What Happens in Piccadilly - Chasity Bowlin Page 0,93
from being able to do damage to anyone else.”
“I’ll see to her,” Averston stated. “That I swear to you. And no one will be making any further threats upon your person. I may be cold-hearted, but I’m not a monster. No matter how often she tried to make one of me.”
Callie nodded. “I am sorry. I know that you cared for Mr. Burney.”
Averston shook his head. “I didn’t. Not really. But I could have, given time and opportunity. It will be handled, Miss. St. James. You and your earl, and whatever Highcliff is in all of this, may depend upon it.”
Looking at him, Callie realized that the outward persona he presented, the cold and distant facade, was just that. He was a lonely man, made lonelier by the burden of keeping up appearances to suit the Machiavellian woman next to them. Sparing a look at the woman who was, by blood at least, her grandmother, Callie addressed her directly. “There are no words for what you are and what you have done. But there is a hell waiting for you when you die… one that will burn hotter and brighter and longer than any other hell before it. Because you, Madam, have earned the lord’s wrath and the devil’s attentions with every breath you’ve taken.”
The dowager duchess smiled coldly, her blue eyes pale and hard, glinting like the crystal of the chandelier that hung above them. “My dear girl, you are foolish to think it matters. There is nothing beyond this earth. I’ve watched enough people die, gasping their last breaths, to know that when a life ends, that’s all it does. It just ends. There is no soul, no eternal part of us. There’s what we leave on this earth when we are gone and whatever manages to grow in the ground above our rotting flesh. Keep your talk of hell and the devil. Even if he existed, it is not I who should fear him.”
Callie’s own gaze hardened and she said with all the ice she herself could muster, “Then at least when you breathe your last, you will leave no lingering presence to taint the rest of us.”
The old woman laughed. “You aren’t just like your mother. There’s a bit of me in there, too. Watch that you don’t let it spread like a cancer and turn you into what you most despise. Though there would certainly be some poetic justice in that.”
“I could never be like you… because I don’t see people as a commodity to be bartered and sold and used. I’m capable of actually loving someone. I don’t think you ever were.” With those final words, Callie turned and walked away from both Averston and the dowager duchess. She marched toward Winn and kept her gaze on him, lest she look back at the horror of what she’d actually come from. As she reached him, she asked, “Will you show me the portrait of my mother? Let me see her.”
“Come along,” Winn said and offered her his arm.
Callie accepted it and let him lead her out into the corridor. Halfway down, he stopped and they turned toward the portrait of Mademoiselle Veronique Delaine. Callie gasped as she saw it. “She was stunning. She was so beautiful.”
“She certainly was,” Winn agreed. “And you are just as beautiful… more so to me, because I can see beyond your pretty face. What that horrid woman said to you—you’re nothing like her, Callie. You never will be. Your heart is too kind and your soul too filled with compassion for others.”
“I don’t feel very compassionate right now. I feel angry and even a bit mean. I hate her, Winn. I’ve been angry before, I’ve been wounded and hurt and afraid of others… but I’ve never hated. Not until now,” Callie said as she looked up at the portrait of her mother once more. She’d never know her, never know her father, and all of that was because of that awful woman.
“She took so much from you. It’s only natural,” he offered.
“We don’t have to marry so quickly now,” she said. “I think, despite what we might have initially believed of him, that the Duke of Averston is not our enemy.”
“We’re getting married tomorrow… and if you think my decision to marry you and my desire to do so with the utmost haste can be laid solely at the door of those people, then I have done a very poor job of expressing my feelings to you. I want