They were not just friends. She completed him in a way no other woman ever had or could.
If you did not bollix everything up with your stupid bloody trip to visit Decker last night, his conscience reminded him.
“But I did marry him, did I not?” Tilly shook her head. “I, alone, am to blame for the desperate straits in which I find myself. I had believed it would be different between us, if he finally had what he wanted. But I was wrong.”
“Has Longleigh hurt you?” Sin pressed.
It was not his business, he knew, but the worries which had first surfaced upon his visit to Haddon House with Callie returned, and they would not be silenced.
“He has not raised his hand against me, if that is what you are asking. He would not dare to cause harm to the babe,” she said. “Afterward…I cannot say. But I have not imposed upon you today to fret over what might happen. I am here seeking your help because of what has happened.”
“Come,” he said, gesturing for her to have a seat on the divan Callie had selected for his study as part of her campaign to refurbish his townhome. “Have a seat.”
“Thank you, Sin,” she whispered, her voice tremulous. “You are a great friend to me. I have missed you.”
He had a feeling this conversation was going to be long and her feet would need the rest. Sin settled himself in a chair opposite. “Tell me everything, Tilly.”
Callie emerged from her visit to Benny and Isabella feeling calmer. It had been good to spend a few, unhurried hours visiting with them. The distraction had been welcome. And it had granted her some time to realize she had been hard on Sin earlier that afternoon. After all, he had shown her he was trustworthy, had he not? The wounds left behind by his first marriage were deep, and she could not forget that.
“Where is his lordship?” she asked Dunlop upon her return, determined that she would see Sin and do her utmost to resume where they had left off earlier.
“Lord Sinclair is with the Duchess of Longleigh, in his study, my lady,” the butler-in-training announced helpfully.
The Duchess of Longleigh?
Callie’s stomach dropped.
“Thank you, Dunlop.” The words had scarcely left her lips when Callie’s feet were moving.
Feeling as if she were in a dream—a nightmare—she reached the study door. It stood slightly ajar. Through the crack, she saw the duchess in her husband’s arms. Saw Sin’s hands tenderly stroking up and down her back.
Heard her husband’s beautiful, deep voice.
It was a lover’s embrace. The intimacy and familiarity were undeniable.
“I will always care for you, Tilly,” he was saying. “Whatever you need…”
Callie could not bear to hear the remainder of the words. The tentative understanding and hope she had spun, delicate as a spider’s web, was obliterated. Everything gone. In a moment. In the sight of the duchess in Sin’s arms, watching the way she clutched him, as if she would never let him go.
Dear God, it was just as she had always suspected. There were still feelings between the two of them.
Perhaps even love.
Callie fled, the sting of tears in her eyes, and ordered the carriage brought around once more. She was going back to Westmorland House.
She was going home.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I will never forget the expression on her face when realization dawned upon her, like the sun illuminating the morning sky, chasing away the shadows and darkness of night. It was in that moment, dear reader, when she realized she had never known me at all.
~from Confessions of a Sinful Earl
“She does not want to see you, Sinclair.”
The cold pronouncement of the Duke of Westmorland cut through the silence of the salon where Sin had been awaiting his wife. For the second day in a row, he had returned to Westmorland House, determined to gain an audience with Callie.
This time, he had not been turned away at the door by the disapproving butler. Mayhap because Sin had finally threatened to plant him a facer if he did not at least allow him inside the sprawling castle where his wife had chosen to hide herself. Regardless, this was not the interview he had been hoping to achieve after suffering through the longest night of his life.
Two nights in a row without her in his bed.
It had been fucking torture, and he was at fault for both.
“She is my wife,” he told his forbidding brother-in-law. “I have every right to see her and to speak with her.”