“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.
~fromConfessions of a Sinful Earl
“She does notwant 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.”
“You do not deserve an audience with her,” Westmorland snarled. “After what you have done, you are damned fortunate I do not shoot you where you stand.”
Sin returned the duke’s glare with one of his own. “As far as I am aware, murder is still a crime, Westmorland.”
“So is what you have put my sister through.” Westmorland stalked toward him, menace in his step. “First, you blackmailed her into marrying you whilst I was on my honeymoon because you are lacking even a modicum of honor. Then, she discovered she was carrying your child, and you spent all night getting soused at a depraved club. After which you promptly made love to your mistress in your study, in plain view of the servants.”
Sin’s ears went hot, but he refused to retreat. “I will own that I blackmailed her into this marriage, and that I drowned myself in whisky that night, but the Duchess of Longleigh is not my mistress, and nor was I making love to her in my study.”
When he had belatedly learned, after Tilly’s departure, that Callie had returned from her call to her brother, only to suddenly leave once more, he had instantly known what she must have seen and the conclusions she had reached. Once again, his own actions looked damning. The fault for that was his, and he would own it. But he had hastened to Westmorland House only to be denied entrance. That Callie would hide from him for an entire night and not even allow him the chance to explain felt like a betrayal.
“Why should anyone believe what you say, Sinclair?” the duke bit out. “You are a known and admitted liar.”
“All I want is the opportunity to speak with my wife,” he returned, undaunted.
“Callie does not want to speak with you,” his brother-in-law snapped. “You have done enough damage. When she is ready to see you, she will let you know.”
