she prodded.
Her question took him back to that long-ago day. Although he had been desperate to gain his freedom from Celeste, nothing could have prepared him for the discovery that she had killed herself. Too much laudanum. She had left him a letter, and it had been convoluted and twisted as her mind had been. Even in death, she had been beautiful.
Deceptively innocent.
“It is,” he bit out, trying to shake himself from the painful ghosts of his past.
“There was no mysterious illness, then?” Lady Calliope prodded.
“Her mind itself was ill,” he admitted tersely. He did not like to speak of Celeste. Not to anyone. But he supposed this acknowledgment was necessary if he meant to follow through with making Lady Calliope his bride.
And everything depended upon making her his wife.
Everything depended upon her, the woman at his side.
The one who wanted vengeance against him.
Silence reigned between them once more, until the vast, imposing façade of Westmorland House loomed within sight.
“Why did you not tell me?” she asked.
“Would you have believed me?” Sin countered, already knowing the answer.
“No.”
He glanced at her once more, taking in her beauty. “And do you believe me now?”
“I am not certain.” Her dulcet voice betrayed her confusion.
At least she was being honest.
He believed her answer. But it was not the answer he needed.
“You have five more days to persuade yourself to see common sense and reason, princess,” he hissed, frustration rising, along with the same old rage. “Because like it or not, you are going to become the next Lady Sinclair.”
She said nothing, merely turned her gaze to the street ahead.
Damn her.
Chapter Ten
The Duke of W. deserved to die, dear reader. I knew it the moment I pushed him on those stairs. I watched him fall. I felt nothing.
~from Confessions of a Sinful Earl
“You met Lord Sinclair’s mistress?” Jo asked, sotto voce, as she and Callie made their way through the Westmorland House orangery the next afternoon, under the guise of Callie showing off their newest pineapples.
Aunt Fanchette was blessedly easy to avoid, especially since she was drinking champagne and plotting Callie’s hasty wedding with inebriated glee.
“His former mistress,” Callie corrected grimly as they reached a row of strawberry plants bursting with ripe, red fruits, which needed to be collected soon.
She did not know why she bothered to make the distinction. Perhaps because she had seen how beautiful the duchess was. Perhaps because she had taken note of the glances the earl and the duchess had exchanged. They cared for each other, and that much was certain, in spite of his vehement declaration that love was naught but a chimera. Callie could not help but to wonder, with a bitterness that did her no credit, whether or not every woman in the Earl of Sinclair’s life had been a golden-haired goddess. She had never been more aware of her dark hair and eyes.
“Former mistress, then,” Jo corrected, waving a hand as if it were neither here nor there.
Perhaps it was. Certainly, it ought not to matter to Callie. Even if the Earl of Sinclair had not killed his wife or Alfred, she still had no reason to feel anything for him other than resentment and hatred. He had abducted her, and he was forcing her into a marriage that was unacceptable and unwanted.
“I met her, yes,” Callie agreed, biting her lip as she moved toward the lemon trees. Fat, yellow fruits hung in abundance.
The late-spring day was warm, the sun piercing the thick London fog overhead to beat through the leaden panes of the glass-domed roof. Everything in the orangery was green and lush, so very alive. Blossoming, the air perfumed with the sweet scents of blooms and exotic fruits. Filled with promise. Of all the rooms in Westmorland House, the orangery would always be one of her favorites.
She would miss it here, she realized with a sudden, stricken pang. In less than a week’s time, Westmorland House would no longer be her home. Instead, she would find herself inhabiting the threadbare townhome of the Earl of Sinclair.
“And what happened when you met her, Callie?” Jo asked, dragging her from her desolate ruminations.
“She supported what Sinclair claimed,” Callie conceded grudgingly.
If she were honest with herself, she would admit that her call upon the Duchess of Longleigh had left her more conflicted and confused than she had been prior to their brief interlude. She had wanted, so desperately, to be right about Sinclair. Because if she was wrong about him, then she had been so blinded by