate rake—would not have thought twice about using her for his personal gain. Hadn’t he done so? From the very beginning? He’d bargained his kisses for her support of his sister. Why should she have ever believed he might have changed?
She’d so believed he could—that decades marked by disdain for emotion could have been nothing more than a faint memory in his checkered past. That she could love him enough to prove to him that the world was worth his caring, his trust. That she could turn him into the man of whom she had dreamed for so long.
That was perhaps the hardest truth of all—that Ralston, the man she’d pined over for a decade, had never been real. He’d never been the strong and silent Odysseus; he’d never been aloof Darcy; never Antony, powerful and passionate. He had only ever been Ralston, arrogant and flawed and altogether flesh and blood.
And, he’d never pretended to be anything else. He’d never plied her with false professions of love, never fooled her into believing that he was anything more than what he was. He had even said it himself; he’d only needed her for Juliana’s sake.
Juliana’s sake and two thousand pounds, it seemed. Not that he needed the money.
That almost made it worse.
She bowed her head as another wave of tears came on a crest of sadness.
Oh, Callie. How did you come to be such an idiot?
Even as she’d come to know the real Ralston—the Ralston who was not cut from heroic cloth—Callie had failed to see the truth. And, instead of seeing her own heartbreak coming, she had fallen in love, not with her fantasy, but with this new, flawed Ralston.
And, while she had been so caught up in the idea that he might change, tonight it was clear that the powerful metamorphosis she had witnessed was not his.
It was hers.
And it was due almost entirely to him.
She stared blindly at the crumpled, stained list clutched in her hand—the list that had begun as hers but that had somehow become theirs. Her heart clenched as she realized that Ralston had been an integral part of this new, bold, adventurous Callie, that he had guided her through each item on the paper. She was forever changed because of him.
How would she survive such heartache? How would she forget that she was so very much in love with him?
She had no idea.
She did know, however, that she could not spend one more moment in this room. She leapt from her seat and crossed the bedchamber with purpose, pulling open the door and moving silently through the quiet house to Benedick’s study. She was going to try her hand at getting foxed again. Men seemed to take comfort in the experience when they were at their lowest lows; what was stopping her from doing the same?
Entering the room, she halted just inside, surprised to find her brother seated behind his enormous desk, staring off into the distance. He turned toward her at the sound of her feet on the wooden floor, and she watched as a shadow passed over his face. “Callie,” he said, and there was something in the way he spoke her name that made tears well in her eyes once more. “It’s four o’clock in the morning.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, beginning to back out of the room.
“No.” He waved a hand in her direction, beckoning her to come inside. “Stay.”
She did, closing the door softly behind her before padding over to the desk and seating herself in a comfortable chair across from him. She pulled her bare feet up under her. “You know,” she said, her voice trembling with unshed tears, “when I was a little girl, I used to sit in this chair, in my nightgown, and watch Father shuffle papers around that desk. For the longest time, I didn’t understand why he had so much work to do. I mean, wasn’t everything—the title, the house, the land, the things—weren’t they simply his?”
Benedick nodded at her words. “I felt the same way. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that all those things actually make work, and that Father wasn’t pretending.”
She smiled a watery smile. “It’s amazing. Here I am, in my nightgown, in this chair, looking at you. So little has changed.”
Benedick met her eyes. “Callie?”
The tears came then, silent and quick, running down her cheeks. She shook her head, looking down at her lap, worrying the fabric of her nightgown. “I thought I could change him.”
Benedick sighed.
“I see now that I cannot. I just…I thought I could convince him to love me.”
He sat for a long time, considering his words carefully. “Callie…love grows. Not everyone has an instant love match like Mother and Father. Like Mariana and Rivington. Ralston has been alone for a long time.”
Tears welled. “I love him,” she whispered.
“Is it not possible that he might love you as well?”
“He wagered two thousand pounds on my future, Benny.”
A ghost of a smile played across his lips. “I will not deny the fact that he was something of an imbecile to do such a thing…but I cannot imagine that the wager was anything more than a point of pride.”
“Pride?”
He nodded. “Male pride.”
Callie shook her head. “Your gender is utterly bizarre.” She shrugged her shoulders. “But that doesn’t mean he loves me. I am not sure he cares for me at all.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Benedick waited for her to look at him. “I would like nothing more than for you and Ralston never to see each other again, Callie, with the level of scandal that the two of you created tonight—and that’s not even considering the countless other scandals that you’ve most definitely orchestrated outside of my knowing—not that I ever want to know about them.” He paused. “However, you forget that I saw him last night. He came to me before he went to you in the library. He cares for you. I know it, or I never would have given him my blessing.”
“You’re wrong,” Callie whispered. “I thought I could love him enough for both of us. But I cannot.”
Silence fell between them, and Benedick watched as tears stained his sister’s cheeks. Finally, he spoke. “Callie…Ralston called Oxford out tonight.”
Callie’s head snapped up. She was certain that she had misunderstood her brother, “I—I beg your pardon?”
“He’s challenged Oxford to a duel.”
Callie shook her head, attempting to clear it of the fog that had just come over her. “No. It can’t be true. Are you sure it was he? And not St. John? They are twins, you know. It can be confusing.”
“Yes, Callie. I am aware that they are twins. I am also quite certain that the dueling parties are Ralston and Oxford, as I witnessed the whole thing. And, considering the duel is over you…”
“Me?” Callie squeaked. “Ralston would never duel over me. I’m not worth risking his life. I
mean, it’s not as if he loves me, Benedick,” she scoffed, meeting his concerned gaze. Benedick remained silent as she considered the words. “Oh, my God.”
“He may not love you, Callie. But I’d wager he feels something rather impressive for you, or he and Oxford would not be choosing their seconds as we speak.”
He was risking everything for her.
If that was not change, what was?
Callie’s eyes widened. “Oh, my God.” She leaned toward him, reaching across the desktop to grab his arm. “Benedick, you have to take me there.”
“Callie…” Benedick shook his head. “I cannot take you there. You know that.”
She shot up from her chair, announcing, “Benedick! He could die!” And she went tearing out of the room, up the wide center staircase and back into her bedchamber, Benedick hot on her heels. She threw open her door with a crash and rushed to her armoire to retrieve a dress from inside. “He could be killed!” she cried.
Benedick closed the door behind him, attempting to keep Callie calm with a soft, steady tone. “He won’t be killed, Callie. Duels rarely go that route anymore.”
She turned to him, arms laden with muslin. “Am I mistaken in how they operate, Benedick? Twenty paces, turn, and fire? A pistol? A loaded pistol?”
“Well, yes,” Benedick conceded the point, adding, “But death is not usually the expected outcome. I mean, one could go to prison for killing someone in a duel, for heaven’s sake.”
“Ah, so it’s a sort of gentlemen’s agreement?”
“Exactly.”
“Really more for show than for purpose.”
“Quite,” he said, pleased that she understood.
Her eyes narrowed on him. “And, what if one of the gentlemen in question is a poor shot?”
Benedick’s mouth opened, then closed.
Callie shook her head and moved behind her dressing screen. “You’re taking me.”
Her nightgown was almost immediately tossed over the top of the screen. Benedick threw up his hands at the indignity of the moment and turned his back to the general area. “I am not taking you, Callie. You shall wait here, as women do.”