Twenty-four

Callie brushed aside her tears as she sat curled on the window seat in her bedchamber, considering the events of the evening.

How could she go on without him? And, at the same time, how could she go on knowing that every moment of their time together had meant so little to him—designed only to win him a wager and launch his sister into society.

It couldn’t be possible. Every ounce of her rejected the thought that he would have used her so callously.

And yet, he hadn’t denied it.

And why should she not believe it? The Marquess of Ralston—inveterate rake—would not have thought twice about using her for his personal gain. Hadn’t he done so? From the very beginning? He’d bargained his kisses for her support of his sister. Why should she have ever believed he might have changed?

She’d so believed he could—that decades marked by disdain for emotion could have been nothing more than a faint memory in his checkered past. That she could love him enough to prove to him that the world was worth his caring, his trust. That she could turn him into the man of whom she had dreamed for so long.

That was perhaps the hardest truth of all—that Ralston, the man she’d pined over for a decade, had never been real. He’d never been the strong and silent Odysseus; he’d never been aloof Darcy; never Antony, powerful and passionate. He had only ever been Ralston, arrogant and flawed and altogether flesh and blood.

And, he’d never pretended to be anything else. He’d never plied her with false professions of love, never fooled her into believing that he was anything more than what he was. He had even said it himself; he’d only needed her for Juliana’s sake.

Juliana’s sake and two thousand pounds, it seemed. Not that he needed the money.

That almost made it worse.

She bowed her head as another wave of tears came on a crest of sadness.

Oh, Callie. How did you come to be such an idiot?

Even as she’d come to know the real Ralston—the Ralston who was not cut from heroic cloth—Callie had failed to see the truth. And, instead of seeing her own heartbreak coming, she had fallen in love, not with her fantasy, but with this new, flawed Ralston.

And, while she had been so caught up in the idea that he might change, tonight it was clear that the powerful metamorphosis she had witnessed was not his.

It was hers.

And it was due almost entirely to him.

She stared blindly at the crumpled, stained list clutched in her hand—the list that had begun as hers but that had somehow become theirs. Her heart clenched as she realized that Ralston had been an integral part of this new, bold, adventurous Callie, that he had guided her through each item on the paper. She was forever changed because of him.

How would she survive such heartache? How would she forget that she was so very much in love with him?

She had no idea.

She did know, however, that she could not spend one more moment in this room. She leapt from her seat and crossed the bedchamber with purpose, pulling open the door and moving silently through the quiet house to Benedick’s study. She was going to try her hand at getting foxed again. Men seemed to take comfort in the experience when they were at their lowest lows; what was stopping her from doing the same?

Entering the room, she halted just inside, surprised to find her brother seated behind his enormous desk, staring off into the distance. He turned toward her at the sound of her feet on the wooden floor, and she watched as a shadow passed over his face. “Callie,” he said, and there was something in the way he spoke her name that made tears well in her eyes once more. “It’s four o’clock in the morning.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, beginning to back out of the room.

“No.” He waved a hand in her direction, beckoning her to come inside. “Stay.”

She did, closing the door softly behind her before padding over to the desk and seating herself in a comfortable chair across from him. She pulled her bare feet up under her. “You know,” she said, her voice trembling with unshed tears, “when I was a little girl, I used to sit in this chair, in my nightgown, and watch Father shuffle papers around that desk. For the longest time, I didn’t understand why he had so much work to do. I mean, wasn’t everything—the title, the house, the land, the things—weren’t they simply his?”

Benedick nodded at her words. “I felt the same way. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that all those things actually make work, and that Father wasn’t pretending.”

She smiled a watery smile. “It’s amazing. Here I am, in my nightgown, in this chair, looking at you. So little has changed.”

Benedick met her eyes. “Callie?”

The tears came then, silent and quick, running down her cheeks. She shook her head, looking down at her lap, worrying the fabric of her nightgown. “I thought I could change him.”

Benedick sighed.

“I see now that I cannot. I just…I thought I could convince him to love me.”

He sat for a long time, considering his words carefully. “Callie…love grows. Not everyone has an instant love match like Mother and Father. Like Mariana and Rivington. Ralston has been alone for a long time.”

Tears welled. “I love him,” she whispered.

“Is it not possible that he might love you as well?”

“He wagered two thousand pounds on my future, Benny.”

A ghost of a smile played across his lips. “I will not deny the fact that he was something of an imbecile to do such a thing…but I cannot imagine that the wager was anything more than a point of pride.”