dear to her. That, coupled with the gift of the chatelaine had left her feeling low, like the most horrid creature on Earth. Even after she had hurt him, he went out of his way to prove his love for her. She’d been too blinded by her fears to see it. Now, it was too late.
“Surely he would forgive you. Callie, the man loves you.”
“His uncle has just died, and after what I’ve already done, I would never intrude in his moment of grief and inflict even more hardship on him. He gave me the chance to choose him, and I spurned it. I would not blame him if he never wanted to see me again.”
Diana seemed ready to go on arguing her point, but Calliope gave her sister a little shake.
“It’s all right. Do you understand? I have made my peace with it, and so must you. Martin is not Dominick, but he is more than I had hoped for in a husband. There is no reason to believe I cannot be happy with him.”
Her sister nodded, though Calliope read the uncertainty in her eyes. She turned away, unable to bear it any longer. She needed to stay strong.
Her father arrived next, moving them all to tears again with his reaction to her in her bridal ensemble. He held her close and told her how lovely she looked. To her relief, the viscount didn’t ask her if she was sure about her choice, though Calliope knew he had witnessed her unhappiness just as Diana had. He simply took her hand and led her down to the waiting coach, joining her, Diana, and Hastings inside.
The vehicle lurched, carrying her toward her future. As she clung to her bouquet of daylilies, she did her best to convince herself it was a future she could be content with.
It was all she had left.
Dominick stood outside St. James’s Church, watching as Aubrey and Lucinda’s wedding guests flocked to the carriages lining the street, waiting to take them to the wedding breakfast. He’d spent the past several days wrestling with himself while grappling with his grief and planning for his departure from London. He hadn’t slept, could barely eat, and an incessant pounding had taken up between his eyes.
Three times he had begun making his way to Hastings House, intent on demanding an audience with Calliope. Three times, he changed course and went off to find other occupation, uncertainty getting the best of him. He still wanted her, loved her beyond all reason, and there was no stopping it. But, did she love him? Would she be willing to toss Lewes over, making an even bigger scandal than the one they had begun in Surrey?
It was this worry that held him back, for he would never want to put her in such a position, nor did he relish making a fool of himself and risk being turned away again. From the dark recesses of his mind—where he had shoved and compressed his feelings for her—a soft voice whispered that there was hope. There was still the chance that she would choose him. The voice had grown louder and louder, until it was all he could hear, his thoughts consumed with the seductive idea of stealing a bride from her unsuspecting groom.
He’d awakened this morning with his every sense on high alert, his body shaken by internal tremors, as if some deep-seated part of him prepared for something monumental. Nick did everything he could to ignore it. He told himself it was merely sorrow over knowing Calliope was getting married today; it would pass once the deed was done and there was no longer anything he could do to stop it.
However, that voice in his mind had dominated his thoughts throughout the wedding. As he’d sat beside Hugh to watch Aubrey marry the woman he loved, Nick found himself unable to ignore it any longer.
He’d thought it a just twist of fate for him to be forced to endure this pain, an inevitability for a man who had lived as he had for so long without truly facing any consequences. But, the evidence of how wrong he was stood right before him. Granted, Aubrey didn’t have Dominick’s salacious past working against him—but there were enough obstacles that ought to have kept him and Lucinda apart. His status as a man in trade and the son of a valet who had once been a slave. All the privilege and advantages Lucinda had been born with that