Salient questions. Sin could not deny that, even if he hated them.
“She does not want me there,” he admitted. “She was ill tonight, and she wanted her bloody lady’s maid to attend her.”
Instead of him.
That still hurt.
Fucking hell, how was his glass empty once more?
“Another whisky?” Decker asked him.
Sin ought to say no.
“Yes,” he said instead. He was not ready to return home.
Home to his wife who had been…strangely withdrawn in the wake of the news she was carrying his child. Home to his wife who had been pale and quiet. Home to the realization that everything between them was about to change. Home to the fears that had not ceased to torment him ever since bloody Dr. Gilmore had made his announcement that Callie was carrying his child.
Thoughts of his daughter, stillborn, returned.
The realization he could lose another child, and that he could lose Callie too, slammed into him with the force of a fist.
His glass was full once more. He took a long, steady draught. The burn down to his gut was not enough to make him forget. But it was enough to distract.
For now.
She was going to be a mother.
How impossible it seemed.
Alone in the sitting room of her apartments, Callie rested her hand upon her belly. The chamber was eastward facing, which meant that whenever it was in abundance, rich sunlight spilled into the room, bathing it in warmth. On ordinary days, she adored this cheerful room. She spent time in here reading. Once, Sin had surprised her and made love to her on the divan. Another occasion, upon the newly replaced carpets.
But the joy she ordinarily found in this chamber was nowhere to be found today, and those memories of lovemaking haunted her like bitter ghosts.
It was still so much to comprehend, Dr. Gilmore’s shocking proclamation the day before, that she was pregnant. Initially, she had been stunned. Utterly flabbergasted. For all that she and Sin had been making love at every opportunity, she had somehow foolishly believed that growing a child in her womb would take time. That it would not happen immediately.
However, fate had proven her wrong.
When Sin had come to her, she had been in shock. She had been dizzied, tired, and terrified. She still was tired. Still terrified. But now, she was also plagued by another painful truth: her husband had not returned home last night. He had left her as she had asked, and he had never come back.
The hour was nearing two o’clock in the afternoon.
Each tick of the arms on the ormolu mocked her. Like everything else in this newly decorated room, she had chosen the ornate bronze clock with a warrior as its focal point. The pictures on the walls, including one of Moreau’s, filled her with bitter sadness. In the last month, she had made changes upon this home. It had begun, gradually, to feel like a place where she belonged.
As had Sin.
Where was he? And why? Had he decided that, having secured the possibility of an heir, he no longer needed to share her bed? Had he gone to his club? To another lover? To the ethereally beautiful Duchess of Longleigh?
At long last, she detected a flurry of motion in the hall. Footsteps. Voices. A door opening and closing. Callie knew what those sounds meant. Sin was back.
She rose to her feet and made her way through the door adjoining their apartments with all haste. When she saw him, she wished she had not, for the evidence of what he had spent the night doing was all over his handsome, dissolute form.
He was wearing yesterday’s clothes. His hair was disheveled, his eyes bloodshot. His neck tie was missing, and his trousers were rumpled.
“Callie,” he said, scrubbing a hand over his jaw.
She did not have the capacity to exchange greetings. A rush of raw fury made her tremble. “Where were you?”
“At my club,” he said, moving toward her. “And after that, I bedded down at my friend’s house.”
She flinched away from his touch when he reached for her. “A friend’s house?”
“Yes.” His jaw hardened as his gaze searched hers. “A friend. Forgive me for not sending word. Yesterday’s news left me surprised. I am afraid I did not handle it well.”
“Were you with a paramour?” she asked, hating herself for the need to ask.
Fearing the answer and what it would mean even more.
“No.” He shook his head. “Christ, no, Callie. I drank too much bloody whisky. My friend Decker took